USG senate discusses Leadership Education and Diversity Summit, bathroom locks

The Undergraduate Student Government senate discussed the 2015 Princeton Leadership Education and Diversity Summitand held an open forum on the University’s bathroom lock policy during its weekly meeting on Sunday.

Last weekend, the Diversity and Equity Committee sponsored the LEAD Summit at the Pocono Environmental Education Center in Pennsylvania. Former USG president Shawon Jackson ’15, Albert Choi ’15 and Ozi Obi-Onuoha ’16 presented a brief summary of the conference.

“The LEAD summit was a three-day summit, and the purpose of it was to give students diversity and leadership training and also to highlight why diversity is important in the context of leadership,” Jackson explained.

Programming during the summit included several keynote speeches and a series of workshops on the topics of race, class, sexuality and gender. Jackson noted that feedback regarding the summit has been very positive.

In response to inquiries by U-councilor Dallas Nan ’16 on whether the event could have been held on campus or could have been less costly, Jackson explained that much of the money was spent on events that were open to the whole school, as well as on providing transportation for eight to 10 speakers.

“We thought the event would be more successful off-campus because you are physically and mentally removed from the Orange Bubble,” Jackson added.

The senate also discussed possible options for changing the bathroom lock system on campus. These options include having bathrooms that don’t have locks, that have locks that open with University ID cards or that have the usual combination locks, University Student Life Committee chairKathy Chow ’17 explained.

“We’re trying to design a questionnaire that would capture the different options that we have and more objectively evaluate what students actually want,” Chow said.

USG president Ella Cheng ’16 explained that the PUID locks on bathrooms would allow students of any gender to access any gender bathroom, while still leaving a record in case any incident were to happen.

“It’s definitely not going to be one gender having locks. The reason why this came up in the first place was because of a gender equality issue,” Cheng said. She added that 40 percent of the student body said in the preliminary survey that they still want some form of a lock.

“If the majority of girls feel like they want locks and the majority of boys feel like they don’t want locks, I don’t feel like that’s a problem,” Class of 2018 senator Rohan Patlolla said. “I don’t feel like that’s equality, just that each gender gets to decide what they want for their own personal needs.”

U-council chair Zhan Okuda-Lim ’15 explained that the University administration first decided to install locks in the 1970s, when a series of sexual assaults took place in women’s bathrooms.

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During the meeting, USG vice president Aleksandra Czulak ’17 discussed the Eating Club Accessibility Project. Czulak explained that the Interclub Council consists of all eating club presidents and Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Students Bryant Blount ’08, who collaborate on sponsoring events such as TruckFest.

“It’s an opportunity for all the clubs to get together and have a discussion about what’s going on on the Street,”Czulak said.

The project will explore ways to make more information about Bicker available online. Cheng added that the new ICC president Jean-Carlos Arenas ’16, who is also the president of Charter Club, has been looking into possibilities for collaboration between eating clubs, such as allowing more meal exchanges and looking into financial aid.

Arenas is a former Chief Copy Editor for The Daily Princetonian.

Class of 2017 senator Chris Shin presented an update on Princeton Public Works, a group working to support artistic endeavors on campus.

USG treasurer Hunter Dong ’17 said that because arts projects already have outside sources of funding readily available to them on campus, including Projects Board, the Lewis Center for the Arts, as well as departmental funding, USG funds should not be the first resort for projects of this kind.

Chow also proposed the USLC body image project, which would entail putting posters up on campus with anonymous quotes about people’s experiences with eating disorders, in addition to information about resources available for those struggling from similar issues.

U-councilor Jacob Cannon ’17 said it would be important for this project to “have a really clear reason for working on it, so it’s very focused and has a clear target audience that you’re appealing to.”