Student Government held its third meeting of the semester Sept. 29, focusing on the role of Flock on campus, committee reports and the SG pizza crisis.
The meeting began with a presentation from Vice President of Administration and Chief of Operations Rafael Martín, Chief Brent Tourangeau and Captain Karl Zuber — the project manager for Flock’s camera installation on campus.
Zuber said that the university typically scanned 22,000 license plates each day with its network of 13 Flock cameras around campus. Each camera costs the university $2,500 per year for a total of $32,500 every year for them. Since UTD first installed the cameras in 2022, the university has spent over $150,000 on Flock cameras. Zuber said that as of Sept. 29, the university has received a total of 66 alerts from the Flock network about possible suspicious activity including but not limited to possible stolen license plates and stolen vehicles.
Green Initiative Chair Colton Rupe asked Martín and UTD PD what kind of cooperation existed between the university and Immigration and Customs Enforcement when it came to the Flock data for campus. Tourangeau said that UTD PD has its own policy to limit access to Flock data, but that if any federal or state agency asks for it, the data will be shared.
“We can’t guarantee you that we will not allow federal law enforcement agencies to use [our] Flock data,” Tourangeau said. “And we will approach [data requests] with caution and make sure that it is a good legitimate reason. We are rule followers. We do obey the law. We expect everyone else to obey the law. So that is a difficult situation for everybody, right?”
Martín said that while the university currently shares Flock data with over 500 different agencies, UTD has little control over what agencies do with that data.
“Our policies, I think, are good policies to prevent the abuse of this data,” Martín said. “I cannot stand here and guarantee you right now that other agencies who have access to that data couldn’t abuse it, right?”
Martín said that he was working with UT System officials to introduce a set of “minimum standards” that organizations using Flock would have to comply with before schools like UTD could share data with them; this effort is still a work in progress. Martín also said that among UTD’s new policies around Flock, all requests made by UTD PD would have to have a reason associated with them — a new rule which has been in effect since at least Aug. 26.
The Retrograde reviewed the Sept. 29 Flock public search audit available on UTD PD’s transparency portal. All seventeen search records have a reason; however, six of the records do not contain verbal reasons and are instead strings of numbers like “202600010679” or “202600010318.” The last search of the UTD Flock network with no reason attached was done Aug. 12.
SG senator and public policy freshman Satvik Pochiraju asked how the university planned to handle misuses of the Flock system. Tourangeau said that UTD PD currently had a strict review and compliance system in case of any possible misconduct — which he clarified had not happened yet — and that the department took violations very seriously.
“So if you misuse this system, you’re in a lot of trouble,” Tourangeau said. “Things all the way from discipline up to firing, but it can also result in criminal charges. We really don’t tolerate any of that kind of [misuse] by any of our [officers].”
During public comment, second year computer science student Aaron Ochakovsky discussed his opposition to SG’s efforts to bring back the university pride wall.
“A public university’s primary focus must always be academic excellence and not ideological branding,” Ochakovsky said. “Maintaining permanent installations could potentially jeopardize funding for other critical services such as housing, food, tuition and scholarships. I believe Student Government should exercise caution with the recommendations they’re giving to the university and they should prioritize every student instead of just some.”
Political science master’s student Alexander de Jesus-Colon spoke in response to Ochakovsky and argued that the original pride wall was not a violation of SB 17 and that SG’s current efforts were not either.
“Saying ‘you belong here’ under a rainbow flag isn’t an ideology in and of itself unless you consider having anyone feel comfortable at the university to be an ideology, in which case I question what you do,” Jesus-Colon said. “It’s important to remember that the university’s funding sources are different and we aren’t limited by some big collective state fund which can suddenly disappear.”
Student Affairs Chair Hassan Alfarhan and Diversity, Equity and Belonging Chair Nivedha Maniv gave a report over their summer experience with the Committee on Student Media and the alleged hostility they experienced from committee administrators during meetings. Alfarhan and Maniv said that SG does not currently have any students serving on COSM and that they are working with the Interim Vice President of Student Affairs Amanda Smith to rework the committee to find a functional solution that meets the needs of UTD’s Student Media department. Smith and the two student chairs said no hard plans had been finalized yet, but that they planned on providing SG with more details in the coming months.
“We are absolutely working on making the committee a cooperative place, and I’m taking some time to speak to some students who have had experiences themselves,” Smith said. “So it’s my intention to make this better, and [SG President] David [Baker] and I have had conversations and share that in common. So that’s what we’re gonna do.”
Before SG began discussion of their allocations or resolutions, SG Treasurer Sebastian Perez let the Senate know that, based on their current pizza eating habits, SG would run out of pizza money for meetings before the end of the semester. Perez added that he was looking at alternative food options to keep feeding SG without going over budget.
“We cannot afford to get pizza every meeting,” Perez said. “We will run out of money and you will starve next semester. Be mindful about how much you eat.”
The Senate approved five allocations this meeting. SG suspended its formal rules of order to hear allocations before public comment and any resolutions to avoid being unable to pay for events due to a possible lack of quorum — SG has in the past lost quorum for meetings that stretch past 7:00 p.m. since senators begin to leave en masse after they are no longer required to stay in attendance. The Sept. 29 meeting officially adjourned at 8:06 p.m. due to lack of quorum.
The first approved allocation set aside roughly $635 to fund SG’s “Pizza with Politicians” event which will be held Oct. 15 from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m in the first floor of the SU. SG is expecting a 200-300 person turn-out for the event. SG does not have a list of confirmed politician attendees as of publication.
The second approved allocation set aside roughly $18 for SG’s “Spooktacular Bazaar” event which will be held Oct. 9 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. SG’s Bazaar will be hosted in coordination with the Small Business Owners’ club. The Bazaar is one of the first artist alley-style events hosted since the SOC rule banning artist alleys was removed — as it stands, “sponsored student organizations” like SG and SUAAB can host events with sales. SG will be providing table cloths for the Bazaar.
The third approved allocation set aside $210.94 for a replacement award for a winner from last semester’s Blank Space art competition. SG said that the winner of the competition did not get the sewing kit they were promised, and that the point of this resolution was to correct that oversight.
The fourth allocation set aside $1,236.51 to pay for security, hire a caricature artist, purchase temporary tattoos and other assorted snacks and giveaway items for the Diversity, Equity and Belonging committee’s National Coming Out Day event. The event will be held Oct. 12 from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m. at the Plinth. SG is working with Synergy Wesley and UTD’s Rainbow Coalition as part of this “celebration of queer identity and the power of coming out.”
The fifth and final approved allocation set aside $219.95 to buy a speaker. SG plans to use the device during its tabling session to attract student attention. The replacement award and speaker allocations were both approved during the previous SG term, but neither was followed up on. Perez told the senate that when allocations are passed and the money is not used, the money goes back into SG’s funds.
The senate began to consider resolutions at 7:52 p.m. In total, SG passed one resolution before quorum was lost at 8:02 p.m.
The only resolution SG passed was Legislative Affairs Chair Anointing Okereke’s S.R. 2026-09, “In support of establishing an Ad-Hoc Committee to track and audit all resolutions passed during Senate legislative sessions.” This resolution establishes a committee which will make sure SG is acting on resolutions it has passed since 2021 — lack of follow-through has been an issue for SG in the past, Okereke said.
SG meetings are open to the public. The next senate meeting will be held at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 13 in the SU Galaxy Rooms.