ASG Senate passed legislation Wednesday that will give $1,000 to the Center for Student Involvement’s planned event, “NU Day at the United Center,” a university trip to a Chicago Bulls game.
Weinberg senior Ian Coley was among the few outspoken opponents of the legislation, concerned by the lack of detail in CSI’s budget proposal for the event. Coley warned against funding an event that does not yet have any other sponsors.
McCormick senior Motoki Mizoguchi proposed an amendment to the legislation with a suggestion that CSI should push back the intended date of the event, which is currently slotted for a day either during spring break or the first week of winter quarter.
“I just thought that the dates that were proposed by CSI didn’t really fit the schedule of the students,” said Mizoguchi. “Also knowing that the best player on the Bulls (Derrick Rose) is injured and might have a chance to recover by the time March rolls around, I felt like it was our duty as representatives to voice that students would rather watch a game where the all-star is there.”
Mizoguchi’s amendment passed by a slim 22-18-3 vote, and ASG later passed the amended legislation in its entirety.
ASG also created a committee composed of senators and Rainbow Alliance members that will work to put more gender-neutral bathrooms on campus.
“It is definitely an important step that we got ASG working with us on this,” said Weinberg junior Paul Koscumb, the Rainbow Alliance ASG senator. “I think that the administration is going to be more receptive to anything that an ASG committee comes up with than maybe an individual student group working by itself.”
The Senate also created a working group that will aid students in communicating with the administration and nuCuisine to potentially change dining hall hours and weekend dining locations.
Other Senate proceedings included:
• ASG will now use preferential voting when electing students to committees instead of plural voting. Preferential voting involves continuously ranking and eliminating candidates until the number of remaining candidates matches the number of open committee seats. With plural voting, the candidates who receive the most votes will be elected, even if they don’t have the majority. Ian Coley, who authored the legislation suggesting this switch, asked if the record could indicate that the Senate passed it unanimously. Speaker of the Senate Ani Ajith joked, “Put it on your resume, man.”
• ASG passed a resolution that will send the administration data from a recent examination of lighting on campus led by Weinberg junior Jane Gilmore, ASG’s Director of Campus Safety.