Duke Student Government conducted the swearing-in of 12 new at-large senators at its meeting Wednesday night. After an application and interview process, the students were selected from a pool of 27 applicants.
DSG members debated transparency regarding advertising senator at-large positions to students at the beginning of the year. Junior Ben Bergmann, athletics and campus services senator, questioned the effectiveness of DSG’s methods of advertising open positions. The newly sworn in senators said they were notified via blast e-mails from DSG, word of mouth and the DSG Web site.
Bergmann expressed concern that “a normal” student would not have known about the open positions because of a lack of DSG advertising.
Student Affairs senator Daren Miller, a sophomore, said that from now on, DSG will try to be more clear in its blast e-mails that positions are available.
“Obviously, the individuals here were qualified,” Miller said.
DSG senators decided that transparency in their processes would be on the agenda for next year’s elections.
In other business:
Chief of Staff Mike Lefevre, a junior, introduced a proposal to appoint a non-voting Campus Council representative to the Duke University Student Dining Advisory Committee. This representative would act as a link between Campus Council and DUSDAC. Dining committee members approved the addition.
“Since some events last year, which involved pretty drastic changes to dining policies and board plans, DSG and DUSDAC invited some people from Campus Council,” Lefevre said. “And as they got involved, they saw an integral connection between dining and residential life.”
He noted that DSG joined forces with DUSDAC because there was a lack of transparency. Since DUSDAC became a part of DSG, two open forums have been created to garner student feedback, Lefevre added.
New members for the Rules Committee were also appointed. Freshman Gurdane Bhutani and sophomores Lauren Moxley, Ubong Akpaninyie and Harrison Comfort, a Chronicle sports associate editor, were elected to serve on the committee.
DSG members also repealed the by-laws governing the Inter-Community Council because the organization no longer falls under DSG’s jurisdiction.
“DSG is a policy-making body. The ICC is a forum for student collaboration,” said Executive Vice President Gregory Morrison, a junior. “In order to do what each organization does best it would be effective to separate the two.”
The Arts and Sciences Council appointees were sworn in too. Sophomore Kaveh Danesh, junior Matt Stansky and seniors Ayrenne Adams, Jason Preissig and Chelsea Goldstein, a member of The Chronicle’s editorial board, were appointed.
Junior Ben Getson was confirmed to serve as Undergraduate Representative to the Academic Affairs Committee of the Board of Trustees and sophomore T.J. Hu was appointed to the Judicial Affairs Student Advisory Group.
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