The Undergraduate Student Government (USG) senate unanimously approved the constitution of the House of SHADE, an informational and educational outreach organization for black and queer students at the university, at a senate meeting on Thursday night.
Sophomore political science and women’s studies double major and House of SHADE President, Carine Green, detailed his struggle to obtain USG approval of his organization’s constitution, describing a break in communication between his organization and USG the prior semester. The club was seeking to meet the qualifications to establish a budget.
According to Green, he visited the USG VP of Clubs and Organizations and Treasurer several times last semester to speak about the House of SHADE’s constitution and how to establish a budget. After initial contact, however, the treasurer didn’t respond to Green’s attempts at communication.
“We submitted our constitution a couple months ago in February, we have not received any information back from USG,” he said. “There were a couple of communications as you can see by the emails, letting them know that we wanted our constitution approved but we got no response.”
USG Vice President of Clubs and Organizations and senior business management major Maame-Esi Otoo apologized for the delay.
“We are here to vote on House of SHADE’s constitution,” Otoo said. “But a sidebar in the bylaws states that if the Supreme Court fails to notify a club of their decision on the constitution within four weeks of receiving that constitution then the constitution should be deemed approved. We are sorry on behalf of USG that this happened, but we are here now to make that right.”