Training for Walk Home Cocky taking place Oct. 6
Student senate introduced a streamlining of its legislative codes Wednesday night. The overhaul of the 200 section largely organizes the codes, codifies current procedures and moves certain codes to more appropriate sections.
“This is much more logical than what was in the previous codes,” said Stuart Wilkerson, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “It’s not a really huge change in practice.”
This update will most likely be voted on next week and similar overhauls of Student Government’s financial, executive and judicial codes are all planned for this semester.
Walk Home Cocky prepares for launch
Volunteer training registration is open for Walk Home Cocky, a late-night campus safe walk program launching Oct. 21. All interested in becoming a volunteer for the program must undergo a training course on Oct. 6; they can register for this training online and will receive free T-shirts once certified, executive director Missy Torgerson said.
Volunteers would only be bound to serve twice a month, but if more than 70 people become volunteers, that could go down to just once a month, Torgerson said.
“They’re not massive commitments of constant daily activity,” Student Body President Chase Mizzell said.
Athletics efforts
Senate Athletics Committee Chair Brian Rodgers and Secretary of Athletics Austin Solheim have met with athletics officials and are trying to address the ongoing issue of students leaving football games early. An athletics advisory council is also being formed by Mizzell and USC’s Athletics Department, consisting of students with the most loyalty points and others who have asked to be on the council “because they’re so passionate about Gamecock athletics,” Mizzell said.
Students will never be penalized for leaving games early, Rodgers said, but the Senate Athletics Committee is trying to determine how to encourage students to stick around. Ideas include giving students additional loyalty points on the way out and using promotional items.
The athletics advisory council will also be used to determine how to increase enthusiasm over USC’s basketball programs and its many Olympic sports, Mizzell said.
Hitting the streets
Three years in, SG’s Carolina Cab is “one of [its] most successful programs,” according to Senate Safety and Transportation Committee Chair Kirkland Gray.
“We’ve had great success and great usage among students,” Gray said.
Now, with more than 200 pages of usage data, Gray said he and his committee plan to examine who most uses Carolina Cab, where they most often go and when it is most popular in order to make improvements on the system.
But when students can drive on their own, a new parking meter system being rolled out by the city of Columbia may make parking woes less stressful. The city is installing new parking meters that will allow drivers to pay with credit and debit cards, Gray said, and some of these meters will be around campus.
Partnerships emphasized
After President Pro Tempore Lindsay Richardson and Senate Student Services Committee Chair Jonathan Holt introduced Carolina Closet, a business clothes loaning initiative, last week, Senate Finance Committee Chair Ashley Farr has joined Richardson in exploring what can be done to make the initiative work.
Farr has reached out to business fraternities Alpha Kappa Psi and Delta Sigma Pi for assistance and advice on community partnerships and finance for the program, which would loan out business attire to students in need.
“The issue is figuring out how to finance it,” Farr said. “When we get clothes back, they have to get washed. They have to get dry cleaned. How can we pay for that if we do it for free?”
Farr, one of few finance students in student senate, said that partnerships with local businesses and startups would be key to the success of Carolina Closet.