NEWS ANALYSIS: IAA audit spurs heated debate between groups

The Undergraduate Assembly Budget Committee's audit of the International Affairs Association has been plagued by personal attacks and group mudslinging. Since the audit's announcement earlier this month, there have been countless meetings between members of the IAA, the UA Budget Committee and Student Activities Council. Members of the IAA and the UA have turned to various media -- including UTV13, the "upenn.talk" newsgroup and The Daily Pennsylvanian -- to get their messages across. And even though the audit was the hot topic of discussion at Sunday night's UA meeting, it seems as if the issue has taken a back seat to the controversy. After extensive debate at the meeting, the body voted to support the audit by a large margin. The problem peaked two weeks ago when IAA member and College senior Steven Ebert said he had overheard UA Chairperson and College senior Lance Rogers making an anti-Semitic remark about him. He said he also overheard UA Treasurer and College sophomore Steve Schorr say the purpose of the audit was to "screw over the IAA." At that point, IAA President and College senior Brendan Cahill approached SAC, requesting that the committee intervene and take over the auditing process. SAC denied this request, but the groups did arrange for SAC Finance IAA Liaison Lija Bentley, a College senior, to conduct her own audit of the group, in addition to the UA's audit. Cahill, along with IAA Vice President and Treasurer Yousef Master, an Engineering junior, were present at Sunday's UA meeting, appealing to the body to overrule Rogers's interpretation that the audit was constitutional under the UA's guidelines. The issue of constitutionality was also raised last Thursday, when Schorr debated IAA member and College senior Josh Wolson on UTV13's "Frontline." Both groups point to Article V, Section E, number 1 of the UA constitution, which states that the UA Budget Committee has the right to audit the records of the UA and all of the constituent parts. UA members interpret this to incorporate all SAC groups, while IAA members believe that since SAC is the constituent part, the budget committee's power allows them to audit SAC as a whole, but not its members. SAC Chairperson and College senior Graham Robinson agrees with the UA and supports the concept of the budget committee performing audits of this sort. "In terms of strict constitutionality, we really think that it is a pretty silly argument to argue that the UA is not allowed to audit the IAA by obtaining the records from the Office of Student Life because the records are public," he said. "There is no constitutional question." And both Lynn Moller, financial administrator of student activities and Fran Walker, director of Student Life Activities and Facilities, agree that the UA Constitution allows the UA Budget Committee to perform this audit. But Moller said that while it is within the budget committee's rights to perform this audit, she does not necessarily support their choice to do so. "I think given that two members of the UA Budget Committee [Schorr and Wharton junior Tom Foldesi] are on SAC Finance, they should have gone through SAC Finance," she said. Walker said in her 20 years at the University, the UA Budget Committee has never audited a SAC group. She added that SAC Finance used to perform audits "fairly routinely," but that they stopped because the process was too time consuming and it was not discovering any misuse of funds. And Walker said this audit has been surrounded by more controversy than any other audit she has seen. "This has clearly gone beyond an issue of budgets into an issue of allegations going in two directions," she said. "There are allegations of impropriety and I think whenever you have allegations of impropriety you have very strong emotions." She added that the IAA's situation is particularly complicated because the group has both SAC funding and non-SAC revenue. "The way in which they spend their money is frequently different from the way groups that exist with only SAC money spend their money," she said. According to Schorr, a Daily Pennsylvanian sports writer, the IAA is allocated approximately $23,000 with an additional $38,000 in loans from SAC. And overall, the group has more than $80,000 in non-SAC revenue. Meanwhile, the UA Budget Committee is continuing to conduct its audit. The group is going though the records in the Office of Student Life and comparing them with the SAC budget. Once the audit is complete, the committee will present its findings to SAC, which will then decide what to do with them. If the audit finds wrongdoing, consequences can range from freezing funds to revoking recognition, Walker said. Robinson said SAC does not feel the UA Budget Committee is infringing on SAC Finance's right to do audits. "We don't think it is at all unfair because we are not really uptight over who has more power than who," he said. "We don't think SAC is being encroached upon in any way." In the future, the UA Budget Committee has decided to audit groups through SAC Finance, Robinson said.