Following the slam of the ceremonial opening gavel, the Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) Assembly convened for the first time this year in Daggett Lounge in Thorne Hall at 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday night. The assembly got right to business by retroactively approving three expenditures that had been organized by BSG’s executive officers over the summer and in the first month of the semester.
The BSG Assembly is headed by President Chris Breen ’15 and is comprised of elected Executive Vice Presidents, Class Representatives, appointed at-large members, and representatives from other organizations like the Inter-House Council and the McKeen Center. On Wednesday night they unanimously voted to support all three proposals.
The first was to continue funding BSG’s PolarFlix film streaming service. Available through BSG’s website, the service allows students on Bowdoin’s Wifi connection to choose among a set of 15 different movies each month, chosen by the executive committee. The cost of the streaming service and the rights to the films is $12,000.
The assembly then voted to approve spending $350 to fund a contract with TurboVote, a nonpartisan service that provides free voter registration to college students. The service also mails students absentee ballots for their home states and sends reminders about upcoming elections and information about voting deadlines.
The final proposal was to approve $800 for gelato given away to first year students at BSG’s meet-and-greet event at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art during orientation week. This proposal, like the two before it, passed without any opposition or debate.
During the meeting, several of the executive committee members shared optimistic prospects for the year ahead. Vice President for Student Affairs Justin Pearson ’17 said that he saw the goal of student government to be “improving the Bowdoin experience.”
He stated that a vital part of doing that was to continue to make BSG into “something that people can approach and utilize,” in order to be an “outlet where they can express themselves and petition to make their ideas a reality.” He cited the existence of BSG’s Good Ideas Fund, a pool of $3,000 that students can apply for in order to finance programming and project ideas independent from the usual club-funding process.
Vice President for Student Government Affairs Charlotte McLaughry ’15 echoed his comments, stressing the need to keep the students informed about the services BSG offers.
“People think we don’t do anything—we need to make sure that they know what we’re doing here, that we’re meeting three or four times a week to try and get things done for the student body,” she said.
The meeting ended around 9:30 p.m. with a motion to adjourn. Not surprisingly, it was unanimous.