Student Senate voted unanimously for student organization Farming Hope to exist on campus.

Senator Joe Cianciolo, director of Campus Affairs, introduced the constitution of Farming Hope.

Cianciolo said the institution strives to help farm food for those struggling to live.

President of Student Senate, Jake Wrasse, recently met with Dean Linda Young from the College of Nursing and Health Sciences. Wrasse said many of those involved with Farming Hope are nursing students and that Dean Young spoke highly of their pursuit for the organization.

Before the vote, Wrasse said the organization not only seeks to help members of the campus community, but of the larger community, making it  worthy of their support.

The vote passed unanimously.

Senior nursing major Amanda Houle is the president of Farming Hope in Eau Claire. Houle said it was a school trip to El Salvador in April for a week-long emerging clinical with seven classmates where she became familiar with Farming Hope.

There, Houle said she encountered a woman named Maria Trinidad who runs a soup kitchen in the city of San Salvador. Trinidad owns the farmland about an hour away in Suchitoto, and invites people she meets at the soup kitchen to work on the farm and learn about agriculture, Houle said.

Houle said Farming Hope in Eau Claire aims to continue this same sustainable ideology that exists on the Farming Hope farm in El Salvador.

“You can give somebody money, you can give somebody food, but how does that sustain them?” Houle said.

Houle said the organization has two plots in the Eau Claire Community Gardens, and they are partnering with Community Table and working with Positive Avenues to reach participants.

“A lot of times you think about going to a developing country and you think ‘okay we have all the answers,’ but we were able to learn so much from them and bring that back here,” Houle said.

 

In other Senate news

Senator Cianciolo introduced the constitutions of three other student organizations, which they will vote on next week. This includes Students Unite, Cosplay and Costuming Guild and Eau Claire Car Club.

Director of Academic Affairs, Allison Wagener, said in her report that the Academic Affairs Commission had their first meeting last Wednesday where they discussed the role the commission will play in the Blugold Commitment Differential Tuition process.

Wagener said they also discussed their goals for the year, which includes creating a Hmong studies major as well as unifying the professor evaluation forms. Senator Wagener and President Wrasse will meet this week to begin discussing professor evaluations.

The Finance Commission also had their first meeting last week. Director Mary-Laura Samples said this week they plan to assign budget consultants for each of the organized activities and begin arranging to address the organized activities that have run a large deficit.

Information Technology Director, Jarrett Yuknis, spoke of the recent discussion at the commission’s meeting regarding the student technology survey to ensure the survey is asking effective questions in the email sent out to students.