Weekend Windup is gone. Students have no information on Barrister’s Ball as of mid February. Over half of the Student Bar Association (SBA) Senate seats are set to be vacant next year. What is happening with our student government? 

The root of the problem is the SBA’s financing. Level 900 of the SBA bylaws describe how the SBA is to be funded. According to Bylaw 904(B), the SBA “shall have access to three accounts”: the R Fund, the C Fund, and the Student Government Association (SGA) Allocation. The R Fund is a rollover account for money raised by the SBA. Once funds are deposited into the R Fund, they are “not subject to reclamation by the Deans.” The C Fund is allocated “from the Dean’s Office,” and any money remaining is “reclaimed” by the university at the end of the year. The SGA Allocation consists of the per credit-hour fees paid by GW Law students and allocated to the SBA by the SGA. The SGA reclaims any remaining funds from this account at the end of the year.

Seems simple enough, right? Well, unfortunately, these bylaws are meaningless to GW Law administrators. The reality is that the administration has not followed this process for a long time. While the Nota Bene was not able to trace back exactly when this process stopped being followed, we suspect it was part of the massive loss of institutional knowledge brought about by the pandemic. Up until this year, the SBA President and Vice President of Finance were shown a number by the administration at the start of their administration and were forced to operate within that budget.

Because we simply did not have access to our own accounts for so many years, we may never know if funds were being improperly deducted from our R Fund while the C Fund and SGA Allocation still had positive balances. We may never know if other expenses from other departments were being improperly deducted from the SBA account, or if all of our fundraising, both by student organizations and the SBA, was being properly credited.

Thanks to the efforts of Vice President of Finance Amanda Hichez, the process will be different next year. The Dean of Students Office, via the GW Law Finance Office, has provided the Vice President of Finance with line-item reports of the SBA account. As things stand, there is only one SBA account, contrary to what the bylaws outline. On a monthly basis, the SBA can (and now does) cross-check every dollar spent by all student organizations to ensure that all withdrawals are valid and ensure that all fundraising checks are properly credited.

However, the SBA’s financial problems will not be solved until the university agrees to full transparency regarding how the SBA will be funded going forward. We know that the GW Law administration was extremely unhappy with the SBA having a sizable R Fund in years past. We know that our school is dropping in the rankings, and we know that the school wants cash. We know that the administration has been using the illusory “Dean’s Allocation” (i.e., the C Fund) throughout the year to strongarm the SBA into doing what it wants, such as not vocalizing support for student groups when their fliers were being torn down. We know that certain administrators have a strong preference against any events with alcohol, and that events with alcohol have been disappearing (i.e., Weekend Windup). The SBA has been struggling to stand on its own two feet and is crumbling under pressure from GW Law’s Administrators. 

Now more than ever, the SBA needs strong leadership. I believe Vice Pres. Amanda Hichez has been providing that leadership and must be given the opportunity to continue doing so. We need to know why the administration has reneged on the historic SBA funding process outlined in the bylaws. We need to demand that the independence of the SBA be respected. And finally, if the current bylaws won’t be followed, we need to demand that the administration agree to a new funding mechanism that the SBA can rely on going forward. Otherwise, there is simply no point in having an SBA.