The changes to the Student Activities Board bylaws proposed by Undergraduate Student Government Sentator Kenneth Myers on Oct. 2 have been approved.
Under the new bylaws, the name of SPA was changed to ASAB—Agency of the Student Activities Board—the SAB treasurer must maintain communications with the ASAB director, the director must also report to the SAB treasurer and secretary, as well as the other officers and the summer and winter activities committee laws were further detailed.
“I decided to propose the changes because I was on SAB last year as the SAB treasurer and I realized that there were a lot of issues with it,” Myers said in a Facebook message. “Last year, I felt like a lot of our operations were a mess, which eventually led to my resignation from my position.”
This “mess” included problems such as the board trying to approve allocations outside of open meetings, the SPA director collecting checks and losing receipts and a general lack of communication between members, Myers said.
Though he said that changing the bylaws does not mean that the organization will be perfect, or even that people will follow them, he proposed the changes in an effort to “change as many things that would make it just a little bit better and/or prevent possible corruption.”
A main point of Myers’ was that changing the name of SPA to ASAB will give both students and USG members a better idea of ASAB’S functions.
“Even in the Legislative Review meeting that I needed to get the bylaws approved, another senator asked what SPA was,” Myers said. “The name change was to just make it clearer [how] SAB operates.”
USG President Anna Lubitz said she is happy with the changed bylaws, and that the few minor changes she requested are being put into place. For example, the current bylaws state that, over the summer, SAB can begin planning one month into the fall semester. In the past, this was not an option.
“That ultimately hindered SAB functioning,” Lubitz said, because it could not sign contracts or make any concrete plans until the start of the semester, and she is also pushing to make the same change to winter session.
But Myers is not finished. Though the new bylaws have been approved he intends to present another set of changes to the senate over the next few weeks.
The coming changes will address Myers’ concerns about the committee on cinematic arts, the Concert Series committee and also the continuity of the summer and winter committee rules and privileges will then be addressed.
