As the CSU’s Vice-President of Finance, part of my mandate entails managing the accounts of clubs; I was bemusedly shocked when, in the April 10th edition (the last to see physical printing this past semester), Jason Hatrick, Treasurer of Concordia’s Model U.N. Club (CONMUN), attributed some failures of his organization to the lack of CSU funding. It is my strongly-held impression, numbers in hand, that the source of those failures may have been entirely distinct from the CSU. Here’s how ridiculous his claim is: by the end of the year, CONMUN (enjoying one of the three largest CSU club budgets), will have failed to spend more than half of its lofty $6200 allotment: $3603 have gone unspent ! This, while club members have had to shoulder an unecessarily large part of the travel costs incurred with every tournament ! This, while every other club was bleeding for money ! Jason: if you can’t spend your budget, please be coherent and don’t lament that you didn’t have more.
Perhaps those aforementioned difficulties were more in line with these facts: that Model U.N. has also failed to account for their monies despite a formal audit request and repeated extensions; that their bank account went in the red when it had no business doing so; that it has attempted to sign its own cheques in clear violation of the CSU’s financial policy and this, despite a clear decision from the Financial Committee formally informing them that they had no right to do so.
The CSU is more than willing to go out of its way to help clubs; at this point, however, CONMUN is just not helping itself.
Louis-Eric Simard
CSU VP Finance
