The Student Bar Association Senate passed a bill at a meeting Tuesday to distribute money to students who were set to receive reimbursements from the body last year for professional development events.
Omer Turkomer, who sponsored the bill, said the SBA will deduct $900 from the SBA Senate’s ad-hoc fund and $899.85 from executive branch’s budget to cover students’ requests for money from last year’s professional development fund, which the SBA created to help students attend preprofessional events for career development. He said students last year requested money through the fund but have not yet received it because the University didn’t process the requests until this year.
“We’ve had discussions with admin, we’re responsible for covering these costs, even though they processed it like now, even though they should have been processed before,” Turkomer said. “So essentially, that means that we need to come up with $1,799.85.”
The SBA Senate voted to table a financial transparency act for the second time after originally sending the legislation back to the Finance Committee for further review at an October meeting to clarify the legislation’s language about who would have control over the budget during the summer when the body is planning orientation week events.
Turkomer, who sponsored the act, said the Finance Committee reviewed with the Vice President of Finance Amanda Hichez the original legislation, which would eliminate the requirements of submitting a line item budget of spending for SBA-sponsored events from the executive to the senate. He said the new legislation outlines practices, like maintaining a running balance sheet for expenses, which Turkomer said Hichez already does, to ensure the financial practices continue into future administrations.
“We decided to essentially have this be more of, essentially, a bill that integrates practices that are already being done, they’re just not necessarily required by statute,” Turkomer said.
The act also gives the SBA Senate the “exclusive authority” to determine the executive budget, a power typically held by the senate but not written into statute and requires the executive budget to be no less than 50 percent of the total SBA annual budget.
The SBA issued a statement Nov. 18 in the weekly newsletter reiterating Executive Vice President Nigel Walton’s comments from last week’s senate meeting about the alleged removal of fliers from the Law student organizations Lambda Law and Law Students for Justice in Palestine. SBA President Cherissa Lindsay said the statement comes after GW Law Dean of Students Jason Belk advised the body to not issue a stance about the situation at a senate meeting earlier this month.
“Actions that systematically remove or destroy such materials not only violate posting policies but may also constitute discriminatory harassment when targeted based on protected characteristics,” the statement reads.
SBA Sen. Rohin Balkundi said while he did not have an “issue” with the statement itself, he had “concern” about the placement of the SBA seal at the bottom of the statement. He said the seal signified full senate approval of Walton’s statement despite a lack of discussion from senators about the language of the post itself.
Walton said although the statement did include the SBA seal, it should be perceived to be on behalf of the executive branch rather than the entirety of the body.
The SBA Senate passed two ad-hoc bills to cover student expenses for law conference fees and travel costs. The senate fully funded a request of $25 from student Nicholas Moeller to cover the registration fee for the American Bar Association Antitrust Forum, an event catered to discussions about the future of antitrust policy in light of the incoming Trump administration.
SBA senators also approved an ad-hoc bill to distribute $360 to the GW chapter of the International Refugee Assistance Project — an initiative to train lawyers in the field of immigration law — to fund transportation via Amtrak to the IRAP Student Summit in New York City.
The SBA Senate will hold its first meeting of the spring semester Jan. 7 at 8:50 p.m. in the LLC.