The report is a compilation of 11 reports produced by various USG officers and committees and expands upon the USG’s first mid-year report, which was released in October.
“Sometimes, people wonder, ‘What is the USG doing for me?’ ” former USG treasurer Trevor Martin ’11 said. “When you see where the money is going, you really see how the USG is trying to allocate its money to help as many students as possible in a meaningful way.”
Among the projects detailed in the report are the Feedback Loop, an email listserv connecting 100 student leaders on campus with the USG to establish a medium for dialogue on current projects, and the rearrangement of the USG offices in the Frist Campus Center to make them more accessible to students. The offices now feature a computer cluster, a seating area stocked with popular magazines and free coffee and hot chocolate.
Other initiatives included efforts to improve the day-to-day lives of students, such as free weekend film showings at the Princeton Garden Theatre, a campus events calendar hosted through TigerApps and free HIV screenings through University Health Services.
The USG also funded and organized events such as the USG’s first-ever FrostFest, a winter festival held in Dillon Gymnasium in December that drew roughly 1,000 students, according to the report.
The document also disclosed the current status of unfinished and tabled projects, which is a first for the USG.
USG president Michael Yaroshefsky ’12 said he thought the best way to serve students was to inform them of tabled projects as well as those they knew were executed successfully.
“We realize that the best policy for us is to be candid,” he said. “Transparency is a buzzword, but this is definitely something along those lines.”
The report includes, for example, updates about the USG’s progress in facilitating meal exchanges, which may be transferred to a University ID card-based system as early as this summer.
Other such projects include efforts to provide a shuttle to West Windsor fields for club sports team members, to explore options to expand gender-neutral housing and to lead the country’s first multi-institution LED light bulb exchange.
Some plans, such as a proposal for the University to provide two-ply toilet paper and ideas for a Battle of the Bands event, have been tabled because of their high cost relative to their benefit to the student body.
Yaroshefsky said that publishing the annual report, which also solicits feedback from students, has the additional benefit of being an effective way to communicate with administrators.
“Reports such as these are the language of the administration,” he said. “If you want to be a part of that conversation, it’s incumbent on you to reach out to administrators in the same ways that they prefer to communicate.”
Yaroshefsky deserved much of the credit for the annual report, Martin said.
“It’s definitely [Yaroshefsky’s] idea and his initiative,” Martin said of the report.
“He really has this idea that the USG should be open and that people should be able to know what the USG is up to,” Martin added.
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