The Undergraduate Student Government (USG) is expanding on the cold-weather policy resolution.
The original cold-weather policy focused on students’ well-being in freezing temperatures and mandated contact hours. BGSU meets the minimum mandated contact hours, making it difficult to cancel classes.
“We developed the original bill as this way to require the university to be more thorough in its response to cold weather. This was made in January of last year, and obviously, the weather was very cold,” said Tiago Gaboardi, USG President.
The expansion of the cold-weather policy resolution is similar to the original policy. USG expanded on winter clothing, supplies and more with the new policy. The expansion of the cold-weather policy resolution was passed recently.
“Last year was mostly focused on the policy that the university has for the cold weather policy. This year, it’s more focused on the physical aspect of it. So, taking care of sidewalks, because I think this year the biggest feedback we received from students was the fact that the university did not respond properly to the icing and snow conditions,” Gaboardi said.
Gaboardi said that the university should be more aware of frigid temperatures.
“The university should cancel classes and be more holistic in the way that they’re prioritizing student health and well-being rather than not canceling classes,” Gaboardi said.
Gaboardi said that USG has learned the university does not cancel classes due to the mandated contact hours, but he has a solution.
“With this bill, we want the university not to cancel classes, so we’ll be able to change it to appropriate ways to answer it, like Zoom and that kind of stuff. Some people don’t have to go outside. So you’re saying, ‘oh, you don’t actually have to cancel the class, you can just move it online,’” Gaboardi said.
Gaboardi said personal experience and student feedback were what made this bill happen.
“We [USG] see the difficulties that people were having going throughout campus, and as students ourselves, we can see that they were not plowing sidewalks, they were not salting it. So we could see it ourselves, and we also received a lot of student feedback from our friends and people we know,” Gaboardi said.
