SG Update 10/19

Branding Change

John Trierweiler, vice president and chief marketing officer in Marketing and Communications, presented a summary of RIT’s branding change. Kin Sejpal, Associate Vice President of Marketing and Branding, explained the reasoning behind the architecture of the branding.

“When you have R-dot-I-dot-T, those dots tend to have a lot of design issues ... there’s a scalability issue and ... now that we’re in the digital era and everything has to be shrunk down to like small sizes [for] mobile devices, the dots seem to fade away or they don’t have that much weight,” said Sejpal. “We also updated the font, thickened the font and then brought the letters closer together.”

She also explained that there will now be consistent labeling for colleges in order to illustrate hierarchy. So, labeling will be done in the order of university name (RIT), college name, school within the college, program within the school, and so on. Also, there are now three versions of Ritchie the Tiger. One is for athletics to show aggressive competition, another is for academics to show pride and the last is for school spirit to show friendliness.

In order to unify the clubs and organizations within the university and tie them closely to the RIT brand, Sejpal and Trierweiler encourage students to change their club logos to reflect current branding.

“The two things that we were looking for is putting the RIT name and then using the RIT colors. However, that’s not a mandate by any means,” said Sejpal.

If a club or organization wants to change their logos to match the new branding, they can visit the brand portal for specifications. 

Greek Senator Candidates

Jobi Reibson, a fifth year Industrial and Systems Engineering major, presented her platform to the senate. She plans to use PawPrints as the main way to communicate the needs of Greek Life. She also looks to be a project leader for Greek events with plans to improve communication. In order to do so, she will split up the president roundtable meetings to create better discussions.

Stelios Moisidis, a fifth year Electrical Engineering major, presented his platform to the senate. He has three pillars for the objectives he wants to accomplish: small stepping stones to achieving success, accountability and open communication and keeping a positive attitude and open mind. Moisidis has experience working with Student Government (SG), since he was the president of Global Union last year.

Student Climate Survey

Stacy Derooy, the Title IX Coordinator, gave SG a brief overview of the results of last year’s student climate survey. The questions were mostly kept consistent with previous years', so that comparisons of past results could be made. Other questions were mandated by New York state law.

The survey got an 18 percent response rate. Within the survey, 97 percent of students said that they feel safe at RIT. Nine percent had experienced at least one incident of sexual misconduct since the fall of 2017. Of those who experienced sexual misconduct, 11 percent reported it. Most of the data gathered by the survey was found to be similar to the cohort.

Derooy’s main goal is to provide information and training to students above the first year. Also, with the mandatory training policy being put into place, she said that all professors will now know how to address different situations in regards to Title IX.

Anna Capria, CHST senator and third year Biomedical Sciences major, brought up an issue that she believed was causing the low rate of reporting.

“I have members of my constituency that have gone through the hearing process and felt like there aren’t any repercussions for the accused at the end of the investigation; and so I worry that people in those situations are sharing that message and then people aren’t reporting so that there are 89 percent of the people that haven’t reported,” said Capria.

Derooy wants students to know that going through the hearing isn’t a “win-lose situation.”

“Just because somebody is not found responsible doesn’t mean that the person wasn’t believed, it just means that there’s not enough evidence to demonstrate,” said Derooy.

Advice from an SG Alum

Andrea Shaver, who served as SG president from 2016 to 2017, gave a presentation describing what she and the then-senators were able to accomplish. She also gave some advice to the current senators and acknowledged the progress that SG has made since she graduated.

One historical fact Shaver shared is that SG launched PawPrints in 2014 to increase communication and build relationships despite concerns raised by faculty and staff about the usefulness of student petitions.

NTID Senator

Eunyoung Doucet, a third year Accounting Technology major, presented her platform to the senate. She wants to improve communication in the classroom by banning simultaneous communication, allow for more inclusivity of disabled students, create a tutoring system and improve the transferring of credits from NTID to RIT.

The senate had a vote and Doucet was elected to be the next NTID senator.

Charges and Responses

A response was given to a petition asking to “put the dots back.” SG expressed their support for the new branding initiative, and explained that new materials will not be purchased immediately to reflect the logo change. Instead, these materials will be phased in.

A response was made to a petition asking to “let clubs keep their colors.” It stated that there was a miscommunication at the beginning of the brand launch; there is nothing for students to worry about as clubs will not be required to rebrand themselves.

A petition asking for the publication of data on how much money is made from expired dining dollars was charged to Housing and Dining Committee.

Announcements

Henry Farr, OUTspoken president and second year Computer Science and Computational Math double major, announced that his organization will be having an event on Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018 in the Infinity Quad. Students will be able to paint their hands and decorate a pride flag.

Capria announced that her Sexual vVolence and Discrimination committee is doing a clothesline project for which she will soon be sending out information.