Wednesday night’s meeting of the 70th Student Senate saw the approval of two resolutions aiming to protect and enhance student’s access to off-campus housing and on-campus dining options.
Sarah Swiney, interim vice president of municipal affairs, said a south College Station neighborhood group plans to present an ordinance to the College Station City Council that would effectively limit student access to housing options in the Southside area. According to Swiney, the group aims to adjust wording in the neighborhood conservation overlay to prevent groups of three or more unrelated inhabitants from sharing the same house.
“They have just presented the idea to the College Station City Council to want to move forward with it,” Swiney said. “As students, we are really trying to get out in front of that to say that we do not support that this wording would be changed because that is a large student living zone in College Station.”
The resolution also expresses support for a rewording of the policy in the opposite direction, allowing more students to cohabitate in this area of College Station.
“Rather than permitting no more than two unrelated persons in a house, we support using this change to increase the current requirement to no more than five (or six) unrelated persons in a house,” the resolution reads. “Living with more roommates would also create opportunity for carpooling and further promote green living.”
The senate also approved a resolution outlining students’ goals for a future renegotiation of Texas A&M’s contract with dining service provider, Chartwells. The supported revisions include the option for students to roll over their meal trades into each new semester, expanded hours for dining facilities and removal of the daily four-swipe limit on meal trades.
The resolution also expressed support for greater cooperation between the university and Chartwells to address the issue of food insecurity in the Brazos Valley.
“These are recommendations that people in the student body and people in our constituency had agreed with and we would like to propose this to the university as they renegotiate the contract with Chartwells,” Senator Colton Mandel said while presenting the resolution.