The SMU Student Senate is creating a new scholarship after receiving a $50,000 donation.
The donor, who wishes to remain anonymous, was a member of the Senate while attending SMU and wanted to work in conjunction with the organization to give something back to the school.
Since it is the school’s policy that there must be a $100,000 endowment to start a scholarship, the Senate will match the donation with $48,000, and the donor will cover the remaining $2,000.
“We have a large amount of money in our Students’ Association account and we can now invest it in a way to promote a great opportunity,” Student Body President Liz Healy said.
While there are several Student Senate scholarships in existence, these have very specific requirements and are mostly need-based.
This new scholarship will be merit-based and will be open to all students who are involved in any student organization. It will be available to students by next year.
In addition to discussing this new scholarship, the Senate approved the finance committee’s recommendations to provide the Advertising Club with $1,400 to help them attend a national conference in Atlanta and also $1,450 for the National Panhellenic Council to attend a conference.
A resolution to amend Student Senate policies and procedures, proposed last week by Dedman II Sen. Ben Hatch, was also unanimously approved.
The amendment will add a senatorial forum to the weekly meeting, which will allow deliberation of three topics per meeting.
“I don’t believe we should be discussing an issue for the first time after legislation has been written,” Hatch said. “This is the first step to modernizing our forum to deal with the issues of students we represent.”
During new business, a bill to appropriate $1,500 for a graduate finance case competition was proposed by Cox senators Max Roberts and Lincoln Torrey. It will be voted on next week.
Also this week, Joel Vasquez was inaugurated as the Hispanic-American senator after a competitive interview process. The Senate still has one vacancy for a Cox senator.
