Boston University Student Government discussed its role on campus and upcoming Cabinet expenditures at its meeting Monday night.
In her opening address, President SaraAnn Kurkul said SG’s intended purpose is to use its allocated funds to advocate for different student groups on campus. However, Kurkul said SG has spent the past decade solely fulfilling student funding requests.
Kurkul compared SG to the university’s Allocations Board, which controls the $1.5 million generated by the Community Student Fee and whose primary responsibility is to fulfill those same requests.
“It’s just turned into this really slippery slope of SG changing its purpose to act as another allocations board on campus,” Kurkul said.
The bulk of the meeting was spent discussing a presentation by Executive Vice President Pier Cacciamani and Vice President of Finance Bernie Lai about upcoming Cabinet expenses.
The Department of Environmental Affairs will spend $230 to place stickers in all on-campus laundry rooms, promoting environmentally-conscious laundry practices, Cacciamani said. The committee will also spend $120 on a Jane Goodall documentary screening and additional funding on a water-tasting event.
The SG Department of Academic Affairs will spend $4,500 on care packages for students, and an additional $2,700 on a “bring your professor” networking event.
The Department of Events is planning to host a “Community Give-Back” event in early April, Cacciamani said, which would be held at White Horse Tavern in Allston. Attendees would pay $10 for a ticket and then be able to decide which student group that money goes to.
Still, Cacciamani said the main purpose of the Tavern event is not to raise money for student groups, but to promote SG to students.
“As a side to this, were going to try to give money back to the community,” Cacciamani said. “Relating to what SaraAnn said in her intro speech, we’re not a funding group.”
Since the event will be held at White Horse Tavern, attendees must be at least 18 years old, and alcoholic beverages will be served to students who are 21 and over, Cacciamani said. Senators expressed mixed opinions over funding an event where alcohol will be present.
Aditya Jain, a freshman in the College of Engineering, said he would be the only member of SG unable to attend the Community Give-Back event because of his age.
“I think that it’s definitely somewhat [of a] risky move in that way, because especially in BU, there’s been a massive push to reduce [the] alcohol and underage drinking culture that exists on campus,” Jain said. “I’d prefer that it wasn’t at the Tavern, personally.”
Norman Toro, a freshman senator in the College of Arts and Sciences, said he did not expect the Community Give-Back event to pass through the Student Activities Office, due to a rule preventing undergraduate student groups from paying for alcohol.
“It’s actually a pretty important thing because you see that Student Government is a big thing on campus, and if you do an event in a bar, people outside of Student Government can see a bad message about that.” Toro said. “It is not the message you want to send out to people that are not in Student Government.”
Brigitta Call, a sophomore at-large senator, said she is not concerned about the event’s nature.
“We’ve already done similar events, other student groups have done similar events, and it’s been successful and it hasn’t had that type of detrimental reputation attracted to whatever club held that event,” Call said.
Additionally, the conversation around the Give-Back event raised concerns about whether or not senators should have a say on funding Cabinet-sponsored events.
Cacciamani expressed his concern at the proposal to require Cabinet measures to be approved by the full Senate.
“If Cabinet has to request funding from Senate, it basically strongly limits the freedom that Cabinet has,” Cacciamani said. “You want to keep the two things separate, so if there’s a problem in one department, it doesn’t affect the other one.”
Jain said he thinks increased dialogue between Cabinet and Senate is important.
“I do think that it’s important that Cabinet does a better job of keeping Senate informed about these events throughout the semester,” Jain said, “instead of dumping them all in one meeting halfway through second semester.”
After debate over the Give-Back event ended, senators heard a proposal from senior CAS senator Julianne Leber. As the chair of the Mental Health Committee, Leber asked for approval to spend $752 of the committee’s $5,000 allocated budget on an event to address myths about mental health and stress disorders. The proposal passed unanimously.
Lillian Ilsley-Greene contributed to the reporting of this article.
Shaun was the Editor-in-Chief for the Spring 2019 semester. Before that, he was the Multimedia Editor, the Layout Editor and a News writer. He also sat on the Board of Directors. Follow him on Twitter @shaun_robs.
