The financial administration of all Tier III Sports Clubs has been given to the Student Organizations Finance Office (SOFO), according to a memo from the student body presidents released on Monday, April 9.
“The decision to move this was due to [the CRC’s] inability to use the reporting spreadsheet,” said graduate student body president James Black. “It shouldn’t take an all out financial review from a group of students to ensure [good accounting], and this is the only way we can ensure that things are happening right.”
Undergraduate student body treasurer Matthew Vickers, who was one of the student who reviewed the CRC’s accounts, agreed.
“[The CRC] did a lot of research, and they were able to rectify their mistakes,” Vickers said. “It’s great and I’m glad they [met with us]. They also repudiated a few of our arguments in regards to misallocation.”
However, this was not enough to remedy several accounting errors, first brought to light by a report from the Joint Committee on Fiscal Responsibility, which was released earlier in March.
“Now the question becomes, ‘Is that sufficient?’ This accounting stuff is their job, so why does it take this sort of [student activity] to get their accounts in order?” Vickers said. “They should’ve been keeping track of JFC policy for years.”
When reached, Ken Lovic, Sports Club Coordinator for the CRC, declined to comment.
However, one representative in the Undergraduate House of Representatives questioned the methodology of this change.
“Fundamentally, the executive [branch of SGA] does execute what the legislative tells them to do — that’s how our system is set up,” said SGA member-at-large Mathias Rost. “If they’re to argue that moving a sports club from their current administrator where they have accountants working in CRC and a sports club director working in the CRC to SOFO is a small operational change, then they’re completely mistaken.”
Rost suggested that the executive branch should have taken another route in dealing with this situation.
“It really comes down to the fact that this executive order is outside the executive jurisdiction,” Rost said. “It should’ve been passed as a bill or resolution to have these funds moved.”
Black, however, disagreed, stating that, although allocation of the Student Activity Funds (SAF) was the legislative right, the day-to-day administration of SAF was within the executive realm of responsibility.
Along with ordering the move to SOFO, SGA created a committee responsible for managing the transition, composed of representatives from SGA and the CRC.