The following covers the meeting on March 6.
CLIMATE CHECK
Senator emeritus and senior Amulya Deva said that she went to the Black History Month Showcase hosted by Black Student Union on Saturday, March 2. Deva said that the event was great but that attendance was low.
First-year senator Esther Omegba asked about the broken sliding door in Coates Student Center. Adviser David Tuttle said that he had heard that replacing the door could take eight to ten weeks but that this information came secondhand.
President Ty Tinker, junior, said that he had talked to a student in the Bee Alliance about the bees that had gotten loose and died in the Center for Sciences and Innovation. According to Tinker’s source, the bees did not like the cold, so they went inside.
Deva said that senator emeritus Kara McLean, senior, had mentioned to her that SGA had not approved meeting minutes since the second meeting of the year on Jan. 30. Customarily, SGA approves the meeting minutes for the previous week at each meeting. Junior senator Taylor Volzer motioned to approve all minutes from all meetings of the semester. The motion passed.
MSA FUNDING VOTING
Vice President Kenneth Clouston, junior, met with the treasurer of the Muslim Student Association (MSA) about their request for funding on Feb. 27. MSA had previously requested $3,515 for Henna Night, an annual cultural event held in Laurie Auditorium. SGA voted to table discussion of approving the funds due to discrepancies in MSA’s funding request. MSA had incorrectly calculated the prices for some food and requested $300 for cutlery. Clouston and the MSA treasurer Juhi Choudury worked out what needed to change in the request. MSA submitted a new request for $3,291.83. They cut the request for cutlery down to $25 and fixed the numbers for food. They also added a request to fund t-shirts for performers. SGA voted unanimously to approve the full new amount of $3,291.83.
POST-FUNDING MEETINGS
Clouston overviewed a plan to more explicitly offer meetings with members of student organizations after their requests for funding had been denied. While student organizations had this option in the past, it was not made very clear. Clouston explained that this will help SGA’s relationship with student organizations by providing them a face-to-face explanation and not just an email with the results of the funding meeting.
DINING COMMITTEE UPDATE
Junior senator Josephine Van Houten, chair of the dining committee, talked about the committee’s meeting with Charles Robles, food service director last week. In the meeting, they established how the relationship between Robles and the committee would look, such as how often they would meet and who would be responsible for contacting Robles. Robles also invited SGA members to his monthly “Dine with the Director” dinners, where Robles and students, especially those in cultural organizations, can discuss on-campus dining.
Van Houten announced that Robles and his staff are already making a change due to MSA’s complaints about pork in food, especially in the omelet station. The omelet station will be moving to where the pasta station currently is, and the omelets will be cooked on individual pans instead of on one large griddle. Certain pans will be used depending on whether the omelet order contains meat.
PRELIMINARY MEETING ASSESSMENT
Senator Volzer proposed that SGA come up with a set of guidelines for the student organization funding process that could help make the process more transparent to student organizations. Specifically, Volzer suggested creating a flexible document that can be passed on to future administrations that contains helpful information for preliminary finance meetings that are held between a couple SGA members and student organization representatives before they present a budget request in front of all of SGA or to the finance committee.
SGA broke up into two groups to brainstorm ideas for how to make preliminary finance meetings run more efficiently. Some ideas included creating a better document for student organizations to reference that includes dos and don’ts for their proposals as well as suggestions like looking into Airbnb instead of a hotel when traveling. Volzer also suggested that they revive a practice from the last administration so that all SGA members could add questions for the preliminary finance meetings to a Google Doc. This way, more could be covered in the preliminary meeting and less time would be spent asking questions at funding meetings with all of SGA.
