Student Government hosted its first town hall of the semester on Thursday to discuss student concerns, including on-campus voting and student involvement in campus life.
The meeting began with a general question about voting obstacles, where the student government discussed registering out-of-state and long voting lines. President Grace Kelly encouraged students not to wait to register and vote.
“You don’t want to wait until election day because the line will be ten times around the building, and that will be hard,” Kelly said. “If that’s the only option you have, still go and vote on November 5, utilize your civic duty and get informed.”
Kelly said students voting in their hometowns must register there, and students planning to vote on campus must register in Austin by Oct. 7. She said early voting is from Oct. 21 to Nov. 1, and students can vote in the Texas Union or LBJ School of Public Affairs. A representative from University Democrats who attended mentioned the shuttles the organization will have running every 15 minutes to and from the LBJ School for students to vote.
After discussing voting registration, the student government divided attendees into four groups, including student life and affordability, physical and mental health and wellness, academic and professional opportunity, and community and student engagement.
The student life and affordability group discussed wanting free printing for students in the Perry-Castañeda Library. According to the group, the University is one of the only schools that does not offer it to all students, as only honors students and a few select majors can access free printing.
“Last semester, I had some meetings with some faculty members and met with the faculty member that handles all the budgeting for the UT Libraries,” said government junior Dylan, who did not say his last name during the meeting. “It seems like there’s a good chance we can actually get this through. It’s just going to need a lot of support for it.”
The physical and mental health and wellness group discussed providing accommodations like water and fans to people waiting in lines to vote on campus.
The academic and professional opportunity group discussed how smaller colleges do not have as many professional opportunities as bigger colleges. The group said students get overwhelmed with the amount of emails they receive daily about on-campus events. Kelly said SG is developing an app to reduce that stress.
“There are immense disparities between all the colleges,” Kelly said. “We’re coming up with a way to put a calendar of all career resources and events within the same platform, and that would be a condensed app for all students to use.”
Kelly said she would deliver these discussion points to the Dean of Students at their next meeting.
