The University of Michigan’s Central Student Government met August 12 to confirm 18 nominations for positions within the Executive Branch, amend the authority of the CSJ special prosecutor and pass resolutions on student rights.
Nominations to the Assembly included deputy director of government relations; health, safety and wellness policy advisor; and deputy chief diversity officer. During questioning, Shelby Reid, LSA rising sophomore and nominee for CSG deputy director of communications, said she wants to focus on boosting engagement between CSG and the student body via increased social media presence.
“I do want to increase social media engagement in terms of how many likes we’re getting for posts,” Reid said. “That will be the benchmark, and we’ll work on increasing it. Additionally, the one thing I’m very passionate about is making sure that students are aware of the CSG elections.”
Nursing rising junior Jack Brummer, nominee for Sexual Misconduct Prevention and Survivor Empowerment commission policy advisor, said he would like to expand the presence of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center to North Campus.
“I do think that North Campus often goes overlooked in many things,” Brummer said. “And I don’t believe that there is a SAPAC office or anything like that on North Campus, at least to the same extent that there is on Central Campus. So I think (we should work) closely with SAPAC and administration and trying to encourage them to maybe open some kind of office on North Campus and have more resources out there, as well as making sure that the University is held accountable for reporting things that happen to the extent that they can (and having) people (remain) anonymous.”
LSA rising senior Wade Vellky, health, safety and wellness policy advisor nominee, said his support for expanded mental health support systems at the University stems from his observations of students’ mental health nationwide.
“One of the things that I’ve noticed at this university is there’s a lot of kids who find themselves isolated really, really fast,” Vellky said. “I’m of the opinion that face-to-face contact socialization is one of the biggest and the decline of that is one of the biggest reasons why we are currently living in the worst mental health (situation).”
Vellky said University-provided counselors within residence halls may address a common barrier for students to access mental health resources: a lack of available assistance during nighttime hours.
“I really think that one of the things we need to do is to have in-house counselors or psychologists, and it needs to be something that can be accessed 24/7,” Vellky said.
After all nominations had been confirmed, the Assembly moved to discuss current resolutions. LSA rising junior Aiden Burke, student general counsel, introduced AR 15-019, the Prosecutorial Discretion Act, which passed following a vote. The act amends the Compiled Code to provide the independent special prosecutor with authority to determine which formal complaints will be sent for review to the Central Student Judiciary. Burke said the act will not impact a representative’s ability to file complaints nor their position within the Assembly.
“What this legislation is doing is codifying practices that already exist, and it’s expanding what happened for individuals who submit a report that does not actually get filed with the court,” Burke said. “What this is doing now as well with the new amendments, (if) the ISP decides not to pursue a complaint that a party has submitted to them, the ISP must inform that individual of the decision not to move forward, provide them with an explanation of the reasoning (and) inform them of the fact that this decision does not impact their party or any other party’s standing or ability.”
Burke said the act is intended to allow the ISP to prioritize important complaints and delegate less pressing ones to other campus resources.
“The main point in this legislation is that there are frequent times when a super minor or tedious violation happens that could be better resolved with the parties beyond a complaint,” Burke said. “A lot of times when students first entering CSG see that complaints have been filed against them, their immediate decision is just to drop out of the race. So the ISP will still be devoting their time to handling attendance complaints, as they always do, and major complaints that are worth their time, and instead (provide) individuals (with) complaints that the ISP does not believe (are) worth their time with the resources to continue that complaint.”
LDA Motion-III, which proposed that CSG purchase 5,000 English Know Your Rights Red Cards from the Immigrant Legal Resource Center to be distributed across campus, passed without debate.
AR 15-025, the Rights Education Act, also passed. LSA rising senior Keshava Demerath-Shanti said the act would allocate $750 from the Legislative Discretionary Fund to host an event educating students about their rights when interacting with law enforcement on or around campus.
“This act is just authorizing its sponsors to put on an event through CSG (and) to bring a speaker onto campus to present to students about their rights when interacting with law enforcement,” Demerath-Shanti said. “I think in our current moment, we can all understand why there might be a heightened need for this.”
Demerath-Shanti said he believes the legal risk posed to some students for attending this event warrants a virtual attendance option and protection by the National Lawyers Guild.
“I think it’s important for everyone to get access to this,” Demerath-Shanti said. “I think having a virtual option where people can anonymously join is helpful. I’m hoping to do a combination of having DPSS sort of nearby to monitor the situation, to make sure there isn’t a safety issue and also looking at potentially getting legal observers from the National Lawyers Guild.”
Summer Senior News Editor Claudia Minetti can be reached at cminetti@umich.edu.
