The Undergraduate Council of Students held an information session during its first general body meeting of the semester and discussed the new UCS Equity and Inclusion Committee, project updates and upcoming UCS elections.
At Wednesday’s virtual meeting, members of the Council’s executive board, including UCS President Jason Carroll ’21, Vice President Summer Dai ’22 and Chief of Staff Sam Caplan ’22, also talked about ways for students to get involved with UCS and gave an overview of Council activities and responsibilities to prospective members during the meeting.
In outlining the Council’s positions, Acting Appointments Chair Eamon McKeaver ’22 described the need for an official Appointments chair to fill an undergraduate student vacancy on the College Curriculum Council over the course of October. The College Curriculum Council decides which undergraduate concentrations the College will offer.
The Equity and Inclusion committee, which is new to UCS this semester, plans to collaborate with the Undocumented, First-Generation College and Low Income Student Center, the Brown Center for Students of Color, the Sarah Doyle Center for Women and Gender and other University identity organizations on diversity-specific initiatives, according to Committee Chair Jai’el Toussaint ’22.
Equity and Inclusion has started organizing newsletters from identity centers to create a centralized resource to potentially be featured on the BrownU app. The committee also plans to work with student group Decolonization at Brown to advocate that the University start offering previously unrepresented languages, such as Swahili and Yoruba.
The Council announced that it will still hold an election in October for first-year students to select two UCS representatives. The First-Year Representative roles were created last year to help incorporate first-year feedback into UCS initiatives.
These representatives “will be even more crucial given the circumstances this year,” said Program Manager Joon Nam ’23, who previously served as his class’s first-year representative. First-years will not move onto campus or attend classes full-time until the spring.
UCS will also hold internal elections Sept. 30 to fill the UCS/Undergraduate Finance Board Liaison and Treasurer positions.
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