SA Briefs: 3 takeaways from Monday’s meeting (Nov. 2)
Here are three takeaways from the Student Association’s Monday night meeting in Maxwell Auditorium:
- Race in suspect descriptions
The assembly had a lengthy discussion on whether it would be appropriate for the Department of Public Safety to include ethnicity and race in descriptions of suspects in its public safety notices. DPS stopped including race in the descriptions in 2013.
SA President Aysha Seedat approached DPS Chief Bobby Maldonado about the issue at a public safety town hall meeting on Monday before seeking assembly members’ feelings on the matter. The members’ opinions varied, with some arguing that it would help DPS identify suspects and others arguing that it wouldn’t and could lead to issues of racial profiling.
Seedat said she asked Maldonado about the issue because of a letter to the editor in The Daily Orange, which argued that if DPS were to include ethnicity in its descriptions, it would “greatly improve the likelihood that the perpetrator might actually be identified and apprehended.”
- Assembly takes stance on Uber
The assembly voted to take an official stance supporting the legalization of a ride-hailing service like Uber in Syracuse. Seedat recently drafted a letter requesting that the New York State Assembly do just that, and the SA assembly plans to vote on approving that letter next week.
- Budget Appeals
The assembly also voted to package the Finance Board’s budget appeals decisions. After receiving about $150,000 in budget appeals requests from recognized student organizations, the Finance Board allocated about $43,000. That brings its total allocation to RSOs for the spring 2016 semester to roughly $730,000.