The Allegheny Student Government heard a capital project proposal and approved three new clubs during their first round of voting at their General Assembly meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 6. After the meeting, ASG leadership provided some updates on the current state of the financial system, which has been without a permanent leader for just over three months.
Funding proposals
The guest speaker on Tuesday was Chief Information Officer Katrina Yeung, who was in attendance to propose a pair of infrastructure projects that ASG could fund, as well as provide an update on the college’s internet.
Both funding requests were to install outdoor wireless connectivity. The first, estimated to cost just over $50,000, would provide Wi-Fi to most outdoor spaces on campus, including the Gator Quad, Brooks Walk, the Carrden, Bicentennial Lawn, Murray Lawn, the NV courtyard and more.
“We would hang access points off of strategic buildings to create spaces for outside collaborations,” Yeung said. “We’d focus them on where there are classes held outside, where we saw students congregating and where we know that outdoor events happen.”
The 33 new access points needed to complete the coverage would take two to three weeks to install once they arrive, Yeung said.
The second proposal would be to provide additional wireless access to the Robertson Athletic Complex, at a total cost of just over $56,000.
“There’s lots of data we can capture in the other sporting areas if we have the capacity to connect the systems,” Yeung said. “Also, up at Robertson the cellular coverage is not great in some areas, so this would allow us to have some form of coverage for emergency purposes, and we can put in a few additional cameras just to increase security coverage up there.”
However, ASG seemed skeptical of both projects and their role in funding them.
Among the representatives who asked questions was Co-Director of Student Affairs London Dejarnette, ’24, who asked after the first proposal if Yeung had sought out other sources of funding, saying that ASG’s funding was for student activities.
“After we exited the prior network installers, I was given a fixed dollar amount,” Yeung said. “I have spent that. So if we want to do the ‘nice-to-have’ outdoor things, I need another source and President Cole guided me to ASG.”
Yeung’s proposal is not the first of its kind; ASG has previously funded water bottle refill stations and the installation of fire pits in North Village and on the Murray Lawn, as well as free charging stations across campus.
Without ASG funding, there would be no set time or funding for completion of these projects. “We could look to add it into some kind of capital improvement next year sometime, but I couldn’t guarantee that,” Yeung said, in response to a question from Attorney General Will Lowthert, ’24.
“Could we do it on a later date? 100%. If you are willing to fund the dollars, we can do it faster,” Yeung later added.
Towards the end of Yeung’s presentation, ASG Vice President Sam Ault, ’26, clarified that the Senate was not being asked to vote on funding, just hearing the proposal. Ault added that other groups — including the office of Physical Plant — would be pitching ideas to ASG over the course of the semester.
“We want this to be a process where you all feel really engaged and good about what we’re going to be investing in,” Ault told the Senate. “You guys have time to go and ask your peers, ask your classmates, ask people in your residence halls, ‘What matters to you, which would you prefer?’”
ASG is currently sitting on just under $500,000 in unspent surplus funds, largely left from when the school’s student activities shut down during the pandemic and student organizations had few opportunities to spend their funding.
Wi-Fi
Yeung’s presentation included an explanation and update on the current internet situation. She noted that the college replaced its core switches in the first week of October and received a major shipment in the second week of October — one that filled much of the Reis Hall rotunda.
“We got nine pallets of equipment; it filled up an entire tractor-trailer,” Yeung said. “Then we installed it all in less than 10 weeks. That is a Herculean effort by not only the installers, but my team and I know it’s not perfect yet.”
In the interest of speed, all wireless access points were left in the base configuration, Yeung said, which means that they need to be tuned to reach peak capability.
“If you take Baldwin as an example, it is essentially concrete,” Yeung said, “I’ve got four concrete walls, I’ve got a mesh ceiling and a metal door and it’s super hard to get radio waves through there. So now that everything is installed, it’s a painstaking process of tweaking the configuration building by building.”
Dejarnette asked if ASG could help fund the tweaking process and work on the existing network, instead of supporting a new project.
“The problem with you funding that is I don’t know what the scope of work is yet; it’s not super defined,” Yeung replied. “I might have to re-cable 600 APs (access points) and it’s $1,000 apiece. Maybe I need to do none. I just don’t know, so I can’t define the scope for you.”
