Associate Director: Riley Cagle

Governmental Affairs Committee

Director: Dave Stewart

Associate Director: Riley Cagle

Meeting Recorder: Greg Carvajal

Assistant Recorder:

Meeting Location: New Kensington

Council Weekend # 2

11:24am – Dave Stewart calls in Zach Robinson who is going to discuss P.A.S.S.

• 11:25 am update: attempt failed. Trying to fix connection problem.
• 11:28 am update: connection established. Call moves forward.

Zach Robinson: Pitt, Temple, Penn State and Lincoln for P.A.S.S.

• PASS is striving to become like BATS
• PASS advocates at the state level
• With CCSG, PASS is able to get one-point contact
• Advocate for issues that affect all the schools involved
• The focus is going to be social issues for now
• Need to meet and establish relationships with legislators
• Each university gets 2 votes
• QUESTION Austin Fayette – Would you recommend discussing our issues with the campus specifically instead of through PASS?
• Zach – yes you can, and the purpose of PASS is to establish a connection between the schools.
• Email: , number: 412-616-8163
• QUESTION: Austin – is there a way to get involved with PASS on our campuses?
• Zach - we don’t have a very large physical representation, the way to fix that on a campus level is to create a working group within the student gov’ts, but they help by establishing benchmarking and collaborative ideas with the other universities.
• QUESTION: Colin York – what social issues?
• Zach – affordable living and medical amnesty
• QUESTION: Justice Schuylkill – is there a website?
• Zach – not yet, but there is a newsletter coming out and social media pages which contain information
• Lauren Fayette – elaborate affordable living?
• Zach – there is a rising cost of living in the downtown area in state college, pitt and temple is getting out of hand. Trying to find new and creative ways to encourage lower rates for students
• QUESTION: Colin York – is there anything we can do specifically yet?
• Zach – not at the moment. Best thing at the moment is to make that communication with the other schools.

Riley Cagle

-Community engagement

• What is there besides the budget?
• The other aspect is community engagement
• Getting involved in local events, volunteering etc.
• It gives legislators an incentive to fund PSU, because they see the impact that PSU has on communities
• Community Outreach Programming System (COPS)
• QUESTION: Cooper Altoona – had a member of ROTC come to the SGA meeting and asked if people could help with the memorial center. To raise money for the events, reaching out to local businesses.
• Riley: fundraising for different projects. Have to be willing to go out on your own to start the projects.
• York – there are a ton of opportunities to get involved. This is a way to put a collective name to the existing mediums for community engagement.
• Riley – wants to be more of a tool you can use or not use. Not something you have to use. COPS is supposed to be help if you need it.
• QUESTION: Cassandra Shenango – we have nothing at Shenango. We’ve tried multiple times to create local events, but local areas don’t have a lot of ability to help with fundraising. There is little opportunity to use community engagement as leverage with legislators.
• Have a simple problem on campus, lots of students are commuters, so students don’t feel a part of the community. Therefore, they are not incentivized to engage in the community with proposed projects.
• QUESTION: Lauren Fayette – being from the campus, we are fortunate that the outreach organization is very effective. Speaker came out from the FDA and spoke about the opioid epidemic. Able to facilitate with the community.
• QUESTION: Cassandra Schuykill – a concern is about paying for speakers, because SGA is highly financially constrained.
• QUESTION: Tyler Behrend – having a program like this is a deliverable. Poor relationships with the local community, and so now the SGA is promoting future relationships. Replacing smoke detectors in poor neighborhoods, adopt-a-highway, etc. Commuters are engaged with a new position called the commuter chair.
• QUESTION: Justin LeHigh Valley – 100% a commuter college. One of the things that really works is partnering with other clubs. Have them piggy back off of us, or vice versa. You promote off campus events and make sure you invite local important people. One of the easy things to do is food drives, since it requires little effort from students.

Dave

-Budget Passed

• Budget passed – now what?
• You’re not always physically advocating. Getting involved in the community makes PSU look better, and it gives the university leverage when asking for the state appropriation ever year.
• Zak – legislators need to see the university as impactful. They need to see results. What we can do differently is show up when they don’t expect us to.

-Non-budgetary issues

• Medical amnesty
• Student housing
• Do not get caught in the weeds

-limited asks per year