SGB reviews fall budgets, votes on resolution 

Vice President of Operations Sarah Siddiqui introduced a new allocations task force with some new stipulations for allocations requests and said reworking the allocations manual was a major goal for Student Government Board.

“I think a big focus of ours this year was to make the manual more accessible and readable for student organizations,” Siddiqui said. “I think that’s something that was accomplished with the new revision and that’s really exciting.” 

SGB introduced changes to the allocations manual to make the manual more organized and changed some requirements for funding at Tuesday’s meeting in Nordy’s Place. The board also passed a resolution in support of workers at Hong Seng Knitting, where Pitt sources its Nike gear.

The Allocations Policy and Procedure Task Force announced its plan to reduce the speaker honoraria cap from $30,000 to $20,000, among other things. The board will vote on the bill at next week’s meeting.

“The manual has first been formatted to make finding policies a lot easier for student organizations,” Siddiqui said. “There is now an affirmative duty to disclose all allocations decisions throughout the year and that’s been adopted to increase transparency in the process.”

The board also voted on the resolution introduced last week by Board Member Matt Jurich expressing solidarity with the workers at the Hong Seng Knitting factory. The board passed the resolution unanimously.

“The University of Pittsburgh is a signed affiliate of the Workers’ Rights Consortium,” Jurich said. “The WRC conducted an investigation into Hong Seng Knitting company and has found that Hong Seng ‘conducted a scheme’ to avoid paying workers legally required wages during repeated suspensions of employment.” 

In her report, Siddiqui said classes, with the exception of labs, will take place asynchronously on Election Day in November.

“The calendar for 2024-2025 this next year has been finalized,” Siddiqui said. “One notable part of that calendar, which I want to address, which we talked about in public meetings before, is that students will have remote classes on Election Day with the exception of labs — so labs will be in person — and a lot of the credit for that goes to Board Member Jurich.”

Vice President of Initiatives Katie Fitzpatrick announced that she is working on a survey to improve accessibility. 

“’I’ve been working with members of the disability resources ad hoc committee to create a survey on accessibility on campus,” Fitzpatrick said. “We’re seeing what needs to be improved with able-bodied students and students with disabilities. Also, our last disability resource meeting is next week. Please come if you can. I’m very excited to see where the committee goes next year.” 

Board Member Katie Emmert said she encourages students to support survivors during sexual assault awareness month.

“April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and I just want to remind everyone that the best way to support survivors is to first and foremost believe in [and] validate them,” Emmert said. “On that topic, I’m still working with Prevention at Pitt to pursue the peer survivor support network and we hope to have that running next year.” 

Allocations:

Engineering Student Council requested their fall budget. The board amended and approved the budget to $2,600.

Black Action Society requested their fall budget. The board amended and approved this budget to $2,167.

Chinese Bible Study requested their fall budget. The board amended and approved this budget to $6,842. 

Asian Student Alliance requested their fall budget. The board approved the budget of $898.