Establishing a presidential search committee

ASMSU passed a bill that called for community input, specifically from MSU faculty and students, to be considered when choosing a new MSU president.

The resolution would involve the Faculty Senate, the Council of Graduate Students and ASMSU, and would include five faculty members and five students on the committee.

"I wanted it to be an equal number of faculty and students because we all have a really important voice in presidential search," Vice President for Academic Affairs Ewurama Appiagyei-Dankah, who put together the language on the bill, said.

The resolution also states if the majority of people in these groups oppose the selected presidential candidate, "the Board of Trustees should not be able to select this candidate to serve as the President of this university."

College of Natural Science Representative Caroline Colpoys, who penned the bill, addressed questions of community involvement in the presidential search to Interim President John Engler at ASMSU's meeting. She said this bill would be a "solid solution" for all of the concerns regarding a lack of transparency and communication from MSU administration. 

"This bill came out of the fact that we have expressed so little confidence in the leadership of this institution right now and we think that it is only appropriate and makes sense ... given the context that a wide variety of people from around the MSU community and the larger community have a say in the presidential search," Appiagyei-Dankah said.

Fighting food insecurity on campus

ASMSU passed a bill that allocates $7,000 from the general fund toward the MSU Food Bank in order to "support students in an effort to help end food insecurity on our campus."

During the meeting, Appiagyei-Dankah noted a survey that was recently released by researchers at Temple University and the Wisconsin HOPE Lab that concluded 36 percent of students face hunger, which was written about in the Washington Post.

"This is a problem that's affecting a lot of our peers, whether we know it or not, and they estimated in this (the survey) that they didn't even have the full scope of how many students are affected by this," Appiagyei-Dankah said.   

Vice President for Internal Administration Katherine Rifiotis, who penned the bill, said MSU doesn't do enough about food insecurity on campus.

Pre-Veterinary Medicine Representative Lauren Pepper, who seconded the bill, said, "This is one of the best things we can spend our money on, which is something we have to think about when spending money as a student government."

Establishing a new Mental Health Center

As the search for a Counseling and Psychiatric Services, or CAPS, director continues, ASMSU passed a bill to add them to a growing list of students, faculty and student organizations in support for the creation of a Mental Health Center separate from CAPS. 

The resolution gives ASMSU the responsibility of "exploring avenues to financially support the construction of the MHC (Mental Health Center), if needed, throughout the coming sessions."

Political theory and constitutional democracy junior Griffin Romney, who is not a part of ASMSU, began this idea and is working with university administration, state representatives and businesses in the East Lansing area in the hope of its creation. 

"It will be very multi-purposed and different from CAPS," Romney said. "It would bring in different resources that most mental health institutions haven't used in the past, it will really be an entirely new mental health center."  

Rifiotis, who seconded the bill, said this is a farsighted goal and something ASMSU will continue working on in future sessions. 

"Something of this magnitude is going to happen somewhere in this country or in the world, and the idea is that we bring it here," Rifiotis said.

Restructuring MSU's conduct system 

In an effort to "re-establish trust and faith in the University system" to handle misconduct cases, ASMSU passed a bill that would "establish a model that is specifically designed for the unique needs of MSU, inviting open and broad input from the diverse constituencies the conduct system serves." 

Specifically, the resolution advocates for the creation of an "Office of the Dean of Students" that is separate from Student Affairs and Services, the department in charge of handling these conduct cases. 

"The point of this is to try to make the entire division of student affairs even borderline efficient, because right now it is not even reaching a minimum standard for what we should be able to expect from the division that really should be working closest with our undergraduate students," said ASMSU representative of the Alliance for Queer and Ally Students Olivia Brenner, who seconded the bill. 

College of Music representative Isaiah Hawkins, who penned the bill, said Vice President for Student Affairs and Services Denise Maybank said she supports this idea. And Brenner said the bill is not intended to criticize Maybank's job performance in the past years. 

"I think that this kind of a change in structure will really bring about some profound changes in how we all interact with a very important aspect of the administration that we currently have very little relationship with," Brenner said.

Moving forward

ASMSU's Student Election Week comes to a close on April 9 and the results of the election will be in on April 10. The first general assembly meeting of the next session, which will include newly-elected representatives, will also be on April 10. 

Elections for ASMSU's next president and other positions on the Office of the President will be on April 18.