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USG recaps Project Board work, discusses Room Draw error

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Andres Larrieu '22 Courtesy of Brad Spicher '20

The Undergraduate Student Government (USG) recapped Projects Board work, student-athlete student relations, and problems with room draw during its last weekly meeting of the academic year on Sunday, May 12.

The Student Groups Recognition Committee (SGRC) announced it had approved two new clubs. The first discussed was B+ Princeton, an advocacy and service group that aims to aid awareness and support of children with pediatric cancer. The next was the Princeton European Union Forum, a group that seeks to promote knowledge of the EU on campus.

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The Projects Board then recapped the work completed in the past semester.

Projects Board Co-Chairs Rachel Hazan ’21 and Kavya Chaturvedi ‘21 were the co-chairs of the board. Hazan reported that they funded 77 groups and more than 100 events with $132,000 requested in total for events this semester and a median request of $1,863.

Hazan is a former staff copy editor for The Daily Princetonian.

Hazan noted that identity groups were the largest category of funded group this past semester. The chairs discussed their policy to inform USG of their practices which includes approving funding which includes approving only events that are enriching to students and not covering the costs of advertising or off campus events.

Allen Liu ’22 inquired the chairs how the Projects Board considers the carbon impact of student events who responded that they were looking into solutions such as disseminating guidelines on emissions.

The USG Senate voted in approval of the three internal referenda recently approved by the Honor Committee. The senate then voted on the re-approval of existing Honor Committee members and approved Samuel Fendler ’21 and Munisa Said ’22.

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Assistant Director of Marketing Information of Athletics, Marketing and Community Relations Macall Martin presented a plan to create a Princeton University fan club monikered the “Tiger Den” which would be an open club free to all University students with the intention to create greater community cohesion.

Undergraduates Lachlan McCarty ’22, Betsy Pu ’22, and Yafah Edelman ’20 then proposed the formation of an ad-hoc committee to further investigate and resolve the problems with room draw.

“We looked at the 2018 and 2019 upperclass draw and found correlation in ranks across the years inconsistent with randomization,” McCarty said.

They also noted from their own investigation that in addition to upperclassmen room draw being non random underclassmen room draw times were non random as well.

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The advocates declared that there were lots of issues of communication between housing and students and the public release given were unclear and contained inaccurate numbers of how many students were affected.

After lengthy discussion USG voted to approve the ad-hoc committee and finalize how it will be administered via an electronic vote next week.

USG President Zarnab Virk ’20 then moved into an executive session to elect the new U-Council Chair.

Hazan, Ben Press ’20, and Isabella Faccone ’21 gave speeches for candidacy. The election results have not been announced.

The USG meeting was held in Lewis Library 138 at 8 p.m. on May 12.