With 11 of the 15 senators needed to meet quorum, the student senate failed to meet quorum for the second week in a row.   

Because of quorum being unmet, senator James Haddon, a freshman digital media technology major, was unable to be appointed to the parking appeals board.  

During the meeting, there was an introduction of some of the university police officers, including Police Lieutenant, Michael Lusk.  

Lusk, who was born and raised in Chicago, started his career as a police officer over 30 years ago.  

Lusk said that he knew he wanted to be a police officer from a young age, saying that he always knew that he wanted to help people. Lusk wanted to save the world, but soon realized that it was more important to do other things, like create community and individual relationships.  

Lusk started his career working in the public housing projects of Chicago, which houses prominently people of color. While that was a very different setting than it is at Eastern, Lusk thinks that it was similar because in each setting it is vital to look at a variety of needs that affect a certain group while also making individual connections with the community, whether it be residents or students.  

While the two are very different, Lusk noted that the University Police Department, UPD, focuses on issues that impact the campus community, just like he did when he worked in public housing.  

“As a police department, we have the ability to focus on issues that were unique to that community,” Lusk said. “We had the flexibility to work towards trying to resolve problems instead of trying to slap a band aid on because we were going from call to call to call. UPD Officers are able to pretty much focus here on issues that affect campus. They can handle a situation today, come back and deal with the second part of that problem because they’re there to address as holistically as possible issues that are impacting the university. The same opportunity that I had working in public housing.” 

Lusk said that in both settings as well, it is very important to create relationships with individuals and students alike.  

“It is vitally important,” Lusk said. “Just as I said in there, it is important to engage your community and it is not necessarily an environment in which you can address large groups. You have to build relationships individually. Same thing here is not necessarily an issue of challenging or confronting system wide issues. You have to talk to people, engage individually, develop relationships, develop rapport, and try to reach an impact positively on the individuals that you will encounter both in public housing as well as here on a university campus.” 

Aside from hearing Lusk speak, President Lucy Ade said it was important that students filled out the campus parking survey, as it impacts the amount of work is done to better parking for students.  

 Katja Benz can be reached at 581-2812 or at [email protected].