After already violating budget policy once, one of the largest student organizations at the University of Wisconsin nearly found itself in a financial debacle Monday night.

The Multi-Cultural Student Coalition had its second payroll policy violation of the semester last week and appeared in front of the Student Services Finance Committee for disciplinary action.

An MCSC employee submitted a timesheet with 24 hours logged for one week, an internal error since university policy states that student staff cannot work for more than 20 hours per week and no more than 8 hours per day.

Ultimately, SSFC decided to require the two violating employees, as well as the entire executive staff, to attend payroll-training sessions next semester.

Executive MCSC staff member Stella Luong said she thought there was excessive discussion about punishment for her organization, but also said the organization will adhere to the ruling.

"Ideally, I don't think we needed to have to do the training," Luong said. "But if they want us to attend them again, that's what we'll do."

According to executive staff member Kevin Dopwell, MCSC has already taken steps internally to resolve the issue and has placed four academic staff members on suspension, which means administrative staff will not get paid for another month.

Dopwell said MCSC will continue its tradition of being open with its financial records.

"We have done this to be transparent with SSFC as well as our own staff," he said.

And MCSC executive staff member Katrina Flores said the staff of up to 30 had issues with the 180 timesheets they handle per semester. She added many student organizations — including MCSC — recently switched to a university-wide time-counting system that has taken time to get used to.

SSFC Chair Zach Frey presented a possible punishment for the group where their funding could have been frozen until staff had attended the payroll training sessions, or had submitted written commitments to attend. He also proposed refreezing the funding if the staff failed to attend.

"The biggest effect on them would be payroll," Frey said. "Nobody would get paid between tonight's meeting and whenever they turn in that letter."

Luong said these harsh sanctions for violations would have been out of line.

The four-hour overage was a minor issue according to Luong, but the freezing procedure would have adversely affected the group.

"The discussion about freezing our account and the fact that it was debated and brought up was ridiculous," Luong said. "It was our second violation and looking at the circumstances, it was only four hours over."

SSFC representative David Lapidus said he was satisfied with MCSC's own resolutions to the problem, but still wanted to hold them accountable for attending the payroll sessions.

"The organization definitely showed very responsible conduct about resolving this issue," he said.

Frey also announced last night that fall committee member Kyle Ripple resigned from his position due to a new job. New members Tony Rodriguez, Mayur Patel, Bryon Eagon and Alex Schmus were sworn in as new members.