The Campus Women's Center exhausted its appeals process Thursday when the Student Services Finance Committee voted 2-0 to reject a procedural appeal and to uphold an earlier ASM Student Judiciary ruling.
Zorian Lasowsky, CWC finance coordinator, argued the organization had been denied the due process procedure guaranteed to them by the ASM Constitution during the original budget hearings.
Lawosky said the committee made an ""error of omission"" by not clearly articulating to members that they were allowed to use discretion on all sources of information they considered in their decision, including supplementary materials.
The implication of the omission, he said, was that members believed they had to give more weight to the CWC's eligibility application than other evidence.
""This was a violation of due process,"" Lawosky said. ""Some SSFC members were allowed to make considerations under a stricter set of bylaws than were others.""
In the original vote, no SSFC members voted to fund the CWC. Four members had voted to deny the application and four others abstained from voting. Several committee members suggested Thursday that four was an abnormally high number of abstaining votes—a number, they argued, indicating confusion about how to judge CWC's eligibility.
However, only two committee members present Thursday were allowed to rule on the appeal, and both had voted against CWC previously. Secretary Matthew Manes and Vice Chair Michael Romenesko rejected the appeal 2-0, citing no procedural violations.
The SSFC also voted 5-3 to appropriate $264,468 to the Multicultural Student Center, and 7-0 to approve MEChA's budget of $69,170.
