Boston University Student Government fleshed out in a Monday night meeting a series of events focusing on student well-being, as well as a bill to create more transparency in requests for funding and meeting minutes.
Katharine Mooney, director of BU Wellness and Prevention, said the month-long event series — called Terriers Thrive Together — was created by the Wellbeing Project, a campus-wide initiative to support students’ mental health.
Terriers Strive Together will feature events that promote student health, including the annual depression screening coming up Thursday that the University participates in yearly. An email will invite students to participate in an anonymous screening and they receive personalized feedback and resources.
The University has also partnered with Wellnest to offer free access to the Wellnest Journal app, which is currently undergoing beta testing. Students with Apple devices can sign up this semester.
“We know that how you feel matters,” Mooney said. “We know this is a really, really challenging time for all kinds of reasons.”
Mooney also highlighted an upcoming Community Impact Challenge that aims to produce solutions to issues surrounding well-being.
“It’s going to give students an opportunity to put forth ideas for supporting well-being in all of our communities,” Mooney said.
Selected teams and students will receive a $500 seed grant to fund the creation and implementation of their idea, Mooney said, as well as access to workshops and experts to help guide execution.
The other major item on the agenda was deliberation over a bill, the Senate Transparency and Accountability Act, introduced this year.
The bill includes creating a public Google Drive so students could access minutes of StuGov Senate meetings easily and implementing a deadline for student groups requesting funds.
Sen. Hessann Farooqi, a CAS junior, discussed the next section of the bill, which outlined procedures for managing these funding requests.
“Now sometimes what’s happened in the past is that not all the groups have all their ducks in a row,” Farooqi said. “Obviously, planning an event is super, super complicated, I understand. But we also want to make sure that we’re getting the full information when we are using our Senate budget.”
The bill, Farooqi added, will mandate that those proposing funding requests include the amount they plan to spend, where the money will be allocated and any vendors they may use.
Other senators, including Sen. Samantha Casas, a CAS junior, raised concerns over this section of the bill.
“I could see how … this could hinder certain people,” Casas said. “We have to understand that there is going to be times when completely outside-Student-Government people are going to come and make proposals, and having things like specific vendor information is going to be extremely difficult.”
Other concerns lay in the length of time groups have to get their funding ready. The initial bill proposal mandated that all groups requesting funding send materials to StuGov three days before the meeting the proposal is scheduled for.
Sen. Shaina Evans, CAS junior, raised concerns over the deadline.
“I’m not sure writing it into the bylaws is something that would be appropriate,” Evans said, “considering that that three-day rule is up to the discretion of the Senate chair.”
The Senate removed the three-day deadline from the bill. With two abstentions, the legislation passed by a margin of 31 votes.
