In November 2022, the Student Government Association Budget and Finance Committee lost a majority of members following the departure of SGA Vice President of Finance Chase Slenker on Nov. 11. The Budget and Finance Committee allocates student activity fees to all student activities including intercollegiate athletics, student media, club sports, APB and more.

The Slate reached out to former members for comment. Katie Fischetti provided her resignation letter to the Slate, writing, “The hostility and politics have run rampant through the committee and SGA as a whole and is evident to students across the campus.”

The committee had all its seats filled with an average tenure of just under two years of experience. Following Slenker’s resignation, 13 of the 20 members have resigned from the committee, including multiple members with over three years of experience on the committee. The members include Fischetti, Nathan Augustin, Alexander Boeckel, Austin Correll, Ian Davis, Khalilh Jackson, Chris Jeune, Matthew Leonard, Jordan Miller, Steven Matheson, Christina Pinto, Caleb Owens and committee chair Slenker. According to public record, the Budget and Finance committee did not meet at all between Slenker’s resignation and Jan. 31.

Members expressed that their resignations were based either primarily or in part due to a “hostile” work environment and stated that they did not feel “respected” for the role in the organization ­— which members noted felt more akin to a job. Leonard said there were “persistent unfair and inaccurate criticisms of other members of the committee and SGA in general.”

“A lot of unnecessary hostility could have been avoided if people kept their personal feelings separate,” Pinto said.

Not only was there a large turnover in the Budget and Finance committee, but senators Jackson, Cassidy Vangas, Matheson and Darien Ressler resigned from the SGA Senate.

“I wasn’t proud of the way members were being treated by SGA and other entities. The student body would lash out to things they didn’t like or want to hear yet they refused to come to public meetings to ask questions,” Ressler said.

SGA swore in a new vice president of Finance, Ethan Rosenberry, on Thursday, Feb. 2 and is actively looking for new members to join the committee. The committee has 13 open seats and, according to Rosenberry, is already in the process of finding replacements.

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