Brown and White Vol. 132 no. 23

              The Brown and White Vol. 132 No. 23
Friday, May 5, 2017 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
Three safety resolutions pass during Senate meeting
By GABY MORERA
Editor in Chief
Student Senate XXX started its
tenure in an uncommon way — by
going over resolutions new Student
Senate president Matt Rothberg,
’18, will present to the board of
trustees at the annual Student
Affairs Committee meeting May
18.
The resolutions come as a result
of discussions from the town hall
hosted by Senate on April 26 and
are meant to start conversations
regarding student safety.
At the meeting, Rothberg pre-sented
five resolutions drafted by
him and previous Senate president
Dakota DiMattio, ’17. The reso-lutions
presented at the meeting
are still drafts that will be altered
before being presented to the board
of trustees.
“At the town hall, a lot of people
spoke their opinions, and we tried
to put all those opinions into this
resolution the best way that we
could,” Rothberg said.
Three resolutions passed and
two were tabled.
The resolutions that passed a
Senate vote dealt with the imple-mentation
of more comprehensive
alcohol education for all students,
the implementation of an anon-ymous
pre-registration survey
regarding alcohol consumption Annie Henry/B&W Staff
Molly Bankuti, ’18, and Matt Rothberg, ’18, attend the campus climate discussion April 26 in
Perella Auditorium. Rothberg will present approved resolutions to the board of trustees May 18.
Conquering the great divide
By EMILY WARD
News Editor
When Daniel Moncada, ’18,
arrived at Lehigh his first year,
he immediately noticed the socio-economic
divide among students.
His classmates talked about
playing golf, a sport he had never
tried, or joining Greek life, a lux-ury
he would struggle to afford.
“There’s a cultural dissonance
that happens between students,”
Moncada said. “Coming from
a lower- to middle-class back-ground,
I just didn’t really relate
to a lot of students in various
ways.”
In January, The New York
Times released a study of the
median family incomes of college
students in the United States.
When Moncada saw Lehigh’s
results, he wasn’t surprised.
According to the study, the
median family income of a Lehigh
student is $167,600. Forty per-cent
of students come from the
top 5 percent and 67 percent come
from the top 20 percent.
Donald Outing, the first vice
president for equity and commu-nity,
hired February of 2017, dis-covered
this information while
Lehigh lacks financial diversity according to study
Green Action
to phase out
Styrofoam in
dining halls
By MEG KELLY
Deputy News Editor
Lauren Sleeger, the director of
Rathbone dining hall, estimates
Upper Cort has reduced 95 percent
of its polystyrene, or Styrofoam,
materials.
The main hurdle in completely
eliminating this plastic polymer
sits in the far corner of Upper in
the form of Pandini’s Italian Grille.
To overcome the specific chal-lenge
presented by Pandini’s, mem-bers
of Lehigh’s Green Action club
are working with dining services to
find more sustainable alternatives.
Jason Lenig, the director of din-ing
services, said although polysty-rene
is one of the cheaper options
when it comes to plates and con-tainers,
the university is not con-cerned
with the cost.
Lenig and Sleeger said the alter-native
to polystyrene is a com-postable,
corn-based product. Lenig
said this alternative is currently
used at the other Upper dining
stations that serve hot food.
Sleeger said while she would like
to immediately phase out polysty-rene
at Pandini’s, the temperature
of the station’s food makes it diffi-cult
to find a sustainable solution.
“With Pandini’s, what we’re find-ing
is the alternative isn’t working
with the product,” Sleeger said.
To demonstrate how the alterna-tive
material is challenging for the
Pandini’s staff to work with, Lenig
cupped his hands as though they
were holding pasta or a pizza, typi-cal
fare at the dining station. Lenig
said the food served at Pandini’s
See FINANCIAL Page 4 See STYROFOAM Page 3
See SENATE Page 2
Anna Simoneau/B&W Staff