ASG cancels first meeting of the year due to Hurricane Irene

Expected torrential rain and wind from Hurricane Irene will keep members of the UNC Association of Student Governments off of the road this weekend.

Student delegates from each of the 17 institutions in the UNC system were supposed to meet at UNC-Asheville Saturday morning for their first meeting of the school year.

The original meeting location was at UNC-Wilmington but was later changed to UNC-A’s campus to escape the brunt of the storm.

But after having conversations with student body presidents from schools on the eastern coast, ASG President Atul Bhula decided to cancel the meeting.

“If we have an ASG meeting, then I want to include everybody and not just include western schools,” he said.

The hurricane is supposed to hit Saturday afternoon as a category 3 with wind gusts as high as 115 miles per hour.

Bhula said he was worried about people driving back toward the eastern coast after the meeting.

At Elizabeth City State University, administrators notified students through email to evacuate today by noon.

Those who cannot evacuate will be housed in R.L. Vaughan Center on campus.

DeVon McNair, student body president at ECSU, said he was disappointed the first ASG meeting of the 2011-2012 academic year was cancelled, but he understands safety comes first.

“Originally I thought it was a bad thing that we were canceling it, but at the same time coming back on Sunday will be hard,” he said.

“It will set us back because we want to get a lot of stuff done.”

ASG members meet once a month at different UNC-system campuses, where they discuss policy impacting students.

Travel to the meetings and hotel lodgings are funded by an annual $1 fee from every UNC-system student.

The association has no plans to make up the meeting in person, but Bhula said he will be trying to communicate with student body presidents via phone.

“I will be calling up individual student body presidents and talking with them,” he said.

“We’re getting our presence on campus.”

Mary Cooper, student body president at UNC-CH, said she too hopes to communicate with Bhula.

“I want to ask him a little bit more information about what the officers were going to present and maybe send out some information, so it’s not a completely wasted month,” she said.

ASG’s next meeting will be the weekend of Sept. 23 at UNC-Charlotte.

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