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Your senators have been working hard. Keep an eye out for progress in these areas:
Franklin: Franklin representatives are working on a website for incoming freshmen in order to alleviate the stresses of acclimation.
Education: COE representatives are working toward maintaining their English Education major as a 4-year track.
Terry: Terry representatives are in the process of creating cross-major newsletters to ensure that all students know what’s going on in the school and how it could benefit them.
SPIA: SPIA representatives are meeting with the Dean to discuss issues of course availability, vacant professorships, and study abroad.
FACS: FACS representatives are in the process of creating a school bulletin to ensure that all students know events and opportunities for the school and how it could benefit them.
CAES: CAES representatives are re-vamping the student organization webpage and are working toward an adviser recognition program.
Grady: Working on establishing the Grady Student Leaders office with the student ambassadors and are working on a Grady blog.
Env. & Design: Env. & Design representative is gearing his efforts to transitioning the new dean.
Ecology: Ecology representative is proposing legislation in support of the Go Green Alliances to support conservation measures.
Law: Law representative is establishing contacts with the other organizations within his school in order to work in joint efforts.
All of your senators are working on brochures and packets to be distributed with orientation materials in order to better PR your school. If you would like to make any suggestions, let them know!
Our next committee meeting will be on Tuesday at 7pm in SLC 214–come out!
Also, we are co-sponsoring a Virginia Tech Anniversary Memorial Vigil on April 16 at 8pm at the Arch. Please take the time to pay your respects to our lost friends.
Best,
Student Government Association
First of all– The Spanish Minor is here to stay! The proposal has been withdrawn. We would like to thank all the students who wrote letters and helped to combat this proposal. We want to specifically thankAmrita Veliyath and Jason Schwartz for their commitment and the time they put into researching and fighting the deactivation of the Spanish minor.
Studio art classes are now available for all majors (ARST 1050, ARST 1080). This initiative was started last year in the Academic Affairs committee and has now come to fruition!
We will be meeting with EITS this week to discuss the UGAmail overhaul initiative. We will also be meeting with google representatives to discuss cost, feasibility, security, etc.
Open Mic with Mike is today at 4:00 pm in the Fireside Lounge at East Campus! This is an open forum for students to pose questions and concerns to President Michael Adams.
We will be helping to coordinate the Virginia Tech Vigil which will be April 16th at 8:00 pm at the Arch. Everyone is welcome to attend.
Earth Day is April 22, SGA will be hosting the “Lug-a-Mug” booth.
Our Attorney General, Mark Clifford, is spearheading the UGAcard initiative. We are pushing to get safety numbers on the back of the UGAcard in time for orientation and the arrival of the new freshman class.
Committee Chairs, Freshman Board and Forum Advisers, as well as Associate Justices have been appointed. If you’d like to know more about SGA’s leadership please visit our homepage www.uga.edu/sga.
Our first committee meeting will be on April 8 at 7:00 pm in SLC room 148! Come voice your concerns and join a committee! The contact info for the committee heads is below:
Academic Affairs John Williams jwill89@uga.edu
Athletic Affairs Jamarl Glenn jagpotsc@uga.edu
External Affairs Christie Haynes schaynes@uga.edu, Mike Naghshineh mike123@uga.edu
Multicultural Affairs Alex Galvan agalvan@uga.edu, Lemona Wyatt mona88@uga.edu
Public Relations Courtney Johnson cej11@uga.edu
Student Life Lauren Gray lpgray@uga.edu
Please let us know if you have any comments, questions or concerns! You can email us at ugasga@uga.edu! Have a great week!
Happy Weekend UGA,
Spanish will no longer be offered as a minor if a bill which passed through the Curriculum Committee of University Council passes through the Executive Committee and the general body of University Council. Despite heavy student resistance (presented by Student Government Association), several faculty members who spoke against the bill, and Vice President of Instruction Jere Morehead’s disapproval, the Committee voted to deactivate the Spanish Minor… Wow. In response Nicki and I wrote a letter to President Adams expressing our concern and opposition to the measure. You can find our letter and the resolution on www.uga.edu/sga.
If you are opposed to the idea, please let us know ASAP! Send an email to Amrita Veliyath, the Student Government Association representative for students on the committee at veliyath@uga.edu. We have already received notes from current minors, parents of current minors, alumni of the program, and parents of prospective students intending to minor in Spanish, but these were clearly not enough to sway the opinion of the committee.
In happier news, if you would like to apply to be the student on the Athletic Association Board of Directors, please find the application at www.uga.edu/sga. Graduating seniors may also apply to be the commencement speaker by downloading the application at www.uga.edu/sga.
This week we are holding interviews for our committee chair positions, and will soon have more feet on the ground to accomplish our initiatives. Also, keep an eye out for senators from your school attending your club and organizational meetings. Rather than being huddled up in the office, our senators are reaching out to their schools–as they well should!–to make sure they are best serving you. Please use them as a resource to report anything of interest to you and to stay updated on how we are hoping to serve you.
