Although a minority of Bentley students will have any direct interaction with AIA and ABA, it’s important that they understand what is happening with their student activity fee, which, theoretically, should benefit them directly. Although these issues only have a direct impact on organization presidents, there is ultimately a trickledown effect which affects students who pay the activity fee, or every Bentley student.

Let’s say you’re an organization president and you want to have your organization’s name or constitution changed, or make any change to your organization which requires ABA approval. You would typically submit the request to your ABA rep, ABA would discuss and ultimately vote on your proposal behind your back without any input from you, and then let you know whether the proposal was ok or not.

ABA also pretends to use CollegiateLink to help determine how many members are in a particular organization and to say that certain organizations regularly use it as a method of publicizing events. The only organization which seems to regularly use it is CAB, and that’s simply because they are their own cluster rep due to their size. Student Life and ABA continue to regularly push organizations to utilize CollegiateLink to publicize their events and manage their membership, yet no students actually utilize it and even freshmen barely know what it is or how to use it.

Let’s say you wanted to start a new organization on campus. You will have to collect signatures and complete the daunting and arduous new organization packet, which at the very least will take weeks to get approved and may ultimately be rejected after you’ve completed all the work for a club you’re very passionate about starting.

The ultimate question is what determines the legitimacy of one organization over another? Is the Bentley Ski and Snowboard Club, which runs trips to ski mountains in the winter and doesn’t have an active membership any more legitimate or illegitimate than the Bentley Democrats or Republicans, which don’t run many events but ultimately have a very active membership?

Furthermore, why shouldn’t the Democrats or Republicans receive funding for food at their meetings when they have a regular consistent membership, whereas the Ski and Snowboard Club receives much more funding for their events?
Ultimately, the funding creates another issue for the treasurers and presidents of Bentley organizations. Oftentimes when organizations receive funding, there are too many restrictions on the funding that ultimately the organizations question whether the funding is worth it in the first place. AIA will only provide money for food if it’s through Sodexo, unless Sodexo issues a food waiver instead. Let’s be honest, though, if you want to have Chinese food at your event, just because Sodexo can make Chinese food, doesn’t mean that they should.

Similarly, AIA has a fairly blanket policy prohibiting funding for t-shirts, although somehow the large-scale student events always manage to receive funding for Spring Day or the upcoming Bentley Arts and Music Festival (B.A.M.F.). For organization trips or certain events, any student organization should be able to have AIA fund t-shirts, especially if it makes identifying a group much easier.

Bentley students pay $288 per year for the student activity fee, which should benefit all students equally. The ultimate question comes down to whether Bentley students are benefiting from their share of the student activity fee.

Do Bentley students as a whole stand to benefit from the travel funding that the rugby teams receive? CAB was allocated over $360,000 last year for their events, including Spring Day and the comedy shows, adding up to about $90 per person alone. Are you getting your money’s worth?

Written by: Khaled Al-Amiri

ABA would like to announce that we are currently accepting applications for third and fourth housing picks. Every year, organizations have the chance to raffle off third and/or fourth housing picks at any event.

Before you come to the conclusion that all the bigger organizations will have priority over your organization, we would like to clarify that the organization size is not what matters.

What will give your organization higher priority is the anticipated attendance at your event and how many more Bentley students would attend your event because of the housing picks raffle.

Although the process is simple, there are a few requirements. All of the information you need and the application itself can be found on ABA’s CollegiateLink page under General Documents.

Don’t forget that the deadline is December 31 at 11:59 p.m.! Even if you think your organization is small, what’s the worst that could happen?

Apply today and maybe you can raffle off the pick at your next event!

Written by: Andy Zhong

After a year of much reform and progress, Tyler Williams, president of Association of Bentley Activities (ABA), is pleased with how the organization has worked to improve the student experience at Bentley. Because Williams is graduating next fall, he was unable to run for reelection, since the ABA constitution clearly states that the presidential position requires service of one full year.

