In a 17-1-0 vote, the ASWSU Senate granted funding toward a staff and faculty appreciation banquet.

At the banquet, students will vote to nominate staff and faculty for numerous awards, said Colleen McMahon, ASWSU senator. The approved $2,020 will go toward refreshments and setting up an online domain for students to vote on, McMahon said.

A separate domain for voting purposes was decided upon due to the difficulty using CougSync and other media outlets, McMahon said. The event will be April 25 from 6-8 p.m., but attendance will only be via invitation, McMahon said, expecting 75-100 people.

WSU’s Asian Pacific American Student Coalition (APASC) is preparing to host several events throughout April for Asian Pacific American month, said Lawrena “Nana” Meach, chair of the club.

The Marshall Islands are succumbing to global warming, Meach said, with three out of six of the islands remaining. To keep the islands from disappearing, the global temperature needs to decrease to 1.5 degrees Celsius, Meach said. She said the month is meant to bring awareness to the 1.5 Stay Alive message.

“They are essentially disappearing,” Meach said, referring to the Marshall Islands.

Wanting to increase the amount of students studying abroad to 1,000, Director of Global Learning Christine Oakley asked the Senate to give ideas on how to do so. Oakley said the desired goal would mean only 4 percent of WSU students would be studying abroad.

Oakley said one reason for the low amount of students is the abroad programs may not be as beneficial to certain majors, using engineering students as an example. ASWSU senator Victor Charoonsophonsak, an engineering major, said a lot of people are looking for internship experience, suggesting global learning advertise studying abroad as a way to obtain said experience.

Another idea is to encourage academic advisors to encourage students early in their college career to study abroad as soon as possible, said Shaylen Sharp, ASWSU senator. Sharp said some students have trouble finding abroad programs that provide the credits needed and she is curious if abroad programs could help provide needed UCORE credits.

With cost being an issue for many, Oakley said some of the abroad programs are similar in cost to certain housing situations in the local Pullman and WSU area.

“The more students you get, the cheaper the cost is for students,” Oakley said.

In the case between Swanson and Geiger v. Student media, the ASWSU judicial board unanimously found the Office of Student Media not at fault in breaking the referendum regarding the Student Media fee ballot.