Finally, as a follow up to Ruckus, we wanted to let you know how the “Do It Legally” campaign is serving our school. On Monday and Tuesday the campaign will visit classrooms and sorority chapters to deliver its key talking points. On Tuesday evening (3/25), it will hold its “main event,” Face the Music: A Panel Discussion on Digital Media Downloading (7:30 p.m. in SLC 248). They have panelists from the administration, faculty, student body and the music industry. It’s a blue card event, and they’ll be offering lots of information and some free giveaways. The campaign will be on the Tate Lawn on Wednesday, at Snelling on Thursday and at both the Young Joc (University Union) concert and two other concerts downtown on Friday. You can find them on Facebook or online at www.uga.edu/doitlegally for more information.
Stay classy UGA, and don’t forget to let us know how you feel about deactivating the Spanish Minor.
Best,
Connor and Nicki
In order to avoid boredom, I’ll avoid a recap of the last couple blogs. But worry not, we’re continuing work on those initiatives!
In more immediate news, the following agenda items will and/or have come before University Council general body or committees… These are fairly important and will probably catch your attention:
- Deactivation of the Spanish Minor: A proposal will come through UC Curriculum Committee on Friday to deactivate the Spanish Minor (read it here: http://www.curriculumsystems.uga.edu/UCC/FINALDeacMinSpan.pdf). We are forwardly opposed to the idea as Spanish is arguably the most important minor on campus. At the meeting we will present data on several key peer and aspirational institutions and will have either students in the minor present, letters urging the committee to vote this down from current and past students, or both.
- UC seats, proportional decrease: On Thursday the Statutes/Bylaws Committee will make a proposal to the general body increasing faculty representation from 110 to 145; student representation will remain at 25 (http://uc.reg.uga.edu/motions/agenda_motions/255/council_bylaws_EC_approved.pdf). While we support this proposal, there was an unintentional oversight in the fact that student votes (thus the student voices) are diluted. However, we plan to ask the Statutes/Bylaws Committee to take on the charge of increasing student representation.
- Preparation Week: Our Preparation Week proposal modified in order to decrease our academic calendar to a 14 week schedule (to which most other institutions adhere–why do you think we have such short breaks compared to our friends at other schools.?). This would give us the opportunity to take all or part of the 15th week for exam preparation. It will be a state-wide initiative and will come before the Board of Regents.
Also, All Campus Allocations is meeting this week. Six SGA representatives make up part of the twelve person committee which is in control of the $3 million budget… Where do you want your money to go?
As always, send us an e-mail, give us a call, let us know what you think. We’re all ears.
Stay classy UGA,
Connor and Nicki
First, APPLICATIONS FOR APPOINTED POSITIONS are available on ugasga.org. Apply today, they’re due the Tuesday we return from Spring Break!
This week we had several initial meetings to get the ball rolling on some of our platform points.
Beginning with campus safety: UGACard administrators were very receptive to the idea of including campus safety numbers on the back of the cards. The drawback is space availability; if we cannot rework the details included on the back, we will look into alternative methods of getting numbers like the Escort Van, Parking Services, and local hospitals easily accessible to all students.
We also had a meeting with Kari Barlow, Associate Vice President of Technology at Arizona State University, whose model of adopting GMail we would hope to follow. This was a very positive step in the direction of increasing our server space for campus e-mail.
Ms. Beth Bailey from Legal Affairs took the time to meet with us regarding sexual harassment; we, alongside University Judiciary, were able to maintain a sit-down dialogue with her office and express some areas for improvement. Legal Affairs and the Administration were very receptive to our thoughts and look forward to working with the students to improve safety and employ more stringent sexual harassment training.
If you have any questions or comments or would like any other information, e-mail us at ugasga@uga.edu and we would love to meet with you or your organizations.
Stay classy UGA,
Connor and Nicki
Tonight marked the official commencement of the 2008-2009 student government association administration with the inauguration of President, Vice President, and senators, and the appointment and inauguration of Treasurer.
First and foremost, we’d like to thank and congratulate Katy Bowers, Sara Andrzejewski, the senators, the executive staff, and all who helped the past administration for a job well done. You accomplished many great things and paved the road on many new initiatives on order for us to have a starting block from which to begin. Thanks again for everything.
Now down to business: interviews for appointed executive cabinet positions are being held this week in order for decisions to be made prior to our Spring Orientation/Retreat this weekend. Applications for all other appointed positions will be released shortly in order to jump the gun this year–keep an eye out!
WHAT WE’RE DOING NOW:
-Sexual Harassment: meeting with Ms. Beth Bailey, Associate Director of Legal Affairs in regards to current policy
- Campus Safety: meeting with Mr. Dee Matthews of UGACard to print campus safety numbers on the back of student IDs before orientation rolls around
- UGAMail: Teleconference with Ms. Kari Barlow, Assistant Vice President for Technology at Arizona St., on whose GMail system we intend to model our own (more info: https://uto.asu.edu/mediawiki/index.php/Google_and_ASU)
- Appointed Positions
Finally, thanks to the Red&Black for providing us with an effective two-way outlet of communication between SGA and the student body.
If any of this is of particular interest to you, feel free to let us know your thoughts and feedback!
Stay classy UGA,
Connor and Nicki
connorm@uga.edu, nickib@uga.edu
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