SPR and AC History

The Student Presidents’ Roundtable (SPR) is an alliance of the leaders of the eight major boards in the CWRU undergraduate student governance system. In conjunction with the Allocations Committee (AC), they form the Student Executive Committee (SEC.)

CWRU is a federation and joining of multiple institutions and colleges within those institutions, and each of those entities developed its own student governance system over the years since its first predecessor institution was founded in 1826. After the 1967 Federation of Western Reserve University and Case Institute of Technology, the undergraduate student government entities experimented with combining governments into a single overarching body. As at many colleges and universities, this single body was responsible for most functions of student programming and advocacy.

However, in 1982, a poorly-planned concert (later known as “The Atlanta Rhythm Section Debacle”) resulted in student anger at low attendance and what was seen as reckless spending of the student activity fee. As a result, the single student governance organization was split into four “boards,” each responsible for a different aspect of undergraduate life, and each independent of the others’ decisions as a way to check and balance the leadership of student life and the spending of the student activity fee.

Over the years, additional boards were formed and added, each with its own mission and character, and each charged with improving undergraduate life using student fees. Individual student organizations, once recognized, would affiliate under one of the boards for shared leadership, advocacy, development, and funding. Although each board was independent, a committee of equals needed to meet each semester to decide what percentage of the collected student activity fee should be allocated to each board. This group was the Student Executive Council (SEC.)

By the early 2000s, the regular SEC meetings had become burdensome for all involved. The meetings tended to stretch on for hours into the night, as the boards debated appropriate financial expenditures and each board advocated for its own best interests. The SEC was often led by the executive president of the Residence Hall Association, since it was the one board that did not draw funds from the student activity fee (rather, they are funded through university housing fees.) Board leaders tended to see the allocation process as adversarial and meetings could become heated.

A group of student leaders noted that the competition for funding was not only unpleasant, but the over-focus on divvying up the student fees got in the way of the senior-most undergraduate student leaders on campus working TOGETHER to solve common problems, maximize the use of resources, coordinate programming, amplify advocacy, and learn leadership skills together. In 2016, they proposed a new constitution for the SEC which would split it into two sub-organizations: 1.) the Student Presidents’ Roundtable (SPR), which would focus on cooperation and coordination between boards, and 2) the Allocations Committee (AC), which would be elected by the student body but not biased toward any one board, and could make objective decisions about allocations. Both groups would function throughout the year to establish relationships among student leaders and to envision decision-making that would benefit the entire student body rather than a particular board.

Today, the SPR and the AC work in parallel but in partnership to accomplish the SEC’s work of coordinating today’s eight boards. As a relatively young iteration of the SEC, this model is still discussing and updating its processes and procedures - for example, the chair of the AC was recently added as an ex-officio member of the SPR, and the two groups together are discussing whether the current percentages used for allocation are appropriate for today’s student life. But the model of independent boards, connected by a council, all working together to improve undergraduate student life at CWRU is going strong.