The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/student-assembly/)
Mayor Svante Myrick ’09 and other Ithaca officials discussed on-campus housing, parking, Schwartz Plaza redevelopment, and campus safety at a town hall meeting held at Collegetown’s eHub.
“I think we’re all adults here,” said School of Industrial and Labor Relations Representative Noah Chovanec ’18. “We should decide how we take notes effectively.”
Julia Montejo ’17, vice president of diversity and inclusion, acknowledged that the S.A. needs to do more to include low-income students in the political system, but she said it is difficult for representatives to step outside their personal experiences when making legislative decisions.
Created three years ago, the SAIFC helps fund infrastructure changes on campus by financing student-initiated building proposals, according to Kasher. In the past, the committee has provided predominantly monetary contributions, which she said some felt demotivated members.
“We amended it to clarify that students applying for the Special Projects Fund have to just report all other funding sources that they have or intend to apply to in order to fund their project,” said Julia Montejo ’17, vice president of diversity and inclusion.
“I think the one thing that is really challenging with the issue of faculty is that there are a fair number of students that have long-term mental health issues — who either struggle to obtain certain accommodations or who have accommodations — but whose professors sometimes question legitimacy of why they need them,” said Jonathan Goldstein ’17.
The resolution is responsible for “studying and investigating the S.A.’s current membership and operational structure and issuing a formal set of recommendations to the S.A. on how to improve representation.”
“I had a faculty member at one point ask me why we were in Iraq,” he said. “The professor has his Oxford diploma and he’s talking about all his publications and he’s asking me why we were in Iraq.”
Mental Health Awareness Week is part of an ongoing campaign to change the culture of mental health on campus, whether through raising awareness, eliminating stigma, or providing assistance.
To the editor:
Resolution #44: Creation of the First Generation Student Representative is, without a doubt, the greatest piece of legislation to go through the Student Assembly during our time on the Hill. This resolution is unique in that it did not come from a member; instead it came from members of the First in Class Advocacy Team. Through meetings with the First in Class Advocacy Team, it became crystal clear that the Student Assembly, our student government that is tasked with representing all students, is inaccessible and excludes many communities, with regards to transparency, communication, engagement and membership. All too many times, we have heard from people who try to challenge that notion, questioning why they (underrepresented communities) “don’t reach out to us more,” “why don’t they come to meetings?” Well, “they” don’t come to meetings because of exactly what you witnessed last Thursday from 4:45-6:30 p.m. When you aggressively defend a viewpoint rooted in hypotheticals that invalidates the experiences of your peers, why would anyone want to be present? When you state that if you hold an open forum the public “might be confused” and might not “understand” what is going on is quite condescending, as it implies that the people who are not elected do not have the capacity to understand how the S.A. works.