SGA president vetoes meal compensation legislation after passing through house and senate
Student Government Association President Katelyn King vetoed legislation regarding meal plan compensation for South and Towers community residents after it passed through the SGA House and Senate at a meeting on Feb. 7.
In October 2021, Central Michigan University Campus Dining announced changes to the hours of operations for the South and Towers communities that closed the dining facilities on weekends.
The legislation called for Campus Dining and Residence Life to create a compensation plan for residents in the respective communities. It also stated that neither flex-dollars, nor credit for meal plans would be a sufficient form of compensation.
“This legislation does not ask for a compensation amount or provide data for how many less meals students living in these areas are receiving since the closure,” King said.
This was one of King's biggest concerns with the legislation, as well as "grammatical errors" and concerns for students in East and North campus who would not receive compensation.
"Creating legislation that is guaranteed to fail, lessens the chance of future legislation," she said.
The veto followed a meeting between King and CMU administration.
“They said, (with the) pandemic, campus dining is doing what they can, and that's just not something that's feasible, currently," King said.
Residents in the respective communities expressed frustrations because they were “promised that dining on campus would fit every lifestyle and dining on campus would be easy,” as written in the resolution.
"The decision to close the dining hall wasn't particularly CMU's fault, or Campus Dining’s fault, it's more of a staffing issue,” King said. “It's not worth it to keep a dining hall open when you can't properly staff it, so I believe that it was the right decision.”
Concerns were presented in an online petition which garnered over 3000 signatures. Not all of them were from students - another problem King cited when reviewing the resolution.
Since last week's meeting, the author of the legislation, Rafael Garza, collaborated with the director of the Residence Housing Association to develop an attainable compensation plan to be specified in the legislation – a 10% reimbursement of the original meal plan price.
“We think a 10% is a good starting point, so that will be one of the changes I'll make for sure,” Garza said.
Garza has been working on the legislation since Jan. 1 and intends to "keep pushing it".
“Personally, I am a little frustrated,” he said. “SGA has not done a lot with trying to tackle this issue where the students in South and towers have encountered hardship in their opinion, obtaining meals. It is especially frustrating because the mission of SGA is that we're supposed to be advocating for constituencies, and we're supposed to be an inspiring improvement.”
The legislation will be further discussed at tonight's meeting at 7 p.m. Students can attend the meeting in-person or watch CM Life's live stream coverage.
