In a press conference held on Friday, Student Union President Nyah Macklin ’16 apologized for the “sloppy” work done by the Allocations Board this past semester and announced several proposed changes to the funding process, including a constitutional amendment, that will be enacted in the coming months.

Macklin noted that the A-Board rules were unclear for many students, which caused a number of misunderstandings in club funding requests. “The rules that guideline A-Board are not clear. That’s a problem — I think that’s a universal understanding. Clubs are coming up with these fantastic ideas but have no idea of whether the Allocations Board will fund them, or has the funds to fund them, or whatever … the policy is that guarantees that club gets funding or not,” she told the attendees.

She noted that the Student Union will be sending the governing document for the A-Board to the student body, which has information on what can and cannot receive funding from the University and how clubs may go about making requests. Specifically, Macklin noted, every part of the request must be itemized and fully explained.

Macklin also discussed problems with the Student Union Management System, the online budgeting program. According to Macklin, many club treasurers do not know how to properly use SUMS, which can cause issues down the line with submitting proper requests and receiving funds. However, she noted, this problem is “not something that I can say is totally the club’s fault. We’ve conducted treasury trainings and A-Board information sessions, which have a number of PowerPoints with this information on it, but they are to no avail. … So what we need to do is rethink the training.”

According to Macklin, the Student Union has considered more interactive SUMS training sessions, possibly including utilizing a computer lab to practice with the system. However, she stated that these changes, if decided upon, would not be made until next semester.

Macklin described the A-Board’s current mode of scheduling at the press conference as a “pre-calibrated ad-hoc fashion” which she called “problematic.” She went on to say that there are no set dates for regular marathon sessions when club treasurers can come to A-Board with an itemized budget and explain why those things should be funded. Additionally, she noted, there is not clear information available to the public on A-Board deadlines, which can mean that clubs are not aware of when they will receive the funding that they have been granted.“There’s too much flexibility with the schedule right now,” Macklin said. “So what we’re going to be doing is working with the budget analysts to see, number one: Why has it been done this way in the past? And number two: Is there a way we can make improvements on that?”

Macklin promised that there will be enforced oversight of A-Board meetings in the coming semester. Executive Senator David Herbstritt ’17 wrote in an email to the Justice that both current policy and proposed policy require a Student Activities representative to be present at meetings. “The failure to follow that regulation was largely a failure of communication and will be resolved before any further Marathons,” he added. Macklin elaborated after her speech that these issues stemmed largely from the fact that much of the conversations between A-Board members was done over Facebook, meaning that administrators could not be kept in the loop.

She apologized to clubs that have felt “personally attacked” by the comments made on their funding requests and for the fact that the A-Board has looked “unprofessional” throughout the process.

In an interview with the Justice, A-Board chair Alex Mitchell ’17 noted that while transparency in the A-Board’s decisions is definitely a priority for the coming months, the biggest concern is that “it doesn't matter how transparent or how perfect the A-Board is, there is not enough money [available for clubs]. And that is the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about, and you can blame the A-Board, you can blame the Union, you can blame whoever you want, but … it's not anyone's fault. There just is no money, and I think that we're assuming that by having all of these new amendments and transparency and et cetera that we will fix that problem, but it won’t.”

According to an Oct. 27 Justice article, the A-Board received $314,185.50 in requests, but was only able to fulfill $190,974.31, or roughly 60.78 percent of those requests.

Herbstritt wrote in his email that the A-Board’s inability to fulfill all funding requests resulted in some difficult decisions on the A-Board’s behalf. “Things were far from perfect, but the job of being on Allocations Board is thankless and, in my opinion, more difficult than any other in the Union. We apologize for how decisions came about and how people perceive them, but I cannot in good conscience blame Allocations Board for all of the difficulties we have had this year,” he added.

Macklin also addressed three recent resignations from A-board in her speech. Specifically, Macklin described the resigners as dedicated individuals who needed time to focus on schoolwork and “self-care.”

Mitchell noted that he has felt some pressure to “push” certain individuals out of A-Board. “I think that part of, with the new constitution[al amendment], I think that there's kind of a desire to have a clean slate,” he said. “But I don't think they are being forced out or hounded out or anything like that.”

The constitutional amendment to which Mitchell referred, which was sent out to the student body via email on Monday, proposes to increase the size of the A-Board to 11 voting members, nine of whom would be voted on by the student body. According to Macklin, this addition of more members will allow the A-Board to represent more “facets of the student body,” so that the Student Union can ensure that students feel they have access to the A-Board. Herbstritt wrote that voting on this amendment will be like any other constitutional amendment and will last from midnight to midnight on Friday, Nov. 6. He added that the special elections to fill the three empty A-Board seats might also happen as early as Friday.

Additionally, Macklin claimed in the press conference that she had not witnessed any evidence of bias in the A-Board decisions, despite Mitchell’s previous statement in the Oct. 27 Justice article that on "certain rare exceptions" if club leaders had friends on the A-Board, they were more likely to receive event funding. She went on to add that “if people think that that [bias] is happening, that’s a problem.”

Herbstritt added in his email “while these allegations [of bias] are troubling, we are hoping to build a better, more robust system that will mitigate the amount of sway any one individual can have.”

Mitchell told the Justice that he believes the proposed amendment’s new system would not improve democratization of the A-Board and, in fact, might hinder it. This is especially due to the fact that it reinstates the presidential veto, which allows the president to veto any specific allocation decision made by the A-Board. “It's very vague the way it's worded, but the way it can be interpreted is the president has the right to veto any decision, positive or negative,” he noted, adding that the president would only need 40 percent of the A-Board to agree with the veto for it to succeed. “I don’t think that the president and four members of the A-Board out of the 11 would be an effective system for writing a budget,” he added. “I think that the A-Board should sort of have the majority opinion there.”

According to Macklin, the content of the speech she made at press conference and relative supplementary documents will be sent out to student body via email in the coming week.

—Max Moran and Hannah Wulkan contributed reporting.