At Thursday night’s SGA Senate meeting, a bill to “clarify and expand communication to students, faculty, and staff about acts of hate on campus” passed in a 36-5-2 vote.
The bill was presented as a response to a recent bias incident in which Jewish student and a black student found a swastika, the letters “KKK” and male genitalia drawn on a whiteboard outside their dorm in Colonnades D. It called for a semester report to be made available students, staff and faculty informing them of hateful incidents occurring on campus, the addition of four students to the Inclusive Community Council and cleared communication from the administration about acts of discrimination.
Several senators criticized the vagueness of articles III and V, which called for the creation of a semester report as well as an online forum that reports and discusses campus climate. The legislation was unclear about how the report would be distributed and how the forum would be moderated.
“There are a lot of aspects of this bill that I’m in full support of, but because its multi-pronged, it’s hard for me to stand behind article three and article five,” said Connor O’Donnell, senior class president. “The online presence and forum have a lot of intricacies.”
The Senate eventually deleted the clause the called for the creation of an online forum and clarified that the semester report would not be made available in lieu of notifications of bias incidents.
In other news, the Senate voted unanimously to allocate $750 to Twisted Measure, a campus a capella group that is organizing a book drive during Acapallooza, its next concert. The money will be used to obtain sound equipment for the event, which will be attended by several acapella groups from other schools.