STUDENT ACTIVITY FEE BOARD MEETING
Friday, April 13, 2012
3:30 p.m. 111 HUB
Minutes
Attendance:
Board Members:
Andrea Dowhower, Asst. VP for Student Affairs
Pete Khoury, CCSG President
Jon Lozano, GSA President
Kelly Terefenko, UPUA Representative
Rebecca Pennington, Director of Student Affairs, Penn State DuBois via polycom
TJ Bard, UPUA President
Brian Martinowich, CCSG Representative, Penn State Abington
Marika Merritt, CCSG Representative, Penn State Wilkes Barre
Ron McCarty, Faculty Senate Committee on Student Life, Penn State Erie via phone
Matthew J. Swatchick, Director of Student Affairs, Penn State Schuylkill via polycom
Catarina Moriera, CCSG Representative, Penn State Abington
Mary Edgington, Senior Director, Union and Student Activities
Ryan Kocse, UPAC Chair
Welcome/Roll Call
Roll call was taken.
Adoption of the Agenda
A motion to accept the agenda was made by Jon Lozano and seconded by Kelly Terefenko. All
were in favor.
Adoption of the Minutes
A motion to approve the minutes from January 27, 2012 was made by TJ Bard and seconded by
Kelly Terefenko. All were in favor.
Announcements by the Chair
Introductions were made for the new incoming members of the board.
Jon Lozano introduced Wanika Fisher who is the incoming president for GSA. She is a
graduate student at the Dickinson School of Law.
TJ Bard introduced Courtney Lennartz who is the incoming president of UPUA. She is a
junior HPA major.
Kelly Terefenko introduced Spencer Mallory who is the incoming UPUA Chair of the
Assembly.
Ryan Kosce introduced Jesse Scott who is the incoming UPAC Chair. He is a graduate
student in Computer Science.
Matthew Swatchick introduced his replacement on the board. Tracy Garnick is from the
Hazleton Campus. She is the Director of Student Services and Engagement. She joined
the meeting by phone.
Andrea shared that the fee levels have been submitted for review. Worthington Scranton is the
only campus remaining at the third tier.
There will be five campuses at the second tier. Two opted to drop at tier in order to stay at the
same dollar amount. They are Schuylkill and Wilkes-Barre. Three others remain at the second
tier. There are thirteen campuses at the first tier.
Seven campuses will maintain a summer student activity fee.
The facility fee also contains tiers for the various campuses. There are four campuses at the
second tier, and eleven at the first tier. There will be nine campuses charging the facility fee for
the summer session.
All edits for the manual have been approved. The new additions will be added and a new version
will be updated on the website.
Mary reminded the board that UPUA and GSA need to complete an end of year audit according
to the suggestions from the auditor. An update will then be provided to the auditor’s report. It
will be submitted by Mary.
Public Comment (10 – 15 minutes)
There were no comments.
Items to be discussed
Student legal services will receive a student activity fee increase to $2/student. The language in
the manual will need to be adjusted to reflect this change.
Jon Lozano made a motion to approve the changes for the manual reflecting the increase for
Legal Services to $2 and was seconded by TJ Bard. A roll call vote was taken.
___Y__ Andrea Dowhower __Y___ Catarina Moriera
__Y___ Jesse Scott
__Y___ Brian Martinowich __Y___ Jon Lozano
__Y___ Marika Merritt
__Y___ TJ Bard
__Y___ Peter Khoury
__Y___ Kelly Terefenko
__Y___ Ron McCarty
___Y__ Mary Edgington
__Y___ Rebecca Pennington
__Y___ Matthew Swatchick
All in favor.
SGA Funding – Rebecca Pennington
Rebecca shared some proposed changes to the SGA funding model at the campuses. There is
confusion on the general funds use and the proposed increase. The proposed changes are
attached. The biggest change in the language is that SGA will not automatically be given an
increase. The proposal states that the campuses should be granted at least the equivalent of
general funds, but not have an automatic increase. This will only affect those campuses that are
using general funds to support student activities staff.
She proposes changing this language:
“In return, the SGA will automatically receive at least the equivalent of their General Funds plus
the equivalent percentage increase to the Student Activity Fee for that year. The SGA however,
will not be automatically granted the percentage increase should student enrollment as defined
by the FTE (Full Time Equivalent) at that campus decreases from the previous year. In that case,
any increase to the SGA Allocation will be determined by the campuses SAF Allocation
Committee.”
To the following:
“The SGA will automatically receive at least the equivalent of their General Funds amount. Any
increase to the SGA Allocation will be determined by the campuses SAF Allocation
Committee.”
Peter thanked Rebecca for bringing this to the table. He is in favor of having campuses/SGAs
produce specific results to determine the use of the funds.
Marika asked what the percent of increase was. Is the increase to the SAF or to the SGA general
funds?
The answer is to the SAF increase. For example: the DuBois SGA would receive $6500 per
semester. That money would go from general funds to the SGA budget. When the “switcheroo”
was presented, instead of the $6500 per semester going to the SGA budget, it would come from
the SAF and then the General Funds money would go to the student life budget to promote
assistance with student activities. A suggestion was made not to allow an increase but to let the
individual campuses determine this for themselves.
Brian asked how many campuses are affected by this. Rebecca stated that the majority of the
campuses indicated that they are a part of this. Andrea agreed that it is a majority of campuses
and that this is not to take away money but to put the control back into the campus hands to do
what is best for their campus based on the SGA needs.
Additional Comments:
The following items will be carried forward for the 2012-2013 board to discuss.
1. Revising the manual including language and structural issues.
2. Funding of CCSG. This has been on the table for a couple of years and needs to be
resolved. The manual currently states that CCSG receives lump sum funding which does
not occur.
3. Legal services for the campuses (brought up by Marika). She would like to have an idea
of how much each campus receives from SAF. Andrea stated that we would be able to
get those figures at a later date when the numbers are finalized in June.
4. The appeals process. The appeals process as defined in the manual doesn’t make much
sense. The committee make-up and appointment process for UPAC is difficult to follow.
It is hard to coordinate everyone’s schedules for a meeting and the process is too hard to
follow. Ryan would like to look at the number of students on the UPAC committee. He
would like to increase the number to help lighten the load for the members. Jay
suggested pulling a subcommittee together to look at this process.
A motion was made by Jon Lozano to adjourn the meeting and seconded by TJ Bard at 4:06 p.m.