Heather O’Brien
Equinox Staff
Student Assembly discussed previous and future funding requests while also sharing feedback regarding Campus Safety with the Director of Campus Safety this week on Tuesday, November 3rd.
At this point in the semester, the assembly has allocated just over eleven thousand dollars between pumpkin lobotomy, global culture club and architecture club.
Member Christine Nigzus informed the rest of the assembly that alternative spring break will be speaking at their meeting next Tuesday, November 10th. They are requesting twelve thousand dollars which is more than the 3 groups that the assembly has allocated money to so far this year.
Last year, the assembly allocated a total of nineteen thousand dollars to alternative spring break
In other business, Director of Campus Safety Amanda Guthorn thanked Student Assembly for their leadership in their organizations and positively commended fellow students on how not having the annual PumkinFest this year was handled.
“It was a tremendous improvement from last October,” Guthorn said.
Guthorn then asked for the assembly’s thoughts about Campus Safety in general and how people are feeling on campus.
Student Assembly member Bethany Peterson commented that she has had positive experiences with Campus Safety and said that she understands that their role on campus isn’t to attack the students and that they are not out to get the students.
Guthorn wants students to be comfortable whether they have positive or negative feedback about different service aspects.
“Everybody’s not one hundred percent perfect one hundred percent of the time, but it’s really important to me that the students are being served,” Guthorn said.
Receiving calls and complaints from students and parents, Campus Safety worked with the Keene Police to change their protocol for responding to Marijuana calls this year. Guthorn said that the previous protocol was to call the Keene Police Department anytime there was a Marijuana call. Usually, by the time the police arrive to campus the smell of Marijuana is gone. Instead Campus Safety will respond; they no longer have to wait for the police to come.
“It’s helped us be able to address Marijuana calls more effectively and more efficiently because the idea isn’t necessarily to have people arrested, the idea is to address the usage and to send people through conduct and to address it in a more educational perspective,” Guthorn said.