Undergraduate Student Government’s (USG) College Council (CC) discussed annual RSO allocation audits performed by CC members and introduced a resolution that would incorporate language concerning the newly instituted Judicial Council into USG bylaws at its meeting on Monday.
CC debated a proposal to establish a formal definition of an RSO general body meeting in response to confusion from CC members performing audits of Student Government Finance Committee (SGFC) funding allocations. Previously, without a formal definition, funding allocations for RSO general body meetings were up to the discretion of SGFC members.
CC Vice Chair Kevin Guo and CC Chair Ben Fica planned to finalize a definition this week and present it to CC at the next meeting on May 11.
Class of 2029 Representative Gavin Wynn expressed concern that the lack of clear definitions for what constitutes an event worthy of funding had caused discrepancies in SGFC allocation decisions.
“RSOs have been given unequal funding for what is functionally the same event,” he said.
Wynn suggested retroactively applying the new definition, once it is formalized, to recent RSO allocations and giving RSOs whose allocations are changed as a result the opportunity to appeal during CC’s Week 9 general meeting. This new round of audits would be conducted alongside CC’s ongoing Annual Allocations audit and the original round of allocation decisions made by SGFC, and it would be implemented by a working group composed of Wynn, Guo, and other interested CC members.
Vice President of Student Organizations Fred Lee expressed concern that this working group would functionally serve as an ad hoc SGFC meeting and questioned the necessity of further audits of previously established SGFC allocations.
“SGFC had a consistent definition of what a general body meeting is,” Lee said. “[Wynn’s proposal] sounds like an ad hoc SGFC where we run the SGFC entirely again by a select group of people.”
Class of 2028 Representative Grace Beatty argued that the proposed working group would only be necessary if audits currently being conducted by CC members and the allocations from SGFC could not be relied upon.
Wynn would not require CC approval to audit RSO allocations further or to create the proposed working group, but any suggested changes to allocations would have to be approved by CC at its next meeting.
CC also discussed modifying individual RSO allocations as a result of the ongoing audits.
After conducting an audit of the UChicago Science Olympiad, Wynn proposed lowering the RSO’s annual allocation from $11,973.50 to $3,933.50, claiming the RSO had “grossly inflated requests based on their internal budgets” and failed to deduct $6,000 earned through fundraising from their annual budget. Multiple members of CC criticized Wynn’s proposal to change the allocation without further investigation, expressing concern that such a response would be overly aggressive.
“This is a question of if we are coming at them with a jackhammer and being, like, ‘Surprise! You have $8,000 less,’” Class of 2026 Representative Pavlik Braverman said, “or are we saying, ‘Hey, we found something, can we talk about it?’”
Wynn reiterated that the RSO would have an opportunity to appeal once it was alerted to the preliminary change to their allocation.
Fica proposed that he and Wynn contact Science Olympiad, allowing it to explain or correct possible issues in its budget submission before approving any changes to its allocation at the next CC meeting.
Following the approval of a constitutional amendment establishing a Judicial Council for USG in this spring’s election, Guo introduced a resolution to incorporate the new body into USG’s bylaws. Because resolutions cannot be passed at the same meeting in which they are introduced, the measure will not be voted on until week 8 at the earliest.
After the spring election is certified on Friday by the Election & Rules Committee, the amendment will be inserted in the USG constitution.
College Council holds weekly public meetings in Stuart Hall 104 on Mondays at 7 p.m.
Editor’s note: CC representative Grace Beatty is a current staff member of the Maroon. She had no involvement in the reporting of this story.
