SGA approves one of two resolutions at second semester meeting
The Student Government Association introduced its second meeting of the 2017 spring semester with available positions that are up for grabs.
Students filled the Bovee University Center Auditorium and were eager to see change in the Central Michigan University community.
House Leader Cody Van Buren introduced the available positions, which were house clerk, house pro tempore, parliamentarian, Membership Committee, Student Budget Allocation Committee and Hardship Committee.
Committee leaders gave updates on what was discussed at their individual meetings.
Each committee was given two resolutions to vote for. The first was a resolution to support the creation of an annual local candidate forum.
The Senate put this resolution on the floor for discussion.
SGA Vice President Anna Owens took the floor to discuss the work she did last year with the Governmental Affairs Committee.
“We held the local candidate’s forum for this past election cycle and it was a big success,” Owens said. “We had a lot of different candidates come in and they discussed their platforms and what their involvement specifically is with CMU students.”
The audience began to discuss making a precinct available on campus. Owens added that they have been looking into it for a while.
“Since CMU’s campus is split into two different voting districts, it is not something that we have been able to do so far,” Owens said. “It is something on more of the county level.”
The first resolution was passed by the committees. The second resolution, which involves the implementation of a Gender and Sexuality Center on campus, was opened.
“The Gender and Sexuality Center is a very dire thing to be implemented into our school,” said SGA President Jazmin Biernat.
Biernat was given permission to speak informally on the resolution in support of the creation of a Gender and Sexuality Center.
“The Gender and Sexuality Center is a combination of the Women Center with the LGBTQ+ center,” Biernat said. “Our goal is to get this implemented for next year."
The proposal is available on SGA's OrgSync page for anybody to access.
Information from the Barthwell Group study was included in the proposal. The Barthwell Group is a research group that came to CMU last year and interviewed administrators and students, who filled out surveys about diversity on campus.
According to an audience member, there had been an issue with the Barthwell Group study that Owens was not aware of.
“It’s kind of interesting that we already have some centers but we don’t have something as generic as a women’s center already on campus,” Owens said.
Because of the issue with the Barthwell Group study the committees voted to leave the resolution on the table to address at the next meeting on Jan. 30.
To end the meeting, Van Buren showed the names of the Academic Senates which were then approved by the committees.
