The Student Government Association hosted their final meeting of the fall semester in the University Center Senate Chamber on Thursday night and passed four bills including one to add handheld bidets to some campus restrooms and one to expand the news readership program on campus.
Will Ritter, the prime sponsor of news readership bill, and the Finance committee proposed the resolution to renegotiate the Collegiate Readership Program. The current program offers three different print newspapers, and this resolution would take more local newspapers such as The Daily Memphian and Memphis Business Journal into consideration.
“There are other news options in the city that we don’t really get to have here at the university,” Ritter said. “I read a lot of newspapers, so why not try to get university-wide access for it?”
It would send a recommendation to faculty for final approval before being submitted to the funding body.
Ritter also sponsored a bill that would help SGA Court's annual travel to the Supreme Court. About nine students would attend the trip. This trip would cost SGA $8,000.
“They typically use travel funds, and travel funds were being eaten up already,” Ritter said. “We wanted to include this in the budget so students can learn and bring their learnings back with them to the university.”
The bidet bill presented by prime sponsor Razan Sweileh and cosponsors Atika Azouz and Thanh Le was a resolution that would install hand spray bidets in the UC bathrooms. Sweileh commented on the financial advantage of people using these dispensers.
“It is cheap and easy to install,” Swieleh said. "The amount of annual money spent nationally on toilet paper would decrease by 75 percent if we all used the hand spray."
This proposal also called for the installation of Wudu stations in the UC bathrooms.
“They would serve to assist in a cleaning ritual for religious purposes, as the university has a wide range of cultures,” Sweileh said. “Several universities in America already have them installed in their bathrooms.”
Jane Clement and Victoria Jones of the Counseling Center briefly spoke about the Relaxation Zone and recommended students to use it as they prepare for finals. They also provided information about mental health.
They are currently working to de-stigmatize mental health issues so students will feel more inclined to be open and willing to seek necessary help. They encouraged students to utilize the resources available on campus.
The Counseling Center also offers suicide prevention training and safe zone training in alliance with the LGBTQ community.
Prime sponsor Garrett Barnes and the campus safety committee presented a resolution that would enable SGA to partner with the Recreation Center to teach students self-defense tactics and assist in highlighting the resources available at the U of M regarding self-defense. This would be a week-long event, and SGA aims for this to occur during spring 2019.
The U of M also offers self-defense courses that count as electives.
“We really wanted to promote what the U of M already has to offer,” Barnes said. “We wanted to encourage more students to participate.”
Catie Blackwood, the speaker of the senate, discussed the goals of SGA for the spring semester.
“We want to start doing stuff earlier in the semester so that things are achieved while we are still in school,” Blackwood said.
Blackwood emphasized the need to work faster towards their goals.
“We are having to work towards getting a lot of the things we passed into actual movement, so we are definitely trying to ramp things up some more,” Blackwood said.
SGA members get seated and adjusted as they get ready for the last meeting of the semester. SGA discussed bills that, among others, would add bidets in some campus restrooms and increase news access on campus.
