SG Update 10/24

Reports

The Brick City Homecoming and Family Weekend was reported as a major success by Senate advisers in terms of Student Government (SG) organization, engagement with RIT alumni and the professional conduct displayed during the distinguished speaker event headlined by Anderson Cooper.

Senate advisers used the commendations to shift attention towards planning for Halloween events occurring at the Student Alumni Building in the past week.

C10.0 Policy Revisions

Following reports, Senators were given a presentation on a planned revision of the C10.0 university policy regarding political activities and student group involvement. The revisions seek to better address the wording within the policy and clarify certain stipulations that affect the political involvement of RIT-sanctioned student groups.

During the presentation, it was emphasized that these policies do not affect the ability of individual students to exercise their political beliefs whatsoever. The new revisions only apply to university-recognized student organizations acting as one entity. While mainly administrative, these revisions will allow organizations who may want to be more active politically to have an easier time navigating through the numerous codes and rules that are in place at RIT. The policy updates also better ensure that no events on campus become one sided, or partisan. This allows equal representation of all the views and opinions of RIT’s diverse population.

Policy updates like this one may seem mundane, but they will play an important role when election seasons start and student groups decide whether or not they want to play a more active role in them.

After a few questions, the Senate voted in favor of endorsing the C10.0 policy revisions.

New Charge

With presentations settled, the Senators listened to a new charge presented by the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) advocacy committee representative. The charge seeks to address an issue that some DHH students on campus have with the extended time for examinations.

The issue is that not all DHH students are allowed equal extended time when taking quizzes or examinations, and some of these students are not allowed extended time at all. The charge hopes to address this issue by looking into the possibility of expanding the accessibility for more students in the DHH community.

The Senate voted to approve the charge and assigned the DHH advocacy committee to investigate a possible solution to the issue.

Bylaws

With business regarding charges and presentations concluded, the SG President began the painstaking task of briefing her fellow SG members on updates to the organization’s bylaws. Updates to the bylaws are essential to approve now, because any issues could delay SG elections in the spring.

The bylaws are the rules and standard operating procedures in which SG follows. Any updates to these bylaws are normally presented by the SG President to their fellow representatives. SG members must vote to approve changes made to the bylaws before any of these edits can be officially enacted.

Most of the common grammatical and syntax errors were voted in favor of being changed. With that said, other changes resulted in drawn out and lengthy debates between representatives over the ramifications they could potentially pose.

Available time being constrained, these edits to the bylaws were tabled for further discussion at a later SG meeting.