The Associated Students of the University of Arizona, the university’s undergraduate student governing body, met on Wednesday, Nov. 17 to discuss the development of their senate initiative.
The meeting was called to order at 7:09 p.m. and adjourned at 7:54 p.m. The senate gathered in the Mesquite Room of the Student Union Memorial Center and over Zoom.
According to ASUA’s post-meeting minutes, four senators were marked absent during roll call: Edda Anderson, senator for the Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health; Jack Haskins, senator for the College of Fine Arts; Jack Healy, senator for the Eller College of Management and Louise Lalescu, senator for the College of Science.
Senate Initiatives
ASUA continues to search for a solution to the lack of facilities open 24 hours for students on campus.
In order for the Main Library to stay open 24/7, the facility would need to receive an extra $1 million in funding annually, according to ASUA Executive Vice President Ally Devereux. This money would go to paying staff to work these hours. ASUA Student Body President Noah Vega met with UA President Dr. Robert C. Robbins to discuss this initiative. According to Vega, Robbins was interested in finding the funds necessary to keep the library open at these hours or even finding other spots on campus that could accomplish this goal.
Vega stressed the importance of each senator reaching out to the deans of their respective colleges in order to get these colleges to show their support for the initiative. He also reminded the senators present that, despite the challenges they have faced in trying to make it happen, the library initiative has made progress in the past few weeks by speaking with administrators about securing funding.
“It’s so easy to almost forget about the initiative once you reach that roadblock, but with the conversations that we had and the amount that we were actually able to accomplish in the past month or so is quick compared to other projects,” said Vega.
Fostering Success Joins ASUA
Fostering Success will officially join ASUA’s programming in January 2022 after years of being a part of the Thrive Center.
The organization supports students who were in the foster care system, unaccompanied homeless or housing insecure. They do this through mentorship programs and professional programs.
They will be joining the Basic Needs Initiative according to Ex-Officio Associate Dean Sylvester Gaskin. Fostering Success has been making this transition for at least three years. He said they want to work closer with other student organizations on campus and thought ASUA would be a good way to do that.
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“This campus really doesn’t do a lot of basic needs work. It’s the students who do it and it’s housed in the student government,” Gaskin said. “The students are leading the charge … and [they] wanted to be somewhere where that’s really respected.”
Notable Mentions
ASUA changed their meeting location. They will now meet in the Mesquite Room at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesdays. They previously met in the Madera Room of the Student Union Memorial Center.
Devereux said that they are continuing to hire senators for the last three colleges. Right now there are two applications for the College of Medicine. She is unsure if there are applicants for the last two colleges: College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and College of Optical Sciences.
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