EDITORIAL – It’s your money; SGB needs accountability

In case you haven’t been paying attention, the Student Government Board is up to no good. … In case you haven’t been paying attention, the Student Government Board is up to no good.

President Brian Kelly submitted a request for $3,936 to the allocations committee Sept. 14 to get funding for a leadership conference.

The money would come from the student activities fee: $80 paid by each full-time, non-College of General studies student along with tuition each term.

When allocations recommended denying the funding, the board voted to overturn the recommendation, sending the request back to the committee. When the committee again said “no” to the funding, the board held an emergency session via e-mail and voted to grant themselves the funding.

So why is this a problem? Well, consider that this is SGB’s third conference of the year, and that only one of the four members set to go on the trip is actually running for re-election.

Then consider that the vote took place privately, through e-mail.

“How emergency votes go is that once we get five votes, I mean, people can still vote ‘no’ if they want to, but it passes,” Kelly told The Pitt News last month.

But what was wrong making this decision publicly? Maybe it’s their lame justification for sending themselves to the conference, which, by the way, takes place at the Catamaran Resort in San Diego at the end of this month.

Board member Dilinus Harris explained that SGB would take this opportunity to work on the election code.

However, he said that just days before the board was set to have a special session to finalize the code. Furthermore, none of the people going on the trip was newly appointed elections chair Greg Heller-Labelle.

Perhaps a better excuse is in order, guys?

In any case, the whole business is pretty ridiculous. None of it is technically illegal – the board really does have the power to overturn decisions made by the allocations committee and all – but that doesn’t make it right.

Looks like a giant flag that it’s time to revise the allocations process. Other student groups – like some of the club sports whose members pay for their equipment and uniforms out of their own pockets – have caps on the funding they can receive.

SGB has no such limit.

Other student groups – like the South Asian women’s dance team, which was granted just $1,442.54 of a requested $5,122.54 – are required to justify their expenses.

The dance team, for example, wanted the money for a competition in New Jersey. They were granted $3,380 less than they requested because the board felt that it was reasonable to give them funding for ground transportation and uniforms, but not for airfare.

SGB members should be held to similar standards, without the right to grant themselves funding willy-nilly for whatever vacation they happen to want at a particular time.

In the meantime, how about giving some of that money back to the student organizations that deserve it?