At this month's Student Activities Commission (SAC) General Assembly (GA), SAC Executive Chairperson Noel De Santos announced a revision to the meeting structure, which will now involve a shorter, and hopefully more effective, format.
As part of the revision, guest speakers will no longer attend the GA, but will instead take part in the Executive Board meetings. The SAC liaisons will take notes and report back to their respective groups. The SAC will also invite speakers to submit a one-page brief to be included in the meeting agenda.
De Santos hopes that this will not only save time, but will allow group members to benefit more from what the speakers have to say.
"Instead of having the speakers come up and no one listening, the liaisons will pass on the information," said De Santos.
Erica Mak of Women's Club Softball cited the benefits of the new format, in that the group liaison is "someone you already know," and someone who group members "can ask questions [of] right away."
She expressed confusion, however, regarding the new status of the GA.
"I'm not sure what the point of the meeting is going to be if it only involves the groups meeting individually," said Mak.
De Santos stressed the fact that the GA meetings will still be used for elections and for passing resolutions or bylaws, and that the exclusion of speakers is intended to "allow more effective dissemination of the material."
"The speaker's information will be more applicable to each group, since liaisons will be able to convey it in a more topical fashion," said De Santos.
Senior Renato Carfagno of the Recreation and Hobbies group expressed satisfaction with the new design.
"I think the shortened meeting format is fantastic," said Carfagno. "Before, a lot of time was wasted, or was not used effectively. For many people, attending the SAC GAs is a hassle, but they do it because of the threat of losing SAC funding ? by this point in the year everyone should know how the system works, and the SAC GA should be no more than a formality."
Also discussed at the meeting was annual budgeting. All Class A groups, who receive an annual SAC budget, must take part in budget hearings, which will be held from March 7-11. During the hearings, the SAC will review each group's financial plan and make suggestions for improvement. The revised final budgets will be due March 26. Other groups who do not receive an annual budget will instead submit funding requests on a case-by-case basis.
De Santos announced that the Judicial Board members are now fully trained after a meeting held with outside consultant Paul Narain, Director of Student Involvement Dr. Bill Smedick and Student Activities Financial Coordinator James Almond. Judicial Board members discussed the rules of the committee and took part in training exercises on ethics and fairness.
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