The Associated Student Government Senate meeting opened Wednesday with Weinberg junior and Speaker of the Senate Kaitlyn Salgado-Alvarez swearing in ASG’s new officers, including its new co-Presidents, McCormick junior James La Fayette Jr. and Weinberg sophomore Jamal Omoniyi.
Senators then voted to pass three resolutions introduced last week, including to introduce American Sign Language courses at Northwestern, to open Bienen School of Music practice rooms to non-majors and to pass the RISE Bill, which encourages the creation of a student-run business directory.
Many senators showed vocal support for the bill encouraging NU to create ASL courses.
“I can’t buy, as a Northwestern senator, UChicago doing something better than us,” Communication junior and Senator Ryan Lien said, in reference to the University of Chicago already having its own ASL program.
NU is the only Big Ten school not to offer any ASL courses, according to the resolution.
Only one new resolution was introduced this week, by Medill junior Luis Castañeda, a former Daily staffer.
“One day I was cooking, and I chopped into my thumb,” Castañeda said. “What made my night worse was when I went outside (afterward) and my bike was gone.”
This is how Castañeda introduced his BRAKE resolution, which stands for Bicycle Recovery and Allocation for Knowledgable Engagement and aims to simplify NU’s relationship with abandoned bikes.
Castañeda said his difficult search for a bike after that fateful night led him to take notice of all the seemingly abandoned bikes on campus decorated with purple tags. His epiphany prompted him to email the University asking if he could call one of these bikes his own.
He was quickly shot down.
NU Facilities Management currently donates some tagged bikes to Working Bikes, a refurbishing organization based in the West Side of Chicago, and some to The Recyclery, based in Rogers Park. While Castañeda agrees with its mission, he said he believes all of NU’s ownerless bikes should be sent to closer organizations like The Recyclery, instead of organizations further away.
Beyond increasing ties with The Recyclery, the BRAKE resolution aims to establish an official partnership between the University and The Bike Project, an abandoned bike reselling organization. Castañeda is the treasurer of NU’s chapter. The bill drew wide support.
Weinberg sophomore Adam Djoudi was sworn in as interim senator. As a Chicago native, he said he always took note of the amount of abandoned bikes on campus when biking to NU as a child. His interest in bikes started when he opened a bike resale business when he was 15, leading him to support the BRAKE resolution.
“I came from Loyola as a transfer, and they actually have an initiative that’s similar,” Djoudi said. “I think something like that at Northwestern would be super useful.”
Weinberg sophomore and Analytics co-Chair Roberto Borsetti said he plans to continue making students’ voices heard through ASG analytics committee surveys.
“Right now we’re in our proposal writing sessions,” Borsetti said. “We’re looking toward targeting issues that are seen across the student body and look toward presenting them to the administration at the end of the year.”
While ASG Senate will not meet next week, senators will be busy this weekend reviewing student groups’ funding applications for the upcoming Student Activities Finance Committee meeting May 28.
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