Print Edition of the Student Government Insider of The Observer for Thursday, December 6, 2018

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McGavick, Gayheart discuss progress, goals

By MARY STEURER News Writer

Nearing the halfway point of their term, seniors Gates McGavick and Corey Gayheart, student body president and vice president, said they have worked hard this semester to encourage greater conversations between the University administration, campus groups and the Notre Dame community.

In their campaign platform, the pair pledged to make student government “approachable, collaborative and transformative.”

McGavick said the team has already taken several measures to advance the “approachable” and “collaborative” modules of their platform.

“We’ve just made it a point to make student government as interactive as possible and form as many relationships as possible,” he said.

McGavick said Student Government has worked closely with campus’ various student union organizations this semester. He also said he and Gayheart hope to improve communication between the groups, which in the future will help streamline event planning.

“We’re really looking at how [we can] integrate the multiple moving parts of the student union better,” he said. “How can we get them interacting more on a daily basis and less operating in their different bubbles?”

Gayheart said regularly communicating with the organizations will prove essential when

discussions about renovating LaFortune Student Center begin.

“There’s some updates that need to be made in [LaFortune Student Center] and we think working with that, that would also have an adverse impact on how the student union functions as a whole,” he said.

McGavick and Gayheart have also worked to improve the Student Activities Office this semester. “[SAO] has started meeting at the beginning of every week, and they go in to approve or look at the different events that are happening within the next week that they have to get approved and through the process,” he said. “So there’s kind of an active communication pipeline where there wasn’t one before.”

McGavick and Gayheart plan to continue these efforts next year.

“Moving forward, there’s actually going to be an external audit of SAO,” Gayheart said. “So they’ll bring in administrators from other schools that work in similar departments, and they’ll observe what SAO does and then provide suggestions for how they can rethink and revamp SAO.” McGavick and Gayheart said student government’s communications department has improved student outreach this semester by increasing their following on social media.

“When we started the semester, one of the biggest problems was, a lot of current students don’t follow the student government social media,” Gayheart said.

By consequence, Gayheart added, many student government

events went overlooked by the student body.

McGavick said since the beginning of the semester, however, the team has raised its engagements and impressions on social media eightfold.

“The social media presence for student government has just completely turned around,” he said. “ …

People actually have a way to reach out to student government [and] they know what student government’s doing.”

Gayheart said he believes another one of student government’s greatest successes this year has been its push for financial transparency within Notre Dame’s administration.

In October, student government hosted a seminar with the Office of Development titled “Where Does the Money Go: An Insider’s Look into Finances at Notre Dame.” At the event, an official from the department spoke on student tuition and the University’s endowment, and broke down how the money was used to cover annual expenses. The event drew between 100 and 200 students, Gayheart said.

Gayheart said he and McGavick plan to do more to promote financial transparency next semester.

“In our platform, we had originally advocated for online University checkbook, which we’re still working on,” he said. “But we felt that [the event] was a step in the right direction because we very clearly communicated that students, one, don’t know how [the University’s] money’s being spent, and when they see the numbers,

they’re just appalled.”

Gayheart said he not only hopes students find these efforts educational, but that the initiative sets a precedent for fiscal transparency within the administration. “[The message] we tried to get to the administration was, ‘People are OK with you spending the money, they just want to know how,’” Gayheart said.

Gayheart said student government has also taken strides to promote campus safety by requiring all of its members to be GreeNDot certified and its executive cabinet to receive multicultural competency training.

“They have larger impacts in our work as a whole,” he said.

McGavick said student government will focus on improving dorm maintenance next semester.

“Our approach to dorm maintenance can be completely founded on the experiences of kids on campus,” he said. “I’m trying to gain pretty much as many anecdotes, as many experiences that kids have had with dorm maintenance and just kind of collectivize these experiences.”

McGavick said the initiative will be a massive undertaking requiring the combined efforts of several

student government departments and thorough research.

“We’re going to have several departments and their entire staffs devoted to [the dorm maintenance initiative], and we’re just going to collect information from across campus until we have so much information on the issue that we can make a really compelling argument for improving the situation,” he said.

McGavick and Gayheart said they also plan to write transition books to help better prepare future student government leaders.

