Editorial: SGB should keep written record of its rules

The Student Government Board is all over the news this month. The Student Government Board is all over the news this month.

From its handling of Alternative Break and the African Student Organization’s allocations, we’ve noticed that the Board members aren’t always consistent in their rulings.

Last week, the Board denied the Women’s Fast-Pitch Softball Club’s and the men’s baseball club’s requests for funding for competitions in Florida over Spring Break. Despite the fact that the two sports teams had received funding for the same events for the past two years, the Board maintained a precedent set the week before that prevents funding of trips that conflict with the University-sponsored Alternative Break.

The situation involves confusion because the Board operates based on a number of precedents — earlier actions that serve as examples or guides for future reference — that are constantly in flux and not recorded.

This becomes a game of Calvinball, a sport introduced in the old Calvin and Hobbes comic that consists simply of making up the rules as you go along.

This doesn’t just cause problems with communication. Since precedents can be altered at any time, all power is theoretically deferred to President James Landreneau and his Board, which can overrule the Allocations Manual.

Calvinball never seemed so dangerous.

The Board isn’t required to write these rules down, but it ought to be. Despite the University’s general exemption from Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law, it should still keep track — in writing — of what its own rules are, if not for the sake of the student body it represents, then for the sake of its own infrastructure.

SBG offers Allocations 101, a program designed to inform student groups about the allocations process, and the class demonstrates a desire on the part of the SGB to communicate with student groups. But because it’s clear that the Board itself isn’t even on the same page when it comes to its previous precedents, something like Allocations 101 conceals the root of the problem.

We don’t think the Board can criticize student groups for not knowing the allocations process — or even educate them, for that matter — until it documents its own precedents by which it makes decisions.

And when you consider the fact that SGB has rolled over more than $200,000 of the Student Activities Fund each year since 2007, what are non-College of General Studies undergraduates really getting out of the machine they feed with $80 per semester through the Student Activities Fee?

It seems that SGB strives for transparency, what with its public meetings in Nordy’s Place every Tuesday night and its offering programs like Allocations 101. But to be truly transparent, we think the Board needs to firmly grasp what its rules and precedents are and create a written record of them for both the Board and student groups to utilize.

SGB, we can’t keep up with Calvinball anymore — stop making up the rules.