Executive Committee Report - March 5, 2024

The executive committee has issued the following report for the March 5, 2024 Assembly Meeting:

Notices to the Assembly:

1. Every year, the Chief of Staff and Speaker create a demographics survey. This is completely confidential and anonymous. If you haven’t filled it out yet, please do it tonight! The link is in the Slack.

2. SAPAC will be coming to the Executive Committee meeting tomorrow to give a workshop that will present a comprehensive overview of responsive disclosure. If you are interested in coming, please let Jules know! We’d love to have Assembly members present.

3. Chief of Staff Juliette Quenioux and Intern to the Chief of Staff Ashley Heo have planned an internal professional development alongside the Career Center–this is mandatory for interns and is open to anyone who wants to learn more about networking, LinkedIn, and how to best leverage your CSG experience on your resume and professionally. This will take place on next Monday, March 11 from 6:00-7:00pm in the Parker Room of the Union.

4. Upcoming Events: Take Your Professor to Lunch, Operation Graduation, Go Blue Goes Green (2210 ABC, 3/9 & 3/10), Professional Development Event (Parker Rm., 3/11), Plastic Bag Drive (Week of 3/11), St. Patrick’s Day High-Risk Programming (3/14-3/17), Female Student Entrepreneur Pop Up (Pendleton Rm., 3/23), Adaptive Sports Awareness Event (The Diag, 3/24), Big 10 on the Hill (3/24-3/26), Healing Honestly Book Talk (4/9)

5. See a quick summary of all the great initiatives our team will be working on this year here!

Communications Activities:

1. The March All-Campus newsletter will be going out this Friday. Requests are open for CSG’s bi-weekly newsletter. Please direct those requests to this form and inquiries to our Director of Communications Andrew Ky.

2. The Communications team is working on a new video segment, the first of which will be “13 Questions with Student General Counsel Tyler Watt!” The next segment of CSG Chats will also be going up this week, on campus safety and medical amnesty. Keep an eye out!

3. The Communications team has created a wonderful branding guide as part of their initiative to develop a framework for communications activities. Check it out here! Otherwise, for any graphics requests, please fill out this form.

Programs and Events:

1. Policy Director Gwen Tatara met with the Center for Campus Involvement to plan for high-risk programming on St. Patrick’s Day, and Chief Programming Officer Terra Lafreniere met with Panhel and IFC to discuss running hydration stations and other resource-sharing including potentially distributing Narcan on St. Patrick’s Day.

2. Policy Advisor Nneka is also planning a pop-up shop that will highlight some of our female entrepreneurs on campus for Women’s History Month. This is set to take place on Saturday, March 23 in the Pendleton Room.

3. The Programming team is working on a reiteration of our popular Go Blue Goes Green event, our free campus thrift store. This will be taking place THIS SATURDAY, March 9 from 10:00am-6:00pm and Sunday, March 10 from 10:00am-4:00pm in Room 2210 ABC of the Union. Please sign up to help here!

4. Operation Graduation is back and better! Through this program, students have the opportunity to receive free graduation gowns, which will be awarded on a first-come, first-served basis. This semester, we are rethinking the operations of this program–we will be doing a free “rental” system to bolster the re-use of the gowns and build up a running inventory of gowns for semester-over-semester use. Students who receive a free gown will be required to return it to CSG after graduation.

5. Take Your Professor/GSI to Lunch is halfway complete! This program provides vouchers for free lunch for a group of up to four students and at least one professor or GSI. This semester, we are offering 60 lunches. Our programming intern, Max Stefanski, has been working with members of the University Union staff to make this program smoother for participating students and CSG staff alike.

6. Our SMPSEC team is collaborating with SAPAC on a book talk about healing honestly by a Michigan alumni April 9th from 6:30-9:00pm.

Policy Team:

1. Our SMPSEC team also has been working very closely with SAPAC to advocate for the addition of SMPSE resources in syllabi.

2. Our Treasury team is meeting with LinkedIn and Snackpass representatives this week to discuss potential UM student discounts. Updates to follow soon!

3. Vice President Bipasha Ray’s High-Risk Planning (HRP) Student Sub-Committee met with stakeholders in FSL to push for further access to nightcaps and test strips in strategic areas to promote and normalize personal safety right before the break. They are attending FSL & Panhel leadership meetings to plan for the creation of a nightcap pilot program, and are researching the best ways to advocate for the creation of a city ordinance for the bar portion of the program, as well as connecting with Ann Arbor bars. Members of the HRP group met with a marketing company in Detroit before Spring Break who has offered to help pro-bono with the creation of a marketing plan for this project.

4. Policy Advisor for Affordability and Accessibility Emily Ryan is working with the Director of Student Accessibility and Accommodation Services (SAAS) in an upcoming event on Sunday, March 24 in the Diag at 2:00pm. Come play boccia and goalball and learn about the adaptive sports program! They are also connecting with SAAS’s Accessibility research coordinator to use existing data to write a policy report on the program’s current needs.

5. Emily’s intern, Katie Rose, is also working on the Accessibility portion of CSG’s Resource Guide as well as the University’s financial resources document, updating resources and reformatting it to make it more digestible for students.

6. Policy Advisor on Mental Health and Wellness Aditi Vijendra is researching two current CSG initiatives. The first is looking into strategies to boost engagement with our Calm app program, and the second is a comprehensive report for SMPSEC on the new wellness vending machine put into the Union in January.

7. Policy Advisor on Sustainability Brandon Cooper met with MDining leadership about including more non-meat options in the dining halls. He will be working with MDining and the Humane Society to advocate for increasing vegan and vegetarian dining hall options to 55% or more. He is also working on planning a plastic bag drive for next week and has connected with SCANN, the Student Carbon Neutrality Network on the creation of an orientation education model for sustainability.

8. Policy Director Gwen Tatara is working with Beyond the Diag to refresh their off-campus housing guide. BTD is a U-M program developed to provide resources to students living off campus. She’s going through the responses of her housing survey, as well as comparing it with data from last year, and using this to create graphic analysis and Landlord Report Cards.

9. The Government Relations and Policy teams are conducting research on the congressional RISE Act and Farm Bill in order to inform our upcoming lobbying efforts during Big 10 on the Hill, which will be taking place on March 24th through March 26th. Director of Government Relations Akhila Mullapudi is also working with representatives from Dearborn and Flint student governments to investigate tri-campus transportation.

10. Policy Director Gwen Tatara, along with Bipasha Ray and intern Lidia Cappelletti, are waiting for Procurement to approve our agreement with UWorld, a partnership that will allow U-M students to receive discounted test prep materials and free consultations targeted at students pursuing graduate degrees. Our Princeton Review partnership has been officially approved and information has been shared via our Instagram on how students can attend sessions run by PR! Discount codes for the Princeton Review will be shared in our March all-campus email!

If you have any questions or would like to meet with the President or Vice President, please contact Chief of

Staff to the President Juliette Quenioux (julietq@umich.edu)