The Allegheny Student Government honored Danielle Duncan, discussed shared governance and set satirical publication The Krampus on the road to ASG recognition at their General Assembly on Tuesday, Nov. 15.
The GA started with a moment of silence for Duncan, who was killed last Friday, Nov. 11 in a traffic accident in Mercer County.
“Over the past few days, I have heard time and time again how appreciative Danielle was of the Allegheny community, and I’m certain she would be proud of us now,” said Senator Lorenzo Scarnati, ’26, who introduced the moment of silence. “The show of support at Monday’s vigil was incredible, and those who spoke provided wonderful insight into Danielle’s life at Allegheny.”
Following the moment of silence, Dean for Student Success Ian Binnington also spoke, sharing both the resources made available to students that week and his own reflections on the tragedy.
“Nobody in my position wants to get the call that I got on Saturday morning, and yet I cannot imagine how much worse the call must have been to Danielle’s parents on Friday night,” Binnington said. “I don’t have words to express the depth of my sorrow and the depth of our sorrow as a community.”
Binnington added that Interim Dean of Students Trae Yeckley had spoken to Duncan’s father.
“He has expressed gratitude for the support of the Allegheny community,” Binnington said. “He has expressed how much his daughter felt a part of the Allegheny community and how much she enjoyed being here.”
In her report, ASG President Veronica Green, ’23, shared a new rubric proposed by President Ron Cole, ’87, which was designed to clarify the decision-making process used by the shared-governance system.
During the moderated discussion that followed, Senator London Dejarnette, ’24, asked what the point of shared governance was if ASG was just being kept in the loop but not able to make changes.
“I think it’s important to know that there are situations on campus where ASG as a government only really deserves to be informed of stuff that is happening,” Green replied. “Then there are other situations where we believe that there could be a discussion where we are consulted, but then there’s like, who makes the decision? We shouldn’t be making every decision.”
Class of 2026 President Sam Ault also noted that additional channels — specifically pairings between the ASG cabinet and the college president’s cabinet.
“In a way, we end up consulted through that more informal way,” Ault said. “That’s also worth considering.”
After the meeting, Green said the rubric was a step in the right direction for shared governance. “I think it’s an administration doing exactly what they’re supposed to do,” Green said. “The bar is on the floor, compared to the previous administration. I’m not sure if we will have more say necessarily, but at least now we are guaranteed a seat at the table.”
Part of the college’s shared governance structure is a series of committees that include representatives from staff, faculty and students. ASG appoints the student representatives to these committees, but Green said the body has only been able to fill the student seats on the Council on Diversity and Equity, Finance and Facilities Committee, and Study Away and Campus Internationalization Committee.
“We’ve been struggling with that marketing aspect of the college committees to students,” Green said. “They either don’t know what (the committees) do or what the power that they have, or they don’t know whether or not the students have an equal voice as faculty or staff that sit on the committee.”
Green hopes that having a rubric that clarifies the shared governance system will make students more aware of — and interested in — what they can do on a college committee.
During “new business,” ASG approved satirical news publication The Krampus for the first round of voting.
“I want it to be an outlet for people to tell jokes they want to,” Aidan McGrory, ’26, one of the organizers, told the Senate. “It will sort of be similar to the actual ‘Campus,’ but just these stories that are completely made up and satire — and don’t worry, we’ll make it very clear that it’s satire.”
The Krampus, originally founded in 2011, lost ASG recognition in late 2019 after publishing a satirical article titled “Allegheny Student Traumatized By Meadville Mall,” which made light of members of the Meadville community. According to a story published by The Campus in February 2020, the Krampus article included references to “moms with neck tattoos and way too many children” and shops that looked like they had been “closed for years.”
The Krampus was re-approved by ASG in early 2020, but the club died out again when the pandemic hit later that year.
Green asked what McGrory’s plan was to prevent a similar situation from occurring again.
“The system will be: someone writes a story, it goes to a head writer and then the faculty member checks it to make sure that it’s not, you know, like that,” McGrory replied.
After the meeting, McGrory said that the club plans on publishing online to save costs, and will release around five stories every two weeks.
On the financial front, ASG approved $3,000 in budget requests for this week during the report of Director of Treasury Adriana Solis, ’23. Solis also released preliminary spending data from Financial Services in a spreadsheet linked to the meeting’s minutes. According to the data, ASG and its recognized clubs have spent slightly more than $21,000 in the first two and a half months of the academic year, against a General Fund of around $364,000 and a surplus fund of more than $400,000.
The Senate voted to cancel the GA next week, due to Thanksgiving break. ASG will hold its next GA on Tuesday, Nov. 29 at 7:30 p.m. in room 301/302 of the Henderson Campus Center.