At the Sunday Undergraduate Student Government (USG) meeting, USG leaders approved funding for peace advocate Loay Alshareef, presented an expense report, and hosted administrators for a presentation on the Black student experience.
The meeting began with a request by the Projects Board for B’Artzeinu Princeton to fund a lecture from Loay Alshareef. A linguist and peace advocate based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Alshareef is attempting to ease tensions between Arabs and Jews and combat antisemitism through fostering understanding of language, history, and culture. The Projects Board agreed to provide $1,300 for the lecture, despite the original request of $5,000.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, Loay Alshareef is “a linguist and educator based in Abu Dhabi with a passion for Semitic languages, including Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac.” In the past, he has advocated against antisemitic discrimination and for the Abraham Accords, which were 2020-2021 agreements for diplomatic normalisation between Israel and Arab states including the UAE. Starting in 2012, Alshareef has posted content on his social media about language and history in an attempt to further normalise relations between Arabs and Jews.
The meeting was followed by presentations from USG President Quentin Colón Roosevelt ’27 and Treasurer Marvel Jem Roth ’28.
At the outset of Roth’s week four report, she disclosed and itemized all the expenses made in the previous week through USG, which included $670 for the Campus and Community Affairs Committee’s Tigers in Town program for Valentine’s Day weekend, $2,800 for balaclavas to be given out at sports games, and $65.25 spent on catering for the previous Academic Committee’s Legal Access Project initiative. Even after creating an itemized list of expenses for the past week, Roth expressed concern over adhering to the current budget due to issues in calculating the previous semester’s budgetary charges.
Roth also emphasized continuing the process of making important revisions to certain amendments in the Project Boards Charter. Among these revisions were clarifying compliance language and responsibilities, increasing the voting threshold for overcoming compliance regulations, and striking language requiring the return of funds to administration.
Roth also compared USG’s Student Activities Fees to other Ivy League schools, and found that Princeton had one of the lowest costs per student and some of the best activity returns for students.
While Princeton has a student activities fee of $95.50 yearly, other Ivy League universities such as Dartmouth and Brown have fees that amount to $318 and $442, respectively. Even in comparison to Harvard having a $450 fee and Yale having a $185 fee, Princeton has one of the cheapest student activities fees out of the entire Ivy League.
Shawn Maxam, associate provost for institutional diversity and inclusion, and Andy Cofino, assistant vice president for diversity, belonging, and well-being, then delivered a short presentation on the Black student experience at Princeton. The presentation addressed that Black and LGBTQ+ students cited having reportedly the lowest satisfaction rates on campus.
Both Maxam and Cofino affirmed the administration’s commitment to working to support these students, citing willingness to work with the USG Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Committee.
Isaac Bernstein ’28, chair of the USG Academics Committee, discussed ways to facilitate conversations between key campus policymakers and the student body. The Committee will be hosting a Q&A town hall with the Honor Committee, Faculty-Student Committee on Discipline, and Peer Representatives on Feb. 27.
Bernstein is a former staff News writer for the ‘Prince.’
Additionally, Bernstein announced that the Academics Committee will host the Minor Program Research Initiative, which aims to provide a comprehensive guide to understanding the minor program requirements and present it to the student body in a comprehensive way.
Bernstein hopes that the new initiative will help students easily access information about minors. The initiative will also supply answers for various questions about double-counting classes towards minors and what qualifies as independent work.
The last presentation of the meeting was about the Academic Life Total Assessment update for February by U-Councilor Shria Ajay ’27 to gather information on University student behaviors. She formulated specific questions in the survey about AI and how that has affected academics and academic performance, but the data from this survey has not been fully released yet.
The question of AI in academics and whether ChatGPT Plus should be accessible to students was only briefly discussed. However, Ajay is hoping that the results of the survey will help in answering these questions.
The next USG senate meeting will be at 5 p.m. on Sunday in Robertson 016.
Benedict Hooper is a staff News writer for the ‘Prince.’ He is from Greenwich, C.T. and can be reached at bh3193[at]princeton.edu.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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