On Wednesday, April 16, the University of Massachusetts Amherst Undergraduate Senate of the Student Government Association held their 1937th regular meeting. The meeting convened at 6:37 p.m.
President Colin Humphries announced he officially signed the Club Sports transition into RecWell, which will take effect in Fall 2026.
“This is going to take a huge burden off of us,” Humphries said. Club Sports as a whole requested around $3 million for next year, extra costs which will be taken on by UMass Recreation & Wellbeing (RecWell) for the 2026-2027 school year.
SGA will continue to allocate $400,000 for club sports, but RecWell will oversee the organizations and provide extra costs for things like equipment, transportation and spaces. This will leave SGA with more time and resources to aid Registered Student Organizations.
“This was a really, really historic move, and it wouldn’t have been possible without RecWell who has been fantastic this whole process,” Humphries said.
RecWell will review the three most recent available years of spending for each club sport and sort each club into tiers deciding their budgets. This information then goes to the Reviewal Advisory Board, which prepares a budget recommendation for the SGA. SGA will then transfer the funds to RecWell for distribution at the beginning of the school year.
Next, Secretary of the Registry Ranya Merchant presented proposed changes to the RSO application process outlined in the General Bylaws, which the Senate will vote on next week.
The changes include providing clearer application materials, changing the minimum number of members needed from ten to 20 and moving the entire process to Campus Pulse.
She also proposed including the entire Undergraduate Registry Oversight Committee (UROC) in the reviewal process to ease the burden on the UROC chair.
“This is really just the beginning,” Merchant said. “The changes that are made in this process are just a few of the ones we discussed in depth.”
Some senators raised concerns about existing Registered Student Organizations (RSOs) with under 20 members, some of which are small on purpose. Merchant assured them the limit will only be implemented during the application process, and not the auditing process for existing RSOs.
After the presentations, the Senate unanimously passed S.92, a motion to provide Students of Caribbean Ancestry $12,280 for their annual Jouvert event on April 27. The costs will cover artists, DJs, catering, security and event supplies.
Secretary of Finance Dylan Bellerive then proposed S.93, to add a chapter to the SGA bylaws that he wrote concerning the budget process for SGA’s own budget.
After some discussion about the use of italics, bold and the phrase et cetera, none of which typically show up in the SGA bylaws, the motion passed unanimously.
The meeting ended with officer and committee reports and was adjourned at 9:12 p.m.
Piper Morgan can be reached at [email protected].
