[Editor’s Note: This is a continuation on previous articles published in TechNews. Please check out our previous four issues for more information and background on this topic.]
The FinBoard Accountability, Communication, and Transparency (FACT) Amendment to the Student Government Association (SGA) Bylaws was passed in February of 2021 to ensure transparency in Finance Board (FB) policy and allocations. This is part five of a multi-part investigative series on this amendment. The first group of articles covered the history, language, and implementation (or lack thereof) of the FACT Amendment. This second group more broadly covers the circumstances surrounding them. Last week, I looked at the role of Office of Student Life (OSL) policies in the student budget process, both in general and as it relates to the FACT Amendment, as FB Chair (FB-C) Nya Harrison has held they are much of the reason for the policy changes.
This week, I’ll be covering another defense that Harrison has raised: that transparency requirements in the SGA Constitution mean FB does not need to follow the Bylaws. Last week, in response to requests for comment, director of OSL Patrick Fina said that FB was advised “to follow the most current constitution and bylaws of SGA”. According to the SGA website, these were most recently updated on February 2, 2024, and August 23, 2023 respectively. Now, the FACT Amendment is in this most current copy of the bylaws and neither of the relevant amendments appear to have implications for transparency, but there are other transparency rules in the constitution. And in fact, when responding to my requests for disclosure, Harrison also said that FB intended to follow these rules (Article V §2 of the SGA Constitution) and considered this to override the FACT Amendment.
So, with that in mind, I wanted to take today to explore this clause. It admittedly is about FB transparency, is more current than the FACT Amendment, and based on both Article VIII in the Constitution and Article IV §2.7 of the Bylaws, the Constitution overrides the Bylaws. I can see on the surface how this would actually make sense. However, after analyzing the language, I’m not sure it supports the conclusion that it overrides the Bylaws.
Under Article V §2 of the SGA Constitution, “after hearings, the Finance Board shall publicly publish a draft ledger of the allocation of the Student Activity Fund no less than forty-eight hours before they are finalized”. The Constitution makes no other provisions for disclosure. FB is attempting to make the case that, since the disclosure rules are different in the Constitution and Bylaws and the Constitution overrides the Bylaws, they don’t need to follow the FACT Amendment.
At face value, this argument actually makes sense. However, I don’t think the language of these clauses actually support this interpretation. I’m not a lawyer, but I am currently enrolled in an actual law course covering enforcement of laws based on constitutional discrimination protections. One of the most fundamental questions in legal procedures, and these types of laws particularly as they directly deal with constitutional rights, is whether or not a law is constitutional. We’ve got a (by)law passed by a senate being challenged by an interest group on constitutional grounds. Let’s apply actual legal principles and see if it holds up to scrutiny.
There are two main issues at stake in determining the constitutionality of a policy. The first is whether or not the legislating body has the constitutional authority to enact the law in question. I covered this week one. There’s probably a moral debate to be had about if the SGA Senate should pass policies over FB’s head, but as a matter of policy, they are fully able to. Everything I can find on this amendment suggests its implementation was according to policy.
The second is if it overrides a constitutional provision. Courts have repeatedly held that laws can provide additional protections on top of constitutional requirements. For instance, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provides additional protections that clarify how to apply the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the US Constitution. These protections are additional. They don’t undermine constitutional protections; they add to them. Essentially, if you can follow the law without going against the Constitution, it’s probably constitutional.
So, with this framework in mind, the real issue is whether the FACT Amendment adds to or overrides Article V §2. There’s no language such as “only”, “solely”, or “exclusively” within the Constitution. These would be needed to indicate that FB is not required to make disclosures beyond what is stated in Article V §2. Additionally, nothing in the FACT Amendment prohibits FB from following Article V §2. Without this language, the FACT Amendment does not override a constitutional clause. It’s possible to follow both the FACT Amendment and the Constitution without violating either one, indicating that it would be more appropriate to characterize the FACT Amendment as clarifying or adding to Article V §2, rather than Article V §2 as negating the FACT Amendment.
Having said that, I decided to just see if there were draft ledgers published anyway. If this is the standard FB wants to be held to, are they being held to this? As a student organization leader who submitted budgets covered by those ledgers, I can attest that I never received a copy. I also have not spoken to any other student leaders who did receive this ledger, indicating that it probably wasn’t that I was left off an email list. The most up-to-date ledger of any type in the previous FB shared Google Drive is from the fall semester of 2023. If there is a new, similar shared folder in OneDrive, it has not been shared with student leaders (as with receiving copies directly, neither I nor any other student leader I have spoken to are familiar with such a folder). Finally, as of the writing of this article, the most recent edit to any page on the SGA website that contains the word “ledger” was on August 5, 2024. Fall 2024 budgets were sent out on September 12, 2024, and Spring 2025 budgets on January 29, 2025. This was about new ledger submission policies. If FB wants to say these are the transparency standards they should be held to, they are still falling short.
When responding to a request for clarification, Fina raised the issue of an amendment passed in November of 2024 during an SGA meeting, and said this is what he was referring to when he said “current constitution and bylaws”. The two of us investigated this and found that there was indeed an amendment proposed on November 13, 2024. It created a new non-voting administrative position on FB and repealed “the previous adjustments made to the bylaws of the SGA regarding the Finance Board which were not formally approved by the Finance Board and are inconsistent with the provisions of our own internal policies and guidelines”. This can be seen in the livestream of the relevant SGA meeting publicly available on YouTube.
However, Fina and I believe that this amendment does not appear to have been properly passed. The only record we can find of this in a meeting was on November 13. Additionally, per the visible amendment in the screen-recorded meeting, this was only proposed on November 12, 2024. According to SGA’s procedures, all amendments need to go through two readings before passing. Fina agreed that, based on the assembled timeline and when FB told him that it passed, it could only have gone through one reading – not the two required for passage.
Next week, I’ll discuss the proposed amendment, and specifically the language meant to repeal the FACT Amendment, in more detail considering Article IV §2.7 of the SGA Bylaws (a section that the amendment does not appear to contest). I also will blend in conversations between Harrison and the student body that happened over public Discord servers in July 2024. Up until this point, most evidence has suggested that FB’s noncompliance has been, at worst, due to ignorance and confusion. Based on this new evidence, however, I’m not sure that’s the case – and I want to explore this fully.