Filtered Water Stations for Campus Discussed

The first post-election USG meeting started with several updates from representative committees. The meeting was kicked off by a fall break proposal to change move-in day to the Saturday before school starts, allowing two to three extra days for students to settle in. Fall 2013 move-in day is currently scheduled for Wednesday, August 21.

The future USG President, Christian Kurth,spoke on behalf of the University Affairs Committee. He mentioned USG supporting new ELKAY and/or EVIVE stations to be placed around campus for students to have access to free filtered water for refilling bottles. To cut down on water waste, Kurth mentioned bringing in Terracycles to earn money during pledge weeks. People can recycle the popular red cups, allowing USG to receive 2 cents per cup.

Kurth also announced the idea to replace dorm blinds by installing new vertical blinds.

Samantha Coxe from Alumni Affairs discussed the success of last week’s Young Alumni Mixer, and boasted that the upcoming event for “The Great Zamperini” -- USC Trojan, Olympian and war hero – has gained significant student interest. The senate helped fund the Bovard location.

Coxe introduced the ‘Thank You Endeavor System’ to show appreciation for alumni donors -- which has been successful at Harvard University.

Up next was the resolution on a Veterans Resource Center Resolution.

USG unanimously agreed on supporting the creation of a Veterans Resource Center at the University Park Campus.

Joshua Jacobs, President of the USC Veterans Association, seemed very relieved of the turn-out. Senators were pleased that they didn’t have to put money toward this project, but remained concerned by the ratio of veteran members among the university population: 140 undergraduate and 468 graduate students. To allay fears, Joshua assured the senate that graduate students would not be the only group reaping the benefits of the new center.

The finance director for Academic Culture Assembly, Helen Yuan, asked for funding to support a major event on March 4. The event is presented by an as-yet anonymous speaker whom Yuan referred to as Pterodactyl. Due to the recent requests of Pterodactyl, ACA gave a sudden notice to USG for financial need. The potential USG money would go toward the video production of the event, in which ACA wants the highest quality to promote this event to other universities.

Yuan asked USG to fund five children whose parents are affected by cancer to attend Camp Kesem. USG was not able to fund this event because of funding restrictions.