The books would include recommendations for handling the dayto-day responsibilities of the jobs, lists of contacts and other useful information.

“Obviously we’re not going to know everything going in,” he said.

“That being said, we think that there could be more done to help ease [people] into the job.”

Gayheart said he wants next year’s successors to be as prepared for the jobs as possible.

“Whoever comes after us, we want to work with them as much as we can,” he said.

Contact Mary Steurer at msteure1@nd.edu

Student executives work to make ND safer

By THOMAS MURPHY News Writer

Campus safety and the wellbeing of students are always a major concern for a university and its governing bodies. Now with new developments in federally suggested sexual assault procedures, considerations regarding the efficacy of the blue light emergency system and greater GreeNDot awareness, student government has worked with the Notre Dame administration Security Police to increase student safety.

Student body vice president and senior Corey Gayheart said student government was concerned about the Department of Education’s push to change Title IX procedures regarding sexual assault. He said Student Government hopes Notre Dame makes the right policy decision regarding student safety.

“We’re planning on obviously meeting with administrators if Notre Dame will be changing any of its policies based on the changes,” Gayheart said. “I think our biggest issue is we want to make sure that Notre Dame holds itself to the highest standard possible and make sure that we are very in-tune with what is the best practice for dealing with a situation.”

Student body president and senior Gates McGavick said while student government may not be able to make any final decisions regarding Notre Dame’s policy, it will do all it can to advocate for the student body.

“Whatever Notre Dame ends up doing, of course, is one of those places where student government can’t really just stop the course of what [University President] Fr. [John] Jenkins decides,” McGavick said. “But any decision he makes that we don’t think matches the standard that Notre Dame needs to have towards its students, we will loudly and aggressively advocate for the student body’s feelings on it.”

McGavick and Gayheart campaigned last spring with the goal of reviewing, improving and possibly adding to Notre Dame’s blue lights, a system of emergency call boxes placed around the perimeter of campus and in other strategic locations. However, McGavick said their aspirations have been curbed since learning about the cost and effectiveness of the system. “[The administration] indicated to us that the approach of other institutions and the blue light in general as a system is being scaled back,” McGavick said. “ … We were

under the impression that blue lights were, in the view of campus safety departments, the most effective way to fight issues like sexual assault … but the way we have them right now, [blue lights] aren’t being used.”

Notre Dame Security Police chief Keri Kei Shibata said the common use of cell phones has led to a significant decline in the use of the blue light system. “[Blue lights] started long ago, before people had cell phones, and now that almost everyone has a cell phone it’s not seen as being as important of a safety feature,” Shibata said. “We may get one call a semester that’s an actual call of someone needing something, at the most.”

McGavick said while a large expansion of blue lights does not seem possible right now, Student Government is still hoping to add a call box near the recently completed Walsh Family Hall.

Aside from this strategic addition, other options are also being looked at, McGavick said.

“For [the administration], it’s trying to justify the logistical and financial cost for what they see as not a big return because they’re not used that much,” McGavick said.

“We’re interested in going in the direction of more creative solutions like a campus safety app.”

Shibata also said Notre Dame Security Police will continue adding blue lights to the campus perimeter and in isolated areas as the campus expands.

Having inherited a GreeNDot system that seemed to reach a “critical point of name recognition” during the 2017-18 academic year, McGavick said student government is looking for more ways to get students GreeNDot trained. These new initiatives will possibly include GreeNDot training sessions taking place directly in dorms and encouraging students who live in “party rooms” to receive training.

McGavick and Gayheart also said they have received interest from local bars about the possibility of creating a program similar to GreeNDot for their employees, but financial obstacles regarding the payment of employees during non-business hours have made the process difficult.

What is clear about the future of GreeNDot at Notre Dame is it needs to be integrated into the common curriculum and culture, Gayheart said. “[GreeNDot] needs to be a part of the institutionalized culture here,” he said. “GreeNDot shouldn’t have to be its own separate campaign; it should be part of the conversation and culture from day one.”

One of student government’s early campus safety initiatives this year was the Campus Safety Summit. While the event is held by campus’ various safety organizations each year, student government made a concerted effort to get students to attend what became one of the best-attended summits in recent years.

