New Student Activities Council chairwoman outlines plan for year

On Sunday, College junior Ali Huberlie was elected the new chairwoman of the Student Activities Council.

Huberlie sat down with The Daily Pennsylvanian to explain SAC’s plans for the upcoming year.

The Daily Pennsylvanian: What are your goals for next year?

Ali Huberlie: I want to work on the relationship with different umbrella groups that we work with, so that would mean Civic Center and Performing Arts House Council and Sports House Council. … This year, some of the things that have been coming up are the PAC moratorium on space, so we’ve had to fund a lot more groups that we might not otherwise have to. And with Sports Club Council we’ve had a lot of sports teams qualifying for nationals. That’s just drained a lot of funds, so I want to work with all three of those groups to really figure out not only how we can cut down on excessive draining of money that’s going on, but also figure out how we can meet their needs while still saving money. …

The second thing is continued efficiency. One of the big things people saw under Natalie Vernon on SAC was that SAC meetings were suddenly way shorter, there were many fewer appeals, and people were just generally happier with the SAC experience. …

The third thing is continuing our customer relationships with SAC groups.

DP: Why did you decide to run?

AH: I’ve been on SAC since the beginning of my sophomore year … and I’ve just really enjoyed being on SAC for a number of reasons. The first is just getting to interact with so many different student groups. … And the second thing is … student groups really make the campus alive and they allow students to do … so many things that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. … Also, I’ve always been on SAC under Natalie Vernon; she’s always been chair while I was on, and I just really, really admire Natalie and everything she did for SAC.

DP: What do you think the biggest challenge facing SAC will be and how do you hope to fix it?

AH: There’s two major challenges: the first is just groups asking for more and more money. And that happens every year where groups either don’t get the spaces that they need for their performance shows, so they get stuck in Irvine, which is insanely expensive, and they’re not going to make the revenue to make it up. … So I think that one of the biggest challenges is just the sheer amount of money that SAC groups are asking for, and somewhat related to that is just the number of SAC groups.

The number of SAC groups expands every year, with so many new groups popping up, and they obviously shouldn’t be excluded from funding just because they’re new, but at the same time, the more groups you recognize, the more money you’re spending.

DP: What would you like to see SAC do differently?

AH: My biggest initiative that I want SAC to do differently is really reaching out to the new groups. I feel like new groups just get lost in the shuffle all the time. Natalie started this, but her term ended. So she had started with the idea of just sending a new groups e-mail. Every new group got an e-mail that was like “these are the ten things that you have to do,” or “look out for this,” to the listserv, and I want to continue that but also build on it.

DP: How has SAC progressed from where it started to where it is now?

AH: I think the three things I would want to highlight are first just in terms of the technology that we’re able to offer, such as groups online at Penn, and also the SAC online system, so that groups can be aware at any time of what their financial status is, and it just makes it a lot easier for groups to operate. And also this year, because of our technology, we were able to go paperless, which I think is really nice because we used to go through I’m sure millions of sheets of paper in budget and allocations, so I think it’s really great that we’re able to progress to that point.

The second thing I think is the customer service aspect that I mentioned to you. I think that liaisons now take SAC much more seriously, and it’s not just something that they put on their resume, but its something that they really reach out to student groups, and I mean, I know that all of our liaisons right now, if you’re a student group and you e-mail with a problem, you’ll get an answer back within a day. So I think that that’s something that student groups love, because they really like getting the answer.

And I think the third thing which kind of goes along with the second one is just the level of efficiency.

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