The following are meeting minutes from the Senate meeting. The Senate meets every Monday at 5:30 PM in Room 318 on the third floor of The Commons. These meetings are open to all students to listen to discussion. If you would like to present an issue, please contact the Speaker of the Senate, Steve Gilmore, in advance so you can be added to the agenda.
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February 19, 2007
Exceptional by Example - UMBC’s SGA Senate
5:33
Everyone here.
Minutes good
Week in review
Adrienne
• Specs to SEB – advertising soon
• Liability forms good
• Went to open house where ch3 runs. Approved certain majors.
Thaddeus
• It steering committee meeting (Security) dealing with sensitive DATA
• Should be behind firewalls
• Teaching, learning, technology action plan committee is reviewing technology in classroom – what level classes are out, and which ones we should be upgrading.
Avi
• Off campus living task force
• Added more business to red card program
• Umbc.edu/discounts
• Good neighbor service project – last year project was with South West ? Services (Homeless shelter in Arbutus) – any ideas? Check corp. time!
Steve
• Lynn Schaefer talking about the budget
• 2% budget cut all around University (2 million $ shortage) due to lower enrollment than expected
• short about 100 students
• shortage of out of state students and also credit hour requirements have been changed to dissertation (didn’t add tuition #’s)
• also a hiring freeze (not faculty)
Have built a lot of new academic buildings, and with Humanities building just over horizon, money issues come into question. Humanities building would cost approximately 250 million, and other recent buildings didn’t get full funding when they were built.
Dr. Fey coming to this meeting in 2 weeks.
College Readership Program –
Need to come to understanding as a Senate what our stance is.
Alex – can’t pick up a program and fund it every year. More money out of SGA’s pockets every year, and will have a different sga every year. If we want this, need to ensure its longevity; only way to do that is to have more constant people funding it. If we start, people will expect us to continue – people look at the SGA and think money.
Thaddeus – don’t have the money for this, so we shouldn’t do it.
Danielle – how much is budget each year? Roughly $200,000. $150,000 goes to student orgs. GL has $350,000. If this is something that students want, why not use students money to get it for them?
Brittany – Is the SGA committed to do this every year, or can we just do this one year? Technically, we can, but ethically, we probably shouldn’t. Before Dr. Fey comes, can we put a questionnaire on myUMBC?
Mike – informal, can I ask the class before class poll. Could get some decent informal data through that. Secondly, depending on how survey goes, know if people would be upset or not.
Jay – we talk about what we want to institutionalize in the SGA, the stress free zone an example. We could use the rollover money from each year, put it in an account, and have money for this program every year.
Adrienne – to average student, looks suspicious. Readershape is a great idea, as Alex pointed out weeks ago. Shouldn’t just drop program on our laps.
Elani – is there anything else we could do with all that money? (Elani likes Readershape too!)
Terrance – what are we trying to do with this, we’ve been talking for 2 weeks and aren’t getting anywhere.
Steve – don’t want to sit here and wait for him to come to us, but am hoping maybe we could come up with a game plan of something to do before he gets here.
Thaddeus – Elani, the GPS. We could definitely use the money for that.
Alex – propose make a committee for surveying and asking students about how they feel about program.
Brittany – contact different organizations to give money.
Adrienne – set list of questions to give to Dr. Fey.
Alex – I hate the program, but I will head the committee. If I head it can we stop talking about it?
Gabe –
Study groups on spotlight
Jay –
No report
Thaddeus –
March 9th and 10th: if anyone on campus, Debate team needs judges
Mike –
Guitar hero 2 tournament
Tuesday, 8pm
Adrienne –
We still have ad section in Retriever? Yup.
Danielle –
High way clean up on March 3rd (Wilkens Avenue)
Elani –
Email Jen Kent list of orgs involved with or would be willing to approach (referendum questions/candidates/etc)
Roll call: everyone here
6:31