This week’s MCSG meeting began with an update from Diversity and Inclusion Officer Stacy Gerondelis ’19 on the potential creation of a Diversity and Inclusion campus committee. Gerondelis told the Legislative Body (LB) that she’s made a decision to hold off on creating the committee for the time being.

“I went into last week’s Executive Board meeting and we decided, for now, we’re going to wait because we just added members to the Student Services & Relations [Committee (SSRC)] and senior staff is still in conversation about possibly creating a committee there,” Gerondelis said. “We thought it made more sense to just wait and see how [that] works out before adding something else.”

First-year representative Linden Kronberg ’22 then proposed a series of edits to the MCSG election code. This year, the election code has proved a source of numerous complications.

For example, candidate for sophomore class representative Joe Bentley ’21 was disqualified from the sophomore special election due to an election code violation.

In addition, all contested Executive Board elections were redone due to a number of obscure election code violations including failure to provide a physical polling place — a practice which had been neglected for many years. The second round of Executive Board elections resulted in an upset when Fatiya Kedir ’21 surpassed original victor Karinna Gerhardt ’20 to win the MCSG vice presidency.

“A student on the EPC [Election Procedures Committee] approached the first-year representatives with changes to the election code designed to remove some of the ambiguities,” Kronberg said. “Before we go forward with any of the bylaws we want to gather opinions from some of the folks in this room.” Kronberg then suggested that any MCSG members interested in giving feedback send him an email after the meeting.

Next, Student Organizations Committee (SOC) Chair Lily Alexandroff ’21 spoke about a proposed resolution addressing accessibility at Macalester. The resolution, among other things, would potentially allow for tours with accessible routes and sign language as well as an American Disability Act or disability audit survey of buildings and grounds on campus.

“For the last couple of weeks the SOC, along with members of the disability collective, have been working on a resolution to talk about places where accessibility is lacking at Macalester,” Alexandroff said.

Alexandroff mentioned that she would be sharing the proposed resolution via email to all members of MCSG in order to receive feedback before it goes to vote.

Following Alexandroff’s presentation, MCSG members signed up to volunteer at the election polling place on the second floor of the Campus Center during the class representative elections April 24 and 25.

The last topic brought up at the meeting surrounded the Presidential Search Committee which will assist in the process of finding a new president who will replace President Brian Rosenberg. Currently, only one student has been selected to represent the entirety of the student body — Ximena Silva-Avila ’20.

Blair Cha ’20 raised concerns about the issue of bias in having just one student representative.

“The solution that the board of trustees might be able to consider is that students come up with a list of faculty that they think best understand and can best advocate for students,” Cha said.

Cha suggested that members of the LB come up with a list of faculty by next week for the board to consider.

The whole meeting clocked in at just under 20 minutes, making it the shortest of the year.