Over the last several weeks, I’ve detailed the history and current implementation of the FinBoard Accountability, Communication, and Transparency (FACT) Amendment, a 2021 amendment to the Student Government Association (SGA) Bylaws. I’ve brought forward a lot of information – ranging from interviews with its authors to my own attempts to make information disclosures and everything in between. I’ve uncovered truly staggering incompetence. I’ve made a case that the Finance Board (FB) and particularly their Chair (FB-C) Nya Harrison are not just passively in non-compliance, but actively and knowingly violating these policies.
As I start to wrap up this article, I want to pose a broader question: What comes next? All of this information is now public knowledge. Where do we go from here? I don’t want to advocate a specific course of action; that said, I am going to lay out what are, from my perspective as the person who’s researched this, the most likely outcomes. This is going to be much spottier than my other coverage; even according to Benjamin “Ben” Barber, SGA President at the point the FACT Amendment was passed, enforcement was always an issue. He actually (unsuccessfully) pursued amendments to clear up this area for this exact reason.
First, FB could repeal the FACT Amendment. I know I ragged on them a bit last week for the attempt, but they can propose an amendment and ask SGA to pass it. If they do, then please at least put some effort in to make sure it’s at least well-written and passes properly. However, it is an option on the table.
Next, Harrison could be voted out of office in the upcoming SGA Executive Board elections (held every year in April). The FB-C position is up for grabs in each cycle, and someone could run against Harrison. That new person could choose to adhere to the current policies, making them the first FB-C to fully adhere to the FACT Amendment.
This is actually where most official pathways to address systemic failings start to themselves fail. As Elio Armas-Rojo reported recently, the Chief Justice (CJ) position within SGA’s Judicial Board (JB) is currently vacant. All resignations need to be handed to the CJ (Article III §9, “Resignations”, of the SGA Constitution). Even if there was pressure for Harrison to resign, it’s an open question on whether or not she could, without a CJ.
Similarly, while any student can submit a Petition of Impeachment to remove any member of the SGA executive board (including the FB-C), those also need to be handed into the CJ (Article VIII, “Other Authority). It’s an open question here as well if an impeachment process can even be pursued without CJ.
Article VI, §5 of the SGA Bylaws (part 1 of the FACT Amendment) do provide provisions for removing individuals from within FB who are generally causing issues. In fact, §5.8.3.3 explicitly covers removal for non-compliance with §10.1, which is also a part of the FACT Amendment that FB is not following. However, this can only be initiated by someone within FB and requires a two-thirds majority to follow through. Given that there are only ten current members of FB according to the SGA website (discounting Andrew “Andy” Rollins, who is taking a gap semester), this would be a high bar to clear. A two-thirds majority would be seven FB members, and given Harrison and vice-chair (FB-VC) Mohit Rathi are two of those ten and seem unlikely to pursue any enforcement action for an amendment they tried to repeal and are openly ignoring, you’d need seven out of the eight others to do anything – almost a unanimous vote. Also, even if you got that, the language is unclear if you can remove the FB-C this way. Internal action probably isn’t an option either.
Okay, so amendment and removal through election are both reasonable options. It’s probably not feasible to pursue removal (or other punitive actions) to hold them accountable. This leaves open one more area that I want to talk about: reparations. This gets in a bit further into why this all matters, so just hear me out for a moment.
Each year, Prism hosts a drag show near the end of the spring semester (Drag@IIT). Last year, for the 2024 show, their budget noted that this event needed paid tickets ($5 per person). This was never sent out in the budget allocation, so the club didn’t know there was this requirement until they went to spend the money, and didn’t even make sense with FB policy. Ticketed events are supposed to only apply when the number of attendees substantially impacts the total cost of an event, but the drag show just isn’t this. Most of the money for that event goes into fees for the performers, which is a flat cost, or things like light and sound, which are hourly rather than per person. FB never responded to Prism reaching out for clarification. Prism brought this to the attention of Graham Davis in the Office of Student Life (OSL), who agreed the stipulation was in error, and removed it. Around the same time, the Black Student Union (BSU) had a similar incident for their Emergence of Love event, which they announced only a couple weeks later during an email to many organizations and individuals on campus with the subject line “Urgent Matter: Discrimination Concerns and Event Cancellation Follow-Up.” According to the attached document “BSU Illinois Tech List of Demands”, one of the cited reasons for the abrupt and last-minute cancellation included the “issuing [of] a last-minute ticket ultimatum contrary to university policy”. In a separate incident that semester resulted in an event receiving no funding, the Tabletop Role-Playing Games (TTRPG) Club was told that they would need to ticket a movie. This is again without precedent and in opposition to policy – TTRPG Club’s movie event only required a license, which wasn’t per capita. Big or small, this was a repeated and recurring incident (and there might be others I’m unaware of).
The black box that FB has become without transparency is materially hurting student organizations on this campus. Their budgets are being cut for reasons that do not align with policy – as I stated, Davis actually overturned at least one of these decisions. If FB is making decisions that hurt clubs and go against policy, and the clubs have no way to know this until they go to use the money because FB is also not complying with transparency policies, I would argue that FB has a responsibility to make it right. I’m not exactly sure what reparations would look like in this case, but there are clubs that have been materially injured by FB’s decisions and lack of transparency in making them. I think that a longer conversation about what this might take the form of (which would be outside the scope of this article series) is more than due to the individuals and organizations who have been hurt by these policies.
I do want to state, on the record, that these incidents were not under Harrison’s leadership. They were under her predecessor, Monique Perczynski. That said, Harrison was on FB at the time, and according to budgeting emails with Prism, was the FB Advisor (FBA) who worked with them. She would have had far more say over the decisions regarding at least one of these organizations. At best, she was learning from a dangerous precedent, and at worst, she was active and complicit in these decisions.
This concludes the real options available for enforcement, adjustment, or other response actions to FB’s lack of compliance with policies, and in particular with the FACT Amendment. Next week, I want to expand more on why all this matters. I’ve spent the last 11 months of my life prepping for this article in some way, shape, or form. I think it’s worth talking about why I did this – and why you, as the student reading this, should care.
SGA and Finance Board did not respond for comment.