Now, Gayheart said, student government is planning to hold a second Campus Safety Summit in the spring, where he hopes students will be more able to speak directly with campus safety organizations.

“We might shift [the Summit] to more of a club fair type event — a little bit more conversational and more interactive, less people talking to the students and more people talking with [them],” he said.

Shibata said student government has formed a strong relationship with campus security.

“They’ve been very engaged,” Shibata said. “It’s helpful when students help communicate with students. Students tend to listen to them more than they might listen to me or our officers. So, helping to put out safety messages has been really helpful. … It’s been a really good relationship.

Contact Thomas Murphy at tmurphy7@nd.edu

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Corcoran, Ogden reflect, share future plans

By MARIA LEONTARAS Associate Saint Mary’s Editor

Seniors Madeleine Corcoran and Kathy Ogden, president and vice president of Saint Mary’s Student Government Association (SGA), said they were prepared for many things during their time as leaders — except former College President Jan Cervelli’s resignation.

Regardless of this occurrence, Corcoran said the transition from Cervelli to Interim College President Nancy Nekvasil was smooth and an opportunity for Corcoran and Ogden to work well with the administration.

“I think overall, this transition was much smoother than anyone probably would have expected. We had such great support, especially from [vice president of student affairs] Karen Johnson, [vice president for mission] Judy Fean, [Interim] President Nekvasil, of course, and [chair of the board of trustees] Mary Burke,” Corcoran said. “ … That’s why we had the All-Student Assembly, so we could have as open and honest of a conversation as possible for students. We’re obviously here to answer any questions, but we know just as much as everyone else, so it was good, I think, for everyone to hear from those people who are the new leaders of the College.”

Nekvasil has been willing to work with the pair in achieving their goals this semester, Corcoran said.

“We love President Nekvasil.

She’s been so helpful in working with us, and she’s really here for the students, which I think is something super special and important in a president,” Corcoran said. “She knows Saint

Mary’s so well, so we’ve been really fortunate to have that because [Cervelli’s resignation] was definitely unexpected and could have had a lot of hard road blocks along the way, but we’ve been really fortunate.”

Corcoran said she and Ogden have been able to work toward accomplishing many of the points on their platform, specifically getting Blinkie, the student shuttle, running on Sundays and enhancing a few technological aspects on campus.

“We’ve been working very hard to get a couple things done.

One is printing from your own device. … That hopefully will be implemented very soon,” she said. “They worked very hard on it over fall break when students were gone. Also, we’re working on a ‘This Week at SMC’ newsletter that will be like a weekly email with all the events instead of so many all-SMC emails.”

Ogden said another initiative from the team’s platform is to enhance Campus Ministry events. To this end, the team began “Lemonade and Le Mans” Mass on Wednesday evenings.

“On Wednesdays at the 9 p.m.

Mass in Le Mans, they have popcorn and lemonade,” Ogden said. “I talked to Tara Nelson, who is an [executive] for mission, and she said that normally they had maybe eight girls at Mass, but the attendance has gotten up to 25, 30 girls at Mass.

They hang around and they eat popcorn and drink lemonade.

[Corcoran] and I have been able to go to quite a few of those Masses, and it worked out well.”

Another major part of the job has been addressing day-to-day issues, Ogden said.

“Things pop up, and you don’t realize you need to work on it, so

we did,” she said. “Having graduation — there was an initiative to move it inside of Angela, so we really fought hard for the students, and it’s now officially outside of Le Mans, weather permitting.”

The pair also recognized a need to enhance the collaborative spaces available on campus, Ogden said, such as the SGA office located on the second floor of the Student Center.

“We’re redoing the SGA office.

[Corcoran] and I saw that it was a well-used office,” she said. “All the clubs and organizations are welcome to use it, and they each have closets. That’s taken a good amount of time, and hopefully after Christmas break, it’ll be completely finished. It’ll be nice for all the students to use.”

Another way the team hoped to enhance collaboration and communication between the leaders of SGA’s Big Boards — Residence Hall Association, Student Diversity Board, Student Activities Board, Class Council and Student Government Association — was to switch from weekly to biweekly meetings, Ogden said. “[The meetings] are biweekly, but we’re able to sit down and have a longer meeting where it’s very much discussion-based,” she said. “We’re all more engaged. It’s not just a tap in, quick meeting, so we’re all really engaged in what each Big Board is doing. It’s conversation-based, and I think that’s really helped with collaborating with all the clubs and organizations.”

