TCU Senate hears club funding requests, DCA presentation

The Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate met yesterday in the Sophia Gordon Multipurpose Room to discuss supplementary budget allocations.

The meeting began with a presentation from Adrienne Pruitt, the collections management archivist at the Digital Collections and Archives (DCA). The department is responsible for preserving university records in paper and digital format for the administration and student organizations. It is also the department that holds Jumbo’s tail, which can be requested to see. Pruitt proposed that TCU Senate submit records of their meetings to the DCA for future students to be able to learn from the Senate.

“We can help you and future iterations of you by looking back to see what the Senate did previously. What’s been successful, what hasn’t been successful, when it might be time to try that issue again,” Pruitt said. If there were privacy concerns, the records could be available to be opened in 20 or 75 years.

Pruitt further explained the importance of archiving student activities.

“These records are part of the historical record of the university. We really want to document it because one of the things that sometimes gets lost in archives in general are the records of people who aren’t the administration,” she said.

Following Pruitt’s presentation, TCU Senate Treasurer Sharif Hamidi discussed the amount of money spent within the month on supplementary expenditures. Last year, the Senate budgeted $100,000 in supplementary funding throughout the entire year, of which they have so far spent $22,727. 

$5,177 of this money has been spent on competitions and retreats, $7,094 on campus programming, $9,075 on off-campus travel, $1,081 on annual budgeting for groups not given funding from last year’s budgeting meeting and $300 on speakers.

In this meeting, TCU Senate passed through acclamation funding for seven campus organizations, totaling $9,800.

The meeting adjourned after 30 minutes, upon which a closed meeting began.