The Allegheny Student Government hosted its weekly meeting virtually due to a spike in positive COVID-19 tests. The meeting began with cabinet reports of club budgets and other weekly business.
Director of the Treasury Adriana Solis, ’23, started the cabinet reports with information about an upcoming meeting with the Finance and Facilities Committee and club budgets.
“At the meeting, Veronica will present important financial guidelines and also update club spending,” Solis said. “For spending, we have $115 coming from Why Not Us, $390 coming from Beta Beta Beta/Pre-Health Club, $3800.20 coming from USITT and then $780 coming from the ASG collab event from the class of 2025-26 Community and Relations. We have a total of $7,281.14 for this week’s finance request.”
Director of Diversity and Inclusion Jaelyn Valentin, ’25, described the meeting with the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion where a diversity audit was discussed.
“I had my CoDE committee meeting yesterday and we discussed the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion having a diversity audit starting now and really getting work in throughout the summer and onto next year,” Valentin said.
“So the person with my role next year will have the responsibility of having additional monthly or bi-monthly meetings on top of the responsibilities that I currently have which is to sit in on sub-working groups.”
The audit will be developing an inventory of past and current diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, according to Valentin. Then there will be an analysis of how effective the efforts have been to determine what is needed to assess things like experiences of discrimination and campus responses to concerns.
Director of Press and Communications Kyrie Doniz, ’23, described her responsibility this week to post about the sustainable and reusable bags giveaway. Additionally, she will be finishing a video of the cabinet.
Parliamentarian Ankitha Pamula, ’25, gave updates about the election progress and publicity efforts.
“(Attorney General Abigail Estrada-Hernandez, ’25) and I are still planning elections and tabling so we will be tabling (on Wednesday, Feb. 8 and Friday, Feb. 10) to generate publicity for issue elections,” Pamula said. “If you are planning to run, you need to officially declare before Feb. 14.”
Chief of Staff Ray Colabawalla, ’25, announced a new appointee for the Campus Life and Community Standards board. Difei Chen, ’25, was approved to join the board by ASG.
“My professor told me that there is a community committee that can help people solve their dissatisfaction on campus,” Chen said. “So I would like to help them in some way that I am able to help.”
ASG had a three-minute discussion where it was decided that “Talk About it Tuesday” would have another slot from 4-7 p.m. in order to have more senators available to show up.
President of the Class of 2023 Shira Haus said that the class has been meeting with Third- and Fourth-Year Class Dean Jonathon May to continue planning senior week.
“We actually have to do way more than we originally thought which kind of sucks,” Haus said. “We have to execute and plan and basically figure it all out ourselves. Hopefully that changes, but as of now, it is students doing the majority of the work so any help would be appreciated.”
Dean for Student Life Trae Yeckley had some announcements for ASG about Engage, a platform website where students can have access to rosters and their budget. Additionally, Yeckley had reminders for student organizations.
“Engage is up and running, and there are going to be some drop-in sessions for students to learn how to use Engage,” Yeckley said. “I’ve been asked to remind student organizations that when you have events, let Marketing and Communications know so they can post it on the events calendar.”
According to Yeckley, while the website calendar is not commonly visited by students, they are trying to get more people to use it. Additionally, Marketing and Communications wants to also post events on social media.
The assembly was adjourned at 8:10 p.m.