The Student Bar Association president said he will allocate $10,000 of his executive budget to a professional development fund during a meeting Tuesday.

SBA President Shallum Atkinson said the new budget will allow the SBA to give GW Law students money to attend pre-professional events for career development. Students previously had to request money from the SBA’s ad hoc fund — where the amount of allocated funds varied per request — but Atkinson said each law student can now request up to $500 in an effort to give equal opportunities to every student.

The next SBA president must decide if they want to continue the fund because SBA bylaws do not mandate the new allocations, Atkinson said. He added that the SBA will open the application for the fund around finals week in December and release funding decisions sometime in January.

“It will make it easier to put everyone on the same playing field as opposed to rolling applications, as some people’s conferences might be later,” Atkinson said.

Atkinson said the SBA is also in the early stages of creating a proposal to law school administrators requesting that students have the ability to record a letter grade on their transcript for a credit/no credit class if they do well in the course. The proposal would also ask officials to allow students to revert a letter grade in a course to a credit/no credit classification if they didn’t perform well, Atkinson said.

“It’s something other schools use,” Atkinson said. “It’s not a perfect system, and again, we don’t know if it will work, but I think in a sense it is trying to create an enhanced credit/no credit option that we already have.”

Atkinson said the SBA held its annual Lawloween event on Friday, a Halloween-themed party for law students. He said in comparison to previous years, the SBA saved $12,000 in fees associated with the event because they rented a smaller venue. He said the SBA set up a queue system to provide students without tickets an opportunity to attend the event because they sold tickets from people who could no longer attend to students who wanted to go.

“Until Friday at six, people were emailing about tickets, and students in the highest queue would get tickets once someone canceled,” Atkinson said.

SBA Sen. Elan Reisner said he was concerned about the dates of the SBA’s next event in the spring, Barrister Ball, after it coincided with religious holidays like Easter and Ramadan last year. Atkinson said this year’s event is set for earlier in the spring to ensure it doesn’t conflict with the holidays.

Senators unanimously voted to approve the Armenian Law Students Association’s request for $322. SBA Sen. Akhil Kambhammettu said the request would reimburse the organization for the costs associated with aiding displaced families in Armenia, like the bake sale and candlelight vigil they’ve hosted and donations of genocide studies journals to the GW Law library.

Alexa Adalin, a representative from ALSA, said the organization is self-funded primarily through donations from GW Law professor Aram Gavoor but is requesting the aid of the SBA to provide more help in Armenia.

“We’ve had a lot of help from our faculty advisor Professor Gavor,” Adalin said. “He has actually paid out of pocket for a lot of our own events that we’ve been hosting.”

Senators unanimously voted to approve the Evening Law Student Association’s request and amend the bill to distribute their full request of $1,200, instead of the $875 the Finance Committee recommended. ELSA Co-President Emily Thomas said last year, leaders of the organization failed to implement a succession plan, which became “defunct” without management.

She said the organization has to resort to using ad hoc funding — additional funding student organizations may request after the general allocations process — because they have no funding due to the lack of leadership in the ELSA during the general allocations period.

Thomas said the money allocated will help to sponsor the ELSA Fall Social at Tonic, which allows evening students to socialize despite not being able to attend GW Law events like Weekend Windup that the SBA funds because they are typically in class when they occur.

“Some of the things SBA gets funding for, evening students often can’t take advantage of, which is why you’re seeing a larger request from us,” Thomas said.

SBA Sen. Bernard Baffoe-Mensah suggested the amendment because he believed it is vital that the senate helps to support evening law students in any way possible.

Senators also unanimously voted to approve SBA Sen. Diana Kyabega’s request of about $289 to reimburse six students who attended a Young Professionals Career Dinner.

Baffoe-Mensah said he is working on drafting legislation to request GW Law give students the day off for Columbus and Indigenous Peoples Day in October, considering that GW occupies space that is on the ancestral homelands of the Piscataway, Anacostan and Nacotchtank people. He added that since second- and third-year law students don’t have a fall break, having a day off would provide a “mental reset” after the first month of classes, but was unsure if GW Law would approve because it may mean starting the school year earlier in August.

Senators will hold the next SBA Senate meeting on Nov. 14 at 9:15 pm in LLC 009.