(U-WIRE) DURHAM, N.C. – Alcohol and politics took center stage at the opening session of the Duke University Student Government Wednesday night, as the assembly started the year off with a full schedule of legislation and controversy.

Student government leaders presented the first reading of a bill that proposes to use money from a surplus account to fund alcohol subsidies. Seniors Andrew Wisnewski, the executive vice president, and Dave Rausen, the Student Organization Finance Committee chair, hope the bill will improve on-campus social programming by supporting alcohol purchases. The legislation allocates $5,000 a year from Duke Student Government’s approximately $120,000 in excess funding, discovered last spring during an audit, for alcohol-related expenses such as kegs and university bartenders for campus organizations’ events.

The current cost of $300 per keg assessed by the university, which includes labor costs for mandatory university-supplied bartenders, has reduced the ability of student groups to afford alcohol at their events, Wisnewski and Rausen said. Although the SOFC bylaws specifically ban the use of DSG funds to purchase alcohol, all of the subsidy money would come from the surplus fund, meaning it would not detract from funding currently slated for student groups, Rausen said.

“One thing we’re trying to do with this is providing an impetus to create more visible, better attended on-campus programming,” he added.

The bill, which will come before Duke Student Government for a vote in two weeks, is contingent upon the passage of a new constitutional bylaw creating a board of trustees to oversee the surplus account. The proposed five-person board, which will include the Duke Student Government president, executive vice president, chief of staff, treasurer and SOFC chair, would be responsible for allocating budget requests from the excess funding and presenting them to the Senate for a vote.

Money from the fund would be directed toward “really special projects that couldn’t be normally funded by the programming fund … we’re thinking of those great idealists out there,” Rausen said.

With the national presidential election less than two months away and on many minds, the main source of controversy at Wednesday’s meeting was a discussion about Duke for Kerry’s bid for Duke Student Government recognition and SOFC funding.

After members questioned whether the student body should allocate funding to the candidate-driven political group, legislators approved the group for recognition and agreed to fund it $1,195 for an upcoming Sept. 25 rally. Duke for Kerry President Andrew Collins, a former university editor and current columnist for The Chronicle, requested $2,070 from SOFC for the event. SOFC denied some funds for items such as decorative balloons because they would constitute “partisan funding.”

– Julie Stolberg