Year-end celebration still an option

By: Daniel Aruz

The year-end celebration is still very much on the table for MSU President Teddy Saull, even after three recently failed end-of-year celebration Student Representative Assembly motions.

During the report segment of the SRA meeting on Nov. 2, Saull stated that he will be starting a working group regarding what the MSU should “do about a year end celebration if anything.”

The previous SRA meeting saw over fifty students, who came to share their views on how the end of the year celebration money should be put to use. The strongly negative response escalated via online discussion and a petition bearing 500 signatures denouncing the maximum $215,000 proposal. This has been the largest audience an SRA meeting has had in recent memory.

The $215,000 motion was pulled due to the overwhelming negative response, and the failure of Option 2, spending $170,000, and Option 3, the $95,000 allocation. Despite this, Saull continued to ask whether or not he should continue to pursue some form of a year-end celebration, in a scaled-down form.

“I took a straw-poll (this is an informal vote to see how people are feeling on a question less formal than a motion) and the majority of the SRA expressed interest in me continuing to do so.  In short, I am continuing the pursuit of this idea on the recommendation of the SRA,” said Saull, via email. “I would certainly have dropped the idea completely if that was the will of the assembly.”

Saull is looking to possibly build a survey to gather student feedback in the coming weeks. He noted throughout the report segment of the meeting that he has been having difficulty in getting feedback from students, who he has supposedly been reaching out to via social media, and focus groups.

“I remain excited about the prospect of some sort of send off event, even if it is completely re-imagined from what I had initially conceived (maybe there’s something we can do that doesn’t cost any money, for example), and I look forward to working with students and university partners to figure out what that might be,” said Saull.

Since the last SRA meeting, Saull noted that he has been paying more attention to social media, and that he is looking into creating surveys for multiple larger projects he has been working on, including Frost week and the year-end celebration.