The Missouri Students Association passed an act Wednesday that establishes a formal procedure for making its annual fee request to the Student Fee Review Committee.
According to Bill 52-21, the process was established to “ensure a smooth process in requesting a change in student fees.”
Previously, there was no formal procedure for making an SFRC request. MSA senator Ben Bolin said in the past, the MSA president, vice president and senate speaker met and decided what the fee request should contain. Now, the request has to be approved by the MSA Senate before reaching the SFRC.
“We want to put another layer of red tape (on the request process),” Bolin said. “Now, the senators will have oversight on the SFRC request and can say, ‘Yes, we agree with this or no we don’t,’ and they can go back to the drawing board.”
MSA Vice President Helena Kooi, who wrote this year’s SFRC request, said the established process will create more checks and balances.
“No one person should be getting to make these decisions,” she said. “It’s a significant amount of money we’re deciding on … so we wanted to get more people involved in the process.”
Bolin said the changes allow senators to represent the student voice in the request process.
“The changes benefit students because it creates more accountability … from the senators and from MSA, because, no longer, is it only the president and vice president … and senate speaker’s decision,” Bolin said.
Kooi said the changes also give the MSA Budget Committee a larger role in the request.
As of last spring, MSA senators, typically from the Budget Committee, were guaranteed five spots on the SFRC. This changed when the MSA Senate amended the bylaws to no longer guarantee these spots, [according to a previous Maneater article](https://www.themaneater.com/stories/2012/2/17/changes-be-made-student-fee-review-committee/).
Now all SFRC seats are up for application.
Kooi said the change would make the budget committee lose a significant amount of their involvement in the process.
With the newly established process, the MSA vice president is required to take the request to the Budget Committee before it goes to the Senate.
“This is our way of giving the power back to the Budget Committee,” Kooi said.
Now that the Senate has approved the act, the process will take effect immediately.
This year’s official MSA fee request is nearly finalized. Currently, Kooi plans to take it to the Budget Committee on Tuesday for feedback.