Student Bar Association leaders are sidestepping a GW Law dean’s recommendations to reform the body’s spending, claiming his oversight last semester threatened to subvert the SBA’s authority over funding and jeopardize annual events.
SBA President Cherissa Lindsay said GW Law Associate Dean of Students Jason Belk dismissed the body’s funding concerns last semester and said he’d only add money to their professional development fund if they restricted the types of events eligible for reimbursement through the ad-hoc budget. Lindsay said Belk’s solutions to the SBA’s tight budget endangered its continuation of annual events, forcing her to begin “going above” him to more senior officials, like law school Dean Dayna Bowen Matthew.
At the start of each academic year, the SBA allocates funds to student groups, its executive branch and an ad-hoc budget, which has historically operated without input from the law school and distributes money throughout the year to students and groups that form after the general allocations process in the fall.
In October, Lindsay said Belk implemented guidelines for the SBA’s ad-hoc budget — including that the SBA should not fund more than 20 percent of a student event cost or finance events without a “clear academic benefit” — and said he would consider allotting $10,000 toward the SBA’s professional development fund if the body adhered to these proposed rules.
She said the SBA isn’t required to follow his recommendations but that the body must abide if they wish to continue financing students’ attendance at academic and career-related events through the fund, which is currently empty due to this year’s limited budget.
“We do have to basically adhere to what the Dean of Students’ Office wants, and if they’re not satisfied with how we are distributing funds for these events, we are at risk of not having a professional development fund,” Lindsay said at the SBA’s October meeting.
At the same meeting, the SBA Senate complied with Belk’s guidelines by upholding Lindsay’s veto of an ad-hoc bill that the body had initially passed at an earlier meeting. Lindsay said Belk “was not pleased” that the SBA Senate had initially voted to allocate $500 to a student to attend a one-day law summit, and she vetoed the bill in an effort to follow his recommendations.
Lindsay said that when she met with Belk at the start of the fall semester to discuss securing additional University funds for student groups that said they couldn’t finance their programming alone, Belk suggested redirecting all funding allocated to the SBA executive branch to student groups.
Lindsay said the move would eliminate funding for law school-wide events hosted by the executive branch, like the annual end-of-year Barrister’s Ball celebration for law students. This year, the executive branch allocated $75,000 toward the event.
“I didn’t feel that was really fair, but this is where we had quite a few disagreements,” Lindsay said.
She said the SBA began the year with a tight budget that forced the body’s leaders to split funds evenly between the executive branch and student groups as opposed to allocating more to student organizations, a common trend in SBA general allocations.
She said the SBA used to supplement its budget with unspent money from the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, leaving this year’s executive branch without an extra “pool of money” previous SBA leaders relied on.
Lindsay added that in previous years, the SBA operated “without oversight” from the Dean of Students Office and was free to allocate money to events, students and student groups without stipulations. The previous executive branch’s spending of the COVID-19 surplus last year “redefined” the relationship between the office and SBA, forcing the body to more heavily rely on the University for financial support.
“They have power over the SBA now that they didn’t have previously,” Lindsay said.
Matthew said the deans have been “more engaged” in the SBA finance process this year but will not “interfere” with the body’s management of “financial decisions.”
“This year, unlike any year since the pandemic, the SBA chair has no surplus funds to distribute,” Matthew said in an email. “Said another way, this is the first year since 2019 that the SBA has had to stick to what is its ‘traditional’ budget.’”
Matthew said she allotted an “additional amount” of funding to the SBA’s “discretionary allocation” to help the body transition back to a “nonsurplus reality” this year.
“Although Dean Belk and others have provided advice and counsel regarding which expenditures might make the most sense and which do not, no law administrators control the SBA budget or spending,” Matthew said.
Lindsay said that when she began meeting with Matthew in early December to discuss Belk’s advising strategy during the fall semester, Matthew was “interested” in hearing her concerns and had a “plan of action” to improve communication between the office and the SBA. She said Matthew plans to donate money to GW’s food pantry, The Store, following reports of law student food insecurity.
Lindsay said she has not been in communication with Belk “recently” and wants to continue talking with Matthew and GW Law Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Steven Schooner, which she said is a “start” at improving communication between the SBA and law school officials.
“She was talking to Dean Schooner about the Professional Development Fund to see if they can put some money together, so there’s more action on her side, so it’s essentially going above Dean Belk instead of communicating to him,” Lindsay said.
SBA Sen. Rohin Balkundi said his “main gripe” with the Dean of Students Office’s efforts last semester was Belks’ indication that if the SBA complied with his regulations, they would receive the $10,000 to aid its professional development fund.
“You can’t just like throw the $10,000 over our head all over again, and be like, ‘Okay, if you guys don’t do this I’m gonna take away the $10,000,’ when it was never ours to begin with,” Balkundi said.
SBA Sen. Marcella Rubini, a member of the SBA Finance Committee, said she does not believe Belk will ever allocate the $10,000 to the body because he has “not been happy” with SGA decisions in general.
“It’s like he’s making decisions, but he has no actual authority to make decisions on our ad-hoc funding,” Rubini said. “That’s specifically for the senators, and I think that we need to stop tiptoeing around Dean Belk and his wishes.”