Students will soon be able to carry “closed, contained” drinks into Mugar Memorial Library and walk into the entrance without risk of secondhand smoke exposure, Boston University Student Union officials said.
About 40 students and Student Activities Executive Director John Battaglino gathered in the Photonics Center for Monday’s General Assembly meeting, where Union voted on an amendment regarding student group representation, discussed an amendment to create a director of marketing and unanimously approved a resolution for changes at Mugar.
Union Senator and College of Arts and Sciences senior Anant Shukla said he has been working with Union members and administrators to change three policies at the library: drinks, checking bags as students leave and smoking at the library’s entrance.
Shukla said administrators are open on drinks and smoking location policies.
“These were the three main issues that came to my attention,” he said. “We came to a consensus very quickly about what people saw at the library. The administration, the library and dean of students agree that . . . they need to address some student concerns.”
Shukla said the smoking policy has changed significantly over the years at Mugar.
“In the late 1970s, the third floor of Mugar Library used to be the smoking room,” he said.
He said library officials will enforce a smoke-free area at Mugar’s entrance.
“No one wants to walk into the library and get like a huge breath of smoke in their face,” he said. “They’re going to set up a perimeter . . . and they’ll also have no smoking signs.”
Shukla said administrators’ decision not to change bag-checking policy stems from concern about protecting the library’s resources and students’ possessions.
“Mugar Library has over $65 million worth of insured materials,” Shukla said.
Battaglino said after the meeting that he appreciates students working to make changes.
“We always say, raise an issue and let’s address it,” he said. “There’s a lot of caring administrators . . . who want to at least listen to students and address their concerns.”
Union President and CAS and School of Management senior James Sappenfield said he likes the library policy proposals.
“I think it’s fantastic,” he said. “It’s adjusting to a modern situation because in the library right now, the reality is, is that people are drinking all the time.”
Social Affairs Director and CAS sophomore Kathryn Fitzgerald said she is happy with the passing of the amendment that will give student groups representation in Union after the dissolution of the consortia.
“I am so pleased, mostly because it’s just in time for me to get an application together for next semester and things will be sent once and for all, in a sustainable fashion,” she said. “There was only one abstention, everyone else approved.”
Sappenfield also said after meeting with administrators that the $2,000 for the Student Elections Commission to run elections will come out of the budget this year, but that will change with next year’s budget.
“The reason that the $2,000 is coming from our budget is that budgets were done for the year so there was really no way for them to go back and redo the budget, which I think is perfectly legitimate,” he said.
At the last GA, Union officials had expressed concerns that the Student Activities Office had broken its promise to fund the SEC separately from Union’s budget. Sappenfield said the miscommunication about funding for this year may have come from the length of the process of the amendment.
“Everyone was planning on that to happen for this year but then because the amendment took so long to put in place . . . they ended up allocating the money ahead of time,” he said.
SEC Chairman and CAS senior Jeff Maynard said he thinks the decision is reasonable.
“Union was given a specific amount of money to do a certain job,” Maynard said. “The SEC is now fulfilling one of their job requirements so the Union loses that money.”
Union Residence Life Committee Chairman Jared Kleiman, who was the only Union sponsor of the amendment, said he is satisfied with the result.
“I’m happy that the future of the SEC is secured . . . it won’t be coming out of the Union budget after this year,” he said.
Sappenfield said Union is also continuing work on the steering initiative, which aims to improve student understanding of Union.
“We’re still working on getting responses and surveys, those should be done sometime this week hopefully,” Sappenfield said.
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