The Pitt News
The independent student newspaper of the University of Pittsburgh | PIttnews.com | August 30, 2017 | Volume 108 | Issue 15
SGB welcomes new students Nolan Roosa Staff Writer
After filing into Nordy’s Place in matching navy t-shirts Tuesday night, Student Government Board President Max Kneis and his fellow board members had to quiet down the room, packed to the brim with students. At SGB’s first meeting of the academic year, board members and committee chairs introduced themselves and gave a brief overview of the organization, including its purpose — to promote the concerns, interests, needs and welfare of the student body of the University of Pittsburgh. After the presentation and meeting, board members spread throughout the room to field questions during an informal meet-and-greet. Alex Spenceley, one of the eight board members, said he plans to focus his efforts this year on engaging first-year students and promoting mental health awareness on campus. “First-year students come in with a particular energy that most students don’t have,” Spenceley said. “Tapping into that is something [students] may not know how to do.” Spenceley, along with board member Ami Fall, will work on the Mental Health Task Force, formed in 2015. The task force — made up of student representatives and counseling center staff — meets weekly to address mental health issues on campus. Fall is focusing her efforts on lobbying the University to recognize anxiety
A look at Co-ED Holland Hall page 2 Sejla Jukic (left) and John Talley (right), both RAs at Holland, stand at the door that separates the North and South of Holland. Wenhao Wu ASSISTANT VISUAL EDITOR
STUDENT ORGANIZERS REACT TO ADMIN’S UNION OPPOSITION
Kirsten Wong and John Hamilton cal sciences, read Beeson’s letter outlining the The Pitt News Staff
Rachel Coombs was conducting research in a biology lab in late July when she found herself enraged by an email from Pitt Provost Patricia Beeson. Coombs, a Ph.D. student studying biologiSee SGB on page 4
Pitt administration’s opposition to the grad student union efforts. Beeson said the union wouldn’t be in the best interests of students and that “education, not the financial support, is the goal of graduate study.” “I felt like they were trying to segregate us while trying to unite us under the big umbrella
of academia,” Coombs said. “It was very offensive to have someone tell us that money shouldn’t be important when a lot of us are drowning in debt and there are grad students that can’t make ends meet.”
See Graduate Students on page 3