Each year, the Student Government (SG)’s executive slate is given the opportunity to create ad-hoc student committees to address issues they feel are important to the student body. This year, executive slate created three new committees: the Committee on Student Employment, the Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Committee, and the Constitutional Review Committee.
The Committee on Student Employment will be chaired by Claudio Sansone, a graduate student in the Humanities Division studying comparative literature. The committee will seat five students from various areas of the College and University.
The Committee has several projects planned for the coming year. They plan to create a neutral website to inform students about the issue of unionization, which will include reports on student employment around campus. They also plan on distributing a survey to different parts of the University. The Committee will create a contact form on their website so students can request reports on student employment and share their experiences.
“We selected Claudio because of his deep experience with student advocacy and his commitment to research and empirical data collection on the topic of student employment,” Student Government President Eric Holmberg said. “He will be an excellent leader for students and a strong liaison to administrators as well.”
“We hope to see a lot of good data about the ways in which students are employed,” Vice President for Student Affairs Cody Jones added.
The Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Committee will be chaired by Alice Kallman. Last year, $10,000 of the SG budget was allocated to Sexual Assault Awareness Week. The executive slate created the new committee with a $12,500 budget in order to extend the programming throughout the entire year.
According to Kallman, the Committee has recently reviewed and analyzed the results of the 2015 Campus Climate Survey in order to create programming tailored to the student body.
“We are also working with Sarah Wake and Shea Wolf, the University’s Title IX coordinators to restructure O-Week programming and current policies on continued education,” Kallman said. “We hope to partner with them on specific events targeting populations that are often ignored on this campus such as LGBTQ+ students and graduate students.”
The Constitutional Review Committee will be chaired by third-year Max Freedman. The Committee will be tasked with reviewing SG’s governing documents, which are over a decade old, to ensure that they’re working optimally, in what Holmberg called a “best practice.” The committee was created by the recommendation of the Center for Leadership and Involvement
According to Freedman, the Constitutional Review Committee is planning on fixing the constitutional hurdle to voting rights for students on Extended-College status, will be addressing issues with how the Assembly By-Laws handle study abroad, and fixing by-law contradictions. The Committee will also be making some small procedural changes to the various funding codes and charters. Freedman called it “housekeeping work”.
“I’m not sure why it hasn’t been done before,” Holmberg said.
