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Brandyn Fragosa/ Fourth Estate

BY BRANDYN FRAGOSA, SENIOR NEWS REPORTER

On Sept. 25, Mason Student-Body Vice President Colin McAulay and the Government and Community Relations Committee hosted a town hall with Mason student senators to discuss plans for implementing their “Richmond Plan.” 

Held in the side pocket at The HUB, the town hall allowed the Mason community to discuss policy proposals they wanted to share with members of student government and the Virginia General Assembly. McAulay shared insight into what this plan looks like and how it will be implemented.

“What we’re trying to do today is gather opinions from the student body about what we can do in Richmond and [the Virginia] General Assembly to support students at Mason,” McAulay said. “We have ideas as student government, as students at this school, about how we can help students with topics like student poverty and hunger, college affordability, diversity, equity and inclusion, accessibility, all types of issues.”

The town hall provided a platform for students to voice their concerns and propose solutions to develop their Richmond Plan. “We can have our opinion, but we’re the representatives of the students, and we want to represent their opinions and not just ours,” McAulay said.

McAulay shared that a student voiced concerns about pursuing a degree in social work, which requires 450 hours of unpaid fieldwork to receive a bachelor’s degree. McAulay and student government senators want to draft a policy proposal for the Virginia General Assembly to make the major more accessible for students to pursue.

This focus on student concerns aligns with McAulay’s broader responsibilities, including his role on the Student Advisory Council of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV).

Appointed by Mason President Gregory Washington, McAulay and 39 other students from Virginia universities advise SCHEV on higher education administration. Within this role, McAulay focuses on student poverty and hunger, which are concerns he wants to address within the Richmond Plan.

McAulay explained that he wants to support a hunger-free campus bill to “help push dining contractors, for us it’d be Sodexo, to provide more resources to students who are food insecure and trying to eliminate student hunger.”

In addition to addressing hunger on campus, McAulay wants to help alleviate students financially from the rising cost of university tuition.

University tuition cost has been a concern among Mason students with in-state tuition increasing by 3% for the 2024-25 fiscal year. McAulay wants to create policy proposals regarding college affordability, listing ideas such as freezing in-state tuition and student fees to help students with their college tuition. 

To facilitate the legislative process for these bills, students are encouraged to actively participate and voice their opinions by submitting concerns directly to the student government.

“These [conversations] can help facilitate [the legislative] process because the Statehouse and the state assembly can be influenced. It is accessible to Virginians and people that go here and bills pass. It’s not as political as Congress,” McAulay said.

Once student concerns are collected and policy proposals are drafted, they will be submitted to Virginia delegates and senators on behalf of the student government in the first week of October. A member of the House of Delegates or Senate of Virginia will then draft legislation to refine the proposals into clear and effective bills. If both chambers of the Virginia General Assembly approve a bill, it is sent to Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin. Youngkin can then approve, amend or veto the bill.

McAulay advises students to continue to help develop their Richmond Plan by submitting concerns and potential solutions to the student government by directly messaging the official Mason Student Government or Cuesta-McAulay administration Instagram accounts. Students can also submit concerns via the student government email.

Students may also attend the Government and Community Relations Committee meeting every Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. in the Office of Student Involvement for direct input to the Student Government. Students can also attend Student Senate meetings on Thursdays at 4:30 p.m. and Executive Cabinet meetings at 7 p.m. in Merten Hall.

By engaging in these conversations, students can directly influence the student government’s initiatives.

“[We] go to where the students are,” McAulay said. “That’s really what Maria [Cuesta] and I have thrived on within the student government… asking [the community] how Mason’s been. And that kind of conversation can always lead to some form of advocacy or some form of figuring out what those students want and figuring out how we can help them do it.”