Speaker of the Central Michigan University Student Government Association House of Rep. Christian Dunn said he is hoping the house will start brainstorming legislation ideas here in the next few weeks. After having to cancel the House meeting last week, House Reps. spent this week’s meeting discussing the process behind passing legislation.

He said the house will begin their new approach to legislative sessions next week.

“I’m hoping that we’re able to talk about the issues that people are experiencing and to talk about it in a smaller group setting so more people are more inclined to share,” Dunn said.

The last major piece of legislation that SGA passed was the Sustainability Fee back in April. The bill was unanimously approved by the association, and a $5 fee was put on students' tuition to help support more sustainable efforts around campus.

Dunn said the new approach to legislative sessions will have students break out into three groups and focus on specific topics such as campus safety, academic issues and housing and dining. He says this should help improve the brainstorming process of creating legislation.

“Not everyone is able to voice their opinion,” Dunn said. “So by having three different sessions, people are able to do that more easily. Instead of 85, there will be 25 people, which is still a lot of people but you can still easily voice your concerns.”

SGA’s new approach to legislative sessions will start during the meeting on Feb. 17.

Sustainability brainstorms ideas for legislation

SGA’s Sustainability Committee started brainstorming ideas for possible legislation as part of their meeting. The committee was tasked to come up with ideas that could help improve life around campus.

Some of their ideas were:

Changes to how the university salts sidewalks and roads
Siphon for CMU’s Green Team
Changes to the university’s bereavement policy

National Science Teaching Association Representative Lexie Chester also presented the idea of changing plastic products to paper at stores like CMU’s bookstore and Starbucks.

“I feel like it’s so much easier to use a paper bag for a lot of those things,” Chester said. “I’d be fine getting a frozen or cold drink in a paper cup instead of a plastic cup.”

Committee Chair Kathryn House said she liked the idea of the university transitioning from plastic to paper products and proposed the idea to the university’s officials, but was told the transition would be too expensive.

She says that drafting challenging legislation is a balance of “what you know and who you know” and believes that committee meetings are a great way to help draft ideas.

“We are a collective of different people, there are lots of people in here who know more about things than me and vice versa,” House said. “Committees are effective because we can all connect and share and pull our ideas to help be more successful.”

The rest of the meeting was spent discussing ideas on a video the committee could share with the campus community about being more environmentally friendly.

Other news

SGA is holding a TEDx conference in April. Applications to be a speaker are due by March 7 by 5 p.m. President Carolina Hernandez Ruiz said anyone is welcome to apply.
Interim Vice President of Innovation and Online Kaleb Patrick asked SGA members about their thoughts on changing some of the settings for class registration. One suggestion students made was to color-coordinate the options for online or in-person classes so people can more easily tell the difference when signing up.
Program & Event Manager Kaye Reimers spoke with students about the Isabella Bank Institute for Entrepreneurship. The program aims to help students develop different business and entrepreneurial skills.