The Student Governance Council discussed the creation of SGC Fest and passed a bill amending the Allocations Handbook during its April 1 meeting.
SGC Fest is a new event that will celebrate SGC and the organizations it has worked with throughout the academic year. Junior Sarah Horbacewicz, SGC chief of staff, is the primary organizer of the event. It is scheduled for May 2.
Horbacewicz said she is currently working on emailing clubs and organizations on campus to invite them to participate in SGC Fest. She said that some of the activities that will be taking place include live art and music performances and that food will be offered as well.
“We’re going to have some live art going on, people are going to be making a SGC mural during the event, that’ll be really cool,” Horbacewicz said. “There’ll be food and music.”
In addition to discussing SGC Fest, the SGC also passed the Allocations Handbook Revision Act of December 2018, which was originally drafted during Fall 2018, with a unanimous vote of 10–0, with no abstentions. The bill made minor changes to the Allocations Handbook — the set of rules that guides the SGC’s process for allocating funds to organizations on campus. The bill was sponsored by junior senator-at-large Vaughn Golden and sophomore Allison Kelley, senator for the business school, who are both members of the Appropriations Committee.
The bill changed the start time of the weekly Appropriations Committee meeting from 7:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. and said the Appropriations Committee will no longer have meetings during fall break, Thanksgiving break, winter break, the week following winter break and spring break.
Golden said the Appropriations Committee chose not to meet during the week directly after breaks because senior Seondre Carolina, vice president of business finance and business assistant, has to do a lot of work the week before the bills are presented to the committee.
“There’s a lot of legwork that Seondre and Ally have to do that previous weekend to process the budgets before we hear them, so we decided to put it into our handbook that we have that week off, so that it’s less on them while they’re still on their winter break,” Golden said. “Especially on a year like this year where we had all kinds of crazy weather and stuff happening, it should be a priority of our students and everybody to get back to this campus safely and then pick up the allocations process the week after.”
The bill also changed a provision in the Allocations Handbook to clarify that budget proposals must be presented to the Appropriations Committee at least two weeks that school is in session before the event mentioned in the proposal will be held.
Golden said the purpose for that change is to clarify in the Appropriations Handbook that an organization’s budget must be heard by the Appropriations Committee and not just submitted for review two weeks before an event takes place. He said this change will make it easier for the groups involved in organizing the event.
