The Lawrence University Community Council (LUCC) recently underwent a change in cabinet after the executive elections closed Jan. 23. After they are sworn in at the beginning of Spring Term, the cabinet will consist of junior Anders Hanhan as President, sophomore Isabel Dorn as Vice President, sophomore Sherilyn Patterson as Parliamentarian, sophomore Ayesha Wali Rahmoon as Treasurer, junior Cassie Lee as General Secretary, sophomore Matthew Dalgleish as Finance Secretary, sophomore Lillian Biolo Thompson as PR Secretary, junior Caleb Yuan as Club Support and Training Coordinator and junior Matthew Pavlik as Community Relations Coordinator.
Anders Hanhan is the President Elect for LUCC. After working with LUCC’s sustainability committee, Hanhan sees the systems in place as designed to limit change. Hanhan aims to improve communication between LUCC and the student body with propositions such as LUCC listening sessions where students can voice concerns to the committee and a weekly newsletter. In the long term, Hanhan wants to see Lawrence commit to stronger climate commitments (such as through developing a carbon action plan), to raise hourly wages and to further promote inclusivity and equity.
Hanhan wants to improve training for club treasurers so that students can better learn how to create a standard budget form. He also wants to place more emphasis on Title IX and bias trainings. The bias trainings will include training on how to respond to micro aggressions and how to handle bias reporting in clubs, according to Hanhan.
Isabel Dorn is Vice President elect for LUCC. Dorn’s primary goals as VP include improving the overall student welfare on campus through specific targets such as raising higher wages on campus for students and staff, improving transparency and communication between LUCC and the student body, and refining the LUCC budget process for student organizations and class representatives.
Dorn sees Anders and herself as a strong team. She is excited to work with the new cabinet and is looking to build a strong team together. Dorn emphasized a student-focused and team-minded approach.
“I’m really excited to be working with the new cabinet,” said Dorn. “I think they’re all very qualified and hard-working people. I really look forward to building a strong team with them because I think we can affect a lot of change together.”
One distinct goal for Dorn and Hanhan is to build a newsletter to give updates on what LUCC is currently doing, according to Dorn. The goal of the newsletter is to make LUCC accessible to the student body. The desired effect is to make it so any student on campus can easily understand what’s going on in LUCC. Hanhan sees the current system of emailing changes as they come as not very efficient and as cumbersome for finding information.
The newsletter would include information such as what clubs received funding, official LUCC decisions, a collection of committee and student support emails that are currently sent individually, and comprehensive support resources.
Dorn feels that the process of allocating funds to student orgs needs improvement. She aims to alleviate some of the tension that exists between student organizations and LUCC, namely through increasing transparency in the budget process and through presenting the criteria and guidelines for student organizations in a more accessible way. Dorn pointed towards changes that had been proposed by Caleb Yuan, the Club Support and Training Coordinator for LUCC, as a strong step forward.
Yuan originally pitched the idea of having student orgs submit their budget ahead of time to both give orgs more time to prepare and to give the LUCC Finance Committee more time to review budget requests. The cabinet has since been working on this legislation together under the name Winter Advance Budget Legislation, according to Yuan. These reforms aim to establish a more consistent standard for how money is allocated to orgs, such as through the creation of an itemized list for student orgs to fill out. Talks are still underway to get budget submissions pushed to Fall term instead of Spring or Winter term.