This year’s election ended with USAC comprised of eight Bruins United councilmembers and only two from Students First!, with three independents.
The new council was sworn in and held its first meeting on May 15. Since then, relations among councilmembers have been civil.
There was some disagreement about which councilmembers should sit on the new ad hoc committee that will be reviewing issues of office space, as it did not initially include a representative from Students First!, but council resolved the issue by adding Cultural Affairs Commissioner Bernice Shaw to the committee.
President Gabe Rose led council through these discussions and so far has proven a fair and capable chair at meetings.
Office space has proven to be an important topic, provoking discussion in the campus community at large about the direction of this year’s council.
This is the first council that has had to use the new office space allocation guidelines established in 2005 by its predecessors in order to more fairly allocate office space, and the process was not particularly smooth.
The big concern with this year’s allocations was that the Disabled Students Union is going to be removed from their office because, according to the allocation guidelines, they are ineligible to even apply for it.
Rally Committee is also getting moved out, though most of the discussion was surrounding the Disabled Students Union and whether they should receive office or storage space despite being ineligible, which ultimately council decided they should not.
Over the summer, council will be meeting and the committee on office space allocation will be working on getting storage lockers built in Kerckhoff.
Council just received their official nameplates at the installation ceremony last Sunday and are currently moving into their new offices.
The 13 councilmembers for 2007-2008 are gearing up for a busy year.