Student Senate projects are now resumed after the university went into a two-week quarantine. They’re looking to plan Black Lives Matters events and making adjustments to the Business and Engineering Convergence Center (BECC).
General assemblies have been held through Zoom on Mondays at 5 p.m. For most of the departments, projects are conducted remotely.
“As far as the projects the respective chairpeople are doing, they’re going to all have to work to adapt to those projects,” said speaker of assembly David Daye. “Because it’s such an uncharted time, more things are coming up that we’ll be able to address that won’t necessarily require us to be in person.”
Daye, sophomore political science and organizational communication major, said that as Student Senate finds issues, it will have to make adjustments. One example Daye provided was Rise of the Red. Recently, Student Senate moved the event online as a giveaway for students who participate in a social media challenge.
“Something that I like about Student Senate is that, as new issues arise, that’s what we’re going to meet and try to help fix,” said student body president Emma Hoyhtya. “Now, we’re experiencing issues we can’t even comprehend ahead of time.”
Anthony Fidanzo, chairperson of the campus safety and community relations, has taken a similar approach by posting information about COVID-19 at Bradley on the Student Senate’s social media pages as well.
“All of the projects we have had the chance to start, we went into [them] knowing that we would more than likely complete them virtually,” said Fidanzo, junior industrial engineering major, in an email interview.
Campus safety and communication projects so far have included informing students about COVID-19 and testing on campus.
Fidanzo also said that starting general assemblies online and working online allowed for a smoother transition when the university required students to quarantine for two-weeks.
So far, the only projects that have been postponed since the Sept. 14 meeting have been under the campus affairs and the diversity and inclusion departments.
In the diversity and inclusion department, chairperson Emmanuel Agyemang said that the Black Lives Matter movement project has been paused. In an email interview, he said that the project was just developing with ideas from the Bradley NAACP president.
“We were going to have a march, an event for poetry, spoken word, rap and perhaps art to show the various means through which Black people express their excellence,” Agyemang said.
Virtual events are being considered instead as he anticipates COVID-19 protocols will be stricter on events and gatherings.
Meanwhile, chairperson and junior mechanical engineering major Harini Vasedevenallur of campus affairs said their projects had been on a temporary pause due to quarantine, but a few have plans to be resumed.
Fixing the door alarms to ring less at the BECC has been resumed as they found it easier to fix the problem with students off campus.
Still paused is the possibility of students meeting with professors while socially distancing. This may resume once quarantine is over.
Despite these changes needed on senate operations, Hoyhtya said that this semester will require the organization to be especially reactive to any campus issues.
