The University of Colorado Boulder’s Student Government’s legislative council at a meeting on Nov. 14, 2024. (Ainsley Coogan/ CU Independent)
The University of Colorado Boulder’s Student Government’s legislative council met on Nov. 14. The meeting saw the resignation of one member, as well as the movement of 17 new bills and resolutions to appointments or to their respective committees for further processing.
Keenan Powell, a former parliamentarian for CUSG, attended the public open hearing section of the meeting. After one and a half years, Powell had stepped down from his role as parliamentarian to focus his political abilities on other issues, such as combating fascism throughout the country.
“My focus, my scope, needs to be no longer just on the student body, but on every person on this planet,” Powell said.
Powell recommended that in general, everyone should try to better understand other people’s perspectives and assume their best intentions. Relating to the activism that Powell is familiar with, he encouraged that any of CUSG’s support and activism for marginalized groups must be in solidarity with all others.
Out of the 17 bills and resolutions discussed by the council, some stood out in terms of community impact.
Bill 101 LCB 07, presented by Representative-at-Large Nathan Bish, was moved to appointment.
“We’ve created this bill that essentially requires all RSOs to report any instances of sex-based harassment, class-based discrimination, sexual or physical misconduct, as well as giving them authorization to deal in-house with non-sex based issues of misconduct, which is something that’s not currently allowed,” Bisch said. The bill does not encompass organizations such as IFC on the Hill, which is independent from the university.
Bill 101 LCB 09 was also proposed, which would establish a survey for students registered to Buff Connect. The goal of the survey is to assist students with housing by tracking what realty agencies students are signing with, how much students are paying for and establishing an idea of where students want to live.
Several resolutions were also proposed.
Resolution 101 LCR 01 would encourage the city of Boulder to take into consideration the brightness of the new LED street lights that are being added throughout the city. The goal of the resolution is to promote student safety by ensuring that streets are well-lit enough, especially in areas like University Hill.
Another important resolution concerned testing dates for university students.
“At our school, we have 36,000 students, all of whom have different religious beliefs, all of them have different requirements,” said Bish, introducing 101 LCR 02. This resolution would call for the university to prohibit tests on culturally significant days, as well as election days and federal holidays.
He explained that a religious holiday doesn’t constitute an exempt absence so – at the minimum – tests should be prohibited on such days.
101 LCR 03 proposed that the university create policies that protect library books, majors and classes that focus on diversity in response to national controversy relating to topics such as critical race theory. This resolution would also ask university administration to enshrine a policy that will commit dedication to offering accessible contraception, the morning-after pill, STD testing and STI testing.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Ainsley Coogan at ainsley.coogan@colorado.edu
