Student newspaper of Illinois Institute of Technology since 1928

technewsiit.com

OPINION 2
CAMPUS 3-4

AErE 5
SLIPSTICK 6-1

SPORTS 1

Finance Board takes steps toward greater transparency

Soren Spicknall
TEC H N EWS WRITER

If you’re part of the Illinois Tech
Student Community (ITSC) Facebook group,
or if you’ve been a member of a small or
new student organization, you’ve probably
heard plenty of criticism of Finance Board,
the SGAeadministered group responsible for
allocating money from the Student Activities
Fund (SAF)l Over the years, Finance Board
has been accused of all manner of corruption,
misallocation of funds, and ignorance of
fledgling organizations There has been
talk about large organizations using their
membership to vote allies into positions of
power, and plenty of speculation surrounding
Finance Board’s closed hearings In order to
better serve students and address issues that
have arisen over time, SGA and Finance Board
leadership have taken a number of steps in
the last couple years to educate organizations
about the SAF proposal process, train unbiased
student advisors, and open hearings to more
people than ever before In addition, SGA’s

  

 

Union Board ho

 

Communications Committee and Judicial
Board have taken steps as well to publicize the
processes related to Finance Board allocations,
including independent allocation appeals that
are open to all student organizations if they feel
that their proposals were treated unfairly
Jacob Aynessazian, the current
Chair of Finance Board, commented on a few
of his recent efforts to increase its transparency
and accountability, as well as steps undertaken
in previous years by other Chairsl His first
observation was that in the past, “there were
no written rules", but that Finance Board
“operated under the approval of the Chair
for outside observation and attendance’l
In practice, this meant that generally only
members of Finance Board itself, as well as
a few select SGA Senators, were permitted
to attend the hearings in which the group
discussed and voted on budget proposals from
each student organization Today, things are
starting to be different Finance Board hearings
are now technically open to all observers,
“as long as [the observers] don’t speak or
aren’t distracting”, according to Aynessazianl

However, because the room for the hearings
is relatively small (only permitting 1015
guests in attendance at one time), Finance
Board is also looking into the possibility of
live streaming its hearings online in a similar
manner to recent SGA Senate meetings While
the infrastructure to do this may not be in
place before the next hearing, it will hopefully
be present before this semester’s end

In addition to making hearings
open for each funding round, Finance Board
has also been attempting to improve the
SAF application process by restructuring
its advising scheduler This semester, each
registered student organization received an
email detailing signups for specific advising
slots, rather than the walkein process that
took place previoust This ensures that each
organization is given a consistent amount
of time to explain its budget, and avoids the
crowded Friday shuffle which has characterized
advising week in previous semestersl By giving
every organization a structured 20 minutes
to present their budget, Finance Board has
been able to allocate its advising staff more

' ' , —

effectively and prepare those advisors for each
organization they hear from

In addition to reorganizing the
application process itself, Finance Board is
making new gains in recruiting unbiased
advisors and properly training them for
their assignment Working closely with
other parts of SGA, Aynessazian and his
team have devised advertising strategies for
open advising positions, something that
has occasionally been lacking in the past By
making open advisor positions as visible as
possible to students outside of SGA, Finance
Board hopes to bring in a bigger crop of
dedicated students with no personal biases in
their recommendations Combined with the
improvements above (and more coming down
the pipeline), Finance Board is opening itself
up to external review and making itself more
accountable than ever There is still plenty of
work to be done, but with enough dedication,
hopefully these current aims will be seen
through

sts '90rns-theed MTCC Late Niite

 

 

Photos courtesy of Viktor Koves (top), Melaine Standish (bottom)