The University of Michigan’s Central Student Government met in the Wolverine Room of the Michigan Union on Tuesday evening to confirm nominations for various positions and discuss a resolution expressing support for gender-affirming care.
The meeting began with the Assembly’s confirmation of various executive, legislative and ex-officio nominations. The confirmed individuals are listed below.
- LSA senior Joyce Jung as CSG elections director.
- LSA junior Summit Louth as vice chair of the Respect in Striving for Excellence task force and member of the CSG ethics committee.
- Rackham students Erin Neely and Angelica Previero as members of the CSG ethics committee.
- LSA junior Kristina Uribe as the ex-officio representative for transfer students.
- LSA junior John Wayne as the ex-officio representative for non-traditional students.
The Assembly then discussed resolutions and constitutional amendments. CA 15-002, the Student Organization Funding Protection Act, was introduced with the goal of prohibiting CSG from spending less than one-third of its yearly student fee money on student organizations.
Engineering junior Nicolas Torres de Navarra, amendment sponsor, said he hoped the act would provide more support for the interests of student organizations.
“The goal is to always ensure that student organizations always have a voice, always have a seat at the table, that their fundings aren’t threatened regardless of any budgetary conversations that are happening,” Torres de Navarra said.
The amendment was re-referred to committees for second readings.
AR 15-028, the Protecting Rights and Inclusion while Defending Equality Act, was also introduced. The resolution condemned the University’s recent decision to discontinue gender-affirming care for individuals under the age of 19 and sought to create a task force that would push for a reversal of the decision and provide support for transgender students.
LSA senior Keshava Demerath-Shanti said he believed it was important for the University to resist pressure from President Donald Trump’s administration.
“The University is saying that as long as they are threatened with these sorts of sanctions, whether it is subpoenas, whether it is loss of funding … that they’re going to give in,” Demerath-Shanti said. “That is a dangerous precedent to set. There are other things that we can see this administration threatening the University with, and if we let them fall here, that opens the door to them conceding on every other issue that’s out there.”
Engineering sophomore Alex Partlan said he had reservations about the resolution, citing the already large number of CSG taskforces and the difficulty of reversing Michigan Medicine’s decision.
“We already do have a lot of task forces,” Partlan said. “While I do appreciate the idea, and obviously I’m fully in support of the idea that gender-affirming care is necessary for youth as well, I do think that having a CSG task force isn’t going to really create any tangible change.”
Neely said between the task force and the statement, the latter was more important for the Assembly during this meeting.
“It is very important that the declarative part pass tonight so that we can make a statement,” Neely said. “If the task force is controversial, we’re willing to remove it and work on it some other time so that we can make this pressing statement. We’d like to ask you, please don’t vote for our motion, but we’re offering it as a compromise.”
The Assembly voted to cut the task force, with 14 votes in favor, eight against and four abstentions. The resolution was then motioned to be re-referred by all CSG committees, excluding finance, for additional review. Several proponents of the resolution expressed sentiments of frustration at the conduct of the Assembly. Public Policy senior Jimmy Watke-Stacy said he believed CSG was reluctant to touch the topic.
“This is lifesaving, essential care that saves lives, and the University of Michigan’s decision to revoke this care will likely result in a lot of harm,” Watke-Stacy said. “I find it frustrating that we’ve approved many task forces in the past, but when it comes to an issue like this, we don’t have the appetite for that anymore.”
LSA senior Sean Shelbrock said the Assembly was sending a bad message to the campus community.
“We have people who are willing to put in the work to get something done, and we’re sitting here trying to gut it,” Shelbrock said. “We’re sitting here trying to delay it. What kind of message is that sending?”
AR 15-028 was passed unanimously.
Other resolutions discussed were AR 15-027, which seeks to clarify recall voting thresholds and AR 15-023, which would have made CSG interns eligible for need-based compensation, was also introduced. AR 15-027 passed while AR 15-023 was voted down by the Assembly.
Daily Staff Reporter Glenn Hedin can be reached at heglenn@umich.edu.
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