On Thursday, Sept. 11, Macalester College Student Government (MCSG) hosted its inaugural meeting of the Legislative Body (LB) for the 2025-26 academic year. MCSG Vice President Philomena Shuffelton-Sobe ’26 opened the meeting with a land acknowledgement and introductions of new members.
Following introductions, Shuffelton-Sobe provided a brief overview of how the LB functions before moving into a presentation by MCSG President Willow Albano ’26.
Albano began by asking for volunteers from MCSG to fill vacancies on outside committees that consult with the college’s administration. Among these committees is the Educational Policy and Governance Committee, where Albano noted that MCSG’s Academic Affairs Committee (AAC) members have previously held seats.
“[AAC] is where a lot of the nitty gritty decisions happen about educational policy on campus,” Albano said. “So a lot of this will relate to curriculum or … certain classes, whether or not they should get held, things like that.”
Also open for student representation is the Naming Committee and the Student Advisory Committee for Provost Lisa Anderson-Levy. Availability prioritizes LB members, but will open to the general student body should no LB member fill the vacancy.
Following Albano’s presentation, Shuffelton-Sobe returned to the podium to give a short presentation on MCSG’s bylaws and opened considerations for revisions for the 2025-26 academic year.
Albano returned to the podium to briefly outline the Student Organizations Committee (SOC) code and its purpose, noting that this year’s code is a recent overhaul by the SOC to more clearly outline its practices.
“[This code] is more thorough through how we decide what organizations should or shouldn’t be chartered and then outlining the responsibilities that these orgs have,” Albano said.
Following a short review of the financial code, the LB heard a funding appeal from Voices in STEM, which aims to empower students of color in STEM fields. The organization appealed the denial of $2,000.47 by the Financial Affairs Committee (FAC), seeking $700 for conference expenses, citing the value of the National Diversity in STEM conference for their members.
“The reason why I am appealing for this is because I believe this is important, and by not having funding for this it kind of is defeating these students to go beyond the Macalester experience [and] to show Macalester beyond the Macalester community,” co-chair of Voices in STEM Delilah Acosta ’27 said.
FAC Chair David Christenfeld ’27 responded that the cost per student and the limited budget of MCSG for this academic year encouraged their original rejection.
“We thought that this was a super valuable opportunity, obviously, but that the price per person is just way too high, even if it is just registration fees,” Christenfeld said. “Last year we had about a third more [expenses] all over. And so we’re looking at a super tight budget this year for the operating fund.”
A motion to approve the allocation passed by a vote of 10 to five.
Christenfeld noted separately afterward that MCSG plans to raise the student activity fee from $230 to $315 due to student organizations requesting more money than MCSG can give.
“With the last budgeting session last year, we had about $330,000 requested, and we had $72,000 to give away,” Christenfeld said. “And so if needed, if we see something like that this year, there’s not really any point of any budgeting at all.”
To mitigate larger requests, MCSG is switching from yearly budgeting sessions to semesterly ones. Christenfeld hopes this change will make student organizations more exact with their budgetary requests.
The committee chairs and issue-based liaisons then proceeded to lay out their goals for the semester ahead. Residential Life and Dining Liaison Galjer Yangwaue ’27 plans to work on increasing privacy around bathrooms and access to menstrual product dispensers. Dining and Sustainability Liaison JJ Cuneo ’28 plans to make greater accommodations for dietary restrictions across campus and increase accessibility in Macalester’s dining areas.
Samantha Schafer ’26, AAC chair, announced that the AAC is looking at the problems in faculty advising, namely mismatches between a First Year Course (FYC) instructor’s area of expertise and their advisee’s area of interest. SOC Chair Liv Peterson ’27 announced that 10 new groups have already applied for chartership since the semester began. Ash Granda-Bondurant ’27, athletics and recreation liaison, lastly announced that an additional van has been made available for club sports use.
The LB split up into committee groups to allow members to further discuss their goals for the semester. Following these discussions, the meeting was adjourned.
