Hello Illinois Tech, hope all is well! As we are coming to a quick close to the 2026 Spring Semester, the Student Government Association (SGA) held their second-to-last Senate meeting on April 1 in Herman Hall, where this was the first time in the 2025-2026 term, that the Senate failed to cover the whole agenda! This update will consist of the only two subjects that were able to be discussed during the meeting starting with the Finance Board Reform Amendment…
Finance Board Reform Amendment:
The senate meeting began at 6:51 p.m., 20 minutes later than scheduled, due to unexpected room changes. Executive Vice President Erick Armando Silva Jr. began the senate meeting by introducing the Finance Board Reform Amendment. If you would like to review the contents of this reform, access to this Amendment and voting results can be found by emailing sga@illinoistech.edu. However, I’ll briefly describe the amendment to the best of my ability. In the Statement of Purpose, written and submitted by President Yailine Cano and Chief of Staff Charlie Janisch: It states that this amendment reform will create a new Vice President of Finance which will manage operations of the Finance Board alongside the President, as well as merge the Finance Board Vice Chair role with the Executive Administrator to streamline responsibilities and better match other Senate committee structures.
Among its many structural changes, the amendment introduces not one, but two Finance Board Auditors to strengthen oversight. These Auditor positions will be appointed by and report to the Executive Vice President which struck concerning to senators which will be mentioned later… These positions will ensure funds are distributed fairly and in students’ best interests while also monitoring financial misconduct, document issues, and report to the Judicial board and student affairs. If voted into SGA Law, these changes will take effect beginning with the Fall 2026 semester.
However, the Senate had many questions and concerns about whether this is really in the best interest of the student body.
Senator Luis Gomez questioned the executive board how they will deal with biases when appointing students into these new Auditor roles and how will they avoid appointing students who are currently on an executive board of a student organization.
I asked the executive board for a statement on how they would reassure the concerns of conflicts of interest or biases and Janisch stated, “312 keeps record of students’ executive membership in organizations. Additionally, Finance Board Auditors will be required to sign and submit a sworn statement that they are not working as executives of any organization, nor working in collusion with any said executives. It is in SGA Executive Board’s responsibilities to weed out biases in these appointments via a rigorous and detailed interview process”.
Janisch continued to explain the initial reason for the lack of Senate involvement in the creation of this amendment; “The Senate is not sufficiently informed of the reality of Finance Board operations. We did not believe it was worth the Senate’s limited and valuable time to hold Auditor approvals they are not sufficiently informed to do. That being said, we valued the merits of the dissenting arguments greatly and are actively working with the dissenting Senators to address their concerns in a patch amendment”.
Senator Roberto Cassano also questioned the executive board’s claim on transparency. As he believes it is unfair to students to not be able to view where money is specifically being allocated.
Janisch once again clashed head on to these concerns. He responded by stating, “The Senate receives a detailed aggregate report of SAF expenditures every semester. The policy of specific allocations not being made publicly available was a decision of the Finance Board, not the Executive Board.
He continued to state, “It was made to address the drama that ensued when organizations viewed other organizations budget approvals without the context in which Finance Board makes decisions, and fosters the unrealistic expectation of uniformity that every organization is entitled to the same approvals for the same requests: This is patently inconsistent with the Bylaws governing the SAF, which clearly state that allocation decisions should be made on a request’s connection to an organization’s missions, and equity considerations that ensure that allocations do not disproportionately benefit small groups of students”.
Janisch made his closing remarks: “If Senators have a different view on this matter, it is their responsibility to act legislatively to enforce it. To date, this has not been done. The debate on this specific issue, while certainly worth future discussion, was at the time not directly relevant to the content of the bill and served only to delay scheduled Senate proceedings. If a Senator has concerns related to matters of Finance Board, they may submit them to the relevant parties or bring them up during open floor.”
Following over half an hour of high-tension back-and-forth between the Senate and Executive Board, Armando Silva Jr. called the body to a vote. Afterward, he announced that results would not be available until the following week— prompting Cassano to question the delay and draw broader concern from the Senate over why a simple vote count could not be released immediately. The executive board had no direct answer to this concern, leaving senators still confused why a result can’t be provided afterwards. The amendment was then announced a few days later, it was Passed. As mentioned earlier, these changes will take effect beginning in the Fall 2026 semester.
New Student Organization Proposals:
After the hefty discussion on this new amendment, Vice President of the Student Life Committee Fatimah Amer introduced the voting for the approval of the newly proposed student orgs.
Unfortunately, due to a situation with Event Services and booking the Herman Ballroom, SGA had limited time causing Amer to instruct the student life senators to cut their introduction of the organization to a single sentence.
After Student Life Senators were instructed to speed through student organizations introductions, Abigail DiModica motioned to table the vote. She stated, “this is unfair to these student organizations that their introductions are being cut short, and we are essentially doing them a disservice!”
The senate roared to second the motion, which resulted in the vote of the new student organization’s approval to be moved to next senate meeting or emergency meeting if one were to be called to order.
After Dimodica’s successful motion, SGA ran out of time and had to adjourn the senate meeting, failing to complete the agenda. The meeting was adjourned at 8:00 p.m.. The next and final Senate meeting of the semester will be held on Wednesday, April 15 at 6:30 p.m. in the MTCC Ballroom and everyone is welcome to attend.