The Student Senate looked ahead to a football weekend and a visit from "College GameDay," as well as plans to improve the quality of residential and campus life, during its weekly meeting Wednesday.
Student body president Brett Rocheleau said he would share more logistical information with the student body in coming days so campus could be prepared for the Stanford game weekend events.
"As you all know, 'College GameDay' is coming on Saturday," Rocheleau said. "Everyone's wondering about tailgating, camping out, etc. Right now the administration is looking for the best place to set up a line. I'll get more details tonight and send out a report on everything GameDay, what you can and cannot do."
Hall Presidents' Council co-chair Matt Lynch shared details from the Leprechaun Legion's GameDay plan.
"There's going to be a pit for 200 to 300 people in front of the stage," Lynch said. "They're trying to make it all students, and it would be cool if we could get all 29 dorms to have their flags in there. Posters are allowed too, and they want everyone to wear green."
Before the game weekend begins, Rocheleau reminded the senators about student government's upcoming presentation with the Board of Trustees.
"We present Thursday afternoon, and we're basically talking about residence hall life like we've been discussing," Rocheleau said.
Chief of staff Katie Baker mentioned a new addition to their presentation booklet.
"We added pictures of actual dorm rooms to show the discrepancies," she said. "There are pictures of doubles from Duncan Hall and Morrissey Manor as well as a quad in PangbornHall."
With the addition of the group's newest member, Class of 2016 president Hugh Phelan, the group discussed four resolutions related to residential and campus life.
Director of community relations Kelsey Eckenrodge presented a resolution to direct future projects after a recent community summit.
"Basically, a couple of Fridays ago, we had the city summit," Eckenrodge said. "We met in the morning and talked about concerns and ideas for improvement regarding student-city interactions. We have created committees for specific projects to help in these relations. We decided on eight projects to work on this semester."
After the group passed Eckenrodge's resolution concerning community relations committees, the director of university affairs Michael Masi also introduced two resolutions, both of which the group passed. The first resolution proposed the implementation of hydration stations in DeBartolo Hall.
"We passed a resolution very similar to this one already for residence halls last semester," Masi said. "This one is just recommending that the university provide the funding and put them in DeBartoloHall."
When asked where the new hydration stations will be located, Rocheleau responded the exact location has not been decided yet.
"They want to keep it in a central location, but they don't want a line to form where everyone's walking in because that would just add congestion," Rocheleau said. "Basically, they're still working on it."
Masi's second resolution addressed the issue of campus aesthetics.
"It came to my attention that statues around campus are looking old and dirty, so our goal has been to clean them up and restore them," Masi said. "We want to make them look like their original selves again to make campus look good."
Masi said he has contacted the university architect's office and the Snite Museum after getting complaints from both students and alumni, and he has identified four statues on campus to restore.
Walsh Hall senator Veronica Guerrero said she thinks money should be spent on higher priorities such as new buildings or residence halls, but Rocheleau said the money comes from a different budget.
"All the money is allocated differently," Rocheleau said. "There are different groups. This is more land and making campus prettier while money for buildings comes mainly from donations. They're very separate in the budgeting scheme."
Duncan Hall senator Brendan Bell announced a resolution for director of social concerns Paul John DiGiovanni, which also passed.
"The subcommittee for community relations has been working a lot with the South Bend food banks and other organizations, and he thought it would be a good idea to look into cost-effective and healthier ways for people with food stamps to eat," Bell said. "They're looking to make a booklet with specific ideas for healthy eating, for good ways to eat healthy fruits and vegetables that they might now know how to work with."
Rose clarified this booklet is meant to be a sort of recipe book to make sure families on food stamps can meet nutritional needs.
"Paul is hoping this booklet can be distributed to not only people in the community but also to students," Bell said. "People in the local community are really excited and want students to get involved with this."
