If students ignore Student Government elections this semester, they may be passing up their first opportunity to directly choose how their student fees are spent. For nearly a month, the SG Senate has been collecting student ideas concerning how best to spend $5,000 of student fees. After going through e-mails and suggestion boxes located around campus, senators on the Temporary Student Initiatives Committee were finally able to narrow down the submitted ideas and present them to the SG Senate. The SG Senate voted unanimously Wednesday night to accept the three student suggestions chosen by the Temporary Student Initiatives Committee, which will be put up to a campus-wide vote during the spring election. Their first suggestion recommended the funds be used to increase the University’s commitment to recycling. The proposition asked the money to be spent on additional recycling bins and a promotional awareness campaign. Speaker Pro-Tempore Drew Prestridge, who served on the Temporary Student Initiatives Committee, said he had been impressed with the suggestion’s thoroughness and supported it partly because so many of the suggestions they received concerned recycling on campus. Sen. Meghan Hanna, University Center for Advising and Counseling, told the senate  Facility Services had said a student-funded recycling plan could be implemented within two to three weeks.
The second student suggestion the committee brought to the floor was to create an online waiting system that could immediately inform students which computers are available in Middleton Library and other high-traffic computer labs.
The proposed system may have the option to allow students to reserve University computers remotely, but the decision to add this feature has not been decided on.
Finally, the committee presented a suggestion to add more heavy-duty microwaves in high traffic areas such as the Student Union and the Design Building.”If we had microwaves in the more highly trafficked areas of campus, it would be easier for students eating lunch during the middle of the day,” Prestridge said. No specific buildings were officially named as potential microwave recipients because permission must first be given from any individual building before new hardware is installed.These suggestions were chosen because they were the most feasible with the allotted $5,000. Other popular student suggestions did not fit into the relatively small amount offered to students.Hanna said one new bike rack alone would cost almost $5,000, and creating a new crosswalk could reach upward $35,000. Any suggestion involving infrastructure could easily range in the millions.”It is kind of ridiculous and surprising how much these things cost, but that’s often the reality of it,” Prestridge said.
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Contact Adam Duvernay [email protected]