Student Bar Association senators at a meeting Tuesday said a continued “lack of financial transparency” from GW Law officials has left the governing body without the budget increase officials promised.
Amanda Hichez, the SBA’s executive vice president of finance and SBA president-elect, said Dean of Students Jason Belk confirmed with her in January that the SBA would receive an additional $26,115 to their overall SBA budget, but officials had not allocated the funding as of April 1. Hichez said Belk said he asked “somebody in SBA” to communicate with the body that they would not receive the funding, but he refused to disclose the SBA representative’s name.
“It is super unhelpful to be gatekeeping points of contact when clearly we are lacking financial transparency when it comes to the money that all 2,000 plus students at our school are entitled to,” Hichez said.
This year, the SBA has faced heightened oversight from law school administration when the Dean of Students Office refused to supplement the body’s professional development fund if they did not adhere to his requirements of what types of events were eligible for reimbursement through the ad-hoc budget. GW Law Dean Dayna Bowen Matthew gave the SBA an additional $10,000 in funding in January, but Hichez said the body is still missing funding that Belk promised earlier in the year.
“The ideal situation is that the dean of students is not overseeing our money this year, the remainder of this year or next year, since clearly there are a lot of issues, but that is what we’re dealing with,” Hichez said.
SBA senators approved the Executive Branch Budget Transfer Act, which will transfer $6,000 from the executive budget to the ad-hoc fund to supplement the fund after it was depleted by ad-hoc requests at the last meeting. The ad-hoc fund now has $3,072.87 — bringing it out of a $2,927.13 deficit — to distribute to student organizations at next week’s final meeting of the term.
SBA senators also unanimously passed the Student Organization Fundraising Reform Act, which restricts the SBA from using a student organization’s fundraising amounts as a negative metric when allocating their budget at the start of the year. SBA Sen. Omer Turkomer, who initially presented the bill at a February SBA meeting, said under the current policy the SBA deducts the amount an organization has left over in their budget from their overall budget for the year.
Turkomer initially presented the bill along with an amendment that would eliminate the SBA bylaw that requires student organizations to fundraise in order to be eligible for SBA funding the following year.
Following widespread disagreements among SBA senators about the amendment — with some members arguing that removing the requirement would disincentivize student organizations from fundraising — Turkomer said he decided to reintroduce the bill and omit the amendment.
“I’m coming to the end of my term as finance chair, so I figured even though I would have liked the amendment to be in there, I’m gonna sort of agree to disagree,” Turkomer said.
SBA senators passed an ad-hoc bill to allocate the Law Students for Justice in Palestine $36 for drinks for an upcoming event. SBA senators also allocated $713 to the Plaintiffs’ Law Association to cover catering for their networking panel event and $500 to the GW Law First Generation Professionals for their end-of-year celebration.
“We figured it would be a good opportunity to support these students,” Turkomer said. “Law school is already tough enough, especially if you’re experiencing it the first time.”
The SBA Senate approved the Ad-Hoc Transfer Act to transfer all remaining money in the ad-hoc fund to the Flights for International Families Act at the end of the term on April 8. SBA senators passed the FIFA Act on Feb. 25 to grant international students $100 stipends to cover transportation costs for their families to attend GW Law’s graduation this spring. The act will permit SBA senators to raise the stipend to $200 per student with the remaining ad-hoc funds.
SBA Sen. Elan Reisner voted against transferring ad-hoc funds to FIFA and raising the stipend amount, proposing instead that the body delegate a portion of the ad-hoc fund to the food insecurity subcommittee, which aims to address a lack of local, affordable food options for GW Law students.
“It would be very nice, just a show of gratitude,” Reisner said. “My friends are dealing with this issue, and I’m very thankful for these friends, and it would be nice to serve these friends and say that we see you, we hear you, and we are committed to helping the student body that elected us. $23 does not send a good message.”
The SBA Senate will hold its last meeting of the term on April 8 at 8:50 p.m. in the LLC.
