TCU Senate adjusts allocations board structure, prepares to fills vacancies

The Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate heard updates from its executive board, discussed filling the vacancies left by senators spending the semester abroad as well as basic budgeting and parliamentary procedures in their first meeting of the semester on Sunday.

TCU Senate heard no resolutions or supplementary funding requests at its meeting. Instead, the TCU Senate Executive Board announced various updates from their respective roles.

TCU Senate President Shannon Lee provided her updates first. According to Lee, a senior, various committee meetings will begin this week and the Education Policy Committee has two vacant seats to be filled.

After an announcement of the meeting time and location of each specific committee by the committee chairs, TCU Treasurer Sharif Hamidi briefly reviewed the fall semester’s spending summary and discussed the budgeting process for the ongoing spring semester.

According to Hamidi, a junior, he hopes to keep supplementary funding for this semester below $225,000, based on spending from the fall semester. The final budget vote will take place on April 5.

Hamidi, in a structural change to the Allocations Board (ALBO), also announced that he himself would directly oversee the budgeting for large umbrella organizations that have several subgroups which require funding, such as club sports and the Tufts University Social Collective (TUSC), in a brand-new allocations division specifically devoted to those large umbrella organizations. In the past, the responsibility of budgeting these groups was distributed across other ALBO members in their respective councils.

Hamidi explained that he made this change in an effort to divide the heavy load that umbrella organizations carry. This also allows Hamidi to more directly allocate funds to specific groups, which he had not previously done during his tenure as TCU Treasurer.

“It’s a little silly for the treasurer to budget zero organizations,” Hamidi said.

After TCU Senate Parliamentarian and Senator for the Class of 2020 Finn McGarghan led the group in a Kahoot trivia designed to review parliamentary procedure and rules of debate, TCU Senate Historian Rabiya Ismail discussed the upcoming special election to fill eight vacant TCU Senate seats.

Ismail, a sophomore, said that there will be a general interest meeting for prospective candidates on Tuesday, Jan. 21 at 9 PM in Pearson 104. Applications will be due the following Tuesday, Jan. 28. Voting will commence on election day, Feb. 5 following a Candidate's Forum on Feb. 4 at 9 PM in Braker Hall room 001.