At the Oct. 29 meeting of the College of William and Mary’s Student Assembly, senators appointed two members as liaisons to Media Council and also nominated three Senators to serve on the AMP Concert Committee.
Class of 2021 President Aria Austin ’21 and Sen. Patrick Salsburg ’21 both were officially nominated as Media Council Liaisons, a new position created last year in order to improve communication between SA and Media Council. Both SA members will attend all Media Council meetings, discuss any concerns over funding allocations and plan to keep SA in the loop regarding Media Council’s plans.
“I think the reason I wanted to do this is when I was elected in the spring, I came in when there was a lot of tension between the media council and multicultural organizations,” Austin said. “I talked to a lot of them and I like promised a lot of them that I would make sure that this wouldn’t happen again … I think communication is the number one thing that caused the strike last year was a lack of communication and people saying things in GroupMe that weren’t true and just a lot of oversell in increasing transparency …”
Senators then discussed who would represent SA on AMP’s Spring Concert Committee. Sen. Derek Kernus ’14 M.B.A. ’20, Sen. Kyle Vasquez ’21 and Austin were elected as SA’s representatives in the concert’s planning process.
Every year, SA allocates funding for a Spring Concert, where the College contracts an artist to perform on campus. Last year, Ari Lennox, Daya and Misterwives were the show’s headliners, but their concert was poorly attended.
Kernus, Vasquez and Austin all emphasized their desire to improve turnout and provide students with exciting artist options. Kernus particularly expressed interest in Kid Cudi coming to the campus because of the artist’s emphasis on mental wellness.
“So for about three years now, I’ve had this idea of having Kid Cudi come to the spring concert because he is very big in mental health awareness, and he’s talked about his own suicidal ideations and stuff,” Kernus said. “And talking to some of the undergrads, apparently he’s still fairly popular, but I also don’t have a singular focus on this. I know that I’m a good negotiator.”
Also at this week’s meeting:
- Newly appointed Class of 2020 Senator Hailey Ulrich ’20 was sworn in by Secretary of the Review Board Anna Boustany ’21.
- Secretary of Health Shreya Mandava ’20 introduced the Free STI Testing Extension Funding Act, which would allocate $10,007 from the SA Reserves to fully supplement the cost of STI testing and consultations at the Student Health Center.
- Vasquez and Salsburg introduced The Fourth Annual Transgender Awareness Week Act, which would allocate $3,601 from the SA Reserves for the events of the week and bring transgender non-binary activist AC Dumlao to campus.