Though many of the pair’s initiatives focus on the Saint Mary’s community specifically, Corcoran said they are working on a major event to unite the members of the surrounding

community.

“There’s already a ‘Back the Bend’ event that Saint Mary’s is already a part of, but student government is hoping to promote it more and be a greater part of it this year,” Corcoran said. “That’s in the spring, so our community co-chairs will be working on that more specifically to hopefully build, first of all, community within the tricampus community, but as well as South Bend in general, our greater community.”

Corcoran and Ogden have been continuing work on past initiatives, Corcoran said, like expanding the uses of Munch Money.

“We talked to Karen Johnson about it very early on this year as well as Ken Acosta. They’re very much supportive of it,” she said. “They said for this year it’d be hard, but they see the need, and they’re working on seeing what options are the best for Saint Mary’s students and the most feasible. I definitely think we’ll work on it more. At first we thought it’d be a two or threeyear timeline for the project, but we think even next year it might be a possibility, so that’s great.”

Throughout the semester of work, both Corcoran and Ogden said they could not have achieved what they have without one another and the other

board members. “[Ogden] and I definitely lean on each other at times, too,” Corcoran said. “If one of us has a tough week, I think we’re pretty good about being able to say, ‘Can you go to this meeting this week?’ or ‘Can you send the emails?’ or something like that. I definitely couldn’t do it without [Ogden] and our entire student government board.

Everyone is so great at doing their jobs, so we don’t have to be sending reminders constantly or anything like that, which is really important.”

As the two continue working toward the end of their positions, Corcoran said she’s hoping for a smooth transition to the next pair of SGA leaders.

“I think something that’s really important is that transition to whoever’s in our position next year, so that we can really clearly explain exactly what we have done so far and where we’re at, so if anything isn’t finished that they feel that it’s an important enough item to complete,” Corcoran said. “Hopefully that way we can have a smooth transition and strong communication with next year’s president and vice president is definitely something really important to us.”

Contact Maria Leontaras at mleontaras01@saintmarys.edu

SGA extends Blinkie service to cover full week

By MAEVE FILBIN News Writer

On the darkest December nights, the Blinkie van glows with warmth from within, promising sanctuary from the snow and a reliable ride home.

Strung with brightly colored Christmas lights during the winter months, this favorite piece of Saint Mary’s campus culture has been ferrying students along the stretch of road between Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s for more than 13 years. In the past, however, the Blinkie schedule ran only Monday through Saturday, leaving some students visiting on Sundays no choice but to walk Saint Mary’s Road back to campus.

In their Student Government Association (SGA) campaign platform, student body president and senior Madeleine Corcoran and student body vice president and senior Kathy Ogden stressed the need

for additional transportation on Saint Mary’s Road.

“Last year, many students had voiced their concerns regarding not having any Sunday transportation, especially between Saint Mary’s and Notre Dame’s campuses,” Corcoran said in an email. “Students who are involved in activities such as ROTC, band and Campus Ministry especially struggled with this logical challenge.

Additionally, students who are taking classes at Notre Dame and often have to meet with classmates on Sundays.”

SGA approached vice president for student affairs Karen Johnson with the proposal to provide students with Sunday Blinkie transportation during the months between fall break and spring break, Corcoran said.

“Throughout the summer, Saint Mary’s, Holy Cross and Notre Dame administrators worked with South Bend TRANSPO about budgeting and

scheduling changes,” Corcoran said. “However, it was not in the Saint Mary’s budget for this year to add Sunday transportation. The SGA executives felt that [a Sunday Blinkie service] is a necessity for Saint Mary’s students in the winter months, so we began looking at our own budget. We decided it was possible for us to provide the additional service.”

“The student government association agreed to fund the extra time and we were happy to help them,” Johnson said in an email.

SGA is currently collecting data determining if the Sunday services are frequently used, Corcoran said, and if results show that the additional Blinkie rides are benefiting the student body, SGA will propose adding the service to the College administration budget.

