SGA opposes Campus Drive summer plans

The new SGA joined the ranks of students and city officials opposing the university's decision to close off Campus Drive to most traffic this summer as a part of a test run of a long-term goal to make the campus more pedestrian friendly.

In their first meeting of the semester, recently sworn-in legislators of the Student Government Association pushed through three resolutions and 11 cabinet and legislative appointments in the organization's last meeting of the year. Although most bills typically go through a three-week reading period before being put to a vote, the legislature suspended these rules to move through legislation that would have been rendered irrelevant if tabled until the fall, such as the Campus Drive resolution.

The SGA sponsored a public forum Tuesday, during which students came out in force to voice their gripes with the administration's Campus Drive plans. Many said closing the road would hurt students who rely on public transportation, as well as discourage the use of public transportation as an environmentally friendly alternative to getting to the campus. At last night's meeting, agriculture Legislator Jesse Yurow sponsored the unanimously supported resolution that echoed these claims and urged administrators to reconsider the restrictions on public transportation this summer.

The second bill passed was slightly more contentious.

The SGA anually allots $10,000 to the Collegiate Readership Program, which makes The New York Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today available to students in stands outside dining halls and the McKeldin Library. But some legislators urged the program to be moved online, while others pointed out that USA Today is not as well read as the other two papers, and perhaps adding another paper should be considered.

But President Steve Glickman said the program is part of a five-year contract that would be even more costly to violate.

"We would have to pay over $10,000 to get out of the contract," he told the legislature.

After adding an amendment that states the SGA's intention to pursue a possible replacement of USA Today with another paper after the five-year contract is up, the resolution passed unanimously.

Cabinet members were also appointed by Glickman with the legislature's approval: former neighboring commuter legislator Drew Carroll will be the director of administrative affairs; freshman government and politics major Matthew Hopkins will be the director of the sustainability committee; Summer Raza was re-appointed director of government affairs; junior computer science and math major Morgan Parker will be the new webmaster; sophomore environmental science and technology major Jon Yahirun will be director of programming; and Kaiyi Xie was re-appointed director of student groups

Sophomore criminal justice and criminology and communication major Staci Armezzani was also appointed director of communications, while sophomore journalism major Sarah Kraut will be the press secretary, and Tran Hoang will be the new legislative secretary.

Speaker of the legislature and speaker pro tempore — the two SGA members who oversee legislative procedure — were also approved by a majority vote: former south hill legislator Kevin Ford will be the speaker, and last year's speaker pro tempore Jennifer Hill will resume her position.

Junior mechanical engineering major and one of this year's candidates of vice president of academic affairs Bob Hayes nominated himself for the new SGA position of critical activist, who will act as an objective voice in advising and critiquing the SGA. But when debate began over precisely how Hayes would interact with the finance committee, which typically holds closed-door meetings, the vote on the position was tabled until the first meeting of the fall semester.

Hayes wanted to bring in members of student groups whose finances were being discussed, but Vice President of Finance Robert Mutschler said this would disrupt the objectivity and confidentiality of the finance process.

"It's really hard for the finance committee to be objective when what feels like the entire student body is sitting there watching the entire time," Mutschler said. "It would completely destroy the confidentiality of the finance process."

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