Associated Student Government will kick off business with its first Winter Quarter meeting tonight, but officers and senators are not simply concerned with bills on the docket.
Many ASG members’ goals for the quarter will center on promoting upcoming campus events and providing students with access to online information.
Much of the ASG Executive Board’s focus now is on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Day activities, which for the first time will match NU student mentors with local high school and elementary school students.
To promote campus awareness of MLK Day activities, Academic Vice President Tamara Kagel, a Communication junior, found a sponsor to provide 8,000 buttons for people in the campus community to wear.
Kagel said the pins would be distributed to campus mailboxes and by ASG senators at The Rock. They can also be picked up at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall on Jan. 20.
ASG President Rachel Lopez, who has lobbied for the creation of the MLK Day program, said plans are progressing smoothly.
Lopez also stressed that although university only officially observes MLK Day from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., the mentoring program will extend it to a day-long celebration.
“Hopefully it will be something like a spiderweb,” she said. “People who are actively involved will help get other people involved.”
ASG officers are also concerned with improving communication to students online through HereAndNow.
Officers are thinking about creating a frequently-asked-questions database in response to student postings on the soon-to-be-created www.purplepit.net. A bill passed Fall Quarter authorized the online forum’s creation.
“It’s basically a place to inform students about why something should be this way,” said Mike Fong, student services vice president.
Fong’s committee is also interested in revamping the online book exchange. Fong, a Weinberg junior, said his committee hopes to have the site up and running by Spring Quarter.
“No one knows about it, but it’s good to have a student marketplace,” he said.
Ben Cherry, ASG external relations chairman, will work on moving the off-campus living guide to an online format. That would make the guide more usable, he said.
“The biggest challenge is finding a way to get students to use it,” he added.
While the details of these projects are being honed, senators will vote tonight on three pieces of old legislation.
One bill urges the Undergraduate Budget Priorities Committee to lobby for Blomquist Recreation Center improvements. The other two bills involve internal ASG affairs. One would shorten the time a campuswide referendum is binding and the other would eliminate a bylaw that bars the appointment of senators after the third senate meeting each quarter.
A bill to provide a discount to student groups relying on University Police for event coverage likely will be introduced, as well as legislation that will look to expand the option of target grading to Weinberg students.
