USAC committee finds no evidence LET’S ACT! slate misused student fees

The undergraduate student government’s finance committee found no evidence suggesting the LET’S ACT! slate received funds from student groups in its previous campaigns. However, the investigation did not analyze all the forms student groups must submit detailing the use of the funds.

The Undergraduate Students Association Council Finance Committee investigated into the misuse of student funding and did not verify other allegations, such as LET’S ACT! soliciting money from student groups for slate representation, selling illegal substances for campaigning purposes and conspiring to overthrow the director of the Community Programs Office.

The leaked documents, which stated these allegations, were disclosed by an anonymous source before campaigning started for the 2015-2016 election cycle. The allegations in the leaked documents stated that allegations happened in previous election cycles, delaying the investigation process.

The Finance Committee focused its investigation into a leaked document which alleges LET’S ACT! to have used $800 from Contingency Programming funding for campaigning purposes.

The Finance Committee gathered all the names listed in the leaked documents and matched those names with a previous Contingency Programming Fund application. Once a match was found, the Finance Committee re-evaulated the applications in question, said Finance Committee chair Stephanie Wong.

From the information collected, the Finance Committee found most of the students mentioned in the LET’S ACT! documents did not apply for funding for their groups.

“The students which did apply, could not have bought things or used money outside from what they said in the application,” Wong said.

In order to receive funds, a student group must first submit an application detailing an estimated cost of the purchases the student group will make with the funds. Once the application is approved, the group must purchase goods and services with its own money and submit a requisition form containing evidence of their purchases, such as receipts, to receive reimbursement.

Over the summer, the Finance Committee focused on analyzing the applications rather than the requisition forms.

“We can’t possibly go through every single line item in the requisition forms to make sure all the purchases were correct,” Wong said.

However, Wong said the applications provided enough evidence to determine whether or not the student group was involved in LET’S ACT!’s campaigning efforts.

“The application is enough to see whether or not the student fees were being misused,” Wong said. “For example, a student group isn’t going to say they are going to spend money on drugs and alcohol on their application. We would never approve such an application.”

Wong also added that it is impossible for a student group to submit a falsified receipt and receive more than they actually purchased.

“The requisition form has to be audited by both the Finance Committee and the Student Government Accounting,” Wong said. “There is a lot of checks that have to be made before (student groups) receive their money. There’s no way a student group could spend $7 and receive $10.”

However, former Finance Committee chair Cindy Wang mentioned that during her term last year, requisition forms for off-campus events did not receive the same amount of scrutiny as those of on-campus events.

Although the Finance Committee checks receipts, off-campus events are especially difficult to monitor because the Finance Committee cannot see how the money is being spent, Wang said.

The student group might have transferred the purchases to other sources not specified in the application, Wang added.

Although the Finance Committee found no evidence of student fee misuse, USAC president Heather Rosen believes the investigation could have been more thorough.

“(The Finance Committee) only investigated the funding aspect, and there’s other allegations made in the document,” Rosen said. “There’s other information in the document that has not been looked into.”

Rosen suggested creating an investigative body, composed of administrative representatives on the council, who will have the resources to investigate into past claims and can focus on both campaigning-related and student fee misuse allegations in the case that a similar event happens in the future.

Former transfer student representative and LET’S ACT! member Negeen Sadeghi-Movahed said that the investigation should have been more comprehensive because it would have cleared the accusations against LET’S ACT!

“I agree (with Rosen) that there should have been a more thorough investigation,” Sadeghi-Movahed said. “We don’t have anything to hide.”

Sadeghi-Movahed said she thinks the leaked documents damaged the reputation of LET’S ACT! in the previous election. LET’S ACT! was only able to secure three seats on the council.

“I don’t think it’s fair,” Sadeghi-Movahed said. “The documents should have been verified before students took an opinion. The entire incident damaged us.”

Wong said that in response to the student body’s concern in the misuse of student fees, she will create a more comprehensive auditing system, including the creation of a position in charge of coordinating audits, which should be implemented by the end of fall.

Although the details of the system have not been finalized yet, the Finance Committee plans to send staff to both on- and off-campus events funded by student groups to investigate into whether student groups are using the money properly.

All the information collected by the Finance Committee after a three-month investigation will be forwarded to the Judicial Board for review Friday.