SGA discusses funding for Kevin Hart
The Campus Activity Board (CAB) spoke at Tuesday’s Student Government Association meeting to discuss the possibility of comedian Kevin Hart performing at USD. The bill is sponsored by Kelsey Berger, CAB President, as well as the Finance Committee Chair at SGA.
Berger said Kevin Hart’s management team reached out to the MUC front desk and they pitched Hart’s visit as a “conversation” with Hart.
“It’s not technically a stand-up,” Berger said. “It is an opportunity for him to do a comedic storytelling of his history and his successes and his failures.”
The event would include a Q and A session. Hart’s asking price is $100,000. CAB does not know if he has reached out to other SDBOR schools. CAB also has not made an offer to Hart yet.
“We understand this is a large sum of money and we don’t want to rush it,” Berger said.
If the event happens, it will be free for students. After a lengthy discussion between CAB and SGA, the bill will be sent to the Student Affairs Committee to gauge the level of student interest in a Kevin Hart performance.
Due to the limited time surrounding the situation, Berger sponsored the bill. She said that she would have preferred for a different SGA member to have sponsored the bill, but time constraints did not permit that option.
“As the CAB president, and since this is a CAB-related bill, I’m not trying to take a stance on it as a senator. I will abstain on the vote and I’m trying to keep the two things separate, but we were on such a time constraint that this is what I had to do in the moment,” Berger said. “I would have loved to have another person write the bill, but time didn’t allot for that.”
The Student Government Association also discussed a specific line item on the special appropriations from the Students For Reproductive Rights (SFRR). SFRR asked for funding for buttons, which would contain various slogans. SGA members discussed the implications of funding slogans and what sort of standard that would set for student organizations in the future.
“We need to make sure that if a similar organization with competing views were to come in here with the same requests for buttons… would we be okay with them putting similar slogans on buttons. Would we fund that?” Kelsey Berger asked at the meeting.
Senator Matt Colbert further elaborated on the implications of such a decision.
“We are setting a precedent here if we decide to go along with this, then we have to be prepared for future situations that may involve similar debatable topics,” Colbert said. “Whatever way we decide, we just need to make sure that we’re being fair.”
Senator Carissa Occhipinto moved to resume the discussion of buttons and slogans at next week’s meeting, but the motion failed by a vote of 11 No’s, 10 Yes’s and two abstains.
After further discussion, Vice President Hannah Booth entertained a motion to pass the bill. SGA voted to pass the bill to fund SFRR for the slogans by a vote of 21 Yes’s, 0 No’s and three abstains.
