Duke Student Government established a Multicultural Affairs Task Force at its meeting Wednesday to evaluate the Center for Multicultural Affairs, in response to the elimination of two staff positions from the center last semester.
Vice President for Student Affairs Spencer Eldred, a senior, will lead the task force and suggest improvements for the center. Undergraduates can apply for six spots on the task force. The Graduate and Professional Student Council may also elect one graduate student to it, and the task force will include faculty and staff members.
President Awa Nur, a senior, said opening up the positions to the entire student body is crucial.
“This process... will allow us to find the six students who are most passionate about the project, and who are involved with the center from many different perspectives,” Nur said after the meeting.
Members of the DSG Student Affairs committee and junior Jack Zhang, president of the President’s Council on Multicultural Affairs, will select the six undergraduates for the task force. The task force will report to DSG after finishing its report.
Senators also voted down a statute that would have required them to conduct a non-binding vote to select the Young Trustee and then publish the results. Academic Affairs Senator Ari Ruffer, a freshman who presented the statute to the Senate, said the vote would be similar to an endorsement, adding “some people look to our expertise.”
But other senators said the Senate should stay out of the process.
“The reason why we started this whole reform business was to minimize DSG’s influence in this issue, and this maximizes it,” said Student Affairs Senator Gurdane Bhutani, a freshman. “Even though we’re not directly running the process, it’s part of DSG, it’s part of student government, so we should stay out of it.”
In other business:
Senators passed a resolution encouraging the use of electronic course evaluations in order to decrease paper use and make the information easier to share. Other peer institutions, including Yale University and Princeton University, use electronic course evaluation systems.
To improve the relationship between police officers, Trinity Heights residents and students, senators passed a resolution to organize a barbecue on East Campus in April.
The Senate also authorized the Student Environment Sustainability Committee to use $550 of DSG’s funding to purchase 40 collapsible recycling bins for use at events such as section parties.
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