Corcoran and Ogden also reintroduced the idea of utilizing a Blinkie location tracker

app, a project that has been explored in past years, Corcoran said. While the tracker has yet to reach development stages, Corcoran said she and her partner will be passing the baton to next semester’s incoming student government executives.

“It’s definitely an option and a possibility, and actually student government started working on it a few years ago, so they said we could pick that back up,” she said. “But at this point, it’s kind of on the back burner … hopefully we can at least start working on [the tracker app] again and then pass that on to next year’s leaders to get that started and moving forward.”

Campus safety is a top priority stressed by both the current student government and Saint Mary’s administrations, Corcoran said.

“Saint Mary’s Road does not get well-plowed for students in the winter time, especially for those who are trying to bike,”

she said. “There are some days when it is too cold, rainy or windy for students to be outdoors for such a long time.

Additionally, the transportation provides a convenience for students who have busy schedules.”

Johnson said the main goal of campus security is to educate students about general safety, as the college cannot always provide transportation off-campus.

“I think students should always be aware of their personal safety and make sound decisions about walking alone,” Johnson said. “We cannot provide transportation on-demand, but do our best to help student who need to get around. Students need to use safe transportation such as Uber, Lyft or taxi services to get places and should never walk alone.”

Contact Maeve Filbin at mfilbin01@saintmarys.edu

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student SENATE

Senators pass resolutions, discuss reforms

By CLAIRE RAFFORD News Writer

When student body vice president and senior Corey Gayheart came into office, one of his objectives was to make student senate a less formal environment, allowing for more conversation and a less rigid structure.

“Part of our goals for senate [was] just to rethink the body itself and make it a little bit more conversational in nature and less authoritative, if that makes sense,” he said. “It was so serious that people didn’t find it enjoyable and we felt that because they didn’t find it enjoyable, they weren’t contributing as much. … We had to hopefully strike the right balance with the tone of it and I think we’ve done that.”

Gayheart said adding the Diversity Council chair to Senate has been one of the semester’s biggest accomplishments as it increased student representation and brought a new perspective to the group.

“One of the big things that we did last April was adding the Diversity Council chair to the nonvoting block of the senate,” Gayheart said.

“I think that was one of the largest and most beneficial changes, one, because [the Diversity Council needs] to be included in the conversation, and two ... they’re going to provide muchneeded inf luence [on] the conversation.”

Gayheart said student government also hopes to appoint senators to represent academic colleges next semester.

Policy-wise, the committees within Senate — Residential Life, Sustainability, Student Finances and Student Safety and Wellness — have gotten a slow start this year, Gayheart

said. “[The committees] have taken more time than I anticipated, with policy and whatnot, but they are finally coming to the table,” Gayheart said. “ ... They have some very tangible goals and they’re getting ready to roll some of those out next semester. They’ll be doing some surveys with the student body before they draft the policy, and so that’s been a work in progress.”

This semester, senate passed a resolution inherited from last year’s administration proposing that professors include information about mental health resources on campus in their syllabi.

“It had passed through the faculty senate last year and then it just kind of got lost in the shuff le, so working with the Faculty Senate, we passed it through the senate and we also passed it through Campus Life Council, and so it went to the Office of Student Affairs desk but also the provost,” Gayheart said. “So, we’re looking at next January, professors should have the mental health information on their syllabi, which we’re very excited about.”

In terms of other resolutions, Gayheart said he wants the senators to take control of senate’s policy agenda in the spring semester.

“I think a lot of it will come next semester, if I’m being honest,” Gayheart said.

“Policy-wise, I wanted it to be more so be driven by the senators and less by me.”

As for his own priorities, Gayheart said he is interested in creating new sustainability initiatives on Notre Dame’s campus. He said he plans to combine different areas of student government by having senators work with Executive Cabinet to achieve

this goal.

“From a policy perspective, I think the sustainability thing is very important,” Gayheart said. “Our new Director for Social Concerns, Kevin Gallagher — he’s been doing a lot in this area. He’s already started working on a national sustainability coalition with a couple different schools and doing an audit of some other schools to see if we can do a zerowaste stadium initiative and working with the Office of Sustainability on actually implementing those.”

