Illustration by: Maddie Bataille | Photo Editior
This week from Student Senate: Dylan Murdock, a first-year student studying sustainability and food systems presented a proposal to promote composting on campus. He wants to start composting in dining halls.
According to Murdock, the dining halls spend around $60,000 per year on operations and giving away their organic waste to a third-party composting company.
“We’re eating carcinogens, microplastics and these can all be reduced in many ways. The easy solution right now is just adding compost and organic fertilizer to our farms,” Murdock said.
Murdock added that he has a road map for how the Student Senate can help. He proposed creating a sustainability committee within the Senate to spread awareness about composting.
Afterward, they started the nominations and elections for additional positions. They started with the jurist nominees which were Colin Murphy, Cristian Verela and Chris Habr. With 14 ayes and 11 abstentions, Murphy was confirmed.
With 13 aye and eight abstentions, Verela was confirmed. After voting for Verela, Chair Lauren Peckham pointed out that the reason there are many abstentions and no’s is due to the fact that there are no women being chosen for the jury. Peckham felt that because the court was all male, the Senate was missing a whole section of representation.
“I feel like having a report that only consists of males is not representative and that’s not what the courts should be doing,” Peckham said. “Also, implicit bias is a very real thing, my concern is that implicit bias will arise in future meetings.”
President Ramez Rizk agreed that it’s a concern that women weren’t chosen for the jury. He said he and Vice President Jonah Steinweh-Adler didn’t mean to not include female-identifying students, they only included students who were interested in the position.
“I explained that this will not have an effect on any meeting and I can assure you that 100% I really care and want to represent everybody within the Senate,” Rizk said. “I’m not trying to be biased in any way. The people that I nominate are simply the people that I trust the most; they will be the most unbiased and professional people.”
At the end, Steinweh-Adler said these kinds of concerns should be addressed before the meeting and the other members agreed.
After the discussion, Habr still needed to be confirmed/not confirmed so they voted to either address this during this meeting or the next one. After deliberation, they voted and Habr was not confirmed.
Then, they had four other elections.. For off-campus representatives, the nominees were Rose Walding, Kendal Mcloskey and Isabella Neighbors. They were all confirmed.
For the on-campus representative, the nominee was Madeline Clyde and she was confirmed. Grace Keller was confirmed for the College of Education and Professional Studies and Zac Kelling was confirmed for College of Engineering.
After the representatives were sworn in, new business was addressed. There were seven bills about new clubs, including a rifle club. Chair Johnson said President Marc Parlange, Chief Michael Jagoda and Student Affairs were on board with it. He stated there was controversy in the past but as long as a firearm is not seen in a car or on campus outside of the club. If found, the student would be expelled from the group.
“The big thing the club wants to promote is firearm safety,” Johnson said. “This isn’t meant to be associated with assault weapons, it’s meant for an Olympic sport.”
The Senate added there will be a forum on their website for students who have an issue with a professor or class.
The Senate will meet again on Wednesday, April 26.