OUR VIEWS Consensus Opinion

Both chambers of the Student Government Association (SGA) passed a revised version of the Joint Finance Committee (JFC) policy this week, formally changing some of the requirements student organizations will have to follow to get their bills funded from next week onward. The new policy's adoption was a long time coming, with work commencing nearly three years ago, and it is good to see the graduates and the undergraduates finally reach a compromise and move forward with this issue.

The refreshed JFC policy brings with it a number of changes that will affect the way student organizations interact with SGA. For one, the policy's enactment ratios have been altered to give graduate students more participation in the decision-making process. The previous enactment ratio gave the Undergraduate House of Representatives (UHR) the opportunity to essentially override the votes of the Graduate Student Senate if enough members of the UHR voted either in favor or against a bill.

The latest policy revisions also added language dealing with emergency versus non-emergency expenditures. An organization will no longer be able to request capital goods to be purchased during the year except in case of "emergency." Rather, expected capital expenditures will need to be planned for in an organization's budget.

While the new rules for emergency capital spending may reduce the funding of wasteful requests, the greater emphasis given to the budgeting process as a result must be taken into consideration. Organizations must still submit a budget for the following fiscal year by the Friday of the eighth week of Fall semester, and they may not alter their submissions thereafter.

This early deadline, combined with the inability to request non-emergency capital expenditures during the year, means that student organizations must anticipate the failure of items more than a year in advance. This approach may work for items which are likely to wear out on a fixed schedule, but the failure of other capital goods is harder to predict.

Perhaps the most significant change to the JFC policy was not made to the policy itself, however. The new SGA bylaws, ratified last spring, made it significantly more difficult to pass a bill that violates the JFC policy. The committee's recommendations are no longer just recommendations, and SGA must explicitly vote to suspend the policy before voting on a bill if they wish to go against them. This change could lead to an increase in arguments at the already-lengthy SGA meetings.

At this point it is too early to pass judgement on the policy, however. It is up to the student organizations to determine whether it works well.