Central Student Government’s new president and vice president, LSA junior Anushka Sarkar and Public Policy junior Nadine Jawad, were sworn in Tuesday night for their first meeting.
“I couldn’t believe the overwhelming victory, to see all of our (representatives) elected, to be the first woman of color ever elected to this position, and just the overwhelming amount of support we got from the community,” Jawad said on the night of their win. “We just made history.”
eMerge ran on a platform of raising student voices on campus with a campaign standing on three pillars of voice, opportunity and momentum.
Such plans include advocating the reduction of the number of exams a student can take on a day from four to three as well as the expansion of in-state tuition from undocumented undergraduates to include undocumented graduate and nontraditional students.
The committee, also sworn in, mostly comprises eMerge candidates. Representatives such as LSA sophomore Ali Rosenblatt believe they were a split between experienced representatives and CSG first-timers.
“I think there is a good amount of new reps — that is ultimately why I wanted to run as speaker, to help with the transition because (when) I was a new rep, it was overwhelming,” she said.
She hopes to explain the more complicated aspects of CSG to new representatives like LSA freshman Marianne Drysdale.
“It is very overwhelming at first and I kind of have my footing coming off being a fresh new rep, I hope that I can bring some new insight to kind of hit the ground running,” Drysdale said.
LSA sophomore Seth Schostak is also an experienced CSG member who is now serving as the chair of the communications committee.
“I am definitely excited,” he said. “One of my goals for next year is to really increase the transparency between CSG and the student body. I think we have already been working on that a lot this past year and I think given past experience and having (first-time CSG representatives like) Marianne on board able to reach that goal.”
One resolution was discussed at the meeting. While it has not yet been passed, it aimed to approve the funds to provide phone-charging stations in the Shapiro Undergraduate Library on Central Campus and the Duderstadt Center on North Campus. This resolution is left over from former CSG President David Shafer’s old funds for chargers in the Fishbowl and Duderstadt Center. One of the reasons to provide the chargers is to protect students from walking home alone at night with a dead phone. The assembly hopes to allocate $150 for 15 chargers.
The resolution was sent to the Resolutions Committee for further reads.