SGA proposes JFC policy changes

A new policy to govern the allocation of student activity fees by the Student Government Association's (SGA) Joint Finance Committee (JFC) was recently proposed and passed in the Undergraduate House of Representatives (UHR) and the Graduate Student Senate (GSS). However the two passed different versions of the bill and will have to work out the differences starting this week with a conference committee.

The student activity fee, a mandatory fee paid by all currently-enrolled students carrying four or more credit hours, funds student organizations and activities and supports other services benefiting students.

The JFC receives bills submitted to UHR and GSS requesting funds and JFC makes recommendations according to policy.

"[The old policy] was very confusing. A lot of things were not clearly defined, organizations could not use the policy. It was inconsistent within itself, so a lot of the changes are along those lines. JFC just needs to be run more efficiently," said Claudia Jones, vice president of finance.

"It's a culmination of us looking at this document and sitting in UHR and GSS meetings and being confused by certain statements. We have gone through and tried to clarify some of the very confusing aspects that used to exist in that document to make it easier for student organizations who are requesting funding to understand our process," said Mitch Keller, graduate student president, who composed the initial draft of the policy with Jones.

One major set of changes had to do with the types of activities and organizations that were eligible to receive funds.

"We came up with careful definitions of religious activities and political activities that allow us to fund the broadest spectrum of activities we can fund under state and federal law," Keller said.

According to Keller, JFC tried to broaden the scope of what SGA can fund to the greatest extent and provide the greatest access to student activity fee money for Tech student organizations.

Keller denied that these changes were influenced by a recent lawsuit filed against Tech by the Alliance Defense Fund in March.

"We began this process far before the lawsuit was filed. We began back in Jan., and there were some discussions last fall about this," said Keller.

"I would not say it is reactionary to the lawsuit at all. We had taken steps to look at the policy before the lawsuit happened. We took some steps to make sure what we were saying was legal. I would say that was the main impact on the document," Jones said.

The JFC policy has been changed before without requiring the approval of UHR and GSS, but a purposeful effort was taken this time to involve them in this process.

"It's going to be adopted by UHR and GSS, so there is a stronger buy-in from the two legislative bodies. Because they represent the student body as a whole, there is a student body buy-in to the document that way," Jones said.

Another change to the policy is that for planned, non-emergency expenses organizations will now be required to submit requests for funding in the fall, though emergency requests will still be processed whenever they come up.

"The committee that drafted the policy felt it would give UHR and GSS an opportunity to assess the totality of the capital requests for the year all at once," Keller said.

For non-emergency requests for funding, the cost will only be covered up to two-thirds of the expense and the organization must supply the remainder on their own.

"There has always been an expectation that [the organizations] funded but there's never been an amount that we tell them. The way the budget process in the past has worked, it's been disadvantageous for them to save up money for future capital expenses," said Keller.

According to Keller, organizations that saved money for future expenses might be less likely to have some of their short-term requests for funding granted on account of already having enough money on hand to be able to pay for them.

"We are still here to assist them with that, but we want to be clearer about our expectations that they are going to be funding part of this themselves,"Keller said.

Also new in the policy is an appeals process to hear disputes relating to JFC decisions.

"It provides a route for SGA to look at the decision and decide if there was really bias involved in our decision and how we go about remedying that," Keller said.

The bill was passed in different versions by UHR and GSS. Because the two passed versions are different, the bill will be sent to a conference committee to settle the differences between the two houses.

The bill will be resubmitted to the houses and voted on during their meetings next week.