The Senate voted against a bylaw change that would allow Senate Money Resolutions to be granted to projects that benefit the student body as a whole instead of just to Student Union government projects after some original supporters of the amendment changed their minds at last Sunday's Senate meeting, several attendees said. Senators for the Class of 2011 Alex Melman and Lev Hirschhorn, Senator for the Class of 2010 Amanda Hecker, North Quad Senator Alex Norris '11 and Ridgewood Quad Senator Aaron Mitchell Finegold '09 had proposed the bylaw last week.

The Union Judiciary originally ruled March 11 that a Senate Money Resolution of $900 toward an event with former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers and former Black Panther member Robert King violated a Student Union bylaw that stated that all Senate Money Resolutions must go toward Student Union government projects.

The decision stated that to be Union projects, substantial Student Union involvement in the planning of the event is necessary, which the UJ ruled was not the case for the Ayers and King event.

At the beginning of the Union debate on whether to pass the amendment last Sunday, Melman and Hirschhorn stated that the Senate could serve as another funding source when the Finance Board was not able to fund due to insufficient funds.

Supporters of the bylaw change also pointed out that the Senate was spending a large percentage of its discretionary fund of $9221.66 for the semester on free food and T-shirts for events such as the Midnight Buffet rather than on more worthwhile events.

However, in an interview with the Justice, Melman, who was also an event planner for the Ayers and King visits, said that the opposing arguments had convinced him to change his mind.

"There was something to the idea that we don't want to get bogged down in really long debates and we don't want to become an organization that wastes its time giving out money. . We want to be an organization that spends its time doing advocacy," he said afterward.

Melman was originally in favor of the bylaw because he thought it would enable the Senate to get involved in more projects that were not necessarily Senate-initiated.

Hirschhorn said he still supported the amendment. "The F-Board is one body that gives out [a large amount of money] to clubs to do all these projects; the Senate has a pool between $5,000 and $10,000 ... that we could use to co-sponsor events," he said. "The F-Board doesn't co-sponsor events; the Senate co-sponsors events. [The Union Judiciary] basically took away the Senate's power to co-sponsor events" because the Senate could not fund events put on by other groups.

Melman said he and Hirschhorn had not intended to use the bylaw change if it had been passed to request funding for Ayers and King because of the event's controversial nature. He added that they had secured funding from other sources but declined to give further details.

Chief Justice of the Union Judiciary Rachel Graham Kagan '09 said during the debate that the idea behind the UJ's March 11 ruling was that the Union needed to be intimately involved in the planning and that groups should not come before the Senate in a "last-ditch effort" to receive funding.

She went on to say that the bylaw could be unfair because only club members who happened to know senators would be aware of the option.

Graham Kagan and other senators referred to the 2006 reform to the Student Activities Fee, during which students voted to move funds from secured groups such as Brandeis Emergency Medical Corps, BTV and the Student Union to the Finance Board to allocate to chartered clubs. The previous system led to overlong Senate meetings because the Senate had to debate so many requests for SMRs, Kagan said.

"When F-board tells you to go seek other sources of funding, they're not talking about Senate; they're talking about grants from different departments," Graham Kagan said.

She also said at the meeting that "F-board is the best way to allocate money, and if you have problems with the way money is allocated, you fix F-board, you don't fix Senate."

"If the Senate is not utilizing all its money, is spending too much of it on free food, then maybe some of it should go back to the Student Activities Fee," Melman said.