On April 19, at the third weekly Dartmouth Student Government meeting of the spring term, the Senate discussed gym extensions for graduating seniors, a program to consolidate course syllabi in a single database and funding for Dartmouth’s chapter of women’s self-defense organization WenDo.
Student life committee co-chair Ana Arzoumanidis ’28 shared her plans to start a new initiative that would create a website consolidating syllabi from across all departments on campus.
Arzoumanidis said the project will provide “transparency” about course expectations and ensure that students have “enough information to make informed decisions about course selection.”
The Office of the Registrar did not respond to a request for comment on the proposal by the time of publication.
Arzoumanidis also presented an initiative co-sponsored by general senator Ikenna Nwafor ’27 to offer gym extensions to Dartmouth seniors who are graduating early but are planning to stay on campus. Arzoumanidis said that "the gym seems pretty receptive to this proposal.”
Student body president Sabik Jawad ’26 informed the Senate of a new College committee on naming policies for college establishments, which was created at the Board of Trustees’s meeting in April and will be formed in June. On April 8, DSG and the Student and Presidential Committee on Sexual Assault issued a joint statement to campus undergraduates urging Dartmouth to rename the Black Family Visual Arts Center from its namesake Leon Black ’73, who maintained a longstanding relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The committee’s work “includes both how we name [new] establishments on this campus and how we rename [existing] establishments on this campus,” Jawad said. “There’s a lot to be hopeful about it.”
WenDo Dartmouth co-organizer Tamara Rodriguez Gomez ’29 spoke during the public comment portion of the meeting to thank DSG for being one of the group’s “biggest sponsors.” WenDo is a national women’s self-defense organization from Canada focused on empowering women and LGBTQ+ people to defend themselves. DSG contributed $3,000 last term to fund the program.
The program hosted three sessions of 20 participants each on April 11 and 12 and received “positive feedback” from graduate and undergraduate students, with many sharing that it was the “best workshop that they attend here at Dartmouth,” Rodriguez Gomez said.
During the closed session, DSG elected Arzoumanidis to fill the Class of 2028 general senator vacancy and Isla Walker ’29 to fill the Class of 2029 general senator vacancy. Arzoumanidis and Walker currently serve as student life committee co-chairs. "Most of the time," vacancies are filled through a vote that "happens online and there are multiple candidates," Jawad told The Dartmouth. During the last session, however, "senators expressed during the closed session that there was a clear front runner and so they would like for the vote to happen in-person," he explained.
DSG Senate meetings occur weekly on Sundays at 7 p.m. in Collis 101 and are open to all students.
