Duke Student Government selected leadership to oversee the Young Trustee process Wednesday night.
Eight DSG representatives were elected to fill the eight DSG spots on the Young Trustee Nominating Committee. Before being put to a Senate vote, the 10 nominees were questioned about their campus involvement and bias. The bulk of the committee’s work will take place in January and February, when they will work about three to four hours per week.
The committee’s members are freshmen Ajeet Hansra, Andrew Hanna and Ben Shantz; sophomores Christine Larson and Brandon Putnam; juniors Ashley Baker and Louis Ortiz; and senior Joe Catapano.
Eight DSG representatives also accepted nominations for the YTNC At-Large Member Selection Committee, which is responsible for filling the half of the YTNC reserved for non-DSG members. Although the Senate had originally planned on electing five members to the selection committee, all eight were voted in.
Senior Ben Bergmann, an athletics and campus services senator, presented a 2010-2011 diversity report of DSG. Male over-representation was the most significant finding, with males making up 70 percent of DSG, 100 percent of the executive board and 78 percent of the Senate. Only the Duke University Student Dining Advisory Committee was about equally split between males and females.
The study also found that 40 percent of DSG members were Christian, 49 percent were politically left and 41 percent were public policy or political science majors. In addition, 70 percent of non-freshmen were not in a greek organization.
Tailgate issues resurfaced at the beginning of the meeting, and executives said that although Tailgate with a capital “T” will no longer exist, they will be looking into other institutions’ tailgates and devising a plan throughout the Spring semester for the future of tailgate.
“Tailgate is not what we’re fighting to bring back,” said DSG President Mike Lefevre, a senior. “The location will never be the same. If there’s one thing I can promise you, it’s that. I think that tailgates in general are great for a university to get people out on a Saturday, to rally around a university and hopefully to go to the football game—that is what we’re fighting for.”
In other business:
An abbreviated C-2 bus route has been proposed for next semester and will soon be tested. The new route will save three minutes per trip, according to a DSG press release.
This article has been modified to reflect the fact that the DSG diversity report was for 2010-2011, not 2009-2010 as originally reported. The Chronicle regrets the error.
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