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With most students away from campus, members of Student Government continue working on several projects related to their assigned positions. The Student Senate, Student Government’s legislative branch, held its last meeting in late April, but many senators continue working to pursue their projects and goals. These projects include following up on bills passed in the spring, coordinating the transition process and reaching out to the many departments on campus to ensure future projects do not fall through.
Sen. Kate Puricz, a sophomore studying fashion and textile management and one of two Senators representing the College of Textiles, is working on many projects this summer. She is currently serving as the chair of the Committee on On-boarding and Leadership Development (COLD), and one of her responsibilities is working with new senators to inform them of the expectations their positions entail.
“I’m working on a resolution to extend compost bins around campus,” Puricz said. “I’m trying to just get a little bit more information from the sustainability department.”
Besides working on the compost bin resolution, Puricz is looking into ways to raise the productivity of Senate meetings with the help of other senators.
“It was brought to my attention why we do the pledge before Senate meetings, because in parliamentary procedure, it’s not required and it does take up a lot of time, but I’m sure there will be some debate about that,” Puricz said.
Sen. Zac Lentz, a graduate student studying biological and agricultural engineering, is the current chair of the committee on academics and legislative secretary of the Senate. He said that his experience with Student Government so far has been great. He is particularly glad with the level of representation graduate students have this year, and hopes that Student Government continues to have that level of representation in the future.
This summer, Lentz is mainly working on his research. He talked about a Senate bill on the ads displayed on the sides and windows of Wolfline buses and the limitations put on student organizations that choose to use them.
“We are looking for ways to get rid of these limitations,” Lentz said. “They decided they’re going to only be allowed to feature content about energy, sustainability and transit, and the Senate as a whole decided that was rather limiting to student organizations and not the best way to utilize that space, so we are working with transportation right now to try to take care of that in the future.”
Puricz is also working on bringing designs from the College of Textiles to the NC State bookstore.
“We are the only college of textiles in America [that] solely focus on textiles rather than fashion or design or things like that,” Puricz said. “It’s just baffling to me how we’re, the College of Textiles, so world renowned and everybody knows it … Why is the bookstore not taking use of that?”
As part of Student Government’s bookstore committee, Puricz recently started working with the head of the bookstores to see if the College of Textiles could provide a design, through contest or student submissions to be featured semi-annually. Funds from this project could go into improving the equipment students use in the College of Textiles.
Even though this project is currently on hold, Puricz has high hopes about it.
“There’s so much to do, and there’s a lot of grind work that I didn’t know my place was going to be so big in it, I didn’t know my role was going to be so large,” Puricz said. “I’ve taken a step back from that, and I’m going to see if I can try to make it happen … I’ve reached out to the Tompkins textile council and asked for some help, so hopefully, when the school year starts, more people will want to get involved with that.”
Puricz emphasized that her words are only a representative of her views and they are not representative of Student Government as a whole.
Alongside other graduate senators, facilitating transition is one of the main projects Lentz is working on over the summer.
“A lot of the graduate senators are looking at ways to try to fill the rest of the seats … we have three seats open right now for the graduate senators and we would love to get people in those in the beginning of the semester,” Lentz said.