After years of calls for increased transparency, the Student Government Association’s Finance Committee opened its meetings to the public for the first time this month, but so far no students have attended to watch senators debate funding allocations once made behind closed doors.
The decision to open meetings followed renewed calls from SGA senators and student organization leaders since at least 2022 for greater financial transparency, although students have complained for years that the committee was not clear about how it allocated funds to student groups. SGA Sen. Sophie Leinenkugel (ESIA-U), the chair of the Financial Services and Allocations Committee, said zero students attended either of the committee’s first two open meetings, and only one student has indicated they will attend a future meeting.
Leinenkugel said she thinks the committee needs to do a “better job” of publicizing the meetings and encouraging students to attend, but she is still working with other members of the committee and SGA Vice President Liz Stoddard on the details of how to boost attendance.
She said the committee currently promotes its meetings through the SGA’s weekly newsletter, which she thinks is less widely read than other platforms — like posts on the SGA’s Instagram — that typically draw more engagement to boost attendance.
“I do think a little bit of it is we just need to do a better job of getting the word out,” Leinenkugel said.
Closed-door Finance Committee meetings have long dominated criticisms of the SGA’s lack of transparency, with students and organization leaders urging the committee to allow public attendance since at least 2014. During SGA elections in 2023 and 2024, vice presidential candidates — who oversee the SGA Senate’s allocation of money to student organizations — echoed those calls and promised to open finance meetings to their platforms.
In 2014, after a former senator accused the Finance Committee of secrecy, the committee pledged to revise bylaws to increase its accountability and transparency. More reports emerged in 2022 after the SGA’s legal counsel accused the then-finance chair of negligence and bias in fund distribution, resulting in his resignation and renewed calls from student organizations for clearer communication and more consistent funding protocols from the committee.
Students can RSVP to finance meetings, which occur weekly on Thursdays at 8:30 p.m., through a form in the SGA newsletter, which collects basic details like if they have a public comment, the meeting they will attend and any ties to student organizations. Leinenkugel said the system helps the committee anticipate attendance and organization affiliations and gives her the option to deny entry to certain students if they become disruptive.
Leinenkugel said Finance Committee meetings have grown longer this year as student groups request more cosponsorships, since the SGA bolstered the cosponsorship fund while reducing upfront allocations at the beginning of the year. She said long meetings have placed a “strain” on some senators — especially graduate students — and may discourage public attendance, an issue she said she is “actively trying to solve” but still working on specific solutions as to how to bring meeting times down.
“I remember being on the Finance Committee last year when we’d have 18 requests to consider. Those numbers, they don’t really exist anymore,” Leinenkugel said. “Senators can definitely expect there to be 25-plus a night, for sure.”
SGA Sen. Tambudzai Gundani (CCAS-G), one of the committee’s two graduate members, said the longer meetings are a product of more cosponsorship requests but that the committee still gives each one “proper consideration” and approaches the responsibility of deciding on requests seriously. She said open meetings can reinforce fairness by showing the public that senators make funding decisions through a “thoughtful process.”
Gundani said no matter which model is used, students should receive clear explanations of funding decisions so they feel the process is “fair, equitable and accountable.”
“Even if outcomes remain the same, that openness adds accountability and helps student organizations trust the committee’s work,” Gundani said in an email.
She added that longer meetings require “careful” time management for her personally as a graduate student, balancing coursework and other life responsibilities.
“I see it as part of the commitment I made when joining the committee,” Gundani said in an email. “And the work is worthwhile because it directly supports student organizations. When called to serve, it is a rewarding experience.”
SGA Sen. Jonesy Strell (CCAS-U), a member of the Finance Committee and a former chairperson, said he thinks the committee does not have a responsibility to encourage student attendance at meetings beyond advertising that they are now open to the public. He said when he was chair, he supported holding closed-door meetings because he felt senators felt more comfortable debating funding allocations in a private setting.
“If students do come, then we’ll see how it is, I’m also genuinely interested to see what happens,” Strell said. “Look, if things go smoothly and things work, fine, great, worst case scenario things don’t work, then we can change it.”
Strell said the committee increased the threshold for student organizations to present at meetings about a funding request from $800 to $1,000 to reduce the number of presentations per meeting and increase efficiency.
Strell said other SGA members who opposed opening finance meetings to the public worried that student organization leaders attending meetings would create “pressure” for senators to give larger allocations to their groups. He said as chair, he personally kept the meetings closed because he thought minutes typed by clerks provided enough transparency, but he acknowledged that attending in person offers a “more personal” experience meeting summaries cannot capture.
“I felt that the pressure argument was a little bit flawed in the sense that if a senator isn’t able to make a tough decision while an org is in the room with them, should they even be a senator? Should they even be on the Finance Committee?” Strell said.
SGA President Ethan Lynne, who chaired the Finance Committee from 2023-24, said student organizations leaders encouraged him last year when he was vice president to open meetings to the public so they could better understand feedback on their funding requests and see senators debate in real-time instead of reading minutes after the fact. He said there was also a push internally from SGA senators who wanted to increase transparency with the student body.
“I held probably close to a dozen meetings with student organizations every single week when I was vice president, and that was something that continued to come up, so it was very important,” Lynne said.
Lynne, who proposed using the RSVP system to open meetings to the public, said having students sign up to attend a Finance Committee meeting was not intended to restrict certain students from attending but to ensure the room would not become overcrowded and violate safety regulations.
Stoddard, an ex-officio member of the Finance Committee who sponsored the Fair Act last spring, said she pushed for the change because she opposed keeping the committee student organizations care most about closed to the public. She said during last year’s bylaw reforms, senators called for greater financial transparency between the SGA and student organizations, further motivating the push to open meetings.
“If anything, the debate around their presentations or around their cosponsorship applications could make it easier for them to understand where they need to be better,” Stoddard said.
Stoddard said she thinks public attendance is low at meetings because they are scheduled late Thursday evenings, when students would rather be with friends or studying, but the committee cannot move meeting times due to senators’ limited schedules. She said the SGA also only recently started sending out its newsletter this semester, which she thinks will boost attendance at meetings as more students read it each week.
“If one student, and only one student, shows up, and they find it helpful, then I think that’s a net positive,” Stoddard said.
