April Yanko and Rachel Klein spoke to the United Student Government (USG) Monday looking for both monetary support and interest in bringing celebrity YouTuber Laci Green to the university.
Green, a sex and body-positive spokesperson, travels around the country to different college and university campuses speaking of topics in the realm of sex education, gender, body positivity, relationships and more.
Yanko and Klein of the Feminist Collective were the first pair to try out the newly established Open Forum section of USG’s public legislative body meetings.
“[We added] an open forum for students to come in and address us at any point during the meeting,” said USG Vice President Gabe Dubin during the meeting Monday afternoon. “We kind of thought that our meetings are open and that anyone can come in and talk about what they want, but it’s necessary to put this on the agenda.”
However, the trouble the Feminist Collective has run into is the price to bring Green to Point Park.
Working with Dean Keith Paylo, Yanko and Klein are in the process of seeking funds from different organizations and offices around campus, such as Campus Activities Board, the Title IX office and the Office of Student Conduct.
After the presentation, the legislative body opted to pledge support to the Feminist Collective in attempts to have Green visit. Monetary funds for the event would be discussed at a further date once more details were established.
USG also had Public Safety Lt. Nicholas Black speak and address issues and concerns students have raised regarding their safety on and off campus.
A topic of discussion brought up by Sen. Bobby Bertha was the issue of when students are deserted off campus without an option of public transportation.
Working with the Office of Student Affairs, Public Safety is able to offer a way for students to get back to campus if they are stranded.
“Stranded is the key word,” Dean Michael Gieseke said during the meeting. “We have an agreement with Uber in which if a student cannot get back to campus, then we will send a car out and pick up the student, and that’s picked up on the university’s tab.”
The Uber transportation is fully dependent on the situation at hand and will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.
“But [if it’s] 10 o’clock at night and you don’t want to get on a bus, you are not stranded,” Gieseke said. “If it’s 2:30 in the morning, ‘I got out of a movie, I didn’t realize what time it was, I’m stuck in Oakland’ those kinds of things, when public transportation is no longer available, then the university will pick [you] up.”
As of now, USG does not have any graduate representation on the legislative body or within its executive cabinet. Parliamentarian Charles Murria and the Rules Committee are looking into changing this.
“In committee, we were talking about a graduate student’s position, and things we threw around were things like how many people would represent the graduate school,” Murria said. “We’re not writing up anything currently because we’re still throwing ideas around, and this will be a really big project for us.”
President Paul Hennigan plans to attend the next USG meeting on Monday to discuss the university’s strategic plan.
