SG Update 1/19

Stacy DeRooy, Title IX coordinator at RIT, announced the upcoming release of a “student climate survey,” in which RIT students will be able to indicate how safe they feel on campus and during university activities. This survey comes as a state requirement in accordance to the "Enough is Enough" state law, which mandates a Title IX safety survey be administered at minimum once every two years. DeRooy and her department themed this upcoming survey around the Time’s Up movement and sought Student Government's (SG’s) input on design and appeal.

Next, Sara Bayerl, associate application administrator for Student Affairs, spoke about CampusGroups. Student Affairs is pushing for clubs and organizations around campus to make full use of the CampusGroups website. She stressed the number of features CampusGroups allows, with more being added periodically. Bayerl will be speaking about the subject more in-depth at the All Clubs Meeting in February.

SG President Farid Barquet, a fourth year Biotechnology and Molecular Bioscience and Biomedical Sciences double major, recently returned from the Global Consortium in Dubai. The annual conference brings together SG representatives from each of RIT’s campuses, ensuring cooperation and understanding between each branch. Barquet explained that each campus brought forward their own list of goals they had set at their own locations. Many of the global campuses looked for more merchandise availability, as well as a greater accessibility to learning ASL, both of which Barquet was more than happy to help with to his fullest capacity. Goals for the Rochester campus included greater awareness of the global campuses, more communication between them and equal-opportunity online course enrollment across each campus. Currently, Rochester students are given priority in online course enrollment and Barquet and other SG members would like to see this policy overturned.

Each campus also worked together to create a collective list of university-wide goals for SG. This list included the expansion of the One SpiRIT initiative, student entrepreneurship opportunities, a unified and easily-recognizable SG brand and greater communication and cooperation between the campuses in university-wide decisions.

SG Vice President Bobby Moakley, a third year Environmental Science major, and Kristina Owens, associate vice president of the Division of Government and Community Relations, addressed a petition on PawPrints in response to a recent accident near campus. The petition, which garnered 135 signatures, was proactively addressed by SG. SG's response stated that plans are in progress to improve the safety of roads near campus. They also explained that a safety study has been conducted on East River Road as well as other nearby roads in Henrietta, though the study has not yet been finalized. However, RIT is working closely with local government officials to improve the pedestrian safety of these roads, including plans to add a sidewalk to Farnum Lane this summer as well as extend the sidewalk on the Inner Loop.

Senate closed with the announcement that Katia Hudspeth, the former SG Women’s Senator, had to step down from her position for personal reasons. Due to the short timeframe before the next election season, SG has elected to forgo the typical election process in favor of appointing an interim Women’s Senator based largely upon Hudspeth’s recommendations and a series of interviews.