The UA Executive Board is pleased to announce the appointment of the following Cabinet positions:

Communications Director: Chris Cruz
Academic Affairs Director: Faye Cheng
Civic & Philadelphia Engagement Director: Jake Shuster
Housing, Sustainability & Facilities Director: Amanda Young
Student Life Director: Tyler Ernst
Speaker Pro Tempore: Grant Dubler (confirmed by acclamation)

The UA body also elected the following members:

Budget Committee: Emerson Brooking and Hunter Horsley
T-Change Representative: Andrew Jakubowski
Council of Philadelphia Student Government (CPSG) Representative: Emily Shaeffer

The UA representative to NEC will be appointed within the next 2 weeks.

Many Penn students simply don’t use all, or even many, of the dining hall meals their meal plan gives them. Indeed, the Liberty Meal Plan (the smallest of the compulsory freshman plans) would have you eat at the dining halls 10 times a week to fully use up the whole plan.

UA representative Mark Pan, in conjunction with leaders of More Than Pennies, Circle K, Sigma Alpha Mu, and several other organizations around campus, decided to put those leftover meals to good use: feeding the homeless. Unfortunately, there was considerable resistance to permitting the donation of meals outright – so the UA passed a forceful resolution in favor of meal donation.

Sure enough, a few weeks afterward More Than Pennies was allowed to station volunteers outside of all three dining halls on Wednesday, April 29. The event was publicized by freshman-wide email sent by the UA. After one day, More Than Pennies had 531 students donate 10,300 meals! Simply by donating their spare meals, over 1,000 people in Philadelphia homeless shelters had food.

This fantastic initiative attracted a lot of attention from the local media, featuring in MSNBC’s “Making a Difference” segment on May 23 (check out former UA Representative Grant Dubler around 2:00). Check it out below or here.

After a year of work from the UA, RAB, Housing Services, the Office of the Provost and the Office of the Registrar, the spring move-out deadline for all residents of on-campus housing has been extended until 5pm the day after the last day of finals. This means that many more students who have exams on the last day of finals will have at least 24 hours to move out!

The short move-out time was first protested against on Facebook; the UA responded and issued a 700-person survey, which paved the way for a resolution on Move-Out in the Fall Semester of this year. After that, and extensive discussions with Housing Services, the move-out deadline was eventually moved to 5pm on the day after exams.

In addition, we will survey all undergraduate residents of the College Houses and Sansom Place on this year’s move-out process to measure the effectiveness of the change and field suggestions for further improvement. However, looking at anecdotal evidence, it appears as if the change has worked very well for all involved!

Any students with questions on the policy change or other elements of Move-Out should email moveout@exchange.upenn.edu.