The Undergraduate Student Government senate met for the first time in Fall 2026 on Tuesday night, when it unanimously approved a bill amending funding guidelines for committees. 

Senate bill 146-02 amends the current funding department and allocations committee guidelines, which require funding applications for student organizations. Specifically, these applications must now include traveler information as part of any travel requests. 

When an organization applies for travel funding, they must include the name, date of birth, USC email, USC ID number and class level of each traveler, as well as a point of contact for hotel reservations.

While the bill passed unanimously, there were some questions from senate members regarding how this change would affect the actual application.

Senator Zehran Muqtadir said he asked speaker of the senate Madison Troup and chief financial officer Jackson Alexander whether the change to the funding guidelines will be reflected on the current travel request application moving forward.

“From the answer I got from [the executive cabinet], it didn’t seem like it was going to be,” Muqtadir said. “I just look forward to seeing if that’s an option that [USG] can do — just to hone in on the actual issue — because if people aren’t reading the funding guidelines as it is, it’s important that we can [incorporate the change].”

In response, president Syrabi Nur Rahman — who spoke on behalf of the chief financial officer — said that since there was a “slight adjustment” to the wording and “no major changes” to the guidelines, students will have enough information regarding the change.

“The goal with this change is only looking to be directed at making sure that travel applications are submitted with all the adequate information to keep our timeline and workflow clean,” Rahman said. “Our CFO and our funding department also host [funding] workshops throughout the entire year.”

Beyond passing SB 146-02, Troup also presented at Tuesday’s USG meeting. Troup highlighted the confirmation of the 13 2026-27 advocacy liaisons, Jashan Dalal, Sanaa Ofori-Mensah, Nysa Jain, Elijah Agra, Irina Soriano, Alexa Ortiz Galvan, Alex McClain, Patrick Cardenas-Hirsig, Jad Kilani, Braeden BigMan, Milan Mullen, Jana Alnajjar and Amber Tang, as well as the Sustainability and Campus Infrastructure Committee chair, Donovan O’Leary, both of which occurred during the summer.

Troup also discussed her personal and speaker-related goals for the coming year.

“I hope to represent the senate’s voice in cabinet and administrative conversations, lead with compassion and understanding, as well as foster a collaborative and supportive environment for everyone in the senate,” Troup said.

Over the summer, senators also unanimously approved SB 146-01, which amended the annual senate meeting rules. The changes include requiring the speaker of the senate’s removal to be by a five-sixths majority vote, instead of a two-thirds majority vote. It also shifted the responsibilities of coordinating reelection from the vice president to the chief justice, and moved the election to be a week sooner, from two weeks to one.

The two-thirds majority rule was introduced in Fall 2024, with unanimous approval during voting, a week before the removal of the speaker of the senate at the time.

Another change was the requirement of the agenda for senate meetings to be fixed no later than 5 p.m. two business days prior to meetings.

In an interview with the Daily Trojan, Rahman said annual senate meeting rules are routinely updated.

“Every year, the senate meeting rules … go through a revamp process where we go through the entire document to see if there is anything outdated [and] to see if there is anything that needs to be changed,” Rahman said. “It is a regular process that we do with all our governing documents.”

Beyond what has been accomplished over the summer, USG is also now planning for the upcoming academic year. Rahman said her administration intends to launch a new program called “Chosen Trojans” in collaboration with USC Residential Education.

The proposed program intends to host events on campus during football season, Trojan Family Weekend and Alumni Weekend, at which students can build community and make new friends.

Furthermore, Rahman said she and vice president Diane Kim will be implementing town halls and tabling events to speak with students throughout the academic year.

“We are really big on not making projects because we think it is a good idea, but making projects because our students think it is a good idea,” Rahman said. “Our platform of ‘Ask, Listen, Act’ starts with things like town halls and tabling, where the president and vice president go out of their way to speak to these students and learn about what they want.”