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Student Council leaders to stay in Charlottesville to work on summer initiatives

Summer work focuses on developing student resources, auditing appropriations processes

<p>Student Council will be keeping busy this summer developing new educational resources for students and working on numerous other initiatives.</p>

Student Council will be keeping busy this summer developing new educational resources for students and working on numerous other initiatives.

Student Council will be keeping busy this summer developing new educational resources for students and working on numerous other initiatives.

Sarah Kenny, a third-year College student and Student Council president, said she will be remaining in Charlottesville over the summer to work on the initiatives, along with Ty Zirkle, a second-year College student and vice president for organizations, Alex Cintron, a second-year College student and vice president for administration and David Birkenthal, a third-year College student and chair of the representative body.

Kenny said she will be focusing on “compiling resources for students on our website to create a space that fills niche gaps for the student body” and reach all corners of the University.

According to Kenny, these resources will mainly target first-year students and are meant to educate students about issues of healthcare, insurance, the Charlottesville civic engagement process, housing and landlord issues and knowing their rights when dealing with Charlottesville and University police.

In addition to developing these resources, Student Council will also conduct an external auditing process of Student Council’s appropriations process, as well as create a strategic diversity plan.

Kenny and Zirkle are the two who will be responsible for instituting an auditing process for the student activities fee allocation process.

Student Council allocates a student activities fee of roughly $1 million to various undergraduate and graduate CIOs that request funds. This fee comes from student tuition.

Kenny said the funds are appropriated proportional to the amount that each group requests.

Currently, the process is designed so that groups are expected to ask for more money than they need. Proportional cuts are made to their request so they end up with what is supposed to be the actual amount they need. However, Kenny said sometimes groups that don’t expect these proportional cuts to be made then get short-changed.

“We need to define some more standard metrics about what utility maximization means in terms of distributing funds,” Kenny said.

Kenny said that, as a result of the current process, 60 percent of the student activities fee funds Student Council is responsible for go to club sports because they know how to effectively request funds.

She said another one of the problems with the current appropriations process is that they don’t have enough information about the impact of where the funds are going.

“We don’t have great metrics on use for a lot of other groups, and we don’t really have an ethic about quality of impact, number of students impacted, areas that are lacking in terms of quality of student life [and] areas that have funding elsewhere,” Kenny said.

Student Council also hosted a Research-a-Thon this past April where students researched “best practices” for diversity at other schools. This summer, Kenny and her team will synthesize this research and issue a report with suggestions about how to improve diversity at the University.

“We want this to be a resource for CIOs who are looking at their application processes and little tips about what they can do there,” Kenny said. “We want Greek life to be able to use this. We want faculty members who are trying to have conversations about diversity with their students, but don’t know how to, to be able to use this.”

The strategic diversity plan will focus on how to increase diversity at the University in areas such as a new student orientation, admissions, faculty hiring and the Multicultural Student Center.

“The strategic diversity plan is something that Student Council leadership is working on in support [of] other student leaders,” Kenny said. “We definitely saw ourselves more as providing some manpower and behind-the-scenes resources and support to develop this and elevate the voices of students who are leading the charge in the Eliminate the Hate Campaign.”

“This summer is going to be a lot about setting things up to hit the ground running in the fall,” Kenny said.

Liam Wolf, a third-year Engineering student and Student Council chief of cabinet, will also be in Charlottesville for the beginning of the summer to help out. Wolf said his summer work will be “facilitating the efforts of our committees this summer and ensuring that the cabinet is equipped to begin its work come fall.”

He will also be ensuring that all the chairs of Student Council are up to date, since many of the cabinet chairs will begin implementing projects, including a voter registration initiative and supporting Madison House summer volunteer efforts.

“The entire point of the exercise is to have real, actionable plans for all the things that they do,” Wolf said.

Kenny said in the past, student leaders working on projects over the summer was the norm. But in recent years, an increased pressure for students to get summer internships has decreased the number of student leaders on Grounds over the summer. 

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