The Student Association Senate passed a flurry of legislation Monday, advancing lobbying campaigns for the Board of Trustees to add a student seat and for GW police to improve its emergency blue light system.
The Senate unanimously passed a bill that will charge a group of students with laying the groundwork to seek representation on the Board. They will spend the next four months studying the benefits of a voting student member and comparing other schools.
Sen. Chris Stillwell, ESIA-U, who will spearhead the policy research, said the effort was prompted by lackluster University responses to scandals, such as last month’s highly publicized shift from a need-blind admissions policy.
“Because of recent issues in terms of transparency for the University, students should have a more vocal role in what is happening,” Stillwell said.
The Board of Trustees, which decides how GW spends its $1 billion budget, allows a handful of students to sit in on committee meetings, but none can attend the closed-door sessions or cast a vote on University decisions.
The Senate also unanimously passed a resolution, sponsored by Sen. Marshall Cohen, CCAS-U, urging the University to upgrade the blue light phone system and to install more blue light phones across the Foggy Bottom campus.
“The intention of the resolution is not to rail on the administration,” he said. “It is about ensuring that what we have can be used to its fullest potential to provide a safe community.”
University Police Chief Kevin Hay told The Hatchet last week that he did not consider the blue light system a threat to student safety. He said the system is checked for glitches twice a week, and officers respond within two minutes of a blue light activation.
But sophomore Megan Mattson told the Hatchet on Monday that it took officers 15 minutes to arrive at Square 80, where she and some friends said they were chased by a stranger last year.
“When the officers finally came, they were not in a rush. They were meandering and they hadn’t even asked us what happened,” she said. “It was not too dire of a situation luckily, but a lot can happen in 15 minutes.”
The third bill solidified budgeting practices for graduate student organizations, which had already loosely been in place. Graduate student umbrella organizations are now allocated money based on how many students are in that school with current fiscal year numbers, instead of projections.
For example, the Student Bar Association, which distributes funds to multiple GW Law School groups, will be given the amount of funding based on how many students are in the Law School, rather than the mid-year projections.