This past academic year, ABA worked on some major projects, such as the Club Sport Moratorium, in addition to creating changes to its constitution in an attempt to improve the efficiency and communication of Cluster Representatives to student organizations.

“I think overall, ABA was very functional this year,” said Williams, who assumed the role of presidency early last semester when his predecessor, Jacob Graham, left a vacancy in the highly influential student organization.

Perhaps the most notable policy created by ABA this year was the introduction of the Active Organization Policy. The Active Organization Policy “will be used to identify struggling organizations and give [ABA] an opportunity to help them out,” explained Williams. With over 100 student organizations on campus, it becomes difficult for ABA to address each and every organization’s needs. The Active Organization Policy looks to tackle this issue.

Although Williams is pleased with ABA’s progress, there is still much room for improvement. Williams stated, “The one thing I think we still need to work on is external awareness. We still need students and student organizations to understand who we are and what we do.”

The club-recognition process is a lengthy one and requires a lot of dedication. “We look at each organization holistically and try to look at the student organization community as a whole,” said Williams. “As each of our Cluster Representatives represents the organization community as a whole, we try to pull viewpoints from every angle in order to make a decision. It’s never easy to deny an organization, but we give everyone an opportunity to appeal and still become recognized,” he continued.

Throughout this past year, many Bentley students have stepped up in terms of creating their own clubs on campus. Some of the organizations approved this year included Bentley African Association, Bentley Student Artists, and, according to Williams, “close to 20 other potential organizations currently moving through the recognition process.”
When asked whether Williams believes that ABA has achieved many of its goals it set out to do at the beginning of the year, Williams responded, “I would say we did.”

He went on to say, “We revised the constitution and went through some necessary internal restructuring to make us more efficient in our decision making and productivity. I think it shows in the amount we accomplished this semester and moving forward you will see more ABA publicity and awareness. Overall, I am very happy with this semester and this year as a whole,” concluded Williams.

With all these new changes, Williams expects communication and knowledge between the organizations and ABA to improve over the next year.

“I just really want to thank the Cluster Representatives for all the hard work they’ve put in this semester,” he said. “It has been a pleasure working with them and I hope they enjoyed their time on the board.”

Written by: Andy Zhong

The Association of Bentley Activities (ABA) kicked off this semester by appointing its Vice President of Organizational Recognition, Tyler Williams, as its President. The highly-influential position was left vacant late last semester when Williams’ predecessor Jacob Graham stepped down due to personal reasons.

“One of the big goals for this semester,” said Williams, “is revamping the entire communication process. One of my charges as president has been redefining our internal communications to make that more efficient, which in turn reflects the efficiency of our outward communications.”

While Williams admits that there has been a “big lack of inefficiency in the past,” he urges organizations to be patient in the transition process. Williams goes on to remind students that “the best thing I can really say is that the organizations really just need to get back to us with the information that we request and that it is going for a good cause and it does have a purpose.”

The presidency of ABA is a position that is voted upon by the student body at the end of every academic year. Because the position was vacant at the start of this semester, Williams was selected in accordance with ABA constitutional guidelines, which allowed him to become president without holding an election in the wider Bentley community.

Last January was the beginning of Tyler Williams’ first semester on the ABA executive board as the Campus Arts and Media representative. “I really just wanted to get in and see how it worked, why different policies were made, and why organizational governance on campus operated that it did,” said Williams.

Last semester as the Vice-President of Organizational Recognition, Williams was in charge of helping new organizations on campus. “I was responsible for facilitating the process for students who had new ideas and wanted to start an organization on campus,” said Williams.

As president, Tyler Williams will supervise twelve cluster representatives and five members of the executive board, who all together oversee the 102 Bentley clubs and organizations.

“The ABA is first and foremost a resource,” said Williams. “We are here to really enhance and enrich the extra-curricular experience on campus and we try to provide for every organization and to make sure that every organization is heard.”