At 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 14, the Student Government of the University of Dallas held its second weekly meeting of the semester in Cardinal Farrell Hall 219, the Catholic Foundation Board Room. Halfway through the 2023-2024 semester, let’s take a closer look at the major players, tally up the score, and see if the UD student body is winning.
Last semester’s wins
Luke Posegate’s report to the Provost indicates that members of SG completed 444.5 service hours throughout last semester and averaged 18.5 per senator, an SG record. His administration also partnered with Dean Roper to increase excitement around athletics with pizza and burgers at select home soccer, volleyball and basketball games.
Two new clubs were approved under Posegate’s administration: the Accounting and Finance Society and the Rosary Making Club. Furthermore, a commission, chaired by Giovanni Del Piero, senior politics major, was created to tackle the construction of a pro-life statue on campus.
With these wins in their pocket, Posegate’s administration looks forward to doing more good this spring semester.
The SG budget
Peter Key, junior economics major and treasurer, is the steward of SG’s $18,000 annual budget, a 20% increase from the previous academic year.
“I ran for treasurer on the pitch that I would get us more money and I would use that money for bigger, newer events that SG usually doesn’t do,” said Key. “Over the summer break before this year started, I succeeded and got us a 20% increase in our budget.”
Key declined to state the amount left in the SG budget but revealed that it was a majority of the $18,000.
Major allocations of funds were discussed at the Feb. 14 meeting. For instance, the Dallas Refugee Project asked for $210 of funding from SG, a request that was granted.
Today, Wednesday, Feb 21, Mario de Solenni will present his case for $3,000 of SG funding for the UD Olympics. For comparison, the entire Charity Week budget for last semester was $4,200, with an additional $1,000 being provided by SG for costumes. At present, every team must pay $20 to compete in the UD Olympics, which will be held April 13.
Key is currently working with Moey Brown, director of student activities, to hold a concert on April 20 to coincide with the Prima Faira. The total budget for the event is $3,000, with $1,500 being provided by SG.
“One of the ideas I had was to have an on-campus concert separate from Groundhog Day,” said Key. “We found Prophets and Outlaws, who is an amazing local [band] to the Dallas, Texas area, and they do great country music.” SG will also facilitate a talk by Da vid Azerrad, an assistant professor and research fellow at Hillsdale College’s Van Andel Graduate School of Government in Washington, D.C. on Monday. Key was first introduced to Azerrad during a series of lectures at Capitol Hill.
“The best talk I got was from David Azerrad, and it was sort of fighting against modern-day feminism – not merely modern-day feminism, which most everyone on the right would argue against, but even against the first stages of feminism, and how we sort of folded in not fighting to cultivate our conservative values,” said Key This talk will be held on Monday, April 8, and is funded courtesy of the Tocqueville Society.
The Student Concerns Committee
The Student Concerns Committee is the most well-known SG committee due to its booth on the Mall every Friday, stocked with candy and a complaint book. Willem Anderson, senior business major and senator, is this semester’s chair of this committee, taking over for former chair Gabriel Saldivar who held the position last semester.
Two of the major complaints Student Concerns receive are 1) lack of confession times and, 2) card reader issues, particularly in Clark Hall.
To the confession times issue, Anderson said: “It’s just based on the priests’ availability, and that’s up to them.”
To the card reader issue, Anderson said: “That’s all UDPD […] There’s nothing we can do because that’s just going to be whenever UD wants to overhaul the card system. There’s no fix.”
However, there are two major issues Student Concerns is working on. The first is the large number of reports of mold, particularly in the freshman dorms.
“When I took over, that was one of the main issues,” said Anderson. “One thing we are already doing is educating people on how to submit a work order, but that’s just a band-aid. We want to have any kind of intervention that we can do for them.”
Submitting a work order is the first step if your dorm room has mold. Information sheets for this can be found at the Student Concerns table on the Mall every Friday.
