ASG Introduces Bills, One to Lift Rules for RSO Blood Donations
With a new focus on more legislation from the student senate this year, numerous bills and resolutions were read at ASG’s meeting Tuesday night, including a resolution that would prevent RSO’s from penalizing members for not participating in homecoming blood drives.
This sparked debate between senators.
Sen. Samantha Vaughn, a sponsor of the resolution, said that the resolution aims to prevent RSO’s from penalizing students for not giving blood, she said.
“The fear is that if it is not a competition there may be blood shortages,” Vaughn said. “Our argument is that rather than punishing people for not participating—which we essentially require them to—we should throw our efforts into promoting it and reaching out to the community to get their participation rather than forcing people to do it. We find it unethical and against your rights as an American citizen–not to mention the issues it raises on campus.”
Matt Seubert, Young Democrat President, proposed a bill that would fund Safe Ride to bus students from campus to the county courthouse during the November elections.
Seubert, the bill’s author, asked ASG to appropriate $810 for the use of Safe Ride vans for a three-day period during early voting to get students from the center of campus down to the county courthouse, allowing students to vote easily regardless of where they live, Seubert said.
“The big sticking point for students as they move from apartment to apartment, dorm to dorm, is that they will change voting precincts,” Seubert said. “A lot of students will go to the wrong one or they’ll wait until election day and never take care of it–it’s inconvenient.”
Students would take a short ride down to the courthouse and have the opportunity to vote during one of these three days, Seubert said.
“The particularly easy part of this is–imagine how many students, including ourselves, have those one hour or two hour gaps in their schedules,” Seubert said. “We’d have the busses setup to run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. to take students to the polls.”
This bill would make it easier for students to vote, increases the likelihood of students voting and also supports ASG’s goal to create active and lifetime citizens, Seubert said.
“Getting folks started early by voting creates lifelong habits,” Seubert said. “It allows them to use the education they gained here to make decisions for the community they live in now, Fayetteville, the community they will live in moving forward and the nation. We are just giving students as many opportunities as possible to vote and participate.”
Sen. Amy West who also is administrative assistant coordinator for Fresh HOGS, read a bill that would provide additional funding to ASG’s Fresh HOGS program.
“The program was seriously revamped this year to provide a more educational experience to help build our future campus leaders,” West said. “Therefore, to accommodate the programing changes, the program needs additional funding. Because Fresh HOGS is interactive with senate, it would be appropriate to give a small portion of our funds to the Fresh HOGS Program.”
The program is designed to prepare freshmen for future roles in student government, West said.
“Fresh HOGS members will develop leadership skills and increase awareness of diversity in order to effectively represent fellow students in the future,” according to the ASG website. “Fresh HOGS members will learn the operations of ASG through interactive educational programming, serving in multiple roles within the organization and intentional networking.”
