USG senate discusses TruckFest, ‘Dear World’ project

The Undergraduate Student Government senate discussed plans for TruckFest, approved new committee members and reviewed the progress of committee projects at its meeting on Sunday.

In light of Mental Health Week, the senate meeting opened by introducing the photographer Robert Fogarty, who will be running the “Dear World” photography project on campus throughout the week. “Dear World,” which first started in New Orleans, La., is a photography project which asks participants to share a message about themselves.

In addition, the senate approved the appointment of new Honor Committee member HassanEjaz Chaudhry ’18. Chair of the Honor Committee Jesse Fleck ’15 explained that this mid-semester appointment was necessary to replace Class of 2017 president C.J. Harris.

“We believe he’s very insightful. He showed a high understanding of integrity and of the Honor Code itself,” Fleck said of Chaudhry.

A freshman was selected by the senior members of the Honor Committee because they wanted someone who “could be trained and jump into the system mid-semester and not focus on what year they were,” Fleck said.

The senate approved the Projects Board’s request for funding for TruckFest.

Projects Board co-chairs and event organizers Tyler Lawrence ’16 and Naman Jain ’17 presented their plans for TruckFest, which is scheduled to take place on April 25.

The event will be larger in scale than last year’s, with 25 food trucks on Prospect Avenue compared to last year’s 11, Lawrence and Jain said. The organizers said they hope to raise $50,000 for charity.

TruckFest will hopefully be more streamlined than last year by providing every student with a certain number of tickets and reducing wait times by offering only a limited menu at each truck, they added.

Elections manager Grant Golub ’17 discussed his plans about future USG elections.

Golub is a staff writer for the ‘Prince.’

“The first thing is that I would like to have meetings — I call it the speaker series — where we can talk about what USG is doing, how people can get involved,” Golub explained. “I think that the student body should be inundated with that more. That way students feel that it’s more accessible and feel that they can get more involved.”

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However, University Student Life Committee chair Kathy Chow ’17 said students are not always receptive to speakers.

“To be honest, I’m not sure how well the speaker series will go, because we’ve had some amazing people speak at Princeton, and nobody even notices it,” she said. “I think maybe a better way to do this might be just to make videos of USG members talking about why it’s important to vote.”

There is a possibility of underrepresentation in senate based on race, gender or even athlete and engineering status that should potentially be addressed in outreach, U-councilor Naimah Hakim ’16 said.

“I wonder if that might be part of the conversation, who thinks of themselves as potentially being part of USG,” Hakim said.

The communications committee has also been working on the design for a new USG website.Having more frequent visual updates in the form of a blog or videos on the website would be helpful for students, U-councilor Mallory Banks ’16 said.

The USG meeting on bathroom lock policies has been rescheduled for next week’s senate meeting.