Student Council met on Sunday to discuss proposed changes to its bylaws and how to help the Office of Community Partnerships increase student engagement and awareness.
The Business and Finance Committee (BFC) announced that the last hearing for student event funding requests this fall is taking place on Nov. 17. A special hearing for events held in January will take place on Dec. 1.
Safety and Wellness Chair Christopher Jacobson ’27 announced that the Cox Health and Counseling Center plans on hiring a new therapist.
Buildings, Grounds and Sustainability Committee Chair Arthur Wellenstein ’27 announced that the committee will be drafting a proposal for the Swap Shop, a free thrift store on campus. The committee is seeking student input.
Vice President for Business and Finance Ciaran Strimaitis ’27 proposed changes to the Student Council bylaws that deal primarily with “the way the BFC operates.” The contested proposal was deferred to the next Student Council meeting. The proposed changes aimed to address the delay clubs face under the current system between when the BFC allocates funds and when they can actually spend them, according to Strimaitis and Assistant Vice President and Dean of Students Brian Janssen, who is also the advisor for the BFC. The current system requires student groups to wait until Sunday for the Council to approve the BFC’s allocations to campus groups. This waiting period adds a “25% delay … since … realistically [clubs] can’t spend their money until the following Tuesday,” Janssen said. The BFC’s solution is a bylaw amendment that would remove the need for the Council to approve the fund allocation. Stirmaitis said the BFC put maximums in place on funding allocations to prevent people from abusing the system.
Senior Class President Juliette Leclerc ’27 expressed concern that the bylaw change would take away from what she believed was the “pretty important” oversight power that Student Council has over the BFC. Leclerc worried that if the “BFC were less organized, [and had] less voices in the room,” like previous committees, then there would be less accountability. She said that taking away oversight from the body that has “control over all of the money that is from student activity fees … seems a little unnatural.” Janssen believes changes that “some of the advancements that we made to the BFC will help with more transparency” have decreased the need for strict Student Council oversight and approval of BFC funding allocations.
Another matter of contention in the bylaw changes was cutting the auditor position and consolidating the role into the responsibilities of vice president for business and finance. Janssen articulated that the auditor position “never existed” and that the audit can be done through Kenyon Connect (KCon) in response to questioning from Junior Class President Amelia Russell ’28. He stated that using KCon easily allowed the BFC to audit funds with the example: “If groups [come] back to the BFC and say we want $6,000 more,” Student Council can use KCon as the method of auditing and say, “Well, actually, you were already allocated $4,000. You haven’t spent it, so no.” He further clarified that, by using KCon, the BFC could better track where the money was going and that they could avoid situations “like two or three years ago … there was [approximately] $18,000 that went unspent that [the BFC] could have spent … but it was left on the table because [the BFC] were using a spreadsheet to track it.”
At the end of the meeting, the Council approved $19,336.28 in BFC allocated funds. Since the beginning of the semester, the BFC has allocated $81,230.39 in funds to student groups and clubs.
Student Council will host its next meeting on Sunday at 7 p.m. in Chalmers 438. All students are welcome to attend either in person or remotely.