SG’s Department of Diversity is organizing a social media event called “28 Days of Excellence” that will feature posts about 28 different Black figures in the U.S. government, one for each day of February, which is Black History Month.
“When I was in SG last year, I realized that they didn’t acknowledge Black History Month,” Devin Scott, co-director of SG’s Department of Diversity, said. “As student leaders, we need to highlight and celebrate our Black students on campus.”
SG is planning a block party on the Parade Ground with Black organizations outside of SG, a sexual assault awareness event and a club fair set for the last weeks of February.
SG President Stone Cox’s initiative to turn student ideas into SG-funded realities has been termed the “Robinhood Initiative” by members of SG.
“The idea came up a few years ago like this, where students voted in the Spring election for initiatives, and Senate wrote a finance bill for the initiative that won,” Cox said. “SG has been fiscally conservative for the last few years, so we want to make sure that student fees don’t just sit in the bank this semester.”
SG Department of Academic Affairs is speaking with administration about the financial burden ProctorU presents to students. Branches are considering making a fund from the SG account to get students a discount on exams or pay them in full.
There is a resolution in SG Senate to urge LSU to approve the Tiger Girls’ request to go to UDA Nationals competition in late April after LSU Athletics denied their request, according to SG Chief of Staff Patrick Cormier. A student-led petition on change.org has already garnered signatures from students in support of the team’s passage to nationals.
SG’s Governmental Relations Department is working to partner members of SG with Louisiana state representatives and senators to urge them to allocate more money to education in the wake of a budget approval coming up later in the spring.
“We want to work with the University’s governmental relations office during this very important budget season,” SG President Stone Cox said. “LSU’s interests are heard from the faculty and students, also higher education statewide. As the flagship university we can speak on behalf of the other universities since the Capitol is in our backyard.”
SG’s newly-implemented Sexual Violence Prevention Committee plans to hold its first meeting where the eight appointees will vote on the committee Chair and three members at large.
SG Department of Disability Services worked with LSU Dining to successfully implement text-to-speech menus for three restaurants on the LSU Dining website, including Chick-fil-a, Einstein Bros Bagels and Panda Express. There are four other restaurant menus that have yet to be translated into text-to-speech pages due to technical difficulties.
SG will host its second drive-in movie night of the semester on Friday, Feb. 5 featuring “Bad Boys for Life.”
The executive branch will hold its regular meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 3 at 5:30 p.m. via Zoom, and the Senate meeting is immediately after at 6:30 p.m. via Zoom.
