As Kansas University’s Student Senate is making funding choices for all kinds of student fees, its members are looking to change how the group funds social services in Lawrence.

Four Lawrence agencies receive Student Senate funds: GaDuGi SafeCenter, Douglas County AIDS Project, Headquarters Counseling Center and Willow Domestic Violence Center.

All receive funding in two-year cycles from the Senate’s activity fee. This year, senators are recommending that three of the organizations receive funding at nearly the same levels, but for only one year. A fourth, the Willow Domestic Violence Center, had its funding of $4,000 brought down to a recommended level of zero.

The recommendations from the Senate’s finance committee would have to be approved by the full Student Senate at its meeting Wednesday.

A Facebook group has been formed to rally support for the organizations and urge that funding be continued. It is at www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=139812462753121.

Senators have said they’re not against funding the organizations but are looking for new ways to finance them.

Mark Pacey, a graduate student senator and chairman of the Senate’s finance committee, said he supported the formation of a task force that would consider alternative funding sources for these organizations.

As it stands now, the organizations are funded by the same student activity fee that funds student groups such as the marching band, Pacey said.

“From my point of view, I don’t want to have to make my committee members decide between suicide hot lines or tubas,” he said.

Pacey said that perhaps some other fee could be instituted to fund the organizations and that he didn’t know of many senators who thought that funding should be completely eliminated.

Sarah Jane Russell, director of the GaDuGi SafeCenter, said she appreciated the sentiments that she heard at the finance committee meeting from some senators to continue funding the organizations.

Marcia Epstein, director of the Headquarters Counseling Center, said she hoped that senators understood the effect their decisions had on the center, which provides 24-hour suicide prevention counseling services. The activity fee provides $36,200 of the center’s $223,000 annual expenses.

And last year, Headquarters had to dip into reserves to continue operating, Epstein said, meaning it has to raise more private funds to continue its existing level of service.

She said it wasn’t her place to say how the funds should be allocated but she hoped to provide student senators with information on how students depend on Headquarters services and what happens if they aren’t funded.

The consequences are major, she said, for organizations like hers, particularly if the Senate were to decide to remove funding completely.

“We can’t guarantee we’d be open in December without that money,” she said.