This weekend, University Park Undergraduate Association representatives and executives were scheduled to attend the Association of Big Ten Students Conference to share ideas and discuss issues with other student leaders from Big Ten Conference schools.
But due to a flight cancellation, the UPUA representatives were not be able to be there in person.
The student leaders were supposed travel to Iowa State University for the conference, which began Friday night and ends Sunday.
“Our flight this morning was canceled,” UPUA Chief of Staff John Zang (senior-international politics) said Friday. “There’s nothing else going to Iowa until Sunday, so we will be Skyping in.”
At this year’s conference, UPUA Chairman of the Assembly Spencer Malloy said before the event began that talks could include the Penn State scandal and some of its repercussions.
“There’s a couple of things we will talk about, including the NCAA sanctions, that will come up,” Malloy (senior-philosophy and agroecology) said. “There will be presentations, different schools will give an update and Big Ten on the Hill will be discussed to try to get people to go to D.C. to lobby for education.”
UPUA President Courtney Lennartz said ahead of the conference that she was sure things will be brought up about having a risk management plan put in place.
“While other schools aren’t having the same fallout as the Jerry Sandusky scandal, they are having similar instances with corrupt administration or loss of funding and that sort of thing,” Lennartz (senior-health policy and administration) said. “We all have similar issues and it will be interesting to discuss how the best way to handle it is and get their perspectives.”
Lennartz said other issues that could be discussed during the conference involve ABTS funding.
“Besides the funding of the website, we will focus on funding the executive board,” Lennartz said. “The executive board has to attend the two conferences that year. Whatever school runs for position as of now, is required to fund them even though they don’t technically represent that school.”
To correct this issue, Lennartz helped devise a plan to get all of the schools involved in funding the board.
“What this is going to do is help break up the cost because every school is paying for the executive board, not just the one that happens to be on the executive board that year,” Lennartz said.
