By Shawn Ness | September 4, 2023
President Jalen Rose (left), Vice President Amelia Crawford (middle), and Comptroller Jason Lisciandro (right).
Photo Credit: Maceo Foster / Albany Student Press
The University at Albany’s Student Association (SA) met on Wednesday, Aug. 30 for the first time in the fall semester. During Amelia Crawford’s Vice President’s Report, she announced that due to recent budget cuts, SA will not have the funds to host concerts as frequently as they would like, or at the very least, not as big as they would like.
In light of these cuts, Crawford announced that they will be hosting DippiFest, at Dippikill, SA’s 1000-acre wilderness retreat facility in the Adirondacks. The festival will consist of eight local New York bands of varying genres. SA will provide bussing to Dippikill for roughly 500 students.
SA will still be hosting Parkfest this spring, and it will be “as large as we are able to make it,” Crawford said. At Block Party (today on the day of publishing), Crawford announced that the event will be DJ’d by WCDB, UAlbany’s student-run radio station.
In a meeting between Crawford, President Jalen Rose, and UAlbany’s Provost Carol Kim where they spoke about three things. The two are working on changing the available date to S/U a course to be later in the year, as well as fixing a general problem about academic advisors and faculty advisors not meeting students’ expectations. Crawford is also continuing the fight to lessen the cost of printing, as proposed by SA President Rose. Crawford said that Kim was unaware that students still had to pay to print, and that they will be working with professors to not require students to print as much course material.
Rose opened his Presidential Report with the usual remarks about how he is looking forward to the year, and he also said “I’m looking forward to working with most of you.” Senator Selwa Khan told the ASP in a brief interview after the meeting concluded that she found President Rose’s comments about Rose looking forward to working with most members very disrespectful.
This year saw the most self-nominations for elected positions in the upcoming elections, according to Anjalee Modasra, the acting chair of the Elections Commission. With the Elections Commission not yet full, Modasra and Julia Ross-McGuire hold temporary positions, with the latter acting Vice Chair of the Elections Commission. Elections end on Sept. 15, with the Vice Chair elections potentially happening on Sept. 20, although McGrath said that the date is not yet finalized.
UAlbany’s Supreme Court is working on filling two opening positions for Justices. Rose also noted that all applications for director positions have been closed, with two of the eight spots being filled as of last week’s meeting.