Undergraduate Student Government discusses FYRE, international student resources at meeting

Last night, ambitious students put their heads together to make the University experience better for undergraduate students.

The Undergraduate Student Government discussed the First Year Residential Experience, international student representation in the Senate, and the Princeton Leadership Profiles on Portfolium during its weekly meeting on Oct. 7.

Associate Dean of Undergraduate Students Mellisa Thompson and Butler College Director of Student Life Deshawn Cook were the first to present, discussing the re-branding of freshman orientation programs, collectively known as FYRE.

“We wanted to make sure that students understood that FYRE was set to signal certain community values for us,” Thompson said.

FYRE includes LGBTQ+ discussion panels, a play, and subsequent debriefs focused on sexual assault and harassment, mindfulness events, the “Safer Sexpo,” and a ‘Kognito Study Break,’ which trains students to recognize warning signs of psychological distress.

Leadership Program Coordinator Claire Pinciaro ’13 discussed the launching of a new initiative, the Princeton Leadership Profiles. The profiles will be published on Portfolium, a private, closed network for Princeton students.

“A lot of feedback we were getting from students was that it would be great if we had this one centralized way to navigate involvements and opportunities,” Pinciaro said.

Sten Sjoberg ’21 suggested to USG that the Senate appoint a non-voting representative to address the specific needs of international students on campus.

“Cornell, Columbia, and UPenn, to name a few, all have representatives already on their senate[s],” Sjoberg said.

The University’s lack of Curricular Practical Training (CPT), whereby international students can pursue summer internships in the United States, and the ramifications of U.S. “travel bans” are a few of the issues that the Senate international representative might focus on, according to Sjoberg.

Honor Committee Chair Elizabeth Haile ’19 informed the Senate of the Honor Committee’s further progress on its outreach to first-year students to fill two positions.

Next, U-Councilor Aditya Shah ’21 and Class of 2021 Senator Elizabeth Bailey ’21 submitted a proposal for the Transportation Task Force. According to Shah and Bailey, the task force would principally aim to investigate the possibility of bringing electric scooters to campus and to improve student accessibility of TigerTransit.

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Class of 2020 Senator Brad Spicher ’20 additionally introduced a proposal for the Financial Reform Task Force. This task force would look into increasing the USG budget by raising student fees, for example.

“[We want to] make it more feasibly understandable for your average person who isn’t digging through ten thousand cells on Microsoft Word,” Spicher said.

U-Councilor Katya Vera ’20 and U-Councilor Isabella Faccone ’21 also talked about the start of formal USG office hours on Tuesdays from 8:30–10 p.m.

USG approved the new Academics Committee Financial Resources Sub-Committee and confirmed Julie Shin ’22 and Lily Zhang ’21 to the Communications Committee.

The next USG meeting will be held on Oct. 14.