Undergraduate Student Senate General Body Meeting recap 9/15

The Undergraduate Student Senate met on Sept. 15 to discuss a special allocations request and appoint new student senators to vacant positions.

The meeting opened at 5 p.m. to roll call and approval of agenda. The first order of business was a special allocations request from CMU Hockey. President of the Carnegie Mellon hockey club Nicholas Beach gave the presentation.

It was reported that there was an active club hockey conference in western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio that the club hockey team competed in that recently fell into decline but is starting up again. The team played two friendly games against other teams last year and is hoping to have a full slate this year. However, the club hockey team needs to pay for ice time for their games since they will host home games during their season.

While the team is currently projected to receive $18,950, this is $3,000 short of their proposed budget that includes the ice time for home games. In the initial budget, the team did not anticipate this additional cost associated with ice time since the team was not part of a sanctioned league, but it now is. The six extra games that the team plans to play cost $335 an hour and the games are 2.5 hours each.

Joining the regional league and playing competitively is a new initiative for the club and they are not funded by the Joint Funding Committee for the ice time. According to the accompanying presentation, there is a “substantial undergraduate benefit, as students will be able to both watch and play CMU hockey to a greater extent.” The allocation for $3,000 was approved.

The next part of the session was dedicated to approving students to fill vacancies in the Undergraduate Student Senate. First-years Tala Areiqat and Thomas Xiao were elected as senators for Dietrich; First-years Nikhita Bontha and Francesca Cain were elected as senators for CIT; Third-year Gloria Lee and Sophomore Sophia Coscia were elected as senators for CFA; and first-year Mahitha Chaturvedula was elected as senator for MCS.

The Undergraduate Student Senate holds General Body Meetings every Thursday at 5:00 p.m. in the Cohon University Center Danforth Conference Room, which are open to everyone in the Carnegie Mellon community.