The student government decided to postpone a resolution Monday night supporting the ideas behind a student-run group Call To Action because it was too broad, even after they came to lobby their goals.
Auxiliary Affairs Chair Matt Mazur brought the resolution to the Undergraduate Student Government last Monday and, after talking with members inside USG and Call To Action, decided the resolution wasn’t reflecting the message he wanted to send.
“It became clear the state of the resolution was too broad, too general in its current state,” Mazur said during the meeting. “It doesn’t support Call To Action but more just multicultural affairs issues.”
Call To Action is a student-run group that formed in response to racially charged tweets aimed at the Black Student Union that happened earlier this semester. Call To Action claimed the administration and Not In Our Town wasn’t doing enough for the students and presented five demands to the administration for changes to be made by Dec. 2.
Members from Call To Action came to the meeting to present the five demands they had submitted to the University Nov. 1. These demands include the need for a multicultural center created on campus and more representation of minority groups in the administration and staff of the University.
Call To Action’s demands had many details and USG had to consider not just the demands, but what the details meant too, Mazur said.
“There is so much in there, you would be supporting everything [if we made it clear],” he said. “We made the resolution general so we could support multicultural and inclusion, which are the ideas behind [Call To Action’s] overarching goals.”
Resolutions are just words on paper, Mazur said, so supporting Call To Action through action will mean more, like going to meetings and talking with administrators.
“We aren’t done with supporting them, we are just doing it a different way,” he said.
Even though the resolution was tabled, they still have hope to gain support from USG.
Member Amara Huddleston came to lobby for Call To Action, but said she supported the decision to table the resolution.
“I support it because they revised [the resolution] so much it didn’t represent Call To Action,” she said. “I appreciate that they will revisit it soon.”
Member Juan Pimiento was fearful the postponement will cause a loss of momentum for action.
“I expect them to revisit the resolution later and truly hope it will be soon,” he said. “I expect to continue to work with them.”
The majority of USG seemed to support the postponement of the resolution as well and even though there are no plans as of now to revisit the resolution, they have hopes to soon.
Student Affairs Chair Nic Puccio supports Call To Action, but the resolution didn’t work with how he wanted to help.
“I discussed this with my meetings and saw there were a lot of vague points made,” he said. “It does need more clarification and as a group, we do need to support them.”
President of USG Alex Solis also supported the results of the meeting.
“It was very obvious we lost their mission,” he said. “We are looking at how we can best represent them because we do represent the student body and they are students.”
Nick Hennessy, sustainability coordinator, will be coming to speak at the next USG meeting. It will be Monday, Dec. 2 at 7:30 p.m. in Union 308.