Gayheart said another issue senate will be focusing on in the upcoming semester is the cost of laundry on Notre Dame’s campus — looking to either make it free, decrease the price, include the cost of laundry in tuition or roll the cost of laundry into a fee at the beginning of each semester.

“The laundry aspect is one of the most important things to us. It’s probably not going to happen this year,” he said. ”That being said, if we can plant the seed and have it happen a year to two years after us, that would be a huge improvement for so many students.”

Gayheart said a strong point of this year’s senators is their openness.

“People feel comfortable sharing their opinion, even if it is divergent from the norm, which is very important to me,” he said.

Gayheart said senate has faced some significant challenges this semester. The group has had to rotate meeting locations each week, which he said has caused confusion among the group.

“One of the weaknesses, again, is the rotating location,” Gayheart said. “I think that has hindered a lot because people are wondering

where it is. There’s a different feel to senate.”

In terms of projects, Gayheart said an additional obstacle has been motivating senators to take control of policy aims and ideas.

“One of the other weaknesses has been getting senators to understand that they have the ability to draft resolutions and policy. ... I’ve really been pushing that in one-onone settings, being like, ‘Hey, what are your thoughts and ideas?’ And then trying to get them to move it into a more policy-oriented realm. More of that will be coming next semester,” he said.

Gayheart said senate is important because it gives a voice to many different members of the Notre Dame community, including the residence halls, off-campus students, class councils, Student Union Board and more.

“I think in terms of representation, [senate is] the most representative body, and that means something because we have to make sure that we are doing what we need to be doing for the student body,” he said. “And I think [senate provides] a much-needed check and balance on, one, what [student government is] doing, but also they provide their input and opinions on what we’re doing. And that’s so invaluable because we have to make sure that we are doing what the student body wants us to to be doing.”

Next semester, Gayheart said senate is scheduled to

hear a presentation from vice president for student affairs Erin Hoffmann Harding regarding the results of the Inclusive Campus Student Survey, released earlier this semester. In addition, he said the Senate hopes to bring in Campus Dining, Rec Sports, Residential Life and Building Services to speak, among other guests.

Concerning student senate’s impact on the Notre Dame community as a whole, Gayheart said the policies passed by the senate are inf luential and aim to improve the quality of life for a Notre Dame student as well as giving them a voice in the conversation.

“It may have been t wo to three resolutions a semester, but if that hadn’t happened, there would have been less push behind the mental health information on the syllabi. That’s where that originated,” Gayheart said. “Looking to next semester, the free laundr y costs, things like that, or the Campus Dining presentation that Eduardo Luna did, that is something that is so invaluable because information gets disseminated to the residence halls in that way, and v ice versa, information from the halls and whatnot comes to the senate. I’d say that’s the first round of where issues come to light and we can see how we can fix that.”

Contact Claire Rafford at crafford@nd.edu

SGA advocates for student health, wellness

By GINA TWARDOSZ News Writer

When senior Madeleine Corcoran and senior Kathy Ogden were elected Saint Mary’s student body president and vice president, they agreed their focus would be on the community and addressing students’ desire for change. The team has made some headway in furthering the goals of their healthy living platform but are still looking to do more in the spring semester.

Corcoran and Ogden said they talked to food services general manager Kenneth Acosta at the beginning of

the year in order to decipher what they would be able to realistically accomplish in terms of healthy living and the dining hall.

“We talked to [Acosta] at the beginning of the year... with our food committee chair Giavanna [Paradiso],” she said. “Giavanna has a strict diet, so she has a different perspective.”

Corcoran said Acosta was able to carry out some of the small changes student government suggested. She said Paradiso was instrumental in determining these changes.

“Giavanna is a student athlete and she also has a lot of allerg y restrictions,”

Cocoran said. “She brought some of the challenges for those who have allergies to our attention and also to [Acosta’s] attention. Now there’s the fridge over by the sandwich line that offers individual items that are not cross-contaminated or exposed to other items in the dining hall.”

Corcoran and Ogden also discussed adding extra workout classes in Angela Athletic Facility as part of their healthy living platform. But, Corcoran said this has been challenging in some ways.

Adding workout classes has “been hard because [Angela Athletic Facility] is utilized by

many people,” she said. “And the instructors [of the classes] have other jobs, so we haven’t really made progress by having those classes.”