Another question came from Senator Kyra Jordan, ’25, who said they could not access the Wi-Fi from their room in the Walker Annex. However, when Yeung asked if Jordan had submitted a help ticket, Jordan replied that they had not.
“If I know where it’s not working, I can fix it,” Yeung replied.
She then troubleshooted for Jordan on the spot and found a possible solution after learning that all of Jordan’s devices were made by Apple.
“What we have seen with Mac and Apple products is that the SSID — the network ID, the network name — gets added to each time for some random reason,” Yeung said. “So you might have the AC-Student that was Wi-Fi Fiber’s, and not the “AC-Student” that’s new. So we’ve seen deleting them completely and redoing it from scratch helps.”
Yeung encouraged other students who may be experiencing network connectivity problems to file a support ticket at webhelp.allegheny.edu
“If you’re having issues, put in a ticket so I know where it is,” Yeung said. “I can fix things if I know.”
Finance
The finance report for the week was relatively quiet. Following a brief discussion on whether or not the Outdoors Club could hold a skiing event given the creation of Ski and Snowboard Club last semester — ASG agreed the Outdoors Club could — the Senate approved $19,026.55 in student spending for the week.
However, despite the continued funding of club activities, ASG remains without a finance director. Thursday marked 100 days since Hunter Goerman, ’25, stepped down from the role. Since Goerman’s departure, much of the operational weight has fallen on Dean for Student Life Trae Yeckley, who acknowledged Tuesday that the Finance Committee has been working more slowly.
“I can’t continue to work nights and weekends to get the finance done,” Yeckley said. “So there has been a slowdown and I will own that because I am a dean of students and have a million other things on my list to do.”
After the meeting, Ault said that only one person had applied to one of the finance co-directorships, and that person could be put up for a confirmation vote as soon as the next GA. Ault said that even if only one of the two finance chair positions is filled, the they would still help with the finance committee.
There has also been a change in the timing of the Finance Committee meeting; according to a post made to ASG’s Instagram and Facebook Stories on Thursday, Feb. 1, the committee is now meeting on Fridays, with all finance requests due on Friday at noon. After the meeting, Ault — who leads the committee — said that the committee had been meeting on Friday since Jan. 26.
“I know we talked about it with Trae, and it was announced during either adviser (comments) or our comments in one of the GAs from this semester,” ASG President Nicole Recio Bremer, ’25, said of the change.
It is unclear what Recio Bremer is referring to; a Campus review of recordings of the last two GAs could not find any announcement that the Finance Committee would be changing its meeting time.
“I’m not sure if it was something that I had remembered to write down,” Ault said. “It might have been something I said off the top of my head, um, which is my bad. I do apologize because I actually realized the other day that I was like, ‘I don’t know how clear I actually made that,’ which is why I had our director of press and communications put up the reminder.”
As of 5 p.m. on Thursday, there has been no permanent posting on the ASG Instagram or Facebook of the change in finance request deadlines.
The change in meeting time comes as the finance request form has contained conflicting information. As recently as Thursday, Feb. 1, the finance request form listed two due dates; at the beginning of the form, Saturday at 5pm was listed as a due date, while on the third page, the deadline was listed as Sunday at 5pm.
Prior to the Tuesday GA, the form listed Friday at noon as the deadline at the beginning, but the third slide still listed Sunday at 5pm as the deadline.
“Thank you for actually letting me know because I didn’t know that it said again at the end,” Ault said when asked about this discrepancy. “I noticed it at the beginning when I was reviewing for finance and we got it changed.”
As of 5 p.m. on Thursday, the third slide of the form still listed the deadline as Sunday. Speaking on Tuesday, Ault confirmed that the deadline is Friday at noon.
Recio Bremer said that improving financial processes requires filling both finance directorships.
“It would be lovely to have more students apply because we really need help, and it’s something that students really need at the end of the day,” Recio Bremer said. “It’s not only for your club, but also for other clubs and not only ASG, it’s like the whole student body.”
ASG will next meet at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 13 in room 301/302 of the Henderson Campus Center.
