Hello Oakland University!

My name is Madison Kubinski, and I am your student body vice president. I am writing this column to update you with what’s going on inside the Student Congress, mostly to do with legislative updates.

There are currently sixteen legislators serving as I write this, however we could very well have a new addition after our meeting Monday night. A legislator’s job is mostly done in our general body meetings, where they vote on issues pertaining to the student body as a whole and student congress issues. Other parts of their job center on working in and out of the office volunteering with events we put on, or helping e-board members with their committees or other legislature committees.

Another big portion of the legislature job is working on their individual initiative, they are as unique and diverse as our legislators are themselves. One of our legislators has a short term project that she hopes evolves into as OUSC tradition.

Kat Cotton is currently looking into a program that would adopt locally struggling families during the holidays at the end of the semester. This would entail OU students donating slightly used toys as presents to these families, and in return the students would receive free OU swag!

Lena Mishack is currently working with our Environment Health and Wellness Director Katie Rose to bring more nutrition facts and continued healthy options to the newly renovated Pioneer Café and to Au Bon Pain. While Chartwells has done a great job bringing newer and healthier options in the Oakland Center, both Lena and Katie would like to see nutritional information posted both in person where students purchase meals, but more in detail information available online. Also they are also working towards getting allergy labels on food that would help students who have different allergies.

Dema Iskander, a recent addition to the congress, is focusing on trying to bring a resume workshop to student who are making the difficult transition from student to professional. Dema’s vision is for students to have an easier job transitioning from student life by showing them how to tailor a resume to a specific job that they are looking to interview for, and to hopefully be hired for.

Zack Thomas is currently in works to have an Application Inclusion initiative, which focuses on adding options to the many Oakland University application documents that allow one to identify as transgender/gender-nonconforming, as well as gay, lesbian, bisexual, etc. This will allow for students to officially identify with their gender/orientation, and allows OU to track the retention rates of those students, which has the potential to increase LGBTIQA outreach on campus. It would also benefit groups like the Gender and Sexuality Center, which supports this initiative. Zack is also happy to report that administrators have been largely in support of this, and that this should be happening, and hopefully soon.

Thanks for reading my update and I look forward to more to come!