As Hopkins begins another academic year, the Student Government Association (SGA) is already in the works of programming for the student body. During the SGA meeting last Tuesday, the members discussed a number of topics.
The first topic discussed was the upcoming freshmen elections this weekend. This year, there are more freshmen running for positions than in past years. Eight freshmen are running for one spot as freshman class president, and thirteen for six spots as senators. The presidential candidates are Merrill Anovick, Dillon Auvenshine, Nusaiba Baker, Winston Chang, Mats Dreyer, Eric Haydel, Elizabeth Mash and Nathan Schloss. The senatorial candidates are Kevin Barry, Hyun Sik Choi, Bridgett Harkness, Jonathan Hunt, Alan Julian, Minerva Kim, Phoebe Morgan, Dominic Nistal, Andrew Ritchez, Ari Schaffer, Deane Schofield, Michael St. Germain and Gauri Wagle.
In addition to talking about freshman elections, the SGA also approved the new judiciary committee. It reappointed two returning members to the committee, namely, Matt Garland and Patrick Mascia, and inducted three new members, Harry Black, Ben Shapiro-Kline and Cara Kaplan. The fresh judiciary committee will preside over any appeals that it receives, including those that concern the upcoming freshman elections.
The student body opinion survey was another area of focus at the SGA meeting. According to SGA president Mark Dirzulaitis, the intention of such a survey is to provide students with the opportunity to voice their concerns. To encourage more students to complete the survey, one member suggested giving out prizes for filling it out. Additionally, another member recommended that the link to the survey be posted on the SGA website. “Through this website surveys, [the SGA] will have a new medium through which to communicate with the students,” Dirzulaitis said.
Perhaps the most problematic matter discussed was the SGA’s financial situation.
Sophomore and treasurer of SGA Wyatt Larkin said that there was some uncertainty about how much money SGA has for its use this year.
Without having a lucid impression of SGA’s funds, Larkin said, it would be rather complex, even impossible, to properly distribute the money to the school’s various clubs and activities.
Also, the SGA would be unable to approve of the budgets of various traditional Hopkins events such as Beer Garden and HOPtoberfest, which will be discussed at next week’s meeting.
Faced with such problems arising from uncertainty about this year’s budget, Larkin said he was determined to talk to the administration and find out.
The SGA’s monetary situation will also be essential in determining the fate of upcoming programs for the year.
Having diverted funds for the upcoming Lupe Fiasco concert on October 1st, the SGA now has that much less to spend for the rest of the year.
One University service that might suffer as a result is the free bus rides to Fells Point in downtown Baltimore over Halloween weekend, which is something SGA has traditionally been responsible for funding in previous years.
Another topic that was brought up was that of whether to charge for transportation to the Hopkins-tailored premier of the upcoming movie about the origins of Facebook, “The Social Network.”
After the Homewood campus was used as the filming site for “The Social Network,” to represent Harvard, the film studio has presented the school with the opportunity to receive a number of free tickets for a private screening of the film prior to its nationwide release.
The SGA initially wanted to sell those tickets to students in order to provide for transportation to the event, but it has been met with opposition from the film studio which has asserted that Hopkins should not profit from the opportunity.
If the SGA decides to provide transportation for free, the problem is that there possibly would not be enough money in the budget to offer free bus-rides to Fells Point for Halloween.
A number of resolutions were proposed in response to the issue.
One member suggested that students find their own rides to the theater (which is located at Landmark Harbor East), but decided that only a limited number of Hopkins students would be willing both to pay for and ride public transportation in Baltimore.
Another alternative would be to work around the system and give out the tickets on a first come-first serve basis in front of the Mattin Center and sell seats for the bus for five dollars each.
SGA is going to finalize the ticket deal and transportation issues within the next two days.
Much of this decision, as discussed, could be determined by further knowledge of the budget.
While SGA has a number of proposals for this year, most of these plans cannot be properly executed just yet without a definitive calculation of SGA’s budget.
