The Student Government Association recently amended its finance code to better define the student government’s role in financing organizations which fundraise for charitable causes.

Senior class president Allie Karpurk said the original language of the finance code was vague regarding SGA’s ability to give money to organizations that participate in fundraising efforts for charities.

“The way our finance code was originally set up, it had language in there that made it seem like we weren’t supposed to fund anything that was considered a fundraiser or donation,” Karpurk said. “And those were just the words, fundraiser or donation, which kind of limits us in a lot of ways.”

She said despite the vague language, the SGA has still given money to organizations which participate in charitable fundraising events such as Rotaract, Cancer Awareness Club and Dance Marathon.

However, in doing so, Karpurk said the student government was technically breaking its own finance code.

She said the student government eventually decided that, since it saw the value of these organizations and still wanted them to exist, it wanted to continue helping them financially without having to violate the code each time.

“What we wanted to do was change the wording to where we didn’t feel like we were breaking the code. So we essentially just changed the wording to enforce what we’ve been enforcing all along,” said Karpurk.

Under Section B of the revised finance code, the updated language says the SGA will not fund “non-charitable fundraisers” or “non-programmatic monetary donations.”

In other words, Karpurk said the SGA can still finance organizations that hold monetary donations for an outside cause, but with that money, there has to be a program available for students to attend.

“We’re not just going to send student activity fees that students pay to help a disaster relief. But say we were sending students to help with that disaster relief, that’s something we could consider,” she said.

The new language of the code would then prevent student organizations from receiving SGA money for fundraising events in which the money raised would go to the student organization instead of to a charitable cause.

“Say it’s Cancer Awareness Club, and they’re fundraising for a charity. That’s OK,” Karpurk said. “But if they’re fundraising just for themselves, and we’re funding them to fundraise for themselves, it gets kind of weird.”

Going forward, Karpurk said these changes to the finance code will mean there will be less debate when it comes to deciding whether or not funding requests from these student organizations will pass or not.