Associated Student Government held its first Senate meeting of the new year Wednesday, outlining proposed legislation for the quarter and discussing ASG support for Body Acceptance Week and the need for increased openness within legislative initiatives.
ASG President Ani Ajith discussed the initiative to promote more transparency within Senate through creating an online documentation of ASG events.
“We’re working on a playbook right now,” said Ajith, a Weinberg senior and former Daily staffer. “It’s a record of every single project, initiative and event that happens. We’ll record everything about it. We’ll be publishing it online for anyone, everyone to see.”
Senate also outlined its project to institute new measures promoting better communication within ASG, specifically within the Diversity and Inclusion and Sustainability committees.
Due to low attendance, Senate was unable to vote on legislation. Voting was delayed on initiatives including Hoop for Haiyan, a collaboration with the Northwestern athletic department to raise money for recovery from Typhoon Haiyan, which hit the Philippines in November. The proposed event is a basketball tournament that would send proceeds to victims of the typhoon through the “Hope After Haiyan” campaign. Senate plans to vote on the delayed measures at its Jan. 15 meeting.
During the meeting, Alex Van Atta, ASG executive vice president, touted the success of the 10K Initiative, noting it received 203 submissions, surpassing the goal of 200. The 10K Initiative committee will review the submissions through the quarter and limit them to five to seven ideas to be presented to Senate at the end of quarter and eventually voted on by the student body, Van Atta said.
Ajith also recommended using $200 from the Senate Project Pool to contribute to the funding for Body Acceptance Week’s keynote speaker, Lisa Lee, the diversity program manager for Facebook and the former publisher of Hyphen Magazine.
A $200 donation would cover 10 percent of the cost of the speaker, Ajith said.
“She does amazing things,” Ajith said. “She has a great website. She’s very accomplished for someone very young and she does really cool things. She’s very much someone who is cutting edge and has a great platform to talk about some of these issues, and we’d love to be part of that.”
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