The undergraduate Student Association Senate called on the university to review and potentially revise policies that banned club-exclusive rooms in a resolution unanimously passed during a meeting last Wednesday evening.
The document does not name the queer community space that sparked it nor the club that asked the Senate to publicly support it in its fight to keep it.
Since October, UB’s LGBTA club continues to protest over the future closure of SU 373 as the university rolls back policies that assign on-campus rooms to clubs for exclusive use. The university continues to be adamant that the policy will stand and SU 373 continues under the purview.
As part of the fight, club e-board members asked SA senators at a meeting Nov. 12 to call on UB to reverse the decision, which no senator publicly supported. The closest to support was when SA Treasurer Jack Koscinski offered that the Senate could pass a resolution to broadly support student-run spaces; however, the document could not mention SU 373 because of SA’s viewpoint neutrality policy.
SA President Aisha Adam told The Spectrum that while individual senators and officers are encouraged to advocate for causes important to them, the voice of the entire student body is in the Senate’s resolutions.
“Demanding particular resources for particular student groups in Senate resolutions can very arguably vote this,” Adam wrote in a text message. “This is why we supplement our resolutions with relentless, case-specific advocacy to the relevant administrators and offices to get wins for our currently affected students.”
The resolution, authored by SA Senator Grant Peterson, does make multiple references to SU 373, such as “established community spaces that provide support, privacy, and consistency for student populations” and “establish additional guidelines and criteria for evaluating requests for dedicated spaces that consider factors like student safety, privacy needs, and historical usage.”
Lorien Samarra — the club’s junior e-board member — told The Spectrum that they didn’t mention SU 373 to make the resolution more likely to pass, pointing to the criticism sparked at the Nov. 12 meeting.
“Especially if we were to lose that vote if he [Peterson] named SU 373, we felt that it would be strategically unwise as it might imply a lack of support for our cause, which could hurt us in negotiations with upper administration,” Samarra wrote in a text message to The Spectrum.
No senator objected to the passing of the broad resolution last Wednesday.
“Asking the university to consider students and their needs and the allocation of resources on campus is not a big ask at all,” Adam said to senators at the meeting.
Mylien Lai contributed to the reporting of this article.
The news desk can be reached at news@ubspectrum.com.
