IUSA passes 2005-06 budget

IU Student Association congress voted to pass the proposed 2005-06 budget in a meeting held Tuesday, following a mass e-mail attempt by an IU student to prevent the budget's passage. \nAfter a lengthy debate, the budget passed with a vote of 33-3, with three representatives abstaining from the vote. \nIUSA President Alex Shortle, who has participated in student government for 2 1/2 years, said the discussion surrounding the budget was unlike anything he'd seen before. \n"The discussion tonight was fantastic," he said. "It was the best discussion we've had since I've been here." \nVice Chairman of the IU College Republicans Matt Lettelleir sent a mass e-mail encouraging students to oppose the budget early Tuesday morning to roughly 12,000 IU students on a compiled ListServ address he titled "The Shortle Watch." \nListServ is a tool used by IU to compile e-mail lists.\nIn his e-mail, Lettelleir accused the budget of containing "self-serving perks," in reference to executive stipends and parking permits. \nDozens of students attempted to have themselves removed from the list by replying to the original sender, but these replies were also directed to everyone on the e-mail list, creating a bulk of messages. \nLettelleir said he does not regret sending the e-mail, but that he should have made the list private rather than public so students would not be bombarded with messages. \n"I felt like I needed to do something to stop this," he said. "I think that it is a responsibility of every student to know where their money is going." \nThe budget passed Tuesday night allocates $48,400 to maintaining the IUSA office, $19,000 to pay IUSA executives and $21,265 for newspaper advertising contracts. The total budget amounted to $108,865. \nShortle said the attack on the budget should not have been directed through e-mail channels.\n"It's a shame we had to wake up so many students this morning to 100 replies," he said. "The most disappointing thing is there are a lot of people on that ListServ who are not students anymore. They're graduates and they're getting these e-mails at their place of work." \nIn addition, Shortle said this year's proposed budget did not use funds in an unusual way, and he hoped to make IUSA more organized so that past documents could be easily viewed by the public. \n"If I get this place running like a business by the end of the year, I'll feel successful with what I've done," he said. "There's nothing that we have added this year from years in the past. Everything has stayed consistent in terms of the past at least eight years, especially in terms of executive stipends."\nStudent Drew Nguyen, a recipient of Lettelleir's mass e-mail, said he was more concerned with the spam than the student budget. \n"I just woke up this morning and I saw 20 or 30 e-mails concerning this and a bunch of people saying, 'Take me off the list,'" he said. \nNguyen responded to the e-mail in defense of IUSA and the budget. \n"They set up relief efforts that encourage others to lend a helping hand to victims of Hurricane Katrina, people who genuinely need a little bit of help from everyone," he wrote in his reply. \nThe usage standards for ListServ state that "lists may not attempt to address the entire IU community, nor any large group of individuals for which the list owner is not administratively responsible."\nMerri Beth Lavagnino, deputy information technology policy officer for University Information Technology Services, said the e-mail violated these standards. \n"Since the individual's actions caused degradation of service to ListServ and perhaps even general e-mail users, we will be referring this incident to the Office of the Dean of Students," she said in an e-mail interview.