Last Thursday, Sept. 23, the Macalester College Student Government (MCSG) held their second meeting of the school year. The meeting included a visit from the Board of Trustees (BoT) Liaison, speaker nominations, additional budget allocations and committee updates.
President Joel Sadofsky ’25 opened the meeting by welcoming the newly elected members and then introduced the BoT Liaison Gabe Karsh ’25. Karsh explained that their job is to represent student concerns to the BoT, the governing body of the college. The upcoming Board meeting on Sept. 27 will focus on Mac for Palestine’s divestment proposal.
Infrastructure and Sustainability Liaison Yamalí Rodas Figueroa ’27 asked if there were any updates on the administration’s plans for the Cultural House (C-House). Karsh noted that although last week Vice President for Student Affairs Kathryn Kay Coquemont told them a decision could come out in a few days, no new information has been communicated yet.
However, interim locations have been set with the goal of developing a permanent plan for where the C-House will be rebuilt following its eventual demolition.
Academic Affairs Committee (AAC) Chair Tristan Niedzielski ’25 asked if Karsh would be able to mention the issue of transparency in their upcoming meeting with the Board. Karsh explained that while they likely won’t have enough time to address it in their next meeting, they want to make long term changes to the BoT liaison position. Such changes might look like allowing students to elect the BoT liaison, instead of MCSG’s president and the vice president for student affairs selecting applicants, in order to increase transparency and accountability to students.
Next, the Legislative Body (LB) moved on to speaker nominations. Vice President Ryan Connor ’25 explained that the elected speaker’s responsibilities will include attending executive board meetings and facilitating LB sessions, just as Connor himself has been doing at this semester’s initial meetings.
Connor opened the floor for nominations: Aditya Choubal ’27 nominated David Christenfeld ’27; Cooper Glick ’25 nominated Tor Olsson ’25; Elizabeth Ekstrand ’25 nominated Liv Peterson ’27; Xu nominated Cem Ozil ’28. Christenfeld, Glick and Olsson are the three members of the Financial Affairs Committee (FAC) and made their nominations in quick succession. The new speaker will be selected by a secret ballot at next week’s LB meeting.
Next,, Financial Affairs Committee (FAC) Chair Luke Evans ’25, gave a beginning-ofyear presentation about his committee’s role. FAC is projected to have about $74,000 in travel funds, $14,000 in capital funds and $68,000 in operating funds for this academic year. He explained that when a student organization requests over $4,000, FAC must present this request to be approved by the LB to ensure that a small committee isn’t making such a financially impactful decision.
MCSG saw three organizations request over-$4,000 allocations this week: Climbing Club, West Coast Swing Dance Club and Model United Nations (UN).
Climbing Club requested an additional allocation of $4,500 in order to increase the amount of people they can take on their weekly climbs from 9.5 to 15. Historically, they’ve taken 20 people, but due to budget constraints, that number has dropped to 9.5.
After clarifying that this .5 person was an average, the request was approved, with 24 in favor, zero against, and one abstention.
Climbing Club had a secondary request for $4,304 from the travel budget to rent additional Mac vans to transport this larger group. It was again approved with 24 in favor and one abstaining.
West Coast Swing Dance Club requested and was approved for $4,700 for their annual trip to the Swing City event in Chicago. This allocation was split between a $2,400 operating and $2,300 travel. The first request passed with 23 in favor and two abstaining, and the second passed 24 in favor with one abstaining.
The LB reduced Model UN’s request from the operating budget for their annual trip to New York from $6,380 to $5,780 after removing $50 per student that had been specified as for travel. These funds will instead be requested from the travel budget, which passed 25 in favor, zero against and one abstaining.
The meeting shifted to committee updates.
Communications and Engagement Committee (CEC) Chair Mena Feleke ’25 shared that the CEC is working on their October Senior Leadership Team event.
Student Organizations Committee (SOC) Chair Sean Maxfield ’26 said that SOC has a “packed meeting, lots of chartering [and] a lot of prospective org review.” The committee is hearing from two prospective clubs: Furbas, a neurobiology club and the Scots in the Cities volunteering club.
Sadofsky added that he and Connor had met with Dean of Students Javier Gutierrez and “spoke about ideas of how students would feel that there’s transparency in changes to the student handbook.”
After distributing waivers for the Sept. 21-22 MCSG retreat, the meeting adjourned.
