On Thursday March 13th, the Undergraduate Senate General Body Meeting took place. Senators discussed upcoming events such as the SPIRIT fashion show, as well as advocacy updates and meetings with Pittsburgh politicians. 22 senators and proxies were in attendance, barely passing the minimum attendance requirement to hold the meeting.
Spirit Fashion Show
The first order of business was a vote on providing additional funding for the upcoming SPIRIT fashion show. A SPIRIT representative argued that the funding was necessary, as this event drew about 300 students every year and they had about 100 people working on the show.
As for the reason behind this additional cost, SPIRIT required to hire an outside company to handle Audio/Visual elements. Although SPIRIT had initially registered with AB Tech, AB Tech jumped ship to host an event with Greek Sing scheduled for the same date as the fashion show.
In what was described as a “hostile takeover,” Greek Sing organizers purportedly pushed SPIRIT to change the date of their show, but SPIRIT had already paid for other services, such as catering, on that date.
The representative’s request for additional funding was approved by the JFC in a unanimous vote preceding the Undergraduate Senate’s own vote on the matter. The amount of funding totaled to $3500, which is only a third of the total cost, the rest covered by donations, crowdfunding, and money from canceled events that SPIRIT sacrificed earlier in the year.
Despite all of this, the Representative noted that SPIRIT may end up breaking even or with a deficit for the event.
In the Undergraduate Senate, the vote needed a simple majority of 50 percent to pass, and passed nearly unanimously with a 20-0-2 vote.
Advocacy Committee Updates
The advocacy committee reviewed previous events and discussed upcoming meetings of importance to the Undergraduate senate and the student body as a whole.
A town hall meeting hosted by GSA with the current mayor of Pittsburgh Ed Gainey, initially proposed by the Graduate Student Senate, is taking place on Tuesday, March 18th from 5:15-6:30 pm at Tepper Simmons B 1101.
The Senate was charged with advertising the event to spread awareness and encourage participation without endorsing any particular candidate or party. The committee hopes that this will be the first of many such opportunities for students to get involved politically on and off campus.
Later in the meeting, it was noted that the Advocacy Committee is now attempting to organize a mayoral debate on-campus, planning to invite all current and future candidates, again emphasizing political neutrality.
The committee also reviewed the Undergraduate Senate’s trip to DC before spring break. While enjoying the sites of the center of our government, they spoke with the chiefs of staff of two senators, Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and Cory Booker (D-NJ). They spoke about federal funding, student visas, DEI programming, and more.
Lastly, the operations committee is helping set up a cultural food event on Monday, March 24th in the CUC from 5:00-7:00 PM.The event will be led by various student organizations, with at least six required for the event to be finally greenlit. Assuming this requirement is met, each organization will be provided with $400 to make 40 servings of “culturally themed food.”
Academic Affairs is also hosting an event on Wednesday, March 19th for freshman students to give feedback about Core@CMU, the required introduction course for CMU students, serving as a replacement for Computing@Carnegie Mellon, the previous version of this course.
Senate Week
The next order of business was an overview of senate week, which will feature treats like sundaes and smores alongside a day of inflatable obstacle courses. The presenter argued that this was a way to ensure that the Undergraduate Student Senate budget directly benefits students. These events are happening the week of March 24-28th, right outside of Doherty Hall from 5-7 PM.
Wrap-up
The meeting concluded with the Senate president, Francesca Cain, a junior in electrical and computer engineering and biomedical engineering, noting that despite a recent lull in Undergraduate Student Senate activity, this week and those to follow may be far more hectic, especially as voting comes to a close and changes are on the horizon for this branch of student government.
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