Case Western Reserve University’s Undergraduate Student Government (USG) held its last General Assembly before fall break this past Tuesday, Oct. 12. While committee reports went quickly and mostly echoed those of the past few weeks, a few caucus leaders’ announcements and open forum brought up some new information.
USG president Minh-Tri Nguyen reminded the assembly that the Student State of the University address will be delivered by University President Barbara Snyder on Wednesday, Oct. 18 at 6 p.m. in Strosacker Auditorium. “This is a rare event that doesn’t happen at many other universities,” Nguyen said, urging any students who are interested to attend.
Vice-president of student life Divya Aggarwal will be meeting with graduate student representative to discuss how a proposed Greenie stop in Little Italy could affect their constituency. She clarified that only students in CWRU housing have access to the Village workout facilities, which does not include students living in Greek housing. She also reminded students to take advantage of the study room in Leutner. Among its useful features, it will soon be getting a projector, and students can write on the wall with dry-erase markers.
Vice-president of public relations Jared Bell announced that Pizzalympics has been moved to Nov. 12, though it will still take place in the Thwing ballroom. During Pizzalympics, students can sample pizza from various local pizza companies for free and then vote on which one they like best. Students get free pizza and one local company gets the bragging rights that come with being CWRU’s favorite pizza place.
Vice-president of information technology Kelly Maloney informed the assembly that October is National Cyber Security Awareness month. There will be seminars for students about various cyber security issues, such as phishing attacks. Students can sign up at securityaware.case.edu.
School of Engineering representative Matt Fernandes announced that the engineering caucus will be holding a meeting with Dean Tien, head of the engineering department, on Sunday, Oct. 29. The meeting will take place in Nord 516. Weatherhead School of Management representative Mira Lendel announced that the Weatherhead caucus will be holding a “chocolate commons” event on Friday, Oct. 27 from 12-3 p.m. in the Peter B. Lewis Building. Weatherhead representatives will be giving away various chocolate items and taking questions or concerns from constituents.
During open forum, some members of the assembly voiced complaints about Leutner’s hours being too short and causing overcrowding at L3 later on in the evenings. Assembly members also expressed interest in holding some kind of forum about the recent wave of internet bullying of homosexual teenagers. USG advisor Colleen Williamson pointed out that homosexuals were bullied twenty years ago through things like graffiti and physical violence. Finally, Katie Seymour, Teach for America’s representative at CWRU, made a short presentation about her organization. Participating in the Teach for America program enables individuals, after graduating from college, to teach grade school in rural or urban school districts all across the country for two years, earning full salary and benefits.