The Illinois Student Senate passed a resolution regarding expansion of the iRent program, a free iClicker rental program, at its meeting Wednesday and allocated almost $8,000 to purchase 200 iClickers.
The resolution calls for more iClickers to be given to more students the following year since almost all of the 200 iClickers that the program had purchased this year had been given to students previously. The $7,998 allocation amounts to more than 20 percent of the senate’s annual budget.
Senator Nathan Hesch, sophomore in Engineering, opposed the resolution. He pointed out a flaw in the program’s accessibility for students.
“If the program is a first-come-first-serve basis, if a hypothetical student wasn’t able to get it, (they would) have to go purchase an iClicker,” Hesch said.
Hesch explained that if a student needed to purchase an iClicker anyway, it would defeat the purpose of the iRent program, which is to save students’ money.
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Rachel Heller, senator, iRent coordinator and sophomore in DGS, explained that the call to purchase more iClickers and the donations of iClickers from graduating seniors would solve this problem.
Senators continued debate over the missing presence of data and facts to support Heller’s claim. This prompted an amendment to the resolution disallowing the purchase of iClickers if the senate has in its possession 400 or more devices.
Later debate, initiated by Brian Siegel, senator, former Illini Media employee and junior in Media, centered on purchasing iClicker Pluses instead of iClicker 2s, which were originally stated for purchase on the resolution. iClicker Pluses are cheaper, however this idea was dismissed because there wasn’t enough research into how much the total cost would be to purchase iClicker Pluses with tax.
“There are too many unknown variables regarding iClicker Plus,” said Shao Guo, senator and junior in ACES.
Concern regarding the price of iClicker Pluses lead the senate to vote against amending the resolution to include iClicker Pluses.
After numerous calls for recess, Senator Chris Dayton, senior in LAS, urged senate to ultimately support the resolution and look beyond just the cost ISS would have to pay and envision it as an investment.
“We can take our money and actually help students out … and lessen the financial burden or we can sit here and be like, ‘It’s a lot of money, I don’t feel comfortable about it,’” Dayton said. “The only thing you’re going to do is expand the possibility of more students being able to obtain it which means you will have to worry less about a student who needs it not getting it.”
Liz can be reached at [email protected].
