USG discusses support system for students taking leave

The USG senate approved an amendment to the Honor Committee constitution that would give the incoming Honor Committee chair more time for training at its weekly meeting on Sunday.

Honor Committee chair-elect and U-councilor Dallas Nan ’16 noted that other changes to the constitution will require more time for review.

“A concern that we need to pass as soon as possible is to make this chair transition time concrete,” Nan said. “We decided that we wanted the chair to transfer at midyear, so that the outgoing chair has a semester to mentor the incoming chair.”

Under the current system, the incoming chair has to call the chair emeritus whenever he has a question about anything, Nan explained.

Because more than three-fourths of the voting members in senate voted in favor, the amendment passed, and Nan will now become acting Honor Committee chair from this date.

In an update on the recent election cycle, chief elections manager Grant Golub ’17 noted that run-off elections betweenJenny Zhang ’18 and Yash Patel ’18were taking place for the position of Class of 2018 treasurer.

Golub is a former staff writer and senior copy editor for The Daily Princetonian.

In addition, Golub said he wanted to encourage senate members to suggest specific ways to improve the elections handbook.

U-councilor Jacob Cannon ’17 provided an update on a support system for students taking extended leave, which includes a mentorship database for students considering leaving to find advice.

The database will be constructed based on results of a survey, so that the reasons that students took leave — including whether it was for athletics and whether or not it was voluntary — would be considered in creating the database.

Class of 2016 senator Deana Davoudiasl suggested that the project group make the support database an “opt-in” one, so that students who took a year off and are willing to talk to others considering taking time off could offer advice more informally.

USG’s staff appreciation project is underway, media chair Jia Ning Cheng ’17 said, noting that there will be tables in Frist Campus Center by next week and possibly during reading period, where students will be able to write personal thank you notes for staff. There will also be posters available with information about what staff of different departments do for students, Cheng said.

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Addressing the information technology committee, U-councilor Mallory Banks ’16 said that she thought there was a publicity problem for TigerApps and suggested that the committee pursue a campaign to increase student awareness of the resources available to them.

“No one knows anything about TigerApps,” Banks said. “It’s really bizarre and also totally unhelpful.”

TigerApps shouldn't be rolled out officially until USG has thought through how to adopt them most effectively, USG president Ella Cheng ’16 said.

Cheng is a former staff writer for The Daily Princetonian.

During the meeting, U-council chair Zhan Okuda-Lim ’15 also presented two possible amendments to the senate constitution. The first would allow the senate to create standing committees that continue after the newly elected senate takes office. The second proposal would remove the existing attendance policy from the constitution and allow the senate to adopt a new rule.

Class of 2018 senator Paul Draper raised a concern regarding the first proposed amendment, noting that senate members might be less inclined to think about the work being done in standing committees, compared to ad hoc committees, since they don’t need to periodically re-approve the group.

The first amendment failed to pass with less than tw0-thirds of the voting senate members voting in favor, while the second amendment passed.

The senate will not be meeting next Sunday, and the final meeting for the year will be on Saturday, May 9.

Correction: Due to a reporting error, an earlier version of this article misstated the class year of Mallory Banks '16. The 'Prince' regrets the error.