This week’s legislative body (LB) meeting began with a slide show presentation by David Warch, Macalester’s Assistant Vice President for Communications and Public Relations, about a developing collaboration with a Minneapolis-based firm, Little & Co. regarding Macalester’s new branding. Warch pointed out the lack of consistency across Macalester’s current logos; the Highlander, Admissions, Athletics, The Mac Weekly, and the College itself each have their own. Little & Co. aims to create a consistent brand identity for the College, one which promotes ideas of Macalester as an internationally-focused institution and removes the word “College” from the central logo, among other potential changes. Warch passed out booklets displaying some of the potential new logos, design concepts, and language, which Macalester hopes to have finalized and produced by the Fall 2017 semester. However, none of these ideas are finalized, and Warch will be meeting with several other groups on campus to get feedback before making a decision.

Additional allocations were approved by the Financial Affairs Committee (FAC) for the Dance Marathon on Saturday, with the exception of an $800 request for T-shirts. Allocations were also approved for a planetarium trip for Physics & Astronomy students and for a day-long sustainability summit, in which students and sustainability professionals will engage in workshops, panels and networking events on campus.

A presentation from the FAC on this year’s org budgeting process revealed that the 2017-18 school year’s operational total for student orgs is projected to be $143,809.54. Budget appeals will take place at next week’s LB meeting.

The FAC also presented Bill 0021 to extend its funding latitude. This would raise the funding limit for additional allocations, reduce the number of updates the FAC must give to the LB per month and increase the FAC Chair’s flexibility in staffing the committee, allowing them to appoint, ideally, as many student representatives to the committee as there are interested students.

Program Board also presented their spending for spring 2017, which totaled to $64,400; $3,300 remains for the semester.