The Illinois Student Senate will vote Wednesday on a resolution allowing its committee on financial affairs to form task forces that will investigate the spending of student fees.

“SFAC (Student Fee Advisory Committee) works pretty well, but one thing that it isn’t really capable of doing is really getting in-depth to each of these student fees,” said Kevin Seymour, ISS treasurer.

According to the resolution, the task forces will report its findings to the SFAC on all current student fees, including an in-depth description, a general statement of any reserves that have been established and summaries of the cash flow and funds generated by each fee.

“It supplements the information to help (SFAC) make more informed decisions,” Seymour said.

He also said if the resolution passes, he intends to start two or three task forces this spring semester and work into the summer. He said he hopes to get SFAC members involved as well. He also mentioned investigating the new Assembly Hall renovation general fee more deeply as well.

“Of course, we’re not going to get to every single fee,” Seymour said. “There are just way too many fees to really get into a good amount of detail, so maybe we’ll target certain ones where last time we were lacking certain information.”

The task forces would make the whole student fee process more transparent to the public.

“In helping SFAC members making more informed decisions, you are essentially helping students because they are the fee payers,” Seymour said.

Jenny Baldwin, vice president-external, said she felt the task forces might be difficult to maintain, but are necessary considering the senate’s use of student money.

She also said Wednesday’s meeting will be more focused on internal issues than anything else considering there are seven bylaw amendments on the agenda.

“Because our new constitution didn’t go through, we’re trying to amend the bylaws little by little so we can make the student government more efficient,” Baldwin said.

The senate will also discuss a resolution recommending amendments to the senate rules for the student electorate regarding nicknames.

Deputy chief of staff Matt Hill, freshman in LAS, said while researching results from past years’ student elections, he noticed that candidates who ran with nicknames were always elected.

The amendments would remove the ability for students to run under a nickname. Candidates would still be permitted to use a shorter version of their legal name or an alternate name if their legal name conflicts with their gender identity.

“What usually draws students to the polls isn’t senate or trustee, it’s the referenda questions,” Hill said. “Once they’re there, they just vote for whoever they want and that’s why the computer randomizes the list, but still, all my research shows that people who use nicknames regardless of whether they’re in quotes or not still prove advantageous in the polls.”

If passed, the resolution will be referred to the committee on internal affairs.

Tyler can be reached at [email protected].