Dear Associated Students,
Our community has been experiencing extremely distressing incidents in the last few weeks. Students have expressed to me and many others that they feel unsafe on campus, especially walking alone at night. This has led the A.S. Executive Director, Marisela Marquez, and A.S. President, Yuval Cohen to create a Safe Rides Taskforce. We are forming this new Task Force in order to provide reimbursements for safe rides to and from campus for UCSB students after dark. With the suggestion from the Internal Vice President, Bee Schaefer, and the support from the rest of the A.S. Executives, we are going to implement this Task Force through the President’s Executive Order, effective immediately.
There have been various efforts to help students through resources and support. But when it comes down to it, there is a general worry in our community for personal safety. Students should feel safe. This Executive Order is a response to the crisis, especially with finals right around the corner.
As we move forward, we think it’d be important to rely on our department’s student and staff expertise by inviting everyone interested in contributing funds and participating in the Task Force itself.
The President will be:
-Appointing the current Head Financial Officer and ASOP Head of Staff to be co-chairs;
The Head Financial Officer is Adam Majcher and the ASOP Head of Staff Gurleen Pabla. They will be sending out a doodle for weekly meetings to invite entities to participate. We are seeking to meet once a week to discuss;
-Inviting every BCU chair to sit on this Task Force as a voting member;
Each AS Executive office and entity will be invited to participate, by including the chair/commissioner or co-chair (or someone delegated that responsibility). Please respond to this email if you are interested in participating in the Task Force meetings.
-Inviting AS Executives and Entities to pitch in their funding to this effort;
Each AS entity has a budget, and there may be unexpended funds. If this is the case, and the authorized signers for these entities agree that they’d like to contribute funds to this effort,
- They will need to send an email requesting the allocation of funds to Marisela Marquez and Yuval Cohen
- They must hold a meeting of their entity and record this agreement through their minutes (minutes will be kept of its work and sent to the Senate for ratification);
Attached is the official executive order. The order includes more specifics but the Task Force will ultimately be deciding logistics. I hope you are all taking care of yourselves at this time. Please reach out to me if you need any extra support.
The chairs will be in touch soon with those interested in participating on the Task Force. There will also be an announcement in the next few days about how to request a reimbursement.
Best regards,
YuvalÂ