Although many Penn State students were out celebrating syllabus week, our dedicated UPUA representatives withstood the urge to party on a Wednesday night and instead gathered in 302 HUB for the first meeting of 2013.

Not only was this the first meeting of the year, but this was also my first meeting as a UPUA reporter. Greg Schlosser and I will be taking over the UPUA coverage this semester because Onward State’s old UPUA reporter literally fled the country to get out of this job (or just got into an awesome study abroad program — I’ll let you decide).

Starting off the meeting with an interesting initiative, Vice President Katelyn Mullen — who made a great first impression by carrying a chair for me to sit on from all the way across the room — brought up that she is looking into the possibility of making Penn State applications free when you attend a tour. Currently, it costs $50 to apply to Penn State. The University of Pittsburgh already does something similar, and offers free applications to touring students .

Mullen is also looking into getting switching from PSU webmail to Gmail This will hopefully welcome everybody who doesn’t already have a Gmail account to 2013 and also allow easier collaboration between students.

The only piece of legislation to be voted on this meeting was Policy 09-07: Student Conduct Policy Review. This policy gave the Board of Arbitration the exciting task of reviewing all of the different student discipline processes and making sure that they are standard, clear, reader-friendly, and grammatically correct. The board will then make a report and propose recommendations for UPUA leadership to use in its discussions with the administration.

Additionally, UPUA left its façade of not being desperate in 2012 with the start of its ad campaign to encourage people to “like” University Park Undergraduate Association on Facebook, so help your student government out and do as they please. Maybe if UPUA gets enough likes, it won’t need to spend more money on trying to create a bigger social media presence.

Along with its desperation for Facebook likes, UPUA seemed pretty excited to fill some of its open positions. There are five open positions that students can apply for, so if you have a passion for student government and open Wednesday nights, apply to join UPUA by January 16.

UPUA is also starting a “What To Fix” campaign, and if the title’s lack of creativity wasn’t enough to tip you off to what this campaign is, I can help you out. UPUA is starting this initiative as a way to give students an opportunity to voice their concerns and opinions to student leaders directly.

John Zang Outfit of the Week (5.5/10)

After all of the hype surrounding John Zang’s supposedly impeccable style, I must say that I expected more. He sported a navy and burgundy diagonally striped tie that matched his blue and white checkered shirt and khaki pants. It is possible that he would have scored higher if he hadn’t suggested I research some men’s fashion in order to accurately score him. However, even without scoring a perfect 10, Zang was easily the best dressed man at UPUA last night.

I’ll cut him some slack. He had an interesting night.