The Student Association (SA) Senate discussed aspects of next semester like budget and SA staffing Sunday night in the Holmes Student Center’s Sky Room.

The 2014 Academic Budget was approved, which SA Treasurer Josh Venaas said is the first of five budgets the SA is responsible for approving. The academic budget includes funds for about 20 recognized academic groups.

“The overall budget is divided into five separate categories,” Venaas said. “Tonight we did academic groups. Groups are categorized by group type, and we’ll talk about the other four subcommittees over the next few weeks.”

Venaas said the other budget categories are greek/cultural, general programming, university services and sports clubs that are recognized by the SA but not funded by the university.

After the budget was approved, the Senate approved a resolution to appoint Deputy Speaker Michael Theodore to chief of staff.

“The chief of staff is the supervising chief administrative officer of the SA,” Theodore said. “They’re the implementer of the president’s goals and supervises everybody in their duties.”

Sunday night’s agenda also included a bill to amend the SA Constitution with regard to last week’s resolution to require a 2.5 GPA to serve on the SA Senate. The previous requirement was a GPA at or above 2.0.

Senate Speaker James Zanayed said the constitution’s bylaws are structured so incoming freshmen are exempt from the GPA requirement their first semester, since freshmen start with no GPA. In order to implement last week’s resolution, the bylaws would have to be changed, as well, so SA President Delonte LeFlore vetoed the resolution. Due to low attendance at Sunday’s meeting, discussion will take place next week.

“We don’t want to make it harder for freshmen to get involved with the Senate,” Zanayed said. “We want to hear their voices, as well.”