SGA pushes for more transparency and engagement

At its first weekly meeting of the year, the Student Government Association (SGA) welcomed guest speaker Stanley Andrisse, a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Medicine.

Andrisse, a former convict who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for drug distribution and trafficking when he was 20 years old, spoke in support of “Ban the Box” laws, which aim to increase educational opportunities for ex-offenders.

Passing “Ban the Box” laws would mean prohibiting the Office of Admissions from requiring applicants to disclose criminal records. Andrisse urged Hopkins to adopt the laws, which he said could give ex-offender applicants a second chance.

Instead of serving his full 10-year sentence, Andrisse served three years and then underwent a drug rehabilitation program. While in prison, he applied to graduate schools with the help of a professor he knew and was accepted by Washington University in St. Louis. Andrisse believes this was because the professor was on the admissions board of the university.

“I went into prison knowing that there was no hope for change, and that I couldn’t change,” he said. “So I decided to act like a criminal. It took a lot of soul-searching to tell myself that I am not a criminal. Education took me out of that environment. College offers a lot more than knowledge and letters behind a name.”

SGA declared that they would issue a formal statement in support of “Ban the Box.”

SGA members also discussed broader agendas for the year, which include engaging more closely with the student body. Executive President Noh Mebrahtu will send out monthly emails to students. SGA also plans to upload weekly agendas on its website and has set up an email for students to get in direct contact with SGA as a whole. Previously, students usually communicated with the SGA by contacting individual senators.

SGA will also be holding office hours in Brody Cafe twice a week. Junior Class President Ash Panakam said she hoped this would help SGA be more communicative with students.

“We are going to talk to anyone who has questions for the SGA, but mostly it will be geared toward our class constituency,” Panakam said. “In the past, we have been criticized on not being as accessible as we say we are. And maybe that transparency isn’t always there.”

Panakam is organizing a kick-off event on the Beach to help student-SGA engagement. She urged other members to participate in these events to help present a united face for SGA.

Members also discussed how to avoid conflicts of interest. The new Rules Bill requires senators to fill out a disclosure form if they believe they may have conflicts of interest and to refrain from voting in the case of possible conflicts of interest.

Executive Vice President AJ Tsang spoke about the Bill’s importance.

“It was produced from last year’s discussion between the executive board and class councils,” Tsang said. “It was discussed that it was crucial to have conflicts of interest disclosed that way we can make sure that no one does anything improper — not that anyone does.”

According to Tsang, senators may not write, introduce or sponsor legislation on behalf of an organization they are a part of. Some senators objected to a line in the bill that said that senators should “refrain from accepting financial, social, political rewards from subject of conflict of interest,” saying that it was too broad.

Sophomore Class President Anthony Boutros recommended changing the line to “refrain from accepting quid pro quo rewards from conflict of interest.” His amendment gained unanimous support.

Boutros also outlined his priorities for the year.

“One is entrepreneurship activities. The second is bringing civic engagement to the forefront,” Boutros said. “We have met with IDEAL, and we are collaborating with them to have an event on Sept. 26 on National Voter Registration Day.”

Boutros hopes to make TurboVote, a site that aids people in filing official election paperwork, accessible to students by Sept. 26. He is also working with the IT department to add a link to the site on Blackboard.

“I would like to formalize SGA to form a bill to get 2,000 students to register through TurboVote so that come the 2018 elections, students are aware on the federal, state and local level,” Boutros added.

Last year, Executive Secretary Rushabh Doshi presented the Smoking Ban Resolution in an attempt to make Hopkins a smoke-free campus. The resolution failed to pass and has undergone revisions.

“I’ve been working on the smoking ban over the summer and I’ve been talking to... several people on campus,” he said. “We decided we will have a smoking cessation bill and then a smoking ban bill in the near future.”

The cessation resolution will call on the University to provide resources for students who want to quit smoking. Doshi hopes to bring the resolution to the floor next week and reintroduce the revised smoking ban resolution, which calls for smoking to be banned only on Homewood campus, two weeks after that.