The Union Senate passed a Student Union government operations budget of $30,726.23 Sunday, ending almost a month of deadlock on the issue. Much of the controversy hinged on the delineation of budgets for the various Senate committees and the allocation of $2,500 for an executive board-sponsored party this Saturday. The Union couldn't come to an agreement before break and rejected an earlier budget proposal. The Senate passed two continuing resolutions Feb. 17 and 24 in order to keep essential government operations running.

"Delaying it any further would have been really bad, and I think that the [time] we spent really discussing it and getting through the nuances was really helpful, because now we have this very good budget," Senator for the Class of 2009 Julia Sferlazzo, who voted in favor of the budget, said. She added that, "eXstaSy is going to be a really good event, and I think it has really solid policy aspects to it."

The e-board's Social Fund asked for the $2,500 to sponsor the event in Sherman Function Hall. The party, called "eXstaSy" is spearheaded by Union Director of Campus Life Christina Khemraj '09.

The aim of eXtaSy, co-sponsored by 22 other clubs, is to assess the impact of 3 a.m. as the ending time, freedom from financial obligations and creative publicity would have on campus social events, Khremraj said last night.

While many committee chairs were in favor of delineating committee budgets, other senators were in favor of Union Treasurer Choon Woo Ha's '08 earlier proposal without delineation and were displeased with his reaction to the opposition. Under that proposal, committee chairs would have proposed their budgets as Senate Money Resolutions.

"As we currently have it with the budget now, we have blocks of money for each committee, and I don't know what it's being spent on," Senator for the Class of 2008 Asher Tanenbaum said. Tanenbaum voted against the budget because he would have preferred committee budgets to be more transparent.

Tanenbaum said he thought the money should have gone to the Senate Discretionary, from which the e-board could've requested necessary funds. Senators can request money from the Senate Discretionary to fund projects for their quads or class.

Senator-at-Large Andrew Brooks '09 said he opposed the budget mainly due to the funding for the social event. "This party will not yield any positive advocacy for students on this campus," he said. "I think that putting $2,500 simply to see if we can have parties until 3 a.m. is not a worthwhile investment."

Brooks argued that there is no evidence of grassroots student interest in such a party, and suggested that an existing party such as Pachanga could have played a similar role.

"It just saddens me to see that most of the people who voted on this budget were people that had missed many prior meetings," he said. Brooks suggested that senators might have felt pressured to vote for the budget because planning and publicity for the party were already underway on Facebook and at Pachanga.

"To try to steamroll it through just because you think you have the votes from your side, I think is very problematic," he said, referring to efforts to end discussion during Sunday's Senate meeting. Brooks said past events that Khemraj helped plan hadn't been successful, "The Identity Retreat was total failure in my opinion from last year, the Special Olympics she was working on planning, we gave her $ 1500, . and it never happened," he said.

"It took a really long time to come to agreement on what was an acceptable budget-I think that's a little bit inefficient," Racial Minority Senator Gabe Gaskin '08 said. "I was very displeased that most of the conversation and most of the disagreement was around that project [eXstaSy] and shouldn't have been included really in a conversation about passing this budget.