As requested by the Proud Indigenous People for Education (PIPE), this week’s meeting of MCSG began with an acknowledgement that Macalester was built on stolen Dakota land. Ariana Hones ’18 announced that all meetings will now commence similarly.

The majority of this week’s meeting was spent discussing alumni engagement. The Director of Alumni Engagement Katie Ladas led a conversation about different ways to integrate alumni into ongoing events at Macalester.

The Legislative Body (LB) had several ideas, including inviting alumni to participate in class night events and attempting to connect them with student orgs and leadership development programs.

Students agreed that they would find the input of alumni valuable. There was specific interest in the idea of contacting alumni from marginalized backgrounds to share their experiences of Macalester and how they navigated their time at school.

The discussion then turned to additions to the textbook reserve program. Saakshi Daswani ’18 shared a list of new textbooks to be added to the program, which is run out of the library. Selections are through a formula that considers requests from students and teachers alongside prices and how widely each book is used at the college.

The LB also discussed again opening Cafe Mac for study hours during finals. They ultimately concluded that despite near-unanimous interest, Cafe Mac employees would need to be consulted before any final decision was made.

The meeting concluded with several reminders and updates for the body.

A full transcript of the meeting is available on MCSG’s website.

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