Boston University Student Government confirmed various positions, including senate committee chairs and the senate vice chair, and approved an Innovate@BU endorsement in their first in-person meeting since Spring 2020 Monday night.
The meeting began with the confirmation of College of Arts and Sciences sophomore Hanna Dworkin as Senate Vice Chair.
Dworkin said she intended to focus on student outreach by sending out a simple outline of every Senate meeting to the population.
“As Vice Chair, I just want to get the … Senate out there,” Dworkin said. “[The sample is going to be] very clear, concise, we get people [to read it] and hopefully from that people will get involved,” she said.
Dworkin was confirmed with 35 out of 36 votes.
Confirmations continued with senate committee chairs for the Expect More Committee, the Representation Oversight Committee and the Rules Committee.
The Expect More Committee collects and analyzes data for Senate proposals. Richard Segalman, a junior in the Questrom School of Business, ran successfully as a candidate for chair of the committee.
“Nothing in this Senate really gets passed without any data,” Segalman said, noting the credit/no credit proposal that passed in the Senate last year but failed with administration partly due to a lack of supporting statistics.
Segalman said he planned to work on collecting data about student debt, which he intends to present to StuGov at the end of the semester.
“We hope to pass that,” he said. “You guys can get that to BIG [Boston Intercollegiate Government] and hopefully get that through toward the actual Boston government and maybe into the White House.”
Segalman was confirmed with 33 out of 36 votes in the affirmative.
The Representation Oversight Committee was created after a discussion last semester to create a committee to better represent groups without official representation in Student Government following debates regarding StuGov’s representation of Kilachand Honors College.
CAS sophomore Adam Shamsi worked over the summer as ROC chair and sought re-election.
“I came from a low-income high school, a majority/minority high school, and over and over, I saw representation, especially student representation in the eyes of administration overlooked in favor of admins who are often whiter, often older, and often male,” Shamsi said. “Turns out we have a lot of the same problems.”
Shamsi said he was working on gaining representation for KHC, the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies and potentially the new Center for Computing and Data Sciences.
“There is no current way in which these new colleges will have Senate seats,” Shamsi said.
Shamsi was confirmed with 32 out of 36 votes in the affirmative.
The meeting continued with Senate Resolution 2, which seeks to recognize Student Government’s partnership with Innovate@BU on the “Wellbeing Project.”
Innovate@BU’s Wellbeing Challenge is a chance for students to “develop recommendations, interventions, events, traditions, ventures and more that will foster community wellbeing,” according to the Eventbrite for the event, after a year in a pandemic.
With the resolution’s passing, StuGov would help promote the challenge, select winners, facilitate discussions at the Kick-Off Ideathon and ultimately co-sponsor the event.
“It’s all about making sure that people are taking care of their health and well-being,” said Hessann Farooqi, a CAS senior and executive vice president of StuGov. Farooqi noted proposed projects could include anything from digital campaigns to policy changes.
The resolution passed with 34 out of 36 votes in the affirmative
