A Student Senate policy gives its treasurer control over when and how much it can spend internal money.
Some of this year’s senators are questioning the way in which the rule was used by previous executives to compensate a member of its own board for redesigning senate’s website.
Last school year, Senate Treasurer Evan Ecos and the Office of Student Affairs agreed to pay Amrit Saini $1,600 to redesign the site from senate’s budget, which is generated by OU’s General Fund.
The Office of Student Affairs and the senate treasurer typically approve most expenses.
“That is one of the things about a student organization. … We give (student organizations) a lot of latitude to make sure … they are being good stewards of student dollars,” said Ryan Lombardi, vice president of Student Affairs and senate advisor.
All senate expenses are reported to and compiled by the university. Only reimbursements — which wasn’t the case for the payment made to Saini — require a signature from a Student Affairs representative, Lombardi said.
Saini spent the Winter Break of the 2012-13 school year revamping senate’s website, including coding a way to simplify the way information is uploaded and building an internal communication system.
“It wasn’t really part of my job as vice president,” he said. “There are so few people who know code. It was just serendipity that I just happened to know code.”
When Saini was campaigning for vice president, he advertised his ability and plans to re-do the senate site, citing the body’s responsibility to interact more with students online.
The payment went into effect April 19, 2013.
This year’s Senate Vice President Anna Morton heard about Saini’s pay through the senate rumor mill.
“I wish that it would have been presented to the body first so that we all knew what was going on,” Morton said.
Previous senators have worked on senate’s website without pay, including 2010-11 school year Senate Vice President Matthew Beddingfield.
“I saw that there was a need for recruitment and social media,” Beddingfield said. “So we decided we needed a web presence to connect with the students. It wasn’t in my job description, but most of the other executives had side projects that they were working on as well.”
Beddingfield also hired students external to senate to help redesign the website. Saini said executives analyzed those figures — expenses in the $2,000 range — and that senate saved money by using his skills and not additional, external students.
“As far as I’m concerned, if something like this happened with senate this year I would want to be a lot more transparent,” said current Senate President Nick Southall.
According to senate regulation 26.21F in Student Senate’s constitution, “annually funded organizations may reserve up to 12 percent of funding for internal use. The internal budget may include, but is not limited to, internal printing costs, software memberships, telephone usage and food. The internal budget may not be used for gifts or incentives for any organization member.”
Saini’s pay was a little more than 7.5 percent of last school year’s $20,718 senate budget.
“We really weren’t a part of the discussion last year,” said Austin LaForest, current senate treasurer. “I just really wish that it was a senate-wide decision. He did put (a lot) of hours of work into it, but I think it would have been a better decision if the whole body had helped out with it.”
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