Student Senate is still 10 seats short of filling its General Assembly, now more than two months after elections in September. Although they have passed several resolutions concerning campus network improvements and fee change notifications, they still haven’t accomplished this basic requirement, even by their belated deadline goal of the end of October.
“We’re still in the process of [getting the seats filled],” vice president of student affairs Helen Lagerblade said. “It’s been on social media a lot and it’s been in all the [Hilltop Happenings], so we’re trying.”
However, Student Senate has not displayed this extensive use of social media to call out for new senators. Although they have used Hilltop Happenings each week to advertise for the needed seats, they only actively called for more Senators once each on Twitter and Facebook between the September elections and yesterday morning’s posts.
Despite this, Student Senate continues working on contributing to campus. While the network improvement resolution was passed, a few new resolutions were brought up during the General Assembly meeting Monday.
The first was to give students a 30-day notice of any academic fee changes prior to registration, before any changes are finalized. According to the resolution, this announcement should also contain the rationale behind the changes in fee amount. This resolution was brought up because of this year’s sudden increase in the engineering student’s course fees.
Student Senate discarded its usual procedure of tabling a resolution for one week of consideration by bringing it to an immediate vote instead.
These resolutions might seem trivial to some, but many of them attempt to improve student experiences at Bradley, according to vice president of technology services and affairs Mitch Pericak.
“It’s made a big difference, even the little things like printing stations,” Pericak said.
The printing station in Harper-Wyckoff that aims to accommodate many students’ busy schedules was implemented by the Student Senate. Just the one printer in the Student Center printed 12,200 sheets of paper during the 2014 spring semester, according to Pericak. Harper-Wyckoff also printed 5,335 sheets in the same semester.
Another resolution was proposed concerning a “B” shield, which would be lit when Bradley sports teams have home games to raise Bradley spirit. Also, the smoke free forum date was announced for Nov. 18 from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. in Neumiller Lecture Hall. This forum is a chance for students to comment on the possibility of a non-smoking policy at Bradley.
Students are welcome to sit in and contribute to General Assembly meetings every Monday at 5 p.m. in the Garrett Multicultural Center, even if they aren’t part of Student Senate.
