The University Park Student Fee Board held the final meeting of its current term Wednesday afternoon in the UPUA office. The Board wrapped up the year by approving changes to the Student Fee Board Handbook. As long as the Commonwealth Student Fee Board also approves the changes, they’ll officially take effect on the first day of the upcoming Maymester — Monday, May 7.

The biggest change the Board considered was adding procedure on when and how it can hold closed meetings to the handbook. The proposal from the Student Fee Board Steering Committee was to add the following to Section 1.3 of the handbook, highlighted:

Graduate student Jesse Scott was the lone student to speak during the meeting’s public comment period, explaining that the individuals involved in creating the Student Fee Board were “100 percent against” the handbook change to allow the Board to move meetings into closed executive session. He said the section the Board proposed to change was written intentionally so all meetings would be public.

“[Sitting on the Student Fee Board] is a difficult job to have, because sometimes you have to say things that the people asking for money don’t want to hear,” Scott said. “I’ve had to tell people no. That was primarily my job as the chair of UPAC was to tell people ‘no.'”

Student Fee Board Chair and outgoing UPUA President Katie Jordan asked Scott if the Committee ever funded a professional salary during his time with the University Park Allocation Committee, which further allocates student fee dollars to individual student organizations. While UPAC only funded student wage payroll, in his position on the Activities Fee Board, the Board did fund salaries, including those for Student Legal Services, Scott said.

Debate volleyed around the conference table on the implications of holding closed meetings, with UPAC Representative Tram-Anh Bui as the strongest opposition to the proposed changes. Bui is not a voting member of the Board.

Outgoing UPUA Vice President Alex Shockley argued the proposed changes deal with growing pains, and mentioned other bodies with the ability to enter executive session, like Penn State’s Board of Trustees and administrative groups.

“I agree with the original intent of this Board, and it’s very similar…The intent of SFB is very similar to UPAC’s in that…our chief goal is to be responsible for allocating student fees,” Bui said. “Because that’s our goal as an organization, there needs to be some mechanism for us to be held responsible to the public, to the students…and I don’t think that can be accomplished [if we have closed meetings].”

Outgoing UPUA Speaker Brent Rice said the issue of closing Student Fee Board meetings is “getting blown out of proportion” and Bui responded that she did not agree with the notion that closing meetings isn’t a big deal.

Shockley added that information about individual performance and salary doesn’t need to be shared with the public, referencing discussions the Fee Board apparently deliberated this year about Student Legal Services employees and the performance of individuals within the Paul Robeson Cultural Center.

“The reason that the employee that we had the discussion about, I feel like that’s the exact reason we should have them open,” Bui said. “…I feel like that was an example of us overstepping our boundaries.”

According to the Handbook as it currently stands, the role of the Student Fee Board is to:

• Validate all Fee expenditures and special projects;
• Receive and review any proposals to increase/decrease the fee;
• Review the use of funds for consistency with the established principles and practices;
• Report the use of all Student Fee funds on a yearly basis to the university community;
• Rule on appeals of decisions made by the Campus Allocation Committees; and
• Recommend changes in policy and procedure.

This role clearly does not include evaluating the performance of individual employees, which is something the Board specifically discussed as a potential reason for closing meetings, along with salary considerations. Again, these deliberation meetings for the 2018-2019 fee level recommendation were unjustly closed, so I can’t clarify exactly what these talks included, or presume whether the Fee Board truly overstepped its boundaries therein.

Shockley fired back that the Student Fee Board has a much greater impact than UPAC, and noted the Board has struggled this year with separating the two. He said when he comes to Student Fee Board meetings, he isn’t necessarily representing the interests of UPUA, but rather the interests of the student body as a whole. However, UPUA has passed resolutions supporting specific allocation requests.

The Board voted by roll call after Shockley moved to call the question, and the motion passes unanimously among those present. Outgoing GPSA President Matt Krott and at-large board member John Malchow were absent from the meeting.

The Board simultaneously approved changes suggested by the Commonwealth Fee Board, which allow individual campus allocation committees to operate at their own discretion, but indicate SFB handbook would supersede local operating guidelines. Notably, both sets of changes were included in the same vote.

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.

In other business, Jordan also said she has “essentially finalized” each requesting unit’s justification of funding letter, including information on the allowed carry-over from year to year and asking the units to provide end-of-year reports for next year’s Student Fee Board to refer to. These letters should be sent to each unit by the end of this week.

Applications for the five at-large positions on next year’s Student Fee Board are expected to become available next week through a mass email to the student body. Penn State’s Board of Trustees will consider the $267 Student Fee level recommendation for the 2018-2019 school year at its meeting in July at the Penn State Berks campus.