Sixty-one percent male, 39 percent female.
Those numbers represent the gender ratio of Duke Student Government members, said sophomore Price Davidson, an athletics and campus services senator. At DSG’s meeting Wednesday night, Davidson presented the organization’s diversity survey, providing the statistical breakdown of DSG by ethnicity, greek affiliation, state or country of origin and major.
Additionally, the presentation compared this data to the coinciding demographic breakdown of the Duke student body. Percentage-wise, the representation of different ethnicities within DSG was found to be almost identical to the demographics of the University’s student body.
Executive Vice President Gregory Morrison, a junior, said it bodes well for the organization that it can say it truly speaks for and represents every member of the student body.
“I’m pretty pleased with where DSG is demographically,” he said
But the 39 percent female representation in DSG, which does not match the 49 percent female proportion of the student body, demonstrates room for improvement, Morrison added.
Davidson also showed a list of the 88 student organizations DSG members are involved in.
Among these groups was Duke Political Union, which DSG approved as an officially recognized student group after hearing from junior Ben Bergmann, an athletics and campus services director and DPU co-president.
Seniors Chelsea Goldstein, DPU treasurer and DSG senior policy adviser, and Vikram Srinivasan, DPU co-president, asked that DSG directly confirm DPU for student organization status. Goldstein is a member of The Chronicle’s editorial board.
Srinivasan said DPU had already approached the Student Organization Finance Committee to request official recognition as a group and obtain a programming fund. The application was denied.
SOFC Chair David Hu, a junior, initially defended the action, noting that DPU had described its mission statement as virtually identical to those of other political groups on campus. But he later said he supported the group and predicted that its request would eventually pass.
But Bergmann took issue with appealing in the weeks to come. He said in an interview that DSG representatives are currently reserving auditoriums for DPU events in DSG’s name.
“We’re already operating now,” Bergmann said. “We can’t officially reserve spaces, but we are reserving [them].”
Goldstein said DPU’s state is “not sustainable,” especially given the future speakers. DPU’s upcoming events bill may feature Sens. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., and Richard Burr, R-N.C., Bergmann said.
In other business:
DSG voted to confirm sophomore Kevin Mulhern as nominee for student representative for the Judicial Affairs Student Advisory Group.
Directly after, SOFC’s request for $2,700 for the International Association’s Oct. 16 Food Fest was approved.
In addition, two senators introduced possible amendments to the DSG constitution. Academic Affairs Senator Kenneth Gould, a freshman, recommended a process in which members of the Duke University Student Dining Advisory Committee are weaned out for lack of productivity.
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