Wednesday, Feb. 19, Winona State University’s Student Senate heard funds requests at their weekly meeting.

The first speaker was Joshua Broom from Student Economic Association.

Broom requested funding for the Midwest Business Administration Association conference in Chicago. The conference will give students the opportunity to network and they will be representing Winona State.

The second speaker was Kennedy Pierre-Touissant, sophomore in the I-Design program.

Her presentation was on the I-Design majors receiving new and improved laptops that will be more conducive to the work they need to complete for their courses.

The laptop that she presented to senate was the 16-inch Macbook Pro instead of the 13-inch Macbook Pro that I-Design students currently have.

The new laptops will eliminate the problems that I-Design students have encountered when running their software.

“Right now we’re very limited with the laptops we have and once we get the laptops that will hopefully be approved by senate, it will help our professors be able to show us more on our software than we’re unable to do right now because of the lack of space,” Pierre-Touissant said.

Sophomore I-Design major Emma Brezina said that the new laptops will also be more efficient.

“We’re really speaking for everyone in our major when we say we have so many problems with these current laptops,” Brezina said. “And we’re really looking to forward our education because it will make it more efficient and allow us more opportunity.”

The third speaker was Yuvraj Singh, who requested funds to attend a conference called “Google Cloud Next 2020” in San Francisco. The conference will provide educational opportunities concerning technology.

The fourth speaker was junior Annika Culver, who spoke on behalf of the Physical Education Club and the Health Organization for Promotion and Education.

She requested funds to attend the Society of Health and Physical Educators (SHAPE) America conference in Salt Lake City. 19 members of the two clubs will be attending the conference.

The conference focuses on specific aspects of physical education, such as Social Emotional Learning. It will also offer networking opportunities for students.

Culver said there are opportunities for learning more about curriculum in schools.

“It shows us ways in which we can better our curriculum for our future teaching, and it gives us opportunities to connect with professionals that we can come to with other questions and if we need any other curricular ideas,” Culver said.

Social Emotional Learning (SEL) can be used by all education majors, and the students who attend can bring ideas back to the classroom.

“I think that P.E. majors are advocates for SEL because we are the people that need to be experts at it in the gym. And I think that once we’re experts at it, then we can help the other teachers that are in our school,” Culver said.

The fifth and final speaker was Lilly Moua from the Asian Student Nation.

They requested funds to attend the Midwest Asian American Student Union conference in Minneapolis.

The Committee of Student Services proposed a motion that would register all eligible students to vote.

They are currently working to ensure that all eligible voters are registered.

By 2022, Winona State hopes to have automatic voter registration for students.

The opinions expressed in this paper are not necessarily those of Winona State University, the Minnesota State Colleges and University system, or the Winona State University student body.