Boston University’s Student Government discussed a meal plan program for Muslim students participating in Iftar and approved various funding requests Monday night.
Dhruv Kapadia, student body president and a senior in College of Arts and Sciences, opened the meeting by explaining a new meal program to provide meals to on-campus Muslim students participating in Iftar during Ramadan after the Dean of Students Office stopped subsidizing the meals this year.
Kapadia said the meal program would charge one meal swipe for students living on campus. However, Kapadia explained that there would be a “significant financial burden for Muslim students who lived off campus or did not have a meal plan.”
“If you do not have a meal plan, it would cost $20 every single Iftar meal,” Kapadia said. “That’s roughly three weeks worth of meals on campus, which is incredibly burdensome.”
Kapadia said Marsh Chapel “was able to subsidize it down from $20 to $10 per meal.” In response, StuGov then subsidized the lowered cost, now making each meal free for students without a meal plan.
“The community really comes together and that’s when it’s important to not have there be financial barriers,” Kapadia said. “We did all we could to make sure it’s as accessible as possible.”
In a presentation, BU Upsilon Pi Epsilon, an honor society dedicated to “promoting academic excellence” in technical and computing disciplines, requested $269.82 to support newly recruited members for the society.
Thinh Nguyen, treasurer of BU UPE said that new members are usually assigned to work on a software project to provide them with direct, “hands on” experiences in software development.
Nguyen and BU UPE Director of Marketing Sai Nayunipati discussed previous projects the society has done, including the Terrier Course Alert Bot that notifies users of open seats during course registration and the TradeZone Stock Analyzer that “inputs recent news into a financial NLP model to gauge investment sentiment.”
Nayunipati said that the funding would be used to develop new members’ “technical skills” and “create projects that in turn support the organization and the BU community.”
HackHardware, a BU club “dedicated to bridging the gap between hardware and software engineering,” requested $985.73 for catering during a Hackathon being held later this month.
Marianne Palmieri, president of HackHardware, said the club has hosted a yearly Hackathon since spring 2021 although the switch to in-person hackathons starting in 2022 was difficult considering there were “a lot of new factors to take into account like food, venue and lots of costs.”
“Catering is going to increase attention rate, interest and overall just the general experience for the students,” said Christian Hanson, a member of the club’s Sponsorship Committee.
The Senate approved both clubs’ funding requests.
