Opinion

UA Update and Answers

At last week’s Exec meeting, there was a short discussion on dining at Simmons, but not many residents showed up to express their opinions. It transitioned into a discussion on FinBoard reforms. Changes have been made to split the Spring allocation period into two periods, and there was further discussion on changes to policy and funding, as well as the creation of a committee to revise FinBoard policies over IAP.

Much happened at Monday’s Senate meeting as well! It began with a thorough discussion on the enrollment increase and how it will affect academics and student life at MIT. Following the approval of UA budgets, class council budgets, and FinBoard allocations, multiple bills were passed. These include bills to fund MEETERS, fund an IAP class to learn massaging, fund publicity to improve the cross-campus nature of “Bad Ideas” Weekend, extend the operation of the Committee on Athena Printing, task CSL with effectively receiving feedback on Saferide drivers, release Minutes for 42 UAS 8, fund a lighting board of $10,000 for theater student groups, utilize the Fresh Fund for December and IAP allocations, and create the Finboard Policy Ad-Hoc Committee.

We would like to note some important members who will be leaving us next semester. David Chang, Chair of SCEP, will be resigning to study abroad in France, and Krishna Esteva, Chair of Sustainability, will be resigning for personal reasons. In addition, Tim Jenks, the Vice Speaker of the Senate, will be resigning due to time constraints, but he will continue to participate as a senator of fraternities. The UA thanks them for all their hard work!

In addition, the UA ran another midnight study break on Wednesday! We hope to continue to gather useful feedback. Feel free to email ua@mit.edu with questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions!

Alec Lai,

UA Secretary General