Lillian Tejada, Financial Assistant for the Office of Student Life, announced new changes to the financial policy for student organizations at Leadership Reconnect, this Saturday, February 2.
To the discontent of many student leaders on campus, the principal policy changes include requiring receipts to be uploaded to DuckLink within 24 hours of any purchases and limiting PCard pickups to only club treasurers during Tejada’s office hours of 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. during the work week. After 72 hours without an uploaded receipt, one email reminder will be sent. Failure to upload receipts within 24 hours of the reminder will result in a two week purchase suspension.
“I spent a lot of time last semester notifying organizations time and time again to submit their receipts,” said Tejada when she introduced the purchase suspension policy during Leadership Reconnect. Tejada initially stated the penalty to be a one month suspension, but later clarified it would actually be a two week suspension. She also informed organizations that saving PCard information and making purchases without checking out the PCard will result in PCard privileges being revoked indefinitely.
Tejada also noted that campus vendors are now required to have a certificate of insurance. “We ran into the issue where vendors don’t have insurance,” said Tejada as reasoning for the vendor policy change. Tejada informed those in attendance that student organizations should include the cost of insurance in their budget as vendors can bill insurance to Stevens in their contract.
“It’s a student organization manual without student input to write it,” said Elena Malova, Vice President of Finance of the Student Government Association, on the policy changes. Malova gave a separate presentation on the financial policy changes strictly to treasurers of organizations after Tejada’s presentation.
During her presentation, Malova reiterated the policy on PCard receipts in the student organization manual, including the time frame of when to upload receipts and punishments for not doing so. She noted that the final step, not being allowed to purchase goods or services, is ambiguous. “There is no limit on the student organization manual on how much weeks you have to wait to purchase. It just starts off with one day and goes on until you actually submit the receipt,” said Malova as the previous policy.
Specifically, on the new penalty introduced for neglecting receipts, she stated, “I was overridden. [At first] I was told ‘one month’ you cannot use your PCard to spend money. I fought, fought hard, and I got it down to two weeks, at least.” said Malova. “But I still don’t agree with this, I still think you should have access to your money because you do pay for it,” she added. Earlier in her presentation, she stated that everyone present paid $230 as a Student Activity Fee and that everyone should have an equal opportunity to use funds generated by the Student Activity Fee. Malova stated she will continued to fight for the original purchase suspension policy. “Two weeks is a long time,” said Malova, “In my perspective, that’s like a month for organizations.”
While some treasurers did not have an opinion on the new policy changes, others spoke largely in disagreement. “They told us a bunch of stuff that we should’ve known before planning our events. Now we gotta scramble for these fools,” said one anonymous treasurer of a student organization. Another stated their dissatisfaction with the timeline for Amazon purchases, which Tejada mentioned as two to three weeks during her presentation. One former treasurer exclaimed their dissatisfaction as a whole and stated “bring back Brielle” as a comment on the policy change. Brielle Melillo served as the financial assistant prior to Tejada.
The most recent Student Organizations Policy Manual available can be found on the Undergraduate Student Life DuckLink portal.
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