Union Board Governance
Want to keep up with Union Board? You've found the right place. Check out more information about our meeting minutes, updates on things like our art initiative, and details about our internal committees below.
Meeting Minutes
The Indiana Memorial Union Board of Directors meets every Thursday from 6:00–8:00 p.m. in the Distinguished Alumni Room of the IMU. These meetings are open to the public, and guests are always welcome. At our meetings, we share the happenings of each of our committees, vote on important programs and IMU initiatives, and discuss events happening around campus.
If you ever have questions about attending a meeting or presenting, please contact our Vice President for Internal Affairs, Clara Licklider, at vpia@iu.edu.
- 1/11 Meeting: January 11, 2024 Meeting Minutes
- 1/18 Meeting: January 18, 2024 Meeting Minutes
- 1/25 Meeting: January 25, 2024 Meeting Minutes
- 2/1 Meeting: February 1, 2024 Meeting Minutes
- 2/8 Meeting: February 8, 2024 Meeting Minutes
- 2/15 Meeting: February 15, 2024 Meeting Minutes
- 2/22 Meeting: February 22, 2024 Meeting Minutes
- 3/7 Meeting: March 7, 2024 Meeting Minutes
- 3/21 Meeting: March 21, 2024 Meeting Minutes
- 3/28 Meeting: March 28, 2024 Meeting Minutes
- 4/4 Meeting: April 4, 2024 Meeting Minutes
Active Initiatives
As the governing body of the IMU, Union Board is frequently leading projects to make the IMU a more welcoming place to all Hoosiers. If you ever have recommendations to improve the student experience in the IMU, please contact our president, Elisabeth Melms, at ubpres@iu.edu.
Find out more information about our current governance projects below.
As the heart of campus, the IMU must remain a welcoming and inclusive space for all students. Union Board has been dedicated to modernizing and diversifying the art collection of the IMU to better reflect the mosaic of our student body.
The art initiative was born in 2020 when Union Board appointed a task force to look at the art collection. The task force produced a quantitative assessment that examined the diversity of the media used; the ethnicity, gender, and place of origin of the artists; the subject matter(s) being depicted; and, if it was people, the known/assumed ethnicity, gender, and place of origin of those subjects. From there, they produced recommendations for the acquisition of additional art that could diversify the IMU/UB art collection in a way that would be more representative of our current student body and more reflective of the lived experiences of modern-day Hoosiers.
In 2020, former Union Board president Sadia Habib, in collaboration with People of IU, created the "Hoosier Story Gallery" in the Georgian Room of the IMU. This display includes pictures and stories of recent, excellent leaders from across IU's campus. This display will be updated in the spring semester of 2024.
In 2021, Union Board partnered with the First Nations Educational and Cultural Center to bring in Steven Paul Judd, a Native American (Kiowa-Choctaw) award-winning contemporary visual artist and filmmaker, to create a portrait of Jim Thorpe. Jim Thorpe, a member of the Sac and Fox Nation, was a multi-sport professional athlete and was the first Native American to win a gold medal for the United States in the Olympics. He was also an assistant football coach for IU in 1915. This portrait helps to celebrate the often untold Indigenous histories of Indiana University. This was an interactive event that allowed students to assist in painting the mural, which now hangs outside of the IMU dining area.
Thanks to generous donations from Union Board alumni, the art initiative has continued updating the art in the IMU. In the fall of November 2023, Union Board and IUSG purchased three new pieces by Black artists from the Butter Art Festival. These stunning pieces include Tasha Beckwith’s Empowered Tresses, Kyng Rhodes’s Reasons, and India Cruse-Griffin’s Glorious Day. These pieces hang outside the Georgian Room, the dining area, and the South Lounge in the IMU. This semester, Union Board has received further funds from alumni to bring more Latine art to the IMU. Union Board is partnering with La Casa and hopes to partner with Latinos Unidos to bring this project to fruition by the end of the spring semester.
To get involved with or support the Union Board Art Initiative, please email Laurie Frederickson at ubpres@indiana.edu.
The Student Involvement Tower of the IMU holds 30 offices, 11 cubicle spaces, and 27 closet spaces for student organizations to use. It is the largest collection of spaces exclusively for student organization use on campus. It is an important resource for many clubs on campus, and Union Board is the governor of these spaces.
Annually, Union Board evaluates how the space is being used and how to grant more spaces to more student organizations. We review dozens of applications each year and work to allocate office spaces so that as many organizations as possible have space in the IMU. This past fall, we were able to grant space to 12 new organizations. This year, we hope to continue to increase the number of spaces available to student organizations and advocate for the renovation of these spaces.
Applications open in August and agreements renew in October. Costs of tower spaces are kept at an absolute minimum price to keep them accessible to student organizations, and all of those funds go back into maintenance of the tower spaces.
