A.S. Senate Discusses New Vaccine, Future Projects

February 20, 2014 at 5:00 am by David Jackson

Wednesday night’s Associated Students Senate meeting focused on new information about the upcoming meningitis vaccine and its financial impact on UCSB, amongst other issues.

As a result of a mishap preventing all action items being posted publically for 24 hours, the Senate was unable to pass any legislation during the meeting and could only discuss what they would pass at a future meeting to be held later this week. Internal Vice President Kyley Scarlet explained the unusual situation in an email.

“Due to the fact that the agenda didn’t get sent out to the list servers on time, we are conducting a phone vote this week so we aren’t breaking the Brown Act,” Scarlet said.

During Public Forum, Senior Associate Dean of Student Life Debbie Fleming presented to the Senate further details about the meningitis vaccine UCSB will offer in the Recreation Center for a two-week period starting this Monday. According to Flemming, acquiring the vaccine required the cooperation of around 150 administrators and other staff.

“This is a pretty extraordinary effort that’s underway right now,” Fleming said. “There are probably about 150 people from campus working on this — probably about 30 of them working full time to make this happen.”

Fleming addressed concerns regarding side effects of the vaccine, citing a recent case in which the vaccine was administered to a large number of people with no serious repercussions.

“I don’t know about the countries, but Princeton is probably the best example recently. We understand that they gave close to six thousand and they didn’t have any significant adverse reactions, except for just a sore arm and a few students fainted,” Fleming said.

Later, A.S. President Jonathan Abboud informed the Senate on the expected cost of the meningitis vaccine and ways to mitigate its financial impact on any particular department.

“The estimated cost of the meningitis vaccine for everybody is two million dollars,” Abboud said. “There’s no set place approved to pay for it yet … we want to spread the costs a little bit, because faculty get meningitis too, they are with us everyday.”

Abboud also discussed a proposed Associated Students food cart in the University Center, saying it would benefit many students.

“Hopefully we can actually have an A.S. run food service like most A.S.’s have, and we can give students experience running a business,” Abboud said.

External Vice President of Local Affairs Alex Moore gave a brief presentation in which he said he was working to get the architect of the new development planned for I.V. known as “The Nest” to speak at next weeks Senate meeting and answer questions from the public.

“I know he said he wanted to speak to students about it, so I told him this would be a great opportunity to speak to a bunch of students,” Moore said.

Also during the meeting, the UCSB Investment Advisory Committee presented to the Senate its plans to reinvest a portion of its funding into the bank Barclay’s and 10-year Mexican treasury bonds as a response to projected higher interest rates in the near future.

Other items discussed at the meeting included a new student literary arts magazine titled The Catalyst that will accept work from students of all majors and ages, A.S. funding for a planned Persian New Years event with authentic Persian food, a proposal to commission a mural at the I.V. Community Center at Pardall and the Battle of the Bands concert that will be held next Wednesday at the Hub at 6:30pm.