By: Corbin McGuire, Editor-in-Chief
To keep Bellarmine University students, faculty and staff informed of changes on campus, The Concord will be providing coverage of each meeting of the Student Government Association (SGA). Meetings are open to all students and occur every other Friday at 3:30 p.m.
Each SGA meeting begins with reports from the executive board and committee leaders. Here are the notable reports:
Vice President Jessica Winters gave the Educational Affairs report. She gave a “huge thank you to everyone for being so patient about the registration system.” She said things have been going positively with the new system so far. Winters also reminded students that if courses still appear yellow when registering, the student has not yet completed registering. Students must hit the register button.
“You’ll know that you’re registered for classes when they turn green,” said Winters.
Winters also discussed a survey that went out about complementary newspapers offered on campus. Winters said she had a couple of requests to get The Wall Street Journal but following the results of the survey in the Daily Knight, the university will be sticking with The Courier- Journal and The New York Times.
Vice President Tom Finch said he wanted to remind everyone from visiting Registered Student Organizations (RSOs) that nothing would be set in stone until the last SGA meeting on April 22.
Vice President Amber Fields gave the RSO update. She said the RSO Awards are April 26 and asked students to please nominate organizations for the awards on UKnight.
Senior Class Representative Lexi Duck gave the Elections Committee update and discussed approval ratings and the 2016 SGA Awards. The SGA Banquet will be held April 24 at the Spaghetti Factory.
Austin Black gave the Food Services Committee update. Black said, “The food talks for the Flynn Building led to vending machine talks.” He said the committee is now considering switching what is sold in vending machines, but there might not be enough food traffic in the building to warrant more services.
Aaron Patterson gave the Traffic and Safety Committee update. Patterson said the committee meeting with the university to discuss how Bellarmine parking fees compare to other private schools, such as Centre who charges $50 annually for residential students and $10 for commuter students. Patterson discussed the possibility of allowing students to decide whether or not they wanted to pay the parking fee, an amount that will be asked for in the upcoming meeting with the university, that is usually wrapped up into a student’s general costs.
Paige Williamson gave the Commuter update and said that there are a limited number of Hillside tickets free for commuter students. Commuter students need to fill out a form on UKnight and tickets are $7 for residential students.
Drew Chandler gave the Technology Committee update. Chandler said the Technology Committee is working on creating a Technology Recovery Network that would decrease the waste of old technology on campus by distributing technology that could be repurposed.
Ryan Stevens and Amanda Martin gave the Inclusivity Committee Update. Stevens said they are looking for a chair for next fall.
Dr. Helen Grace Ryan gave the adviser’s report.
Ryan congratulated Career Services on seeing more than 300 one-on-one appointments this semester and the Dialogue on Diversity Conference for attracting more than 150 people from across the Commonwealth.
Members from BUKnighted also gave a presentation on their experiences at the Midwest Bisexual Lesbian Gay Transgender Ally College Conference (MBLGTACC) that 12 members were able to attend.
“I think it really helped me with accepting diversity,” freshman member Ayesha Wahidi said.
Here are the bills discussed at the meeting:
The MAPS RSO approval bill and a motion to approve the Spanish Club as a RSO were both been withdrawn until next semester.
A bill concerning the SGA tradition of providing donuts to students during finals week, was presented.
A motion to allocate $781.62 from the SGA General Account for the “Finals Week Sweet Treat” event, where 38 dozen doughnuts will be provided during Finals Week, was passed.
DeVries presented a bill asking SGA to purchase an ad for Bellarmine student Alyssa Robb in the 2016 Miss Kentucky Pageant program.
Robb’s personal platform is suicide prevention and she has used her platform in preventing suicide on college campuses.
There was a motion to allocate $300 from SGA PR account in order for an advertisement in support of Robb for the 2016 Miss Kentucky Pageant to be purchased, and it passed.
Davis shared her shuttle tracking survey results and reported that 92.8 percent of students said they would use an app that tracks the location and the estimated time of arrival (ETA) of the campus shuttles.
Finch reminds RSOs that late budgets resulted in a 10-percent cut and a missed meeting resulted in a 15-percent cut from an RSO’s budget.
The Fall 2016 budget will be discussed at the final SGA meeting on April 22.
For more information, email the Student Government Association (SGA) at sga@bellarmine.edu.