More than 100 students turned out to defend Juvenile Urban Multicultural Program (JUMP Nation) against budget cuts at last night’s Student Assembly meeting.

A Sunday ruling of the Judicial Board also overturned the budget, which included the cut to the $13,000 JUMP Nation budget.

Members of JUMP Nation, as well as supporters from student groups — such as the Black Student Union and the Latin American Student Union — spoke out against the proposed $5,000 cut to the JUMP Nation budget, pointing to a disconnect between the Assembly and Student Association-chartered groups.

Juanita Diaz-Cotto, the director of the Latin American and Caribbean area studies program, was there to advocate for JUMP Nation.

“Look at the composition of the Student Association,” she said of the cultural makeup of the Assembly members. “It’s not a group of peers.”

JUMP Nation treasurer Davon Harris believed that the Assembly “made a decision without even looking at the facts.”

“Certain people on the SA have personal agendas,” said Harris, a junior triple-majoring in Africana studies, LACAS and human development.

SA president Adam Amit also voiced his concern that the Assembly had acted unethically during last week’s 11-hour budget hearing, primarily chastising representatives who voted to amend the budgets of student groups with insufficient knowledge or rationale.

Referring to the way he handled his own personal transgressions earlier in the academic year, Amit said that the Assembly representatives needed to take responsibility for their actions.

“You have set standards for everyone else, but you haven’t set them for yourself,” Amit said to Assembly representatives Monday night. “The character of this body is subject, and you should all think about what you have done during this past year and this past week.”

The SA E-Board filed a grievance against the Assembly in an effort to address some of the same issues Amit raised. The grievance accused the Assembly of violating the SA constitution by failing to approve a budget procedure before April 1 and by denying seven Assembly representatives the opportunity to make a motion at the April 19 meeting.

The Judicial Board heard this grievance Sunday and decided to overturn the budget passed by the Assembly April 19. The J-Board also recommended that the Assembly review the budget once again and pass it within a 48-hour time period for the Judicial Board to approve by May 1.

According to Kaitlyn Flatley, a voting member of the Judicial Board, the board made its decision based on the belief that the budget hearing April 19 was a violation of the equal opportunity clause. The official decision of the Judicial Board was not released at the time of publication.

“It became clear to us that there needed to be some sort of addendum because of the faulty way that it was carried out the first time,” Flatley said. “We didn’t overstep any boundaries that the Constitution didn’t allow us to.”

Some Assembly representatives, however, believed that the Judicial Board had overstepped its boundaries as a branch of the SA by recommending a course of action to the Assembly.

“This is an entire branch of the government that is acting in a distinctly corrupt manner,” said Randal Meyer, an Assembly representative for Off Campus College Council.

Karl Bernhardsen, also an Assembly representative for OCCC, observed that no part of the SA bylaws permitted the Judicial Board to “dictate specific policy changes and specific actions which the Assembly must take.”

If the SA cannot finalize a budget and have it approved by the Judicial Board by May 1, the budget will be passed in the form that the Financial Council had first determined for the 2010-11 academic year. That version of the budget would not include any decrease to the budget for JUMP Nation, nor would it include several increases allocated to some student groups during the April 19 budget hearing.