The Syracuse University Student Association on Monday passed two motion to fund free student tickets to the Friday’s football game and Hurricane Maria relief.

Syracuse Athletics made a special deal with SA to purchase the tickets at a discounted rate for Friday’s game in the Carrier Dome. The student section tickets will be handed out on the Quad on Friday to the first 1,000 students who claim them.

“If we get it to a certain amount of students who didn’t have that ability or access before and get to experience an event at the Dome at a game versus Clemson that will be on ESPN, that will be pretty cool,” said SA President James Franco.

SA also picked three relief organizations to donate $10,000 to in collaboration with University Union. The original plan was to donate the funds evenly between the Greater Houston Community Foundation, Heart of Florida United Way and a fund for Hurricane Maria relief spearheaded by the Foundation for Puerto Rico.

However, after contention at the meeting about other Caribbean areas affected by Hurricane Maria, the assembly passed a movement to allocate an additional $2,000 to the donation, which came from the student advancement fund.

“When we talk about Hurricane Maria, we usually always focus on Puerto Rico, but the Caribbean as a whole was entirely devastated, and all of these funds are only going to Puerto Rico,” said Evanna Ojeda, an assembly member. “There’s nothing going to any of the other islands that are equally as devastated and had lower GDPs before the impact of the hurricane.”

The assembly decided to give $3,000 to each area: Houston, Florida, Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands.

SA Vice President Angie Pati said she is working with Devon Tyler Bartholomew from Hendricks Chapel to plan volunteer trips for hurricane relief. She said they want to send a group to Puerto Rico during winter break and Houston during spring break. There will be an application process for both trips, she added.

There will be a partnership with Southern Baptist Disaster Relief — which Bartholomew worked with in the past — and potentially other organizations, Pati said.

At the beginning of the meeting, Dolan Evanovich, senior vice president for enrollment and the student experience, gave a short presentation about Invest Syracuse, a $100 million fundraising initiative SU announced in July.

The presentation was followed by more than an hour of questions and concerns about the project from SA members. Members were primarily concerned with mental health resources, transportation and safety and accessibility of resources for minority groups.

Evanovich also discussed the redesign of Archbold Gymnasium and Schine Student Center. The university held the first Schine redesign forum last week, and another meeting will be scheduled in the next month.

Published on October 10, 2017 at 12:10 am

Contact Catherine: ccleffer@syr.edu | @ccleffert