Friday, August 28, 2009

President's Desk: Library, ADA compliance, Religious Studies, Parking, Tailgating and Visitation, Incoming Freshman Interest

Students of Concord,

This blog should be shorter than the previous ones, as I will simply not have as much to discuss now that I am in office permanently to where I report to the Senate every week. However, I do have a few points of interest to discuss in this blog that should be interesting for my readers to know.

First off, the library issue. The Senate discussed the initial proposal on Wednesday, and they tabled it until next week. The next day, Business Manager Belcher met with Dr. Rowe, and he found out that Concord was in fact charging us for some of the finals week as well as Sunday hours. Dr. Rowe, however, had enough money in his library budget to lower the cost of what it took to get the periodicals room down to approximately $1000. Once I found out this piece of news, I was overjoyed, and today, I confirmed to Dr. Flanigan, the Interim VP of Student Affairs, that I would take this amended deal to the Senate.

I have to give kudos to Matt on this one for helping to lower the bill. This only demonstrates that this year's Executive Board is a unified team that is working for the benefit of all students. Matt, as demonstrated by this meeting, will undoubtedly be a great manager of the student's money. The fact is that I should have discussed this deal with the entire Executive Board first before confirming it with the President, but at the time of the meeting I acted rashly and excitedly that we got the increased benefit that fast. I hope no one thinks less of me for making the mistake; as I mentioned before, my actions in securing the library deal were not perfect, but I did it acting in the best will of the student body--not necessarily the SGA itself. I still, however, do not see a problem with paying a one time fee, especially now that it's only $1,000, which is 1% of the SGA's budget, to give this great service to students. President Aloia, Dr. Flanigan, and I are all equally determined to improve academics at Concord, and hopefully once this library issue is ironed out, it will be the first of many improvements.

We were initially going to try to discuss this issue in our Joint Cabinet meeting with the administration in order to go over all the exact numbers before the first Senate meeting, but the SGA Executive Board had to cancel, as many of them had class. So, I had a with Dr. Aloia myself over various issues, alongside Attorney General Bill Lewis. I will discuss those in a minute. My greatest hope now is that this library issue passes without many qualms next week. Students will have the periodicals room that is monitored by the student worker (This worker will receive about $7.50 a hour pay for 10 hours a week), a monitored printer (since the SGA is helping to pay; we don't want any video game cheat codes being printed! :)) for about $900, with $1,000 being allocated for emergencies (such as getting a back up worker in case the scheduled worker does not show up). In my own opinion, I find this beyond reasonable. As I mentioned in my President's report last week, these are only the beginning of changes, as the 5.2 million dollar grant that the University is almost assured of getting from stimulus money should help to renovate an area for the rest of it, as well as fix leakage problems and to get new equipment.

I briefly mentioned ADA issues in my report last week, but since people seemed to be getting tired, I will elaborate some more. For quite some time now, students have had issues with the Fine Arts chairman in trying to get the Arts gallery up to ADA compliance standards. It does not have a ramp to get down to it, amongst other issues. I brought this up to Dr. Aloia in our meeting, and he mentioned that he was glad I brought it to his attention, and hopefully it will be taken care of this semester. I am thankful for this, as a student personally asked for me to do this so that his father could look at his art when it was presented in the gallery later this year. I will keep tabs over the course of the semester to make sure that's done. Also, with the 5.2 million grant, the new architect will work on bringing the Arts center up to code. Dr. Aloia is going to tear out all the sidewalks at Concord sometime probably next summer to bring those up to code, and we are also working on ways to improve the steep hill near the gazebo behind the Student Center. Progress is definitely being made in ADA compliance. As a student who has had knee surgery and who has been confined to wheelchairs and crutches in the past, I know how it feels to have to get around difficult places. ADA will not be the free committee that everyone goes to in this SGA; we will hopefully make some great progress.

For those who may have read the Concordian this week, I wrote a short blurb advocating for religious studies at University Point, which I mentioned several blogs ago. Look for a full article on that next week--just giving you a preview.

Dr. Aloia mentioned to the Senate that a parking garage might be in the works to fix the current parking problems on campus. This too would come from federal earmarking. Such a building would probably go behind Wooddell or near the President's house. In the meantime, however, our SGA needs to find ways of helping to improve parking on campus. It does not help that the "modular units" are blocking some spaces currently. The police staff are working hard to get students the best possible parking they can currently, but I will be encouraging the Executive Board to devise a plan to improve parking soon.

The SGA will hear about CUSAC's two proposed policies from last year, Visitation and Tailgating, by next week. I brought Attorney General Lewis to my last meeting with the President to talk about tailgating at more than just Homecoming, and the President seems receptive. However, these issues have to be hashed out in a University committee, and I am pleased to announce that a student representative will be on that committee. I would ideally like to serve if possible on that in order to help improve those services for students.

Perhaps the best news I have to offer about the SGA itself is that there is a great deal of interest by freshman this year! During the past week, I have spent many hours interviewing over 10 applicants for our four senator positions (it was three, but Senator Zach Graham resigned for personal reasons). I asked the Senate to increase the Senate number last week for one pure reason. Most of our current senior leadership team includes seniors, and all of these applicants appear to be born leaders! It is making my job hard to decide amongst them by next week. I'm hoping that if that bill passes, I can appoint most of the others. I am pleased and thankful that I will hopefully get to choose the student body's next great group of leaders.

Vale,

President Yeager

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