Student Union held a Treasury Engagement Session and Budget Allocation Discussion open to all students on Friday afternoon. Among the 22 attendees were the past and current budget committee chairs, Treasury representatives and representatives from various student groups on campus.

Treasury officers discussed topics such as the 90 percent rule, newly implemented this semester, and the deregistration of SU-recognized groups, which Treasury voted on on Tuesday, Nov. 18.

Having just approved student group budgets earlier this week, Treasury aimed to make the process more transparent, fielding questions from student group representatives after the planned presentations.

Budget Committee Chair and junior Hunter Malasky spoke about the recently created 90 percent rule, which dictates that clubs that spend less than 90 percent of their allocated budget will only be funded the amount actually spent for the following year. However, there is still a low cap of $50 for groups that do not spend 90 percent of their funds. Those groups that do spend 90 percent or more will receive more money the following semester.

Malasky discussed the purpose of the rule and its effectiveness this semester in decreasing the high amount of carry-forward funds, or unspent money that is returned to Student Union at the end of the semester to be used in the future, that SU has seen recently.

“We’re hoping that it acts as an incentive so that groups that are allocated all their money will spend 90 percent or more of the amount they’re allocated, thereby reducing the amount of money Student Union gets back at the end of the semester,” Malasky said.

Malasky discussed how such funding has helped groups such as the Association of Latin American Students, Cast N’ Crew, the African Students Association and Campus Kitchen, among others.

Sophomore Kenneth Sng, former committee chair and current speaker of the Treasury, said that student groups are always encouraged to discuss their funding with the budget committee chair.

“We just did this type of engagement session to expand on this message, like we are willing to…work with student groups to make sure that we get more events for campus,” Sng said.

After a question-and-answer session, Student Group Activities Committee member sophomore Danyao Xu discussed the committee’s work this semester, including deregistration. Xu explained that junior and former SGAC chair Michael Schumeister began this process a year before, working with the Budget Committee to create a list of groups that no longer function on campus.

Xu elaborated on the roles of the Budget Committee and SGAC in the process and how they went about seeking out deregistered groups.

“BC and SGAC came up with this together because BC is responsible for allocating budget and they will see the groups every semester,” Xu said. “We actively were going out to look for those that were on the list; most of them [we] couldn’t contact…like I mean actively looking out, we approached the Student Union rep. to find them and we also sent out emails to current…deregistered presidents and treasurers.”

Groups were given two weeks to explain why they should not be deregistered, but Xu said that only five groups actually provided a letter explaining their situation to Student Union.

The most common reason that groups were deregistered, according to Xu, was that there was no registered president or treasurer, making it impossible for them to apply for a budget or be contacted by Student Union.

Neither BC nor SGAC had more authority in the decision of which groups were deregistered—rather, the two committees collaborated to decide which groups should perhaps be deregistered and therefore no longer receive SU funding.

“BC is very important in terms of actively finding the groups…they are the person who actually knows exactly how this group is doing this semester,” Xu said. “This initiative actually is a treasurer initiative…we want to make our funding more actually go to the groups that need the money instead of groups that no longer exist.”