ASWC finished off its legislative activities for the semester last weekend with the final Joint Session, in which members of the ASWC Senate and House of Clubs Representatives passed several new nominations and funding requests.

The Joint Session voted to give a total of $3,000 to Whitman Direct Action (WDA), a philanthropy club committed to making a difference internationally. The money will go to fund the group’s Sadhana Clean Water Project. As part of this project, four members of Whitman Direct Action will be given the opportunity to travel to India to help local authorities confront socio-political barriers that prevent them from providing clean water to their people.
The project will be twofold. First, they will lead a study group that will provide information about these barriers. Later, they will run a conference in Mumbai, India, where there will be presentations and workshops to train local officials.

In order to share their work with the Whitman community, WDA will be hosting a workshop at this year’s symposium and additionally will present at this year’s Undergraduate Conference.

While some members of the session expressed some hesitancy about passing such a large funding request, the measure easily passed both the House and Senate.

“What became clear with our meeting is that Whitman Direct Action and its programs are very unique and ambitious, but have a high potential for reward,” said Finance Chair Elliott Okantey. “We want to be with WDA on this project. Water is a key resource and these sorts of projects are the wave of the future.”

In addition to passing money to fund WDA’s project, the Joint Session confirmed several nominations put forth by the Nominations Committee. They re-confirmed Matt Aliabadi and Keith Cushner as the KWCW general managers and also accepted the nominations of Sophie Johnson and Andrew Jesaitis for the editors-in-chief of the Pioneer.
The session also confirmed the programming chairs for the 2008-’09 school year. Kiva Bell Ellensburg will serve as the public speakers chair, Sam Chasan as the public events chair and Ben Kegan will be the new films chair at the beginning of the fall term next year.

ASWC will resume its legislative activities after Winter Break.