The Student Government General Assembly of Jan. 29 held four discussions. The first was a reflection on how the previous semester went; the second was a conversation on the rules of how Student Interest Groups are funded; the third was about the effectiveness of The Office of Global Education and the fourth was the proposal of a Global Student Council Constitution.

Student Government Vice President Maitha AlMemari led the appraisal of how effective Student Government was last semester and set the aims for the coming semester.

“We are generally going to try and continue being proactive, and work on advocating for the students,” said AlMemari. In the coming weeks, the Student Government Executive Board will be sending out a survey similar to one that was sent after the current Executive Board was elected in May 2016.

During New Business, Junior Class Representative Kelly Murphy brought up that there was a perceived lack of concrete rules that determined how SIG funding was allocated. Chair of the Board of Appeals Vladislav Maksimov noted that students had approached him asking whether they could petition through the BoA for more funding. Vic Lindsay, Associate Director of Student Activities, clarified that students can petition through the GA for more funding, however, there is a limited amount of funding on offer.

Treasurer Cyril Čuda highlighted the pitfalls with creating rules that would apply to every SIG.

“Coming up with this large set of conditions to determine a formula of how to do a budget would be great but I don't think it's possible, especially when the SIGs themselves are young and have new SIGs every year or every semester even,” said Čuda. AlMemari proposed that a special GA be held to discuss this issue.

Global Vice President Patrick Wee reiterated that there is a form available on the Student Government Facebook page, where students can identify issues that they had in interacting with Global Ed last semester. Wee noted that there were discussions about finding a new model for booking students’ flights.

Wee also notified the GA that the Global Student Council, a body that brings together student governments at each of the NYU portal sites, has almost finished a constitution. The GA will have to approve this constitution before it comes into force. Wee believes that this will allow NYU Abu Dhabi students to utilise the GSC to its full extent and have a greater voice in the Student Senator Council.