A $400 debt is owed to the Student Government Association; however, the details of who is responsible for that debt are more complicated than could have ever been anticipated.
The situation began when five members of the Stevens chapter of Amnesty International cancelled their attendance at a conference this past November. Since the organization could not receive a refund, this led to a violation of the relevant policies pertaining to conference attendance. However, remedying this violation created chaos due to the vagueness of Student Life and SGA financial policies. Consequently, everyone involved from Amnesty to the SGA had different interpretations of the relevant policies.
The conference in question was the Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference on November 3, which is a regional meeting consisting of training and networking for Amnesty chapters in the region. Amnesty booked a charter bus to get to the conference with SGA approval, which importantly charges a fixed cost rather than charging per person. Very close to the conference date, five members of the organization had to pull out of the conference for various legitimate reasons; however, Amnesty still had to pay the same amount for transportation and could not receive a refund. This led to it violating part of the Student Organization Policies Manual (SOPM) which reads: “a maximum of $100 per student for up to 20 students (maximum $2000 per RSO, per semester) may be requested for the purposes of attending a conference,” as it had now spent more than $100 for each of those who still attended.
After Amnesty informed former Vice President of Student Interests (VPSI) Dakota Van Deursen and former Vice President of Finance (VPF) Anthony Picone, the three parties met to address the situation. They told Amnesty that the $400 could be re-payed however the organization saw fit, for two reasons. First, the Policies Manual, already cited above, states, “Any unexpected costs related to the conference must be absorbed by all conference attendees and not by the student organization.” However, both Amnesty and the SGA Officials decided this was unjust. Second, the SGA’s Senate Budget Committee Finance Policy and Guidelines (FPG) simply state that, “After the conference, the number of attendees must match the amount of funds requested. If there are fewer attendees, the balance of the conference allocation will roll back to the SGA,” without explicitly stating who should pay the difference in a case like this. Picone also said that the SGA generally tells organizations to recoup the money owed from the people who did not attend the conference. However, Amnesty was against penalizing those who had cancelled for legitimate reasons.
Amnesty did not want to charge those who cancelled for reasons as varied as inconsistencies in the relevant financial policies, the financial burden on those who cancelled, the expectations this interpretation would create for registered student organizations, the impact on Amnesty’s image and well-being, and the unenforceable nature of the interpretation. The Amnesty Executive Board provided this statement on the matter: “During discussions, it became clear that the policy is obtuse and unenforceable. In turn, interpretations of the policy were inconsistent and wavering. Without proper accountability measures in place, this has allowed for the SGA, specifically the Senate Budget Committee, to overstep its powers and fail to look out for students.” While one of the four members who cancelled ultimately did pay back $100, Amnesty decided to host a few fundraisers to pay back the remaining $300.
Amnesty did not come this decision quickly; instead, it was the product of exhaustive meetings and hours of combing through the SOPM and FPG. The situation was complicated by the vagueness of the financial policies and the varying interpretations presented to Amnesty. Originally, the organization wanted to find ways to pay the debt itself, whether by using rollover funds or by cutting items from their semesterly budget. The Executive Board cited Article I, Section 5, of the FPG which states, “All debts accumulated over the course of a semester will be paid for out of that student organization’s allocated budget. In the event that an SO overspends their allocated budget, disciplinary action may result,” and argued that the organization should be able to pay back the debt itself. This strategy was very quickly dismissed, however, as the SGA officials interpreted the policy to mean that the debt was owed by the individuals who cancelled, not Amnesty itself, and that it was the individuals’ responsibility. This is despite the fact that the FPG does not establish a separation between debt owed by an organization and debt owed by its members.
Assuming that the debt is the responsibility of the individuals, it would also stand to reason that those individuals should bear any punishments levied against the organization as a result of the violation; however, this was not the case. The Executive Board ended up having to largely remedy the situation itself, but more importantly, the organization’s Additional Funding Request for the first conference of this semester was denied due to the fact that the debt was still outstanding, punishing those who would’ve attended rather than the individuals in debt. Charging those individuals, however, presented its own set of problems. First, the individuals may simply not be in a financial situation conducive to paying $100 out-of-pocket without any prior notice. Second, the attendees did not sign any sort of agreement stating that they would pay any deficit created by them cancelling. For the next conference, Amnesty actually attempted to draft an agreement to this effect, but it was not approved by the Senate Budget Committee. Third, even if Amnesty wanted to charge the individuals who cancelled, it had no authority to do so, and the SGA refused to enforce the policy itself.
To make matters worse, the headaches surrounding the conference were not the only problems Amnesty faced during that time. The club moved subcommittees, its treasurer resigned for unrelated reasons, it hosted a large event, and members of the club even attended yet another conference the preceding weekend in Boston where they facilitated one of the events and to which they procured their own transportation. Most importantly, however, the situation was further complicated when the new SGA Cabinet was sworn in at the beginning of this semester, leading the new VPF, Elena Malova, to have to interpret the policies herself and approach the situation without prior knowledge of the above debates.
According to Amnesty, this series of events displayed a number of problems in the current FPG. Specifically, it is unclear on who should be held responsible for SGA debt: the individuals who caused it or the organization which they belong to, and how individual debts should be enforced. Amnesty would like to see an agreement for conference attendees in the future, as well as a defined policy for what differentiates individual debt from organization debt. Elena Malova has already stated that she has plans to rewrite the FPG in a manner which would resolve these aforementioned issues.
Be First to Comment