In its first weekly meeting of the year on Sunday, the TCU Senate introduced a new project list and implemented changes to student organization budgets, including a restriction on their ability to award prize money.
TCU President Dhruv Sampat spearheaded the new project list for the Senate as a way to help senators get a sense of the priorities for the year.
“We have a sort of list of things that we’d like to get done, including what we want our end goal to be and what we expect of it,” Sampat said. “Once we have that set list and we have an entire Senate body, we’re really just going to be divvying it up between all of us and getting behind things individually.”
Alexander Vang, TCU vice president and General Board chair added that the Board has a list of projects in order of priority that chairs would like to get done throughout the semester.
“This summer, we focused on how to restructure and reframe how committees operate as it relates to projects primarily, just because last year, [we had a] lot of great ideas, we just want to figure out ways to make them a bit more organized,” Vang said.
He also provided updates on the various Senate committees and introduced the General Board, which consists of committee chairs and himself. Each committee chair also shared their priorities and goals for the school year.
Sampat shared that the code of conduct will be updated on Tuesday to include a new attendance policy that outlines how many meetings can be missed.
“Last year, we were constantly running into confusion based on excused [and] unexcused absences. We’re hoping to have that clarified,” Sampat said.
The Senate later unanimously passed proposed changes to the Treasury Procedures Manual, the governing document for the TCU’s Allocations Board.
The TCU Treasury, along with the Allocations Board, is responsible for allocating revenue to over 400 approved student organizations on campus. They observe the budget of each group to ensure that they receive funding and that their spending is in line with Treasury regulations and university standards.
As part of the changes to the Treasury Procedures Manual, the Treasury reduced how much money student groups can give out in prizes. A restriction of one event with prizes per semester is being placed on student groups to limit the awarding of free money and items.
“What we don’t want is a cultural club that’s 10 people big, or any club that’s 10 people big, handing out $500 worth of prizes, which we’ve had in the past, because it’s just not right,” Sampat added.
The Tufts University Social Collective, which organizes event programming for students, will be an exception to the rule, according to TCU Treasurer Brendan French.
As a way to help distribute the workload for supplementary funding requests, the Treasury will now authorize associate treasurers to approve up to $1,000 in bookmarks, which allows student groups to set aside money in the budget as a placeholder for items not yet defined. Previously, only the treasurer could approve bookmark requests higher than $500.
“[I’m] trying to help offload that workload that the treasurer gets onto the associate treasurer, so there’s two extra people who can approve up to $1,000,” French said.
The Senate also increased how much the Allocations Board can approve in supplementary funding and bookmarks without the approval of the wider Senate, increasing the amount from $4,000 to $6,000. However, the Allocations Board decision must be unanimous.
French hoped this change would help the Senate maximize its time and be more efficient, saying the Allocations Board “does have expertise when it comes to listening to these kinds of requests.”
Finally, the Treasury revised how it allocates food budgets for clubs. Food will now be calculated as part of a group’s total budget rather than be allocated separately. For culture clubs, no more than 60% of the budget can be used for food.
“That should give them more room within their budget to redeem bookmarks or come into [the Allocations Board] with a supplementary funding request if they want money,” French said.
Senators also talked about open positions for non-TCU Senate members, including TCU Senate subcommittee positions and trustee representatives. Both positions have applications with senators looking to fill the spots in the next few weeks.
