Aaron Schaffer, Photo Editor
The Students’ Association Senate approved BlueCrew as a club at its meeting on Monday, Oct. 14. The approval came after BlueCrew’s appeal of the Policy & Review Committee’s decision last semester to deny the club final status.
BlueCrew is a self-described “bottoms-up” organization with numerous ties to Senate. Senator-at-Large and junior Vanessa Sanchez is BlueCrew’s Public Relations Officer, and the Policy & Review Committee’s deputy chair serves as BlueCrew president. Class Senator Luke Metzler and Senator-at-Large Nick Benjamin are both members of BlueCrew. Metzler and Benjamin are both listed on the club’s CCC page, but neither currently holds an executive role in the group.
“As of now, I just kind of do what [BlueCrew] wants me to do,” Metzler said.
One of the numerous revelations at the meeting was that BlueCrew advisors in Wilson Commons were, according to Policy & Review Chair and senior Jonathan LoTempio, “concerned with the level of efficacy in [BlueCrew’s] ability to execute programming.”
This comment reflects the concerns expressed by the Policy & Review Committee, which said that the “redundancy with the Fill Fauver [event],” “hasty event programming,” and “uncertainty of future funding” were grounds for the denial.
However, some senators at the meeting publicly announced their unwillingness to take the advisors’ critique seriously: They viewed it as a tactic by Wilson Commons to protect Fill Fauver, an event that falls under Wilson Commons’ jurisdiction.
To allay the fears surrounding their unstable streams of funding, BlueCrew reiterated their commitment to Alumni & Advancement and Admissions. They also stated that if the situation arose where they could not obtain funding by any other means, they would charge dues to their members.
“The dues would cover face paint,” BlueCrew member Jessica Sands said.
Speaker of the Senate Aditi Simlote prefaced the BlueCrew discussion on determining whether Policy & Review made the correct decision at the time of the original meeting last semester.
“[This is a question of whether] the committee made the right decision based on the information that was made available to them and was present,” Simlote said.
SA President Shilpa Topudurti later intervened, encouraging senators not to think in terms of whether the Policy & Review Committee made the right decision or whether a club fulfills all seven principles of a student organization, but rather, whether the club is appropriate for the campus as a whole. The SA website, however, states that “in order to gain Students’ Association recognition, an organization must fulfill all Seven Principles.”
Jessica Bendes was the only senator to vote against making granting BlueCrew club status, but declined to comment on why she voted no.
LoTempio abstained, as did Tripani and Sanchez. Metzler and Benjamin voted to approve BlueCrew, even though each of them previously held executive board positions in the group.
Schaffer is a member of the class of 2016.
