In Thursday's meeting, SGA decided to start giving an annual donation of $1,000 to the Chaplain Discretionary Fund tonight at their weekly business meeting. 

The Chaplin Fund was established at Elon University to help students, faculty and staff who are in need of additional support. Jana Lynn Patterson, advisor to SGA, said examples of this include sudden illness, injury, accident, food insecurity or a natural disaster. 

Last year, the student body was concerned about funding hurricane relief. Executive Treasurer Maxwell Pivonka told SGA he recalled an almost 2-hour-long debate last year on hurricane relief funding. 

By funding the Chaplin Discretionary Fund, SGA is “replacing debates about hurricane relief,” according to Pivonka. 

“They felt like this was a more direct impact for students than giving $100 to the American Red Cross or whatever agency and knowing ... there are no administrative overhead costs," Patterson said. 

But not all members of SGA were in favor of gifting the Chaplin Discretionary Fund $1,000. 

No members directly opposed the legislation donating to the fund, but seven members abstained from voting — one being Louisa Scholar, senator for the School of Arts and Sciences.  She wanted to see $5,000 donated to the fund instead. 

“$1,000 to show our support is hardly anything compared to the enormous budget that we have and the enormous amount of funds and resources that SGA has to contribute. …  We just passed last meeting $65,000 to bring an artist to campus, for student enjoyment,” Scholar said. “It doesn't seem to make sense to me that we can’t budget for $5,000 annually to support students in their most desperate and dire needs. I just think there is a moral imperative here to be more conscientious of the fact that we have the potential to do a lot more with our money.”

In addition to the annual donation, SGA filled more of its positions tonight. 

Jewel Tillman was inducted as the new senator for cultural organizations and Gregory Paugh was named the athletics senator. 

The SGA executive staff also inducted their assistants. Noah Dyson was named as Chief of Staff to Executive President Kenneth Brown Jr., Elyse Cowles was named as assistant executive secretary and Samantha O’Connor was named speaker pro-tempore, assisting Executive Vice President Charlie Cheema. 

Brown is looking to fill the position of senator for competition and senator for campus programs.  

SGA invites students to join them next Thursday for a an open Town Hall in downstairs Moseley for a “chip and dip party,” in an effort to destress before finals.