$12.6 million to dole out for student services and groups

<p>SG coffers expand</p>

<p>By JESSICA DaSILVA
Alligator Writer</p>

<p>Student Government's power players will have more than $12.6 million to dole out for student services and groups during the next year, an SG official announced Tuesday night. </p>

<p>Tanaz Vaghaiwalla, chairwoman of the Student Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, made a PowerPoint presentation to the Student Senate that reviewed SG's budget for the 2007?08 academic year. </p>

<p>The newly released budget, which consists entirely of student money, represents a 5 percent increase over the most recent budget, which hovered just above $12 million. </p>

<p>The budget accounts for the projected increase in revenue from raising student fees. The new spending plan will provide more money for SG advertising and Museum Nights. </p>

<p>Additionally, it will incorporate newspaper readership programs for The Gainesville Sun, The New York Times and USA Today. </p>

<p>The academic portion of the budget also received increases in order to provide more travel grants to graduate students. </p>

<p>Student Sen. Robert Agrusa, who leads the Senate's Judiciary Committee, also presented a bill Tuesday about resizing legislative districts. </p>

<p>The Senate reconsiders the sizes of its districts each year. Those districts range from off-campus areas to undergraduate dorms on campus. </p>

<p>But this year, Agrusa said, none of the various Senate districts will be resized because there have not been any significant population shifts over the past year. </p>

<p>"We've seen it change so much each year, but we've never let the dust settle," Agrusa said in an interview before the meeting. "Change for the sake of change isn't necessarily responsible." </p>

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<p>"The academic portion of the budget also received increases in order to provide more travel grants to graduate students."
- This is an interesting fact</p>