“Mold has been a problem that we heard a lot last semester,” said Theresa Maska, freshman psychology major and senator, who was involved with the creation of the work-order information sheets. “There’s a step-by-step guide on how to submit a work order because sometimes that’s what stops people – they just don’t know how to submit a work order.”
Maska was also involved with the creation of “Kudos” for the Student Concerns table.
“We want to take a moment for gratitude and see what is being done well on campus. If you have a Kudo you’d like to give, you basically give a note of gratitude and praise to someone who upholds the UD mission or an event that you thought really did that well, so that way, we can give appreciation for that, and also know what events we should repeat in the future,” said Maska. “If you want to give it to a friend, then we’ll email it to them with a little fun ‘You got a Kudo!’ and if you give it to a professor, we will try to hand-deliver it to the professor.”
You can deliver a Kudo by visiting the Friday Student Concerns table.
The Executive Functions Committee
At the Wednesday meeting, the Executive Functions Committee considered three potential clubs seeking approval.
The first of these is the Economics Club. Luke Gonzalez, junior economics major and chair of the Executive Functions Committee, said, “The Econ Club is essentially for promoting extracurricular involvement in the [economics] sphere for the students. At UD, we have amazing professors, we have good classes, but I think one drawback, at least in certain departments, is that the students confine their interest in a subject to just classes instead of getting involved in organizations or events that are happening along the same lines of the stuff they’re interested in.”
The Economics Club was approved at the Feb. 14 meeting.
The second club under consideration is the Young Americans for Freedom.
“It promotes what you’d call ‘mainline conservative thought’ along the lines of limited government, rule of law, and probably originalist constitutional theory – stuff like that,” said Gonzalez. “It’s a pretty mainstream organization.”
However, voting on its approval was delayed over concerns about approving a club on campus with direct connections and funding outside of UD.
The last club was the Future Army Officers of America, which was not approved because the constitution had not been reviewed by every member of SG. “It’s essentially promoting involvement in ROTC, knowledge about the military, what it’s like to be an army officer – I think it’s good,” said Gonzalez. “I think ROTC is a great program. It instills discipline, and it gives people the opportunity to serve their country.”
Voting on this club will likely occur today, Wednesday, Feb. 21 at the SG meeting.
The Campus Beautification Committee
In addition to the four primary committees, the Campus Beautification Committee is a special seasonal committee that must be created anew every year. In the past, the committee has been responsible for funding new art in Clark Hall, allocating funds to begin fundraising for a prolife statue and surveying students for their input into what improvements they want on campus. This committee was critical to the change in artwork around the Cap Bar.
In fall 2023, the committee was established for the current academic year. Dominic Andrews, junior politics major and senator, is the chair of the committee this semester.
“[The committee] was made last [semester], but they didn’t do a lot because a lot of senators who were in charge of it left for Spring Rome,” said Andrews. This semester, the committee consists of Andrews, Luke Gonzalez, Maggie Sonne and Joe Teson.
Andrew’s bucket list for campus improvements includes the benches outside the Church of the Incarnation.
“Those wooden benches are horrid. They’re in complete disrepair,” said Andrews. “So [we’re] thinking about fixing those.”
Andrews is also looking into the possibility of adding a splash of color to the Braniff stairwell for fans of Our Lady.
“One student approached me about doing a set on the Joyful Mysteries [in the Braniff stairwell]. On the way down, there are five levels, and so on each part of the stairwell, we would hang up one of the different paintings. That can be really cool,” said Andrews. “That’s one of the things I was talking about with Dr. Norris.”
Executing these ideas will require the collaboration of multiple senators both in the committee and outside of it.
“I’m going to work closely with Secretary Connor, because he’s helped out with [the committee] last year and he has a good foot in the door with a lot of the people in charge of the campus facilities, including the art,” said Andrews.
Andrews hopes that his committee can function as a liaison between the students and the administration to bring to fruition any improvements to the campus’s aesthetic they believe are necessary.