If approved, the Student Government Association (SGA) run finance meetings might be getting a big overhaul this semester.

Many changes have been proposed this semester by SGA Vice President of Finance Cíara Kain which are now being discussed amongst student organization treasurers and senators.

Currently, SGA finance meetings are held on a bi-weekly schedule on Fridays, with some meetings lasting around three hours. Recognized student organizations on campus send one treasurer each week to present, discuss, and vote on each other’s budgets for any events they want to hold. Voting cannot be held unless they meet quorum, something that is often a struggle, often pushing back the start time of meetings or ending them when people leave mid-meeting.

To combat this, Kain has proposed several new changes to the way meetings are held, almost completely re-doing the process.

The proposal includes changing finance meetings to being much smaller, and having an eight-person committee review and vote on all of the budgets. These eight student representatives would be interviewed and chosen by Kain and SGA President Madia Bestman. In the proposed interim period, current treasurers would be allowed to serve on this finance committee, but in the future treasurers would not be allowed to.

Kain believes these changes would help solve a problem that needs immediate action.

“The Finance Committee will save time, money, and we will be more precise with the budgets that get approved. By having a smaller group and having the ability to look over all the budgets at the same time, we can more easily see similarities in events and suggest co-sponsorship. Plus, with a smaller group of students who actually want to be there, we can more effectively review the details of the budgets and vote faster.”

The proposal has received a lot of feedback from student representatives, with some supporting it and others against. Much of the criticism against the claim proposal has come from treasurers that enjoy being able to go to finance meetings and give their opinions. Their solution is to implement penalties when treasurers skip meetings. Kain opposes this, and believes that threatening punishment when they don’t show up shouldn’t be the reason they come to the meetings, rather they should want to be there.

Another concern other treasurers have brought up is that there will be bias amongst the chosen finance committee representatives. After discussion at the latest finance meeting, a blind budget process was introduced, which has now been included in Kain’s proposal.

Kain hopes that the process of adapting this proposal to what student representatives want will continue.

“I am absolutely open to amending the changes to it. Three weeks ago this proposal was very different. After I brought it to Senate and Finance and took students’ feedback, this proposal is now more aligned to what the majority wants.”