By Zack Sampson, News Staff
The Student Government Association (SGA) Finance Board returned more than $16,000 to the Student Activity Fund over the past five months after auditing several student organizations.
The board audited Tastemakers, WRBB and the Northeastern University Huskiers and Outing Club (NUHOC) in July and found all three groups had violated the Student Activity Fee (SAF) Manual. Additionally, SGA comptroller Anthony Golia confirmed the board is still in the process of another audit concerning the Council for University Programs (CUP).
“The whole purpose of examining the student organizations’ accounts is to make sure that they are spending the SAF in accordance with the rules,” he said.
Golia said this process is generally random, but sometimes necessary to examine the finances of groups with annual budgets, such as CUP. He said some organizations make individual event requests to the Finance Board, reporting back a month after their programs so board members can ensure that all SAF funds were used properly. However, other groups that consistently need funds every year do not follow this process and instead receive annual budgets.
“It’s not fair for groups that have a large annual budget to not have to follow the rules as closely, and then we don’t have money left over and we have to cut and only partially fund events,” he said. “Even if an annual budget is misspending even $1,000, that’s money that can go towards funding events.”
The most recent audits were performed for a variety of reasons, Golia said. Tastemakers’ audits occurred after the Finance Board received an event request in which the presenter noted the purchase of advertising from the music magazine, he said.
Tastemakers had to forfeit $1,025 to the Student Activity Fund, according to Golia’s July monthly report. The group’s president, Kyle Risley, said he was initially surprised by the audit, but was satisfied with how the process worked.
“I didn’t feel like it was unjustified,” he said. “I honestly wasn’t aware that we were breaking rules, so when they explained it to me, I pretty much agreed with their assessment of it, and I was like, ‘Well, I guess fair is fair,’ and that was about it.”
NUHOC was similarly found to have violated SAF policy and ordered to return $10,197 individually and $4,612 from the NUHOC Lodge, according to Golia’s monthly report from July. Golia said the board looked into NUHOC because its audit was left to the current SGA administration by the outgoing one. NUHOC did not respond to The News’ request for comments by deadline.
WRBB’s audit was also left to this year’s Finance Board by the previous administration. Golia said former Student Body President Ryan Fox suggested that he should look into the radio station’s finances and an audit was started in July.
After the board levied its decision that WRBB had violated the SAF Manual in its underwriting policy, the station appealed and the two sides eventually reached an agreement, according to an Aug. 3 story by The News.
WRBB General Manager James Maniscalco said the board initially ordered WRBB to return about $3,900 to the SAF Fund from transactions dating back a couple of years, the amount was lowered to $412.50, just half of the station’s underwriting revenue in Spring 2011. All future underwriting revenue will go towards the Student Activity Fund as part of the agreement as well.
Maniscalco said despite the appeal and initial confusion, he is satisfied with the end result.
“Now that I kind of know that other people were audited as well, and since we got a decision that brought it down from $4,000 to $400 up front, we were pretty satisfied with that,” he said. “We also know that, if you actually read the SAF Manual and follow it strictly, that does seem to be the logical conclusion.”
