Student Congress's Student Safety and Security Committee finally has a chairman.
At Tuesday's Student Congress Meeting, a bill was passed to appoint a chairman and two new members to the Student Safety and Security Committee.
Before Tuesday, there had been a vacancy in the chairman’s position, making it difficult for Student Congress to address issues falling under the committee’s domain, such as allocating money to SafeWalk to alleviate its $20,000 deficit.
This week, the executive branch of Student Government nominated Andrew Wood for the position of chairman and David Goldberg and Sam Pranikoff as new members of the committee and brought the bill to Congress for a vote, which passed.
Student Body Treasurer Brittany Best said that Wood is a great choice for the position because he of his hardworking and dedicated nature.
“Obviously this is a committee that has to work really closely with Congress, and we as exec Branch have to work really closely with Congress. So when we look at who we’re appointing to this position, we wanted to make sure it was someone that everyone felt comfortable working with,” Best said. “Andrew’s proven in the past that he’s very competent, he’s very organized, and when we’re looking at making sure this committee carries out its duties effectively, we need someone in that position who we can trust to do that.”
Wood said he and the committee have major plans for the year.
“The goals for this year will definitely be to increase visibility so that we have more funding proposals throughout the year from student organizations,” he said. “We’re also going to be trying to sort of move forward with the strong position that the committee’s appointed to do and also trying to just generally gather a greater sense of what we’re trying to do on this campus.”
Goldberg said that much of the committee’s work this year will revolve around reorganization.
“We really need to focus on getting a very clear mission and setting up some parameters, and I think that’s gonna open it up to other organizations that feel more comfortable coming to us, and it’s gonna feel good,” said Goldberg. “I think it’s gonna be important for the Safety and Security Committee to work with Congress. There’s a lot of band-aids that have been accumulated over the years, and I hope we can work with Speaker (Ivy) Hardy about really getting serious about this committee once and for all.”
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