The Undergraduate Student Government Senate passed the USG Logo and Seal Act of 2015, which removes the use of the USG seal and proposes changes to the USG logo, at the senate meeting on Thursday evening.
There were copyright issues with the previous logo because it resembled the AMC theater chain’s logo and can lead to legal measures, USG Vice President of Communications Brody Hooper said.
“One of the things requested by the university is to make [changing the logo often] very hard,” Hooper said. “It affects our integrity, among other things, when we change our logo on a yearly basis.”
In an effort to discourage constant changes to the logo, the Senate debated on what steps were appropriate to make changes to the USG logo difficult in the future. USG President Cole Lee suggested a time frame so that the future elected Senate will not change the logo if they simply feel like it.
“I think the idea of a timeline is kind of a bad idea because if we make it absolute for five years or something and something comes up that we don’t agree with, we can’t change it,” Hooper responded.
Hooper brought up the idea that there should be a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate, unanimous vote on the Executive Council and approval from the vice president of communications of the university in order to amend future logos.
Sen. Alexander Bouraad disagreed with Hooper, saying approval from the vice president of communications of the university takes away the Senate’s power over the issue.
“Out of respect for the university, and keeping in mind the copyright, we need to have their approval,” Hooper said.
The Senate approved the USG Logo and Seal Act with 12 affirmative votes and four dissenting votes.
The Senate unanimously approved a resolution to support the addition of a list of mental health and well-being resources to every syllabus. In the resolution, the senate supports requiring all professors and instructors to add contact information for Counseling and Psychological Services and specific language that encourages students to reach out to professors or teaching assistants for advice and support to their syllabuses.
The senate also unanimously voted to recognize the Accounting Society, SBU Women in Computer Science, the Tea House Club, and the Stony Brook chapter of The Supply, a nonprofit organization that educates young people living in slums.
Sen. Jonathan Rodriguez said the Accounting Society has shown initiative in its level of professionalism and their efforts in receiving funding from other organizations.
“There is now a master’s of science that will be offered in the fall for accounting, and there also wasn’t an accounting minor either,” said Eric Biedermann, who represented the Accounting Society at the meeting. “Our club pushed the initiative of both of them.”
Furthermore, Sen. Jan Jaminal said the Tea House Club can help stressful students to relax. USG recognition puts the clubs on the path to receiving budgets from USG.
The Senate unanimously approved the Appropriation Acts #10, #11 and #12 after USG Treasurer Taylor Bouraad said there was a $15,080 surplus in the FSA Management Fee allocation of the USG budget that needed to be reallocated.
Appropriation Act #10 allots $1,000 to increase desk space for the senators. Appropriations Act #11 allots $4,000 toward new computers and computer equipment for USG’s audio/visual office and the communications office and to replace USG’s nonfunctional computers. Appropriations Act #12 moved $4,080 into unallocated funds.
As part of the allocation of the surplus, the Senate designated the Academic Success and Tutoring Center as a contracted service. The center received a $6,000 budget from the FSA Management Fee allocation.