Marquette University Student Government welcomed students into its renovated space in the Alumni Memorial Union Aug. 31. The cost to renovate the space totaled just under $23,000, Meredith Gillespie, president of MUSG and senior in the College of Arts & Sciences, said.
Renovations include blue-and gold-painted walls and new front desks. The lounge and study area got new furniture and now features a dry-erase wall with new lighting. A television and couches are expected to be installed soon.
“Our previous president wrote the legislation to allocate a fund to redo our office from our reserve fund,” Gillespie said. “It was approved by the senate last year, so we’re just implementing what got passed in senate last semester.”
The money spent on the renovations was taken from budget, with the little amount of leftover money getting returned to the reserve fund.
“We have a budget, and whatever is not used in our budget or picked up by other student organizations goes into our reserve fund, and we can only allocate that money through senate approval, and it can be used for anything,” Gillespie said.
“(The reserve fund) is just for extra things we need,” Gillespie added.
MUSG used previous reserve fund allocations for Bublr bikes, scoreboards, coffee containers and other things they deemed necessary on campus. MUSG’s student offices were the last in the AMU to get done, Gillespie said.
Gillespie said a lot of lounges and offices in the AMU are often packed, and she wants to alleviate that spatial tension and allow people to come in, hang out and use the space however they want to.
“I hope (this new space) will branch out of being a professional space for student government to a place where students can hang out and collaborate, study and be creative,” she said.
Gillespie said that she hopes the space will encourage students to get involved with student government, a program that has shaped her college years.
Gillespie said MUSG was the first organization she joined the first week of freshman year. “Freshman year I was McCormick’s senator, sophomore year I was the Arts & Sciences Senator, last year I was outreach vice president and in March, I became president.”
Legislative Vice President Daniel Brophy, junior in the College of Arts & Sciences, said all students should join MUSG, in light of the renovations.
“A lot of people think initially that you have to be a political science major or you have to be into government, but the cool thing about MUSG is that there’s tons of different opportunities for a communication major or a graphic design major,” Brophy said.
Gillespie said MUSG hopes the space will foster a welcoming environment.
“We’re excited to have a new, refreshed space, and going into (this year) we hope that having our new space will translate into a new cultural era for MUSG,” Gillespie said.