However, Ogden said a lot of the athletic clubs, like Yoga Club and Cycling Club, have been able to increase the number of classes they offer.

Next semester, Ogden and Corcoran said they hope to include more healthy living activities, including those that promote mental health.

Corcoran said college students especially need to practice healthy and mindful living.

“In college, it can be so easy

to put your health at the back burner and be so stressed about school that you don’t make the best choices about food, or you skip your workout one day—it’s really important for our emotional happiness that we work out and eat healthy foods,” she said. “Without good health, we wouldn’t be performing as well as we could as students.”

Ogden said she always feels better after eating healthy or exercising.

“A healthy body is a happy body,” she said.

Contact Gina Twardosz at gtwardosz01@saintmarys.edu

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sTUDENT UNION BOARD

Hall presidentS council

SUB brings in big names, diversifies feature events

By MARIAH RUSH News Writer

Bringing high-profile guests, student concerts and movies to the student body, the Student Union Board (SUB) has made its goal diversifying its events and branding itself more distinctly this semester.

“We saw a lot of people that knew events that SUB did and have been to some events that SUB has done, but did not know they were SUB events or didn’t even know what SUB was,” senior Allison Dopazo, director of operations for SUB, said. “So we tried to brand ourselves more and increase awareness of who we are as a group.”

Bethany Boggess, executive director of SUB, said SUB sponsors campus events on a weekly basis. In the last week alone, SUB hosted a talk with Karamo Brown from the Netflix show “Queer Eye” and held its annual fall concert.

Although professional artists typically perform at the SUB fall concert, this year the group chose to showcase student talent “We mostly just wanted to recognize how much student talent there is on this campus and how few opportunities there are to preform,” Boggess said. “Obviously we have AcoustiCafe, but the fall concert really allowed for other types of performers to engage.”

Other notable events from this semester include $3 movies — the most recent being “Polar Express” — and AcoustiCafe, which showcases student performers in a lowkey setting Thursday nights in Duncan Student Center.

Boggess said the movie showings have been successful for SUB this semester.

“We’ve been really strategic with the movies that we’ve chosen to try to consider different groups of students on campus and what they might like to see and not just what we want to see,” she said.

Boggess acknowledged that SUB is typically known for its concerts and its ability to bring big names to campus, but she wishes other SUB events would be recognized more.

“I think that people mostly know the concerts, which is

fun, but I still feel like that’s all anyone is waiting for … but I’m just like, ‘No, look at all these cool things we do, like movies every week for only $3 and we have AcoustiCafe every week,’” Boggess said. “We just did an event where we had a bunch of free pastries and coffee from Einstein’s Bagels and really cool professors came and you could just hang out with them and ask them about their lives. … So I wish that it was easier to get people roped in.”

Boggess said she also believes many people on campus do not know their favorite events may be SUB-sponsored and noted an increase in branding as one of their semester goals.

“Again, going back to people not attributing events to SUB or people don’t attribute the events that they love to SUB … maybe they know what AnTostal is, but they didn’t realize it was a SUB event,” she said. “ … Maybe that is a branding issue on our part.”

Dopazo said nine committees work together to put on the many events SUB hosts, including the Concerts Committee.

“I think on a leadership perspective, it’s important that all the lead programmers of the nine committees we have — concerts being one of them — feel equally as important and feel like they’re equally contributing to what SUB is and to the student body in general,” Dopazo said. “Because I don’t think it’s fair for the concerts lead programmer to have all those pressures and then for all the other lead programmers to feel like their stuff isn’t as important, which it obviously is.”

Dopazo and Boggess both said they are proud of their work this semester in diversifying SUB’s events, and noted that the AnTostal theme for the coming semester will also be a nod

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to this effort, though the theme has not been released yet.

“This year, I think we’ve diversified our events, and I think that’s because we have had more of an eye for that,” Dopazo said. “One example is the Karamo Brown event. He’s a very proud, gay, black man, and it’s so important to have this kind of voice expressed, especially on our campus.”

Dopazo said the organization is trying to promote diversity in its other events as well.

