USG initiatives move forward

Correction appended

One month after the USG released a list of five projects it hoped to complete, several of the initiatives have seen progress, while others have not.

“Out of the USG’s larger project portfolio, these initiatives are both timely and likely to succeed,” the release said of the projects, which included an expansion of the Paw Points program, buses to major cities during breaks, a revised summer storage system, an improvement of printing spaces and the creation of “Princetipedia,” an online wiki.

The Paw Points project, which was a top choice in the USG’s “All our Ideas” comparison survey earlier this year, looked to expand the use of Paw Points to retailers outside the University, including the Wawa. According to the February release, the store’s management had been receptive to the idea.

However, in the past month, “a lot of hurdles have come up since the project was conceived,” said USG spokesman Andy Martens ’13, noting that the time frame for the project has gone “from months to a couple years.”

Martens is also a director of blogs and social media for The Daily Princetonian.

“We’ve spoken to the administrators in charge of TigerCard,” said USG campus and community affairs chair Stephen Stolzenberg ’13, one of the students heading the program. “There is a lot of comparing that needs to be done in relation to how other universities run their programs. We imagine this will take quite a while.”

“The USG’s role in this project is to show and continue to show that students are interested in the results of this project, as well as promoting it to the student body if it is a success,” he explained.

Support nonprofit student journalism. Donate to the ‘Prince’. Donate now »

Another project that the USG had described as a priority was the supplies at campus print stations.

This priority was a result of the Undergraduate Life Committee’s concern over “the absence of office essentials (staplers, hole-punchers, etc.) at many of the printing stations throughout campus,” according to the release.

The USG reported that the project was “near completion” at the end of February, and it has since moved into the hands of different offices. According to Martens, the supply initiative had faced “bureaucratic hurdles,” and the purchasing end of this program may be redirected to the residential colleges and Residential College Advisers.

Princetipedia was a proposed online student-run wiki that would coordinate with a wiki run by the McGraw Center and be open to any user to edit, included those not affiliated with the University, and would be monitored by the USG IT Committee for accuracy.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

While this project, according to the release, was also “near completion” last month, another student-run wiki, Princeton Panda, was opened by students not affiliated with the USG earlier this month and threw the project “a curveball,” Martens said.

“[We are] biding our time to see how the wikis develop so the student body doesn’t end up with three,” he explained. However, a version of the Princetipedia is already online, and is collaborating with the other wikis.

The expansion of summer storage, which was planned to open up international student storage to long-distance American students, is still on schedule, though no final plans have been made.

The USG confirmed that the vacation bus project, which would provide summer vacation buses to Boston and Washington, D.C., would go ahead as planned, though this plan has not been finalized.

Correction

An earlier version of this article contained inaccurate information about the state of the USG projects. The article has been updated to reflect the changes. The Daily Princetonian regrets these errors.