Boston University Student Government confirmed funding requests from two organizations and an endorsement seeking to rename 610 Beacon Street, the dormitory known as Myles Standish Hall, in a meeting Monday night.
The first order of business was a request from Representation Oversight Committee Chair Adam Shamsi, who requested $340 in funding for items related to tabling. Items included 12 beanies and 100 stress relief toys to be handed out while the ROC talks to students passing by tables in the George Sherman Union.
“[The items] is just incentives for people to come to our table,” Shamsi explained. “The beanies will be [given out] if somebody actually fills out a survey or gives a meaningful response to a question.”
The funding request was approved with 38 votes.
Funding requests continued as Students for Reproductive Freedom requested $2,000 from Boston University Senate for purchasing 333 NightCap Scrunchies to be sold in their Plan B Vending Machine in the GSU basement.
After technical issues with a smaller machine, the vending machine was expanded to a larger size, providing SRF “the opportunity to offer more products that promote sexual health and safety to the BU community.”
Boston Police Department has received 73 drink spiking cases throughout 2022, according to the NBC Boston reporting on Oct.28. SRF intends to promote these values through the sale of NightCap Scrunchies, designed with pantyhose, to prevent drinks from being spiked.
“There have been a lot of sexual education courses offered through the University so far about spiking and about sexual assaults, preventions and like all of this stuff,” said Senator Jessica Sullivan, a College of Arts and Sciences junior. “The programs are inflated by the university and quite frankly, aren’t working.”
Chief Justice Ilana Keusch discussed how the reusable nature of the NightCap scrunchies made them a valuable and effective resource for students.
“This isn’t something you get right before you leave,” she said. “This is something you have with you as a protective measure at all times, like pepper spray.”
The NightCap Scrunchies would follow the same standard of cheap pricing that SRF’s Plan B products standardized. Because of SRF’s ability to buy in bulk, the NightCaps would be sold for $6.00 as opposed to the $12.00 offered for individual purchases on the company’s website.
The SRF funding request passed with 40 votes in the affirmative.
The meeting continued with a vote over StuGov’s endorsement of an open letter seeking to rename 610 Beacon Street, known as Myles Standish Hall. Last year, over 900 students petitioned to rename Myles Standish Hall.
Myles Standish was a Plymouth colony military leader known for the Wessagusset Massacre, during which he murdered members of the Neponset band.
President Robert Brown rejected that petition in March, writing that Standish was “a capable and flawed individual whose responsibility was the defense of his community in a precarious time” and that “to remove his name from the residence hall would discount his significant role in our history.”
This year, the petition has over 1,590 signatures. It continues to seek to rename 610 Beacon Street as “Wituwamat Memorial Hall,” following a recommendation from the Massachusett tribe at Ponkapoag.
However, it also demands further steps from the University, outlined in an open letter sent to all BU student organizations to sign. The letter requests BU create a plaque “to be displayed inside and outside the building detailing the history of the Wessagusset Massacre” and “develop and fund initiatives to support Native students, faculty and staff, and local Indigenous communities as peer institutions like UCLA, MIT, and many others have done.”
The endorsement passed with 38 votes.
