Student Senate talked about a forum coming up in November in their meeting Wednesday night in the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.

Student Body President Luke Young said the forum will take place at 7 p.m. in the University Ballroom of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union. It will cover topics of importance such as Paris climate control, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and travel bans.

“We do want to support them in this endeavor and show up,” Young said.

Young said he will be moderating the forum and would appreciate if people would show up and not make faces at him so he can keep his focus.

Young said the Ohio Valley Conference Cross Country Championship Race is being hosted at Eastern this year. Eastern gets to host the race once every eight years and told the senate he would like to see a group of senators at the race wearing blue cheering the team on.

William Outzen, Speaker of the Senate, talked to the senate about the next “1st Thursday” the senate will be hosting. It is on Nov. 2 in the union food court.

“We can get more students in the food court because they will be eating lunch,” Outzen said.

“1st Thursday” is a new project started by Outzen to get students more involved on campus. It is about getting students to engage with the senate on issues they would like to see resolved around campus.

Cash talked about her meeting with Josh Norman, Associate Vice President of Enrollment Management and what he is doing to help with marketing the school. Cash said there are advertisements being put up on billboards and the music streaming service Pandora.

Cash said Norman is sending out “EIU swag bags” to high schools so Eastern can get free advertising in high schools across the state. Cash told the senate some high schools who historically have never had students apply to Eastern are starting to have students apply. She said high schools from both Illinois and states surrounding Illinois are seeing their students apply to Eastern from these high schools.

During their meeting, the student senate played a game, which draws attention to social classes and the opportunities, which come with them. The senate was split up into three groups based on three colored cards. Each senator was given one card at random, black for the lower class, orange for middle class and blue for the upper class.

They each had to act according to what their card says and later convened to talk about how they felt during the game.

Student Senate member Claude Abdoulaye-Pedila led the game to educate the senate on class struggle.

“I thought it was an interesting look at how people have gotten older and what they have gone though because everyone has a different story and a different background,” Outzen said.

Outzen was in the middle class and he said it brought to light the struggles the middle class face.

Samuel Nusbaum can be reached at scnusbaum@eiu.edu or at 581-2812.