By Steve Babcock
The Committee to Examine Northeastern University Student Fees announced Tuesday plans to implement student forums and hold hearings with university and student officials for its investigation of Resident Student Association over the next two weeks.
The committee has a mandate from SGA and the university to examine all Northeastern student fees over the next year.
Michael Benson, the Committee’s Chair and SGA vice president for financial affairs, illustrated his view of the committee as being divided into two subgroups that would report to the larger committee about reactions and implications of the Resident Student Fee.
“How money is spent and how it is supposed to be spent are often two different things,” Benson said.
According to Benson, one subcommittee will be responsible for conducting student forums to discover how students think the money they pay for the RSA fee could be better spent.
The second subcommittee would be responsible for looking into financial records to see how RSA spends the money it receives from fees extracted from tuition.
At the committee’s regular meetings, each fee under investigation will have representatives of their group present to outline how the money is spent. The meetings will follow a hearing format that Benson said would be modeled after the U.S. Senate.
For the RSA portion of the investigation, members of the organization’s executive board will be asked to come in and speak about how their fund is spent before the committee.
During these first two weeks of the committee’s year-long investigation into various undergraduate student fees, the committee will talk to several Resident Directors and Resident Assistants about how they see RSA’s money is being spent. The examination will also include talking to administrators of the fee.
Due to what SGA has called a “lack of oversight” in the RSA fee’s size and administration, the committee was given two weeks to examine it, whereas all other funds will only be examined for one week.
After the first two weeks, the commitee will restructure to set up for investigation of all other university fees, including those administered by student groups and those administered by the administration, isuch as tuition.
Access to university records, which by the infamous “NU shuffle,” could provide a road block to the commitee in accomplishing its task when it investigates such student fees as tuition that is mandated by the Adminsitration, rather than student groups.
“The university has indicated that they are willing to cooperate,” Benson said, despite having concerns.
The commitee itself is mainly made up of students. From SGA, the committee includes one representative each from the Student Affairs and Academic Affairs Committee, as well as several senators with no ties to committees.
Also sitting on the committee will be two representatives from the university Media Board and RSA’s Vice President of Finance Keri Crocitto.
The administration will also have presence, as Sam Solomon, the university budget director, will also sit on the commitee as an advisory member during the investigation of university administered student fees.
As for objectives, Benson hopes to run the committee in a manner that will yield results to the student body about how their money is spent.
“The first purpose is to investigate the RSA and other university fees and to make reccomendations, he said. “But the other goal is also to make [the investigation] inclusive and professional. We want to conduct an internal audit of the student body.”
