The Pitt News T h e in de p e n d e n t st ude nt ne w spap e r of t he University of Pittsburgh
Fan engagement at Heinz Page 8 March 2, 2016 | Issue 117 | Volume 106
Students Natalie Dall wins SGB presidency speak out against yiannopoulos Lauren Rosenblatt Assistant News Editor
In the spirit of free speech, Pitt’s Student Government Board passed the microphone Tuesday to a line of students speaking out about a controversial speaker whose visit SGB partially funded. At its public meeting in Nordy’s Place, students packed the William Pitt Union’s multipurpose room to speak their piece on Milo Yiannopoulos’ lecture Monday evening. The Board released a statement earlier in the day defending its allocations decision and inviting students to “share their perspectives” at the meeting. Yiannopoulos, a controversial conservative writer and activist who tours colleges to speak about the need for free speech, spoke at Pitt Monday evening to a crowd of about 350 students, some of whom protested the lecture. The Board had allocated funding to Pitt College Republicans, who had invited Yiannopoulos to campus. During his talk, Yiannopoulos called students who believe in a gender wage gap “idiots,” declared the Black Lives Matter movement a “supremacy” group, while feminists are “man-haters.” The Board said in a release earlier on Tuesday that it understood and empathized with students who were offended by Yiannopoulos’ talk, but that it had a duty to “fairly represent the voice of all students in the allocations funding process.” See SGB on page 3
Natalie Dall celebrates after winning the SGB presidency. Kate Koenig VISUAL EDITOR
Annemarie Carr and Dale Shoemaker The Pitt News Staff
Running late into the night, the Student Government Board meeting that preceded this year’s election nearly overshadowed the results’ unveiling. Following a mostly open-floor meeting in which Pitt’s SGB allowed students to pub-
licly respond to controversial conservative speaker Milo Yiannopoulos’ Monday night lecture, SGB elections chair Celia Millard announced next year’s Board members and SGB president. Natalie Dall, trumping her sole opponent Matthew Sykes, will serve as the president of SGB following this academic year, starting at the end of April. The eight can-
didates who ran for the eight board seats all won their spots, and junior Sydney Harper won the executive vice presidency, receiving the second highest number of votes in the election. Also up for vote was a referendum proposing SGB constitution changes. Amendments included adjusting the GPA requirements, grammar and instances of See Election on page 2