By Steve Babcock
A misallocation of undergraduate fee funds in the Boston University Student Union has shed light on the accountability process of money that students pay to universities for use by campus student groups.
At BU, the Executive Vice President of the Union Remie Ferreira reportedly forged a check for $333 that used Boston University’s Undergraduate Student Fee to pay for a campus parking permit.
According to the BU Daily Free Press, BU’s student newspaper, the alleged forgery has already yielded the resignation of the Union’s Senate Chairman and a proposal for the impeachment of both the executive vice president who forged the check and the Union’s president. Calls have also come from university officials for the union to be dissolved all together.
Northeastern’s SGA and the BU Student Union have many parallels. Like the BU Undergraduate Student Fee that was used to pay for the parking pass, Northeastern administers a similar Student Activities Fee (SAF) that appears on tuition bills and is used by student groups for programming.
The SGA constitution, however, provides for a certain amount of checks and balances over the allocation of the SAF that, according to SGA Vice President for Financial Affairs Michael Benson, would “never allow anything like [the forgery] to happen.”
According to the Constitution’s by-laws, the Budget Review Committee (BRC), which oversees SAF allocation, must have all spending records approved by the Student Affairs Board.
The by-laws also outline an environment in which the BRC can provide answers to the ways SAF funds were spent, Benson said.
“Our checks and balances are some of the most rigorous and intensive to insure that not only ever dollar, but every cent, is accounted for,” said SGA President Michael Romano.
Such controls, he said, would never lead to such a scandal at Northeastern.
Despite the apparent scandal, Romano remained optimistic about BU’s leadership in a letter to the editor that ran in the Free Press on Sept. 29.
“This instance, while unfortunate, will – in the end – make the Union stronger and prove publicly just how committed and charismatic this executive board can be,” Romano wrote.
In response, former BU Senator Michael Giuggio accused Romano of “meddling in [BU] business.”
Romano called the response “refreshing,” but the relationship between BU and Northeastern is somewhat more complicated [see letter to the editor, page 7].
Both have a leading role in Boston Intercollegiate Government (BIG) — Chairman David Bresler is from BU, and former SGA President Richard Schwab-
acher helped to found the group. One of BIG’s major mission statements is for the involved student governments to be a resource to each other.
Romano, who is one of Northeastern’s delegates to BIG, denied that either Giuggio’s dismissal or the possible internal demise of BU’s Union had any implications with BIG in terms of BU’s leadership or the role of BIG members.
“Part of BIG is us helping other student governments. [The situation at BU] just raises questions that they’ll have to answer not only to BIG, but to all of the Boston student governments,” he said.
As for the leadership at BU that Romano praised and felt “compelled” to speak about, he had a different view a week later.
“It’s not my student body, it’s not my business,” Romano said Monday, when asked if he would comment on the affairs of the BU Union. “When you run for office, you automatically become a public figure, which means every mistake is visible to thousands. What happened to [BU] compromised their integrity.”
