At Tuesday’s Central Student Government meeting, CSG President Cooper Charlton, an LSA senior, announced initiatives to work with students on the issue of sexual assault.
Charlton said CSG will host roundtables with students on sexual assault prevention and to gather feedback on proposed changes to the sexual misconduct policy in the next two months.
Dates for the roundtables are Oct. 1, Oct. 26 and Nov. 3.
“This is something we should all be fighting for, and I encourage you to show up,” Charlton said.
Charlton also requested that CSG allocate $3,800 in funds to bring a production of The Haze to campus. The play is an autobiographical one-woman show by San Francisco resident Heather Marlowe about untested rape kits.
“There are over 400,000 rape victims in the United States whose rape kits have gone ignored at the hands of local law enforcement agencies,” Charlton said. “Heather’s purpose and her objective is to use theater and performance to bring this issue to the forefront.”
Charlton said several students reached out to him about bringing the play to campus, and he thought the performance would spread awareness of the issue to students at a minor cost to CSG.
Budget amendments
CSG voted on and approved the Fall 2015 budget with a few amendments, including a 2-percent increase in the budget for the Student Organization Funding Committee.
Business senior Kevin Ziegler, CSG treasurer, said the financial committee reduced both operations and payroll by 1 percent to raise SOFC’s funding to $200,000, constituting half of CSG’s Fall 2015 budget. SOFC is the CSG committee charged with allocating funding to student organizations.
Ziegler said it is CSG’s duty to make sure the student fees that make up the budget are spent responsibly.
“Not only just spending money, but establishing programs that benefit students for years to come — keeping that in mind in spending our money,” Ziegler said.
Ziegler also discussed how CSG can properly use its money to avoid funds being left over after the budget period are allocated for ends. In Fall 2014, there was $34,000 left over in unused capital from CSG’s commission discretionary and legislative discretionary funds.
Ziegler said this could be avoided by this year by the assembly if they properly apply for and utilize the money set aside for them.
“All leaders on campus can use the CSG funds in different ways,” Ziegler said.
Charlton also requested the executive and legislative branches of CSG provide a total of $500 for each of the days the dining halls open early to thank Michigan Dining for helping CSG address drinking culture on campus.
Michigan Dining has spent an additional $10,000 over the past three weekends in support of CSG’s initiative to open dining halls earlier on game days.
CSG also heard from the Center for Campus Involvement about the funding process.
CCI Interim Director Nick Smith said he thought CSG could share more information about how the body funds student organizations.
“When students ask us for funding options, we direct them to CSG,” Smith said. “But we don’t feel as informed to be able to communicate effectively what really the students are going to experience and go through during the process.”
Smith also noted that renovations are planned for the Michigan Union starting in 2018, and encouraged student input on what those changes should look like.
Correction appended: Kevin Ziegler is a Business student, not an LSA student.