Caden Brenner | Student Government 

Editor’s Note: Senate Reports are written by Student Government senators unaffiliated with The Mercury and seek to inform Comets about Student Government’s activities.  

During the Sept. 10 Student Government meeting, senators passed two motions to bring back a campus-wide fundraising competition that brings more items — and more awareness — to the Comet Cupboard food bank. 

The meeting agenda was short, including only three voting orders of business: a short discussion period soliciting advice on the President Search Advisory Committee in the wake of President Richard Benson’s resignation; a report from Nandita Kumar, the Diversity Equity Belonging Committee chair, on updates about the latest Rainbow Coalition meeting — a coalition of LGBTQ+ focused organizations on campus — and a report from myself on the campus Food Security Committee’s inaugural meeting. Two of the three voting orders concerned the Comet Cupboard. 

The remarkably sparse agenda is partially due to many newly-elected senators still undergoing training, as well as many committees needing a few weeks of buffer time for planning and hearing back from campus stakeholders before event planning can properly commence. 

I presented the two voting measures, with agenda issues resulting in postponing discussion of the third measure: a motion to create a temporary committee focused on improving the Comet Discount Program and its partner list. The two measures discussed focused on SG’s contributions to the Comet Cupboard, the on-campus food bank that serves all UTD students. Both measures were a combined effort to revive Shelf Stars, a pre-COVID competitive food fundraising program on campus. Under the new version of this program, SG will manage competitions between two student organizations and other campus stakeholders, such as Staff Council or the Academic Senate, where each competitor attempts to raise the most of a single commodity specified by the Cupboard within a month. All this food is then collected, counted and delivered to the Cupboard by SG volunteers with the intention to generate more food donations to the Cupboard, and thus, normalize student organizations giving to the Cupboard and introduce more students to the Cupboard’s services. 

The two voting measures were an allocation that purchased the necessary items needed for SG to handle the day-to-day operations of the Shelf Stars program, and a resolution establishing the temporary committee running the program as well as more broadly affirming SG’s commitment to run programs for the Cupboard. During COVID, SG donated a substantial amount of its budget to the Cupboard, but had increased budgetary strains post-COVID.  

The two measures passed unanimously with no opposition presented.