“We’ve diversified our movies to incorporate different kinds of interests, and things of that nature,” she said SUB also welcomed a new advisor this year, Alicia Bates, who has helped the group keep a mindful approach to their planning. “[Bates is] really pushing us, and what’s really nice is that since she’s brand new, she’s able to see SUB from a totally external point of view,” Boggess said. “So we will say ‘OK, here’s our movies lineup.’

And she’s like, ‘Why?’ And then you’re forced to think about, ‘OK, why are we doing this?’”

With the many different student programming groups on campus, Boggess and Dopazo recognize there are many options for students and have made an effort to work with other groups to create events instead of competing with them.

“We try to do so much,” Boggess said. “But I guess overall, we just want to provide programming to the student body that’s something that they want and that they desire for their college experience to make use of Notre Dame as a destination that cool people will want to come and engage in and to just bolster the community as much as possible.”

Contact Mariah Rush at mrush@nd.edu

HPC encourages collaboration between dorms

By ALEXANDRA MUCK News Writer

As Hall Presidents Council (HPC) co-chairs this year, seniors Joe Trzaska and Brendan Watts said they have focused on making HPC a collaborative environment for hall executives.

“At HPC, our goal is to disseminate information, to encourage collaboration between the halls and we run the Hall of the Year competition, so it’s like a competitive, collaborative spirit hybrid that exists in HPC where each dorm is trying is maximize its potential but all the dorms are working toward the same goal,” Trzaska said.

To help with this goal, HPC hosts weekly meetings featuring announcements and recurring features, like StaNDout and HPChat.

With StaNDout, Trzaska said the presidents and vice presidents from two dorms each week share about life in their hall.

While this segment has existed in the past, Trzaska said this year he and Watts have shifted its focus to a more day-to-day look.

We’ve tried to shift the focus of the StaNDout segment to a contemporary look at goings-on in the hall and things that make you proud of living there,” he said.

With the second feature, HPChat, Trzaska and Watts said they have tried to bring in outside speakers to help guide discussions. Past speakers have included Karen Kennedy, director of student centers, activities and events, and Mia James, assistant director for educational initiatives at the Gender Relations Center. Trzaska and Watts also plan to host vice president for student affairs Erin Hoffmann Harding, they said.

Watts said the goal of bringing in the speakers is to make HPC engaging for hall presidents, to let them take valuable information back to their hall and to enable them to host better events. For instance, Watts said one HPChat focused on improving multicultural events in dorms.

“We’ve had some really cool guests who have been able to get the presidents’ minds on different issues they might not have been focused on,” Trzaska said.

To help encourage a more collaborative spirit between halls,

Trzaska said he and Watts have tried to change the way dorms talk about their events during HPC. “Sometimes in the past there was really a spirit of competition, sometimes at the expense of other dorms in HPC,” Trzaska said. “If dorms had a really cool event — a recurring event, say — they would keep their cards close to their chest so that no one else could use it and get Hall of the Year points, too. To combat that, we tried to reframe the way dorms think about those events by doing cool event highlights each month.”

Trzaska said he and Watts look at the Rocknes, forms dorms submit at the end of each month, and if they see a good event in the form, they will ask the president and vice president of the dorm to talk about it during HPC. Watts said he and Trzaska have continued to host one-on-one meetings with the presidents and vice presidents at the start of the year but have also added in a midyear meeting.

At the beginning of the semester, Trzaska and Watts had the dorm presidents and vice presidents outline their goals for the year.

“Each hall is trying to accomplish different things,” he said. “ … We’re going to check in mid-year and see how they’re working on that rather than waiting until the end-of-the-year presentation.”

Trzaska and Watts have also made a change to this year’s Hall of the Year competition, reallocating five percent of the score to GreeNDot participation.

“If a hall reaches 15 percent participation in GreeNDot bystander training — they have 15 percent of the dorm bystanders trained — they automatically receive that 5 percent of the Hall of the Year score,” Watts said.

Watts said there are also several incentives, such as cash prizes and water filtration systems, to help encourage dorms to go beyond the 15 percent. The change, Watts said, should help promote a safer campus environment as well as help give halls opportunities beyond the final presentation to earn Hall of the Year points.

Contact Alexandra Muck at amuck@nd.edu

In Focus

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IN FOCUS