The Grand Rapids Community College held its second to last town hall meeting of the semester and discussed the opening of the Student Game Room, the Solar Eclipse and why they denied an allocation request by the Library and Learning Commons.
The campus activity budget started at $4,674.37 before the Student Government approved a $900 request for the Democrats at GRCC. In a previous meeting, they announced that any request below $1,000 would not be discussed at the meeting, but would be announced if it had been approved or denied.
Student Government announced that they denied the Library and Learning Commons allocation request of $950 for the Exam Cram due to the department making the request instead of a student who is an executive board member of a club. However, Student Government leaders said they would fund the event with their own funds.
“Traditionally, we have always funded the Exam Cram allocation requests but in light of the words in our constitution and student manual, we decided the best course of action would be to protect those funds for students and student organizations,” Vice President Michael Zazzo said. “That being said, we believe the event is worthwhile so we wanted to fund it through Student Government.”
At the beginning of the meeting, Student Government President Alex Miranda mentioned that the organization is interviewing students for three positions in Student Government: Vice President, Communications Director and Treasurer.
“We’ve been interviewing the whole month of April and this is our last week of interviewing and then after that we will deliberate on the interviews we conducted,” Miranda said. “Hopefully by the start of May, we have a full E-Board and once that is finalized we will update everyone on the new positions that were filled.”
They also announced that any clubs that are looking to stay active throughout the summer can fill out the Year End Review form. Any allocation requests for the Summer Activities Fund must be submitted by May 13 by noon if you plan on having an event during the summer.
For a brief moment, the Student Government talked about the Solar Eclipse and what to expect in Grand Rapids. A stat that was mentioned was there was a 31% increase in traffic accidents during the last total eclipse. They expected the totality of the eclipse to be between 3:01 and 3:21 p.m. Totality occurred at 3:11 p.m..
One announcement for an upcoming Town Hall will be the Rec Center design plans. Earlier in the semester, GRCC Ford Fieldhouse Director Whitney Marsh outlined plans for the new Rec Center that is replacing the pool. They also mentioned that there is an upcoming open house for the Rec Center on Wednesday, April 17 from 2:30-4 p.m. at the Ford Fieldhouse room 212.
A main topic of discussion during the meeting was the opening of the Student Game Room and what should be added next. Zazzo believed the opening event was successful and is confident it can be a space for students to connect.
“We were very pleased with the number of attendees and it seemed like students had a lot of fun with the ping-pong table and the board games,” Zazzo said. “Don’t hesitate to come by and chill if you have some spare time between classes.”
They also discussed what could be added to the Student Game Room, including a pool table, an air-hockey table, a change in layout of the furniture and adding a gaming console provided by Student Government.
“We are collecting more data on the Student Game Room and believe it can always be improved,” Zazzo said. “One idea that was mentioned to me that I liked was adding another TV and streaming different sports events or news for students to watch.”
Student Government’s final meeting will be on Monday, April 22, from 12-2 p.m. at RJF room 108-109.
