The Student Fee Board will meet at 4 p.m. Wednesday, April 4 in 111 HUB to consider handbook changes, including provisions about holding closed meetings. The Board’s Steering Committee proposed the slate of changes after meeting two weeks ago.

The biggest change the Board will vote on is to add procedure on when and how it can hold closed meetings to the handbook. The proposal is to add the following to Section 1.3 of the handbook, highlighted:

This past year, closing meetings was up to the discretion of the chair of the board. The proposal for the future will make it a decision so anyone can move to close a meeting, but other members of the board can then object. If there is any objection, it should be placed to a vote.

The proposal also adds the following to Section 1.5 of the Handbook:

“All meetings of the three bodies of the SFB are open to the public with all times and locations communicated to the student body, with the exception of deliberation meetings governed by the restrictions laid out in Section 1.3.”

“I think it kind of has to be up to the judgement of those groups to really think what needs to be private,” Graduate and Professional Student Association President Matt Krott said during the Steering Committee meeting. “I don’t think 90 percent of what we did this year needed to be private.”

On the Commonwealth side of the Fee Board, a few added sentences will clarify the Board’s operating procedures and the authority of local allocation boards to operate within general Student Fee Board procedures. These clarify the Student Fee Board’s relationship with these allocation committees, much like the University Park Student Fee Board has flushed out its relationship with the University Park Allocation Committee (UPAC) over the past year.

The full bodies of each Student Fee Board have 10 days to consider the proposed changes. The University Park Student Fee Board is expected to vote on the proposal Wednesday.