SLC hears update on SU Quality Money’s future amid university pushback
By Elaine Liang, March 24 2026—
On March 10, Students’ Union (SU) President Naomie Bakana and Vice-President Internal Lorraine Ndovi updated the Students’ Legislative Council (SLC) on the future of SU Quality Money after receiving strong pushback from the university.
Bakana and Ndovi presented three major points: the budget allocation for this year’s Quality Money projects, future programming and the ongoing student campaign.
Ndovi had met with the University of Calgary’s CFO Wilbert Arends to discuss this year’s funding allocation as a separate issue from Quality Money’s future. According to Ndovi, Arends agreed that there was a clerical error in regards to funding allocation.
Ndovi said that this year’s projects approved by the Quality Money Committee were presented to Arends for funding allocation approval.
“[Arrends] said everything looked okay and he said he needed to bring it back to his team, but tentatively, we would be receiving this year’s allocation in order to fund those projects,” said Ndovi.
According to Ndovi, a written confirmation will be provided to Ndovi and Bakana for reporting to the Board of Governors (BoG).
After Ndovi’s presentation on the budget allocation for this year’s projects, Bakana updated councillors on future programming and the ongoing campaign.
“Today, we met with the university to basically suggest that we will broaden the buckets for the [Student Experience Quality Quality Program (SEQP)] and not focus too much on the specific dollar amount for each of them … regarding the terms of reference,” said Bakana.
“At that meeting, there was some back and forth. However, I believe that we are starting to come to an end of the issue at hand,” she continued. “The biggest concern that I have been understanding is that the university does not really understand what we are saying because we’re being too specific and we’re not speaking in their high-level language.”
Bakana said that the SU will be including the items that the SU is pushing for in the terms of reference of the university’s proposed SEQP.
“We’re going to take apart the terms of reference [and] include the things that the SU is pushing on … the application process, making it smoother, maintaining the student committee that selects projects and ensures that the whole campus community can continue to submit projects, and also broadening the categories that the university had shared with us because they are a bit too specific,” said Bakana.
Bakana added that Quality Money’s future name is undetermined, noting that she is not a fan of SEQP.
Bakana then presented an update on the ongoing student campaign.
On March 5, Bakana had posted an Instagram reel informing students of the uncertain future of Quality Money and how students can get involved.
“To date, I have received almost 50 letters from students, which is very, very wonderful [and] incredible,” said Bakana. “We will be using these letters to solidify our point to the university that students want to be in control of the spending.”
“Although we can understand the university’s concerns for certain capital projects, as that’s something that they continue to bring up, we will agree to include them earlier on in the process just to kind of vet the feasibility of specific university capital projects, not SU capital projects,” she said.
For more information on upcoming SLC meetings and agendas, visit the SU website.