By Diego Ruiz

Debate over how to use of the $50,000 rollover – which began last April when MCSG announced an unexpected windfall of money from the student activity fee – will come to an end before Thanksgiving. The process of allocating the student government rollover money is in the “home-stretch,” said MCSG Vice President Jesse Horwitz, as students will have the opportunity to vote this weekend on nine ideas to use varying amounts of the rollover. The ideas include four larger ideas with fixed costs: an ice rink, a sustainable revolving investment fund, improved bike infrastructure and a fund to improve student spaces such as the Kirk Basement Lab and 10K in the Dupre basement. There were also five ideas with a more variable cost: increasing a textbook sharing program, having murals on campus, a student game center, more recreation and sports equipment and having hammocks. Most of the ideas would not use all $50,000: ultimately, the fund may end up going to several initiatives. Horwitz said that MCSG executives were “still working on how to structure the ballot, as of Wednesday evening, to determine how students could vote for a combination of ideas. Horwitz said that a number of ideas were “great in spirit” but did not move on to the voting round because they were either not feasible to do with the fund or not permissible to use student activity funds for. As an example, Horwitz mentioned an idea to fund a stipend for students to fund unpaid internships. It would be complicated to directly pay students, and would only help a small number of students. Other ideas did not move to the voting round because they did not have a dedicated advocate. On Tuesday, November 22nd, the student body will learn the results of the vote, and what project or combination of projects the money will go toward, after having the weekend to vote. “We want as many people to be on board with the winning idea as possible,” said Horwitz.