Student Senate met for their weekly meeting Thursday, November 17 at 3:45 p.m. in Hoover 212.
The meeting did not run to the traditional agenda with the order of new business being the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) meeting.
Class of 2025 Representative Alexa Scheetz served as the moderator of the meeting. Scheetz’s role as the moderator was to ensure that each topic of the meeting was not taking up more time than allotted. The five topics of the meeting were: diversity, equity and belonging (DEB); Dining Services; academics; finances; and student life.
There was extra time at the end of these topics to allow the general student body to ask questions that were not pre-submitted.
Starting with the DEB topic section, a prominent question asked was regarding the diversity training that professors receive. It was explained that the training that the professors receive takes place in a variety of different forms.
Along with that, adjunct professors are also required to take the same diversity training as full time faculty.
The Americans with Disability Act (ADA) was also a topic of questioning with how the school is working to improve it. A highlighted building was the upcoming Royer Residences hall being renovated which will include more ADA accessible rooms and bathrooms.
Moving into the Dining Services topic, pre-submitted questions were slightly altered due to the announcement earlier that day that the starting wage for dining services employees will be $14.25 per hour.
SLT was able to confirm that the $14.25 starting rate will not be changing even if they do receive enough student employees.
They recognize that working in Dining Services requires students to be working for the entirety of the shift whereas other jobs may allow students to complete homework when there is no work to complete. Therefore, it was important for the school to recognize this through the pay scale adjustment.
Dining Services will also be working to put a committee together to get better input on how to improve the Dining Services across campus. This committee will be looking for a student representative, with more information to be released soon.
Moving into the academic topic, a question of prominence is if there are any programs in danger of being cut, in which SLT said there are none at the moment.
Moving into the topic of student life, many questions surrounded how will the school work to accommodate the growing incoming classes that come to the school every year, even with the graduating class being significantly smaller.
No clear answer was given as to how the school is and or will be working to do this.
For housing, it was asked because Royer will be reopening as another dorm building, will there be any more Independent Living Units (ILUs) being built to accommodate more upperclassmen to get into them, in which there are no plans to extend the ILU selection.
Student Senate meets weekly on Thursday at 3:45 p.m. in Hoover 212. The last meeting of the semester will be held Dec. 2. Meetings are open to all the campus community.
