The Student Government Association met yesterday at 4:30 p.m. and discussed past motions, funding for the sociology department and scheduling of a meeting of the oversight committee. Brent Callais, SGA president, talked about the survey the SGA will be conducting.

“Dr. Simpson and I finally finalized it, we got all the questions ready, and tomorrow morning I am meeting with Larry Howell, and he is going to select what classes we are going to administer the survey to,” Callais said.

He said the number of students who will be surveyed is still yet to be determined, but it should be in the range from 500 to 700 students.

The SGA has been asked by Mike Matherne, director of student life, to continue to work on the recreational center.

“He and I decided that it would be a good idea if we started a recreational facility ad-hoc committee,” Callais said.

An oversight committee once investigated organizations that received student assessed fees to see that they were functioning organizations.

Callais said the committee has not met since 1998, so he talked to Dr. Dial, Mike Naquin and others.

He advised that the SGA reform this committee to oversee the organizations that are receiving these funds.

“So, SPA, SGA, The Nicholls Worth, Peer Assistance, cheerleaders and a few other organizations will have to go before this board and show their budgets. Are they spending their money? Are they fulfilling their mission statement? They are just going to have to prove their case to the committee that they are a functioning organization, and that their self-assessed fee will continue,” Callais said.

Homecoming decisions were made at last week’s meeting, however, Callais talked about actions being taken concerning the motions and the stipulations within them.

“These three stipulations caused a great deal of conflict between the SPA, SGA, Alumni Affairs and the homecoming committee for a couple of days,” Callais said.

He met with representatives from some of these organizations to talk about plans for next year, and came up with a way to resolve the conflict.

“What I decided to do was use my line item veto, and just take that one stipulation out of the motion,” he said.

“The stipulation is that in the future the SGA will no longer fund the homecoming fireworks display unless the request for funds is proposed within the first week of the fall semester.”

Callais said the SPA will begin planning earlier to come to the SGA in the spring semester instead of the fall semester to ask for homecoming funds.

“I took that stipulation out of the motion because years down the line or next year we did not want to have someone come up and say this is the motion, you came late, we are not funding you. And, just to ease the tension between all the groups this is the stipulation, and now we have this in writing that they will come to us in the spring semester, and, if they do not come to us in the spring semester, we can use this instead of leaving it the way it is in this motion,” Callais said.

New business included Dr. Martin Simpson coming before the senate to ask for funding for video cassettes for his Sociology 372 and 387 classes.

“As you know my department which started out as government, and then ended up with government and everything else, which was sociology, criminal justice and legal assistance studies, years ago got divorced from history, so we had separate budgets,” Simpson said.

Recently, the department has been reunited with the history department.

“The historians are eating our budget, like crazy. So, we are as poor as church mice, and you are the only people that seem to have at least some funds,” he said.

The motion was passed for the funding of the video cassettes.

In response to the death of Dr. Jerry Gee, distinguished service professor of education, the SGA formed a commendation to honor him, that will be framed and presented to his wife.