New SAC chairwoman discusses debt policy

Thursday night, the Student Activities Council elected College junior Melissa Roberts as its new chairwoman. The Daily Pennsylvanian sat down with Roberts to ask her about SAC’s financial situation, its new debt policy and her goals for her term.

Daily Pennsylvanian: What made you decide to run for SAC chair?
Melissa Roberts: I’ve been on SAC for the last year and I’ve been secretary and it’s honestly been one of the most rewarding things I’ve been involved with, so I definitely saw this as a great opportunity. I think as a board we’ve had a lot of momentum in the last year and accomplished a lot, and I really want to keep that moving going forward.

DP: Can you tell us a little bit more about the new debt plan?
MR: I’m not sure I could explain it in a few words, but basically what we have in place now is a way to show what’s going to happen to groups if they go into debt, and … to offer support and counseling for them, and then to eventually penalize groups that go into debt so that it doesn’t hurt all groups. We have a formalized plan on our website.

DP: What are your views on the new policy?
MR: I think it’s going to be something that’s really good. I think that in the last year, we’ve rewritten our constitution, we’ve created this new debt plan, we’ve created new recognition guidelines so I think integrating all of those, we’re in a really strong financial position going forward.

DP: Overall, is SAC’s financial situation under control?
MR: Yeah, definitely. I mean, we’re in a really good place … I think that the fact that we were able to bounce back from a moratorium and only have it for one semester and be able to lift it, I think shows that we’re in a really strong place.

DP: How do you think SAC’s financial situation and new debt policy will affect current groups?
MR: It shouldn’t at all, because we wiped away all historic debt so all groups are starting from new. We don’t think groups are going to go into debt as much because we put a lot of systems in place to stop groups going into debt … If you start reaching different debt limits, we’re going to reach out to you, we’re going to cut up your pro-card, step in and start having to co-sign your expenses, that sort of thing. But, I mean, ideally this isn’t going to happen because no one is going to go into debt. And a lot of the debt we were dealing with, a lot of it was historic debt from 10 years ago that had just been sitting there.

DP: What interested you in the funding aspect of student groups coming from a student group yourself?
MR: I think the funding that goes to student groups through SAC is really the life-blood of the University. Most events that are going on on a day-to-day basis at Penn are funded by SAC. If you look at most of the speakers brought, most of the events, the cultural shows, those are all SAC-funded, and, you know, these groups have no ability to raise that kind of money on their own.

DP: Do you have any new plans to expand your reach?
MR: We’re hoping to make it easier for student groups to see all of their different funding options alternatives because a lot of groups … don’t know about how to use SAC, or they only know about SAC and they don’t know about T-Change or GAPSA or department funding, so we think by really making it easier for groups to see all the different places that can fund and see what would best suit their needs, it will help everyone.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.