The Associated Student Government unanimously passed a bill to allocate $4,090 to the Student Veterans’ Association to purchase six laptops for the initial funding of the Veteran’s Laptop Project.
The project, started by Colorado Mesa University student and veteran John Beezley, aims to provide upward of 20 laptops for veterans at CMU. The laptop project will loan a computer for a fee of $50 a semester.
According to Beezley, any students who qualify for the laptop program will be placed into a lottery and six students will be randomly selected per semester. Students who win the lottery one semester will not be eligible to use a laptop the following semester, so that everyone has a chance to use one. The lottery process will be in effect until the Veteran’s Laptop Project acquires enough funds to provide computers for all veterans who qualify.
Beezley’s project incorporates help from the Information Technology department and the Graphic Design department. The former will help maintain the computers and factory reset them upon return, and the latter will design skins for the laptops with a logo for the Veteran’s Laptop Project.
Beezley has already presented during public input earlier in the semester to inform them of his project.
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During this second presentation, his bill was heavily supported by senators, specifically Jeff Vela. Vela, who advocated for Beezley’s project earlier in the semester, strongly supported the bill again.
Vela stated that many people don’t understand how difficult the transition from military to college life can be. After his endorsement, there was no further discussion and the bill passed unanimously.
In other action:
ASG unanimously passed a bill to $1,500 to send 22 students from the athletic training club to the Rocky Mountain Athletic Training Association Symposium.
ASG unanimously passed a modified version of the bill they saw last week to send seven athletes from the Nordic ski team to their national championships. The bill, which was cut severely during the Fee Allocation Committee meeting Monday, allocated $2,422 to the team, in place of the over $7,000 requested last week. Senator Jay Shearrow considered the bill with the cuts fiscally responsible.
ASG unanimously passed the fourth and final of their constitution bills, which refined the process for a grievance investigation and defined a time limit for such an investigation.
An earlier online version of this article stated that laptops are available for free. The current version has been corrected to state the laptops are available for a fee of $50, to veterans who win the lottery system.