SAC advisor and Deputy Director of Student Programs Bill McCoy will be leaving Georgetown in August, according to an announcement from the University’s Center for Student Programs.

In a phone call, McCoy confirmed to Vox that he would be leaving Georgetown for a position at Bucknell university. His departure was announced along with several other changes to CSP staff, including the hiring of Lauren Gagliardi as the center’s new Programs Coordinator.

McCoy’s departure concludes a somewhat tumultuous year for the Student Activities Commission, with a number of student organizations under the SAC umbrella protesting the manner in which events must be approved by the organization. Under the current guidelines, all events hosted by SAC groups – even those which require no funding from the University – must be submitted in a semester-long programming arc and individually approved.

After dozens of student groups signed two open letters to the Commission protesting the guidelines and the clubs’ lack of input in the approval process, SAC adopted several changes to its constitution creating an appeals process for rejected programming arcs and a mechanism to waive funding guidelines on an individual basis. The Commission also held several town hall meetings with club leaders, who used the opportunity to voice frustrations over perceived inequities in the funding process.

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It’s only the second week of school, but the Student Activities Commission—long known as student organizations’ favorite bureaucratic body on campus—is already off to a great start in solidifying its relations with club leaders.

Two separate group leaders (who both requested anonymity out of concern that their clubs would be targeted) emailed Vox to complain about a message sent out by SAC Adviser Bill McCoy yesterday afternoon detailing the approval process for club events.

From McCoy’s email (which you can find in full after the jump):

Something important to note is that SAC’s approval process is just that – an approval process. SAC must offer approval of all of your events, even those that have no funding associated. If your organization’s name is going to be associated with anything more in depth than a meeting, you should begin talking to your Commissioner …

Also, SAC will often approve an event and allocate for space, without allocating anything else including equipment such as tables and chairs. This gives your organization a good faith basis to pursue an event and reserve space through OCAF before your organization has all the details for the event.

Although the policies detailed in the email are not new, according to McCoy, neither club leader was pleased with the message.   One complained:

Based on the highlighted paragraph, it looks like their going to be asserting even more control over student groups this year. As if it wasn’t hard enough to be a student group on campus, now you don’t even have to ask for money in order to bring down the fierce scrutiny of these self-appointed guardians of Georgetown’s morality, political correctness, etc.

Will they be scrutinizing the questions for the next College Dems vs. College Republicans debate? Checking the internal temperature of GUGS burgers? Monitoring the pacing at the Running Club? Is there a point at which groups will say enough is an enough and just disassociate from the University?

Read the full email after the jump!

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