At its weekly meeting on Tuesday at Nordy’s Place, the Student Government Board introduced several changes it hopes to make over the remainder of the 2024-25 academic year to address student safety and allocations efficiency.
Following numerous discrimination-related events on campus last semester and in recent years — including two attacks on Jewish students and rhetorically polarizing events — board member Evan Levasseur announced the charter for a new anti-hate ad-hoc committee. If passed, the committee would be a center to address many discrimination-related issues on campus.
“To create a safe campus for all students, this ad-hoc committee will identify acts of hate in all forms,” Levasseur said. “The scope of this committee will be intentionally broad, and this will allow them to address topical issues as they arise.”
The board will vote on the charter at next week’s meeting. In a past meeting, SGB President Sarah Mayer addressed the hate crimes that targeted Jewish communities on campus earlier this academic year.
“I want to be clear — acts of violence and antisemitism will never be tolerated on our campus or in our community,” Mayer said. “I’m confident that the Pitt community will continue in the spirit to foster an environment built upon love and inclusivity.”
The board is also reconsidering its allocations policies to address SGB’s growing number of allocations requests.
“[We’re] working to gather some information about our allocations spending over the last few years,” Mayer said. “I’m hoping we can use this data to move forward with some changes and improvements to our allocations budget.”
In October, Mayer met with Lorraine Craven, executive associate dean of student affairs, to consider increasing the student activity fee, which funds the allocations budget. This could accommodate the increasing number of requests, providing a higher supply of money for SGB to allocate.
“The student activities fund just can’t bear the weight of every request,” Mayer said. “We’re trying to meet the demand, but we’re already kind of on track to run out of money.”
At a past meeting, board member Andrew Elliott voiced concerns about the growing size of allocation requests.
“We have $900,000 to give out every year. It sounds like a lot of money, but there are over 800 clubs at Pitt,” Elliott said at the meeting on October 8th. “Continuing to fund these large dollar amounts may become more challenging for us specifically because of the quantity of requests we have.”
Allocations chair Nicole Zheng said the board will be completing an audit of the allocations manual soon to “identify trends” within requests.
“We’re working on doing a five-year audit to look at our spending and request volume,” Zheng said. “We want to put something together about the pattern of requests we’ve been receiving this year.”
Zheng said she hopes to make the allocations budget more accessible over the semester as the board works to make appropriate changes.
“Our goal is to distribute the limited amount of funding we have fairly, which unfortunately means we aren’t able to fund everything,” Zheng said.
Allocations:
Dhirana requested $11,337.50 to hold an event. The board postponed the request until the next public meeting.
Hydroponics Club requested $8,000 for a project. The board amended and approved the request to $3,100.
Chinese American and Vietnamese Student Organizations requested $20,225.32 to host an event. The board approved the request in full.
Chinese American Student Association requested $7,000 to host an event. The board revised and approved the request to $6,675.
Vietnamese Student Association requested $10,000 to hold an event. The board amended and approved the request to $6,000.
Club Gymnastics requested $3,795 to attend a competition. The board revised and approved the request to $3,630.
Model United Nations requested $3,226.02 to attend two events. The board amended and approved the request to $2,330.60.
Muslim Student Association requested $17,364 for an event. The board approved the request in full asynchronously last Friday.