From a white paper concerning a smoothie stand in the new Welch Fitness Center to a white paper concerning lighting along Burkhart Walk, DePauw Student Government has passed 11 pieces of legislation.
Other topics included making sure more courses at the 200 and 300 levels count towards distribution requirements, placing a stop sign at the corner of Anderson Street and Locust Street, additional hours of operation for the library and preventing first-years from taking W courses that they will not receive W credit for or allowing first-years to gain their W certification.
“We also put in resolutions for training for Bon Appetite staff workers after the particular incident Halloween weekend,” Student Government Vice President Courtney Cosby said.
In addition to the large volume of legislation, they have worked to reorganize and update the database of recognized student organizations; prepared the student space in the basement of the Union Building, known as the student org space; introduced a new way to register events through an iOS app named Ventfull and researched Student Government’s history in the diversity and potential multicultural requirement.
“We started off the year with the student org space,” Student Government President Cody Watson said.
Watson said that a lot of their non-legislative action has been based in regaining order for the student organization recognition process.
“Recognition was a mess this semester based on the work that had been done in previous semesters,” Watson said.
Earlier this semester, there were discussions surrounding raising the student activity fee as a result of a smaller freshmen class. The smaller class has led to less total funds in their allocations pool. Organization’s semester budgets are currently in the process of being finalized.
At Sunday’s general assembly meeting, there was also discussion of changes to Student Government’s Constitution. These would allow for representatives from various student organizations to decide to stay to vote on an issue, rather than being required to vote on issues that they do not necessarily care about.
As of now, all representatives have to be present and remain until all of the issues have been voted on. There was also the proposed change of allowing each student to represent up to two organizations. Currently, students can only represent one.
Finally, the last potential change to Student Government’s Constitution would grant them the ability to appoint vacancies rather than attempt to hold another election, only to end up having to appoint someone to fill the position.
Watson and Cosby reformatted the way that assembly meetings are held by making them more interactive. Representatives from the various student organizations now choose which of the four discussions in which they would like to participate.
“We’re still going to make sure that we’re transparent and available in the student org space and by email,” Watson said.
Cosby agreed.
“We’re all very open to hearing student concerns,” Cosby said.
Junior Amarilis Roman believes that Student Government has been listening to student concerns and acting appropriately.
“I believe Student Government is really trying to voice all of our concerns and tackle our issues one by one,” Roman said. “Only so much can be done in one semester.”