This story has been edited to reflect corrections. 

DeKALB —Due to the $253,245.20 budget cut that the Student Government Association received, discussions to dissolve some vacant directorships and combine two committees that were alike were started during their 5 p.m. Saturday virtual meeting over Microsoft Teams. 

“Because our budget is very limited this year, combined with the fact that we had directors that didn’t feel like they had enough work to meet the minimum eight hour requirement to work for SGA as a student director, that all kind of culminated into writing legislation to dissolve some positions,” Speaker of the Senate Brad Beyer said.

These positions are not currently filled, however, meaning that no students are losing their job, Beyer said.

One of the committees to be dissolved is the mass transit directorship.

“We still have mass transit representation via the Director of Advertising and the University Services Committee within the Senate,” Beyer said.

The Information and Technology directorship is another to be dissolved.

“Since there were so little duties for the previous director [Corey Batz], he agreed that it does not require a directorship,” Beyer said. “[Batz] is working front desk now, but also kind of informally doing IT on the side, so he’s still around.”

The Director of Student Life and the Director of Cultural Affairs will be merged into one position, on top of the previous two positions being dissolved. This, however, is temporary and has the possibility of being changed again later in the year, Beyer said.

Also, due to the global pandemic and trying to limit face-to-face interactions with students, the number of signatures a potential SGA candidate needs to receive has been halved. 

“Because of COVID, and because of the kind of ‘protect the pack’ and other public health guidelines, I feel that taking a piece of paper and walking it around to 50 different people on campus is problematic,” Beyer said.

Senator Jacob Burg supported the motion of cutting the signatures because he felt it was only fair considering the circumstances students are in due to the pandemic, and being in contact with so many people touching one piece of paper would be problematic, Burg said.

Originally, candidates were to collect 50 signatures. The bill passed will only require 25 — online or physical — signatures for prospective candidates.

“I like the idea of having the option of collecting signatures virtually,” Senator Samantha Gurrola said. “I do think it enhances equity.”

*****Correction*****

The story has been corrected to show the following: Corey Batz and the SGA discussed to dissolve directorships.