The Associated Students of the University of Arizona, UA’s undergraduate student government, received a presentation from UA Policy and Compliance, the UA Bookstore and Feminists Organized to Resist, Create, and Empower, approved funding for SafeRide and announced they are over budget for club funding.

Funding Requests and Club Funding 

ASUA approved funding to help SafeRide purchase an electric car, which is a joint effort with Students for Sustainability to increase sustainable travel. SafeRide is an ASUA program that students can call to request a ride to or from campus for free. 

ASUA unanimously approved SafeRide’s requested $5,000. 

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ASUA approved funding for Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, Baja Racing Team, Club Latino, Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers, Theatre Artists and Performers, Filipino American Student Association, Damascus Road and Global Health Interest Group. ASUA is over its budget by over $8,000. 

“We are over our budget at the moment,” said Matthew Rein, executive vice president. “We’re going to go back and do partial requests and see who has not spent their money, so that number is not exactly $8,000. It’s probably net neutral or probably will still be in the black.”

UA Policy/Compliance, Bookstore and FORCE Presentations

There are two proposed policy changes regarding acceptable use and privacy policy. 

“You may or may not be aware of the performance audit that the university underwent over the past year,” said Lanita Collette, chief information security officer. “One of the pillars of that performance audit was information security.”

The university is introducing a privacy statement after it was determined that information security practices needed to be updated.

Then Cindy Hawk, assistant director of the UA Bookstore, explained how textbooks are priced under the inclusive access program, which she said has “substantially made a difference.”

Katie Christopher, senator for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and Madeline Melichar, senator for the College of Engineering, asked about the effectiveness of the inclusive access program. 

Hawk said the inclusive access program is the cheapest way for students to access textbooks, because the bookstore price matches their competitors. 

Then Keely Davis, co-director of FORCE, said the vision of the program is to create an intersectional feminist community on campus. FORCE is a feminist program run through ASUA. 

“We do campus collaborative events,” said Brigette Villasenor, co-director of FORCE. “We try to partner with other cultural centers or the Women and Gender Resource Center itself.”

FORCE participates in the Slutwalk on campus and hosts empowering events and speakers. 

Resolutions

At-large senator Rocque Perez said he wants to see a place created within ASUA that brings all of the cultural centers together. 

“Something that I found very interesting was that [Arizona State University] and a lot of other campuses, they have various entities around campus where they centralize marginalized students … and centralize them in a way where you can receive training,” Perez said. 

Perez said he is currently writing a resolution that would advocate for this centralized area and address protections allocated for immigrant students.   

Noah Huang, senator for the College of Fine Arts, discussed his resolution addressing the stigma around mental health on campus. Huang said he hopes to get the resolution passed at the next senate meeting.

“What I wanted to do with this resolution was a number of things: destigmatize mental health and illness, raise awareness for mental health and encourage students both affected and those who are supporting those who are affected to know the resources, know how to properly handle these kinds of situations,” Huang said. 

The resolution is supported by the Student Health Advocacy Committee, an ASUA program. 

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Senator for the Eller College of Management Michelle Mendoza discussed her resolution intending to bring awareness to Title IX resources on campus.

“Even though it’s getting hard in Title IX to feel like they can come forward, they still have support from ASUA to be able to come forward,” Mendoza said. 

Bylaw Changes

Kate Rosenstengel, administrative vice president, said the bylaws for Students for Sustainability, Pride Alliance and VolunteerUA all have proposed changes. 

“It’s your responsibility as senator to read the changes, so if there’s something in there that you don’t like that you find out in the future, and you could have said it next week, then that’s on you,” Rein said to the senators.

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