The bills, introduced by Vice President for Academic Affairs and international relations sophomore Lorenzo Santavicca and seconded by neuroscience junior, representative Tyler Orlando, would advocate for the addition of a diversity education session to the AOP schedule and the reservation of an open tour room in every neighborhood during the program.

“What we really wanna see happen is (students) moving forward to begin ideas and conversations with other students at AOP, maybe not in those dialogues, but amongst the students at AOP to really consider ‘oh, I need to open my doors now to communities I haven’t been exposed to already,’ and that’s what college is all about,” Santavicca said.

With groups like LiberateMSU forming in light of bias incidents on campus, diversity education has become a recommended solution to encouraging multicultural harmony on campus.

“It’s hard to really say we’re a university built on the values of being an inclusive learning environment if we don’t (help) students to see to that and really move forward in their environment,” Santavicca said.

The bill suggests the session be accomplished via either hiring a speaker or assembling a panel of student speakers. ASMSU hopes to encourage open dialogue during these sessions, although the structure and format of the potential dialogues are not yet set in stone.

“We’re gonna be working with AOP quite extensively to see a more constructed framework of what this looks like,” Santavicca said.

Currently, students spend the entirety of AOP in South Neighborhood, with the exception of a campus tour. Students are given the opportunity to tour a residence hall as well; however, due to the wide variety of housing options on campus, the dorm a student ends up seeing may feature an entirely different living arrangement or recreational community than the dorm or neighborhood they end up in.

“Students are limited to seeing other perspectives of the on-campus living and learning communities, as well as their potential residence hall in solely touring and learning about South Neighborhood,” Bill 52 - 52, passed at the last ASMSU assembly, states.

ASMSU’s proposed solution to this issue would be to reserve a tour room in each residence area (Brody, North, East, West Circle, South, and River Trail) year-round for orientation purposes, allowing students to tour a room of the same style and in the same neighborhood as they’ll be living in, if not the same hall.

“We’re an investment for this university,” Santavicca said. “There’s a big push for REHS to encourage students to ‘live on’ another semester beyond their freshman term and we think that this is a way for them to really live up to that.''

The implementation of these changes is still at AOP’s discretion, and the program still has full power over whether or not anything is enacted. Santavicca believes, however, that the bills and public support will lead them to follow through.

“It’s really hard for AOP to say ‘no, we’re not going to implement this’ when students across campus and in representative government here are saying ‘yes, we want this to happen,’” Santavicca said.