The ASSU Undergraduate Senate discussed last night how to best approach errors made in the special fees process.

The constitutional by-laws state that any group that has a significant increase — over 10 percent — in its special fees allocations must then petition in order to receive funding in the current year.

The 10 percent was to be calculated based only on the amount of special fees funding that the group had the previous year. However, while making calculations, the Senate based the 10 percent figure on the sum of the special fees funding and reserves money combined.

As a result, the amount of money that the Senate allocated to each of four groups — KZSU, AASA, Stanford NAACP and Stanford Dance Marathon — was beyond the 10 percent increase.

“In extenuating circumstances,” Senator Luukas Ilves ‘09 said, “the ASSU legislatures are able to place a special fee group on the ballot without petitioning even if their budget has increased by more than 10 percent. We will be voting on resolutions to do so for KZSU, Dance Marathon, AASA and NAACP next week.”

Senators felt that asking the groups to petition was unreasonable this late in the process.

“Because of some accounting errors in the appropriations process,” Ilves continued, “it didn’t come to our attention that these groups would have to petition for their budget increases. By the time this came to the undergraduate senate’s attention, we felt that it was too late to force these groups to petition.”

The Senate also discussed the success of its event last week, “Come Complain Here.”

“We held office hours every week this last quarter, and we didn’t get one comment,” Senator Jose Benchimol ‘08 said. “And, then, one day, we hold an event and we get fifty comments. I think this is something that needs to be done every quarter.”