The executive committee has issued the following report for the March 12, 2024 Assembly Meeting:
Notices to the Assembly:
Thank you to everyone who attended yesterday’s professional development event, or volunteered for Go Blue Goes Green this weekend!
Upcoming Events: Take Your Professor to Lunch, Operation Graduation, Plastic Bag Drive (Week of 3/18), St. Patrick’s Day High-Risk Programming (3/14-3/17), Women’s History Month Event (Pendleton Rm., 3/23), Adaptive Sports Awareness Event (The Diag, 3/24), Big 10 on the Hill (3/24-3/26), Healing Honestly Book Talk (4/9)
See a quick summary of all the great initiatives our team will be working on this year here!
Communications Activities:
Requests are open for CSG’s bi-weekly newsletter. Please direct those requests to this form and inquiries to our Director of Communications Andrew Ky.
The Communications team is working on a new video segment, the first of which will be “13 Questions with Student General Counsel Tyler Watt!” The next segment of CSG Chats will also be going up this week, on campus safety and medical amnesty. Keep an eye out!
The Communications team has created a wonderful branding guide as part of their initiative to develop a framework for communications activities. Check it out here! Otherwise, for any graphics requests, please fill out this form.
Programs and Events:
Policy Advisor for DEIJ Nneka Obiekwu is planning for a Women’s History Month event, which will take place on Saturday, March 23rd in the Pendleton room of the Union. This will be focused on appreciating the work that female student leaders do on campus, including a University keynote speaker. More details to follow!
Policy Director Gwen Tatara met with the Center for Campus Involvement to plan for high-risk programming on St. Patrick’s Day, and Chief Programming Officer Terra Lafreniere met with Panhel and IFC to discuss running hydration stations and other resource-sharing including potentially distributing Narcan on St. Patrick’s Day.
Operation Graduation is back and better! Through this program, students have the opportunity to receive free graduation gowns, which will be awarded on a first-come, first-served basis. This semester, we are rethinking the operations of this program–we will be doing a free “rental” system to bolster the re-use of the gowns and build up a running inventory of gowns for semester-over-semester use. Students who receive a free gown will be required to return it to CSG after graduation.
SMPSEC is putting on a Denim Day event, which is focused on sexual assault awareness. We are working with art and performance groups on campus, and will be showcasing resources and activities such as a communal art piece. This will be taking place on April 6 in the Diag.
Take Your Professor/GSI to Lunch is finishing up this week! This program provides vouchers for free lunch for a group of up to four students and at least one professor or GSI. This semester, we are offering 60 lunches. Our programming intern, Max Stefanski, has been working with members of the University Union staff to make this program smoother for participating students and CSG staff alike.
Our SMPSEC team is collaborating with SAPAC on a book talk about healing honestly by a Michigan alumni April 9th from 6:30-9:00pm.
Policy Team:
Our SMPSEC team also has been working very closely with SAPAC to advocate for the addition of SMPSE resources in syllabi.
Our Treasury team is meeting with Snackpass, Lineleap, Office Max, and Staples representatives soon to discuss potential UM student discounts. They met with LinkedIn this past week. Updates to follow soon!
Vice President Bipasha Ray’s High-Risk Planning (HRP) Student Sub-Committee met with stakeholders in FSL to push for further access to nightcaps and test strips in strategic areas to promote and normalize personal safety right before the break. They are attending FSL & Panhel leadership meetings to plan for the creation of a nightcap pilot program, and are researching the best ways to advocate for the creation of a city ordinance for the bar portion of the program, as well as connecting with Ann Arbor bars. Members of the HRP group are also working with a marketing company who has offered to help pro-bono with the creation of a marketing plan for this project.
Policy Advisor for Affordability and Accessibility Emily Ryan is working with the Director of Student Accessibility and Accommodation Services (SAAS) in an upcoming event on Sunday, March 24 in the Diag at 2:00pm. Come play boccia and goalball and learn about the adaptive sports program! They are also connecting with SAAS’s Accessibility research coordinator to use existing data to write a policy report on the program’s current needs.
Emily’s intern, Katie Rose, is also working on the Accessibility portion of CSG’s Resource Guide as well as the University’s financial resources document, updating resources and reformatting it to make it more digestible for students.
Policy Advisor on Mental Health and Wellness Aditi Vijendra is researching two current CSG initiatives. The first is looking into strategies to boost engagement with our Calm app program, and the second is a comprehensive report for SMPSEC on the new wellness vending machine put into the Union in January.
Policy Advisor on Sustainability Brandon Cooper is working with MDining and the Humane Society to advocate for increasing vegan and vegetarian dining hall options to 55% or more. Brandon will also be serving as the CSG representative on the food advisory committee for sustainable food on campus. He is also working on planning a plastic bag drive for next week and has connected with SCANN, the Student Carbon Neutrality Network on the creation of an orientation education model for sustainability.
Policy Director Gwen Tatara is working with Beyond the Diag to refresh their off-campus housing guide. BTD is a U-M program developed to provide resources to students living off campus. She’s going through the responses of her housing survey, as well as comparing it with data from last year, and using this to create graphic analysis and Landlord Report Cards.
The Government Relations and Policy teams are creating one pagers on the congressional RISE Act and Farm Bill to inform our upcoming lobbying efforts during Big 10 on the Hill, which will be taking place on March 24th through March 26th. Director of Government Relations Akhila Mullapudi is also working with representatives from Dearborn and Flint student governments to investigate tri-campus transportation.
If you have any questions or would like to meet with the President or Vice President, please contact Chief of
Staff to the President Juliette Quenioux (julietq@umich.edu)