A motion was passed by the Associated Student Organization (ASO) to allocate $6,500 from the Associated Student Campus Enrichment account to provide subsidies for El Camino College students in need of a Metro U-Pass on Thursday, Sept, 27.

The subsidies the ASO plans to make available will be for students that need to cover part or all of the cost of a Metro U-Pass.

Previously the ASO provided $5,000 in Metro U-Pass subsidies for students.

President of the ASO Chinua Taylor-Pearce said, “ASO provided subsidies last year, we plan on continuing that but we decided to stagger it. Basically, we created three different tiers.”

During the ASO Senate meeting a Microsoft Excel sheet was presented, showing the different tiers of subsidies and how much would be given per tier.

According to the Excell sheet, $6,500 will be to fund 100 subsidies that have been split into three different tiers.

One tier of the 10 subsidies covers 100 percent of the cost while another tier of 30 will cover 50 percent of the cost and the third tier will have 60 subsidies that cover 25 percent of the cost.

According to the Excel sheet the exact total cost of the motion would be $6,210.30 despite the fact that $6,500 was allocated.

Taylor-Pearce said that this over allocation was to allow for “breathing room” in the budget.

Director of Student Services Sean Min said that there could be instead 85 subsidies instead of 100.

Min said that 50 of those should be for students in the selected programs and 35 for the general public.

“This opening for the general public is the first we’ve done ever.” said Min.

Director of Academic Affairs Wiley Wilson said that it would be a good idea to wait to apply the changes until the beginning of next semester due to how far into the current semester the college is in.

In response to Wilson’s statement, Taylor-Pearce said that the motion had already been approved for the subsidies to be released on Monday Oct. 1.