Members of NYU’s Student Government Assembly introduced an online expansion of the Swipe it Forward program and drafted a letter calling for the university to offer more resources to Shia Muslim students at their Thursday meeting.
SGA’s Swipe It Forward initiative will expand next semester with opportunities for students to donate meal swipes online, SGA President Angela Chou announced at the meeting. She said the new system will incentivise students to donate more of their excess meals, and that the current in-person requirements have proven to be limiting. She added that the SGA hopes to extend the online services to NYU’S Abu Dhabi campus, which also offers the program.
Currently, students are able to donate up to three meal swipes a day in-person — a number Chou also said she was hoping to increase. SGA has led the Swipe it Forward Initiative since 2019, and introduced an online banking system last September for students to check their meal swipe balances and see how many are available across campus dining locations. Chou said that she aims to create more programs for food insecure students — such as offering a base level of meal swipes without cost — that do not rely on others’ donations.
“The hope is that the Swipe it Forward program does advance to other global sites and can even evolve in a way that’s not entirely student-based,” Chou said in an interview with WSN. “It would be amazing to not only have Swipe it Forward brought into global sites, but to also have more accessible systems.”
At the meeting, Senator at-Large for Arab Students and Shia Muslims Zahraa Al-Saif presented a letter requesting that the university bolster its support for Shia students by offering specific counseling, physical spaces to hold events and other opportunities to make the culture more prevalent on campus. She said the additional funding was the most critical request and a major deficiency in NYU’s current programming and scholarship opportunities.
“That underfunding is causing a kind of barrier for two groups of people, not only the Shia student leaders but even Shia students within the campus,” Al-Saif said in an interview with WSN. “For the opportunities to be there, but the money not being there to support them, causes a huge gap in trying to help those students.”
In the letter, Al-Saif cited that Shia students comprise 20% of NYU’s Muslim population. She said that while the university has made significant contributions toward the community, such as establishing the first Muslim student center at any U.S. college and hiring a Shia chaplain, students would benefit from more resources.
SGA members revised the letter during the meeting, preparing it for a vote by the Student Senators Council next semester. After SSC approval, the letter will be officially voted on by SGA before it’s sent to Jason Pina, Senior Vice President for University Life, and Rafael Rodriguez, Dean of Students and Vice President for Student Engagement — a process Al-Saif said will likely happen in February.
“I hope that the things being done within NYU, within SGA, act as a blueprint for other universities,” Al-Saif said. “If this is being done here, in the greatest city in the world, it could cause ripples and change a lot of student — specifically Shia student — experiences.”
At the meeting, Initiative Fund manager Leticia Mosqueda also encouraged students to apply for the fund, which was implemented last year to finance student initiatives and has supported a food pantry, fridge installation and new water fountains. She said the fund has received around 15 project applications this semester, and that she hopes it is able to support more student-led initiatives in the coming months.
Contact Liyana Illyas at lillyas@nyunews.com.
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