senate
Internet & Technology Updates via CS40
Hello everyone,
As a Liaison to Congress of the South 40, I receive the minutes from meetings of the Resident Student Advisory Board (RSAB). RSAB is composed of the College Council Presidents, Hannah Bowling the Speaker of CS40, and Dean Justin Carroll - Associate Vice Chancellor for Students. Similar to some Senate meetings, they bring in administrators to have conversations about issues facing students and their experience at WU.
This past Tuesday, RSAB met with Barb Braun, the Director of Student Technology Services (STS) to speak about the current state of technology and many of the issues we have been running into this year. Below are the minutes from this meeting courtesy of Hannah Bowling.
For more information, please feel free to email Hannah cs40speaker@wustl.edu.
RSAB Minutes
Meeting with Barb Braun –Student Technology Services
November 16, 2009
Attending: Steven Perlberg (WGE), Maanasa Bandla (RuSoFo), Julia Greenberger (HIGE), Lindsey Zhang (Brookings), Paul Dohmen (JKL), Nicole Adesman (Wayman Crow), Diana Chu (Park/Mudd), Tricia Yeh (Lee Beau), Mark Bigg (LK), Chrystal Okonta (NSA), Hannah Bowling (Speaker), Dean Carroll
STS Overview:
Current Major Project:
I) Printingà waste reduction
A) Costly in terms of both financial and environmental resources
B) Goal to make people more aware and more accountable for their usage
II) Last week’s printing (81,000 sheets)
A) Last year: full semester: 250,000 sheets used total
B) Currently an increase in printing
C) Can access how much saved through Paper Cut System
a) Must actually release the printing at a station by the printer
b) Saved 3500 sheets last week
D) Next step:
a) Possible contact ‘heavy printers’ – can see the top 10 printers
(1) Not a punishment, but to raise their awareness
Student Technology Advisory Committee
I) Born last April
A) Takes the place of an old SU group
B) 8 members: 4 at large members who apply, 4 appointed by various student groups (CS40, SU, NSA, Greeks)
II) Goal: ‘technology done with you rather than for you”
A) Current student e-mail pilot project
a) Live@edu: Microsoft Project
Wireless Issues
I) Survey Results
A) Problems were ‘everywhere’ on the 40
B) Almost 900 students responded-largest response to a STC survey ever
C) Reports supported ad hoc comments about issues mostly occurring after 5 pm
a) Contact STS if you’re in a corner suite with dead spots-tell Building/Floor/nearest closet/nearest door/time of issue
D) Some of the issues come from the massive increase in students with smartphones like blackberries or iphones----they pull on WUFI
a) Previously: around 4000 registered devices, now around 12,000
b) Idea about there being more freshmen that are using the wireless and causing the issues: false!
II) Actually controlled by “Network Services”
III) 2 weeks ago: “opened up the bandwidth”
A) Previously: at all times half the bandwidth went to Danforth Campus, half to STS users
a) Now: after 5 pm, all bandwidth (except that being used by university researchers) will be directed to residential areas
B) Recent contract for more that will “very substantially” increase available bandwidth
a) Likely contracts will be signed by 2nd semester, aren’t yet allowed to tell how much will be added
IV) Library
A) Have recently added more Access Points
Suggestions/Final Comments:
I) Residents paying for printing in the future
A) Undetermined, isn’t under STS’s job description
B) Eads decision is under ArtSci’s purview
II) Suggestion
A) Make students able to see the number of pages they’ve printed this year and what that means in terms of carbon output.
Again, if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below or email myself (novickj@wustl.edu) or Hannah Bowling (cs40speaker@wustl.edu).
Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!
WUPD Chief Don Strom to Discuss Racial Profiling at SU Senate this Wednesday @ 9PM
This Wednesday, Senate will be joined by WUPD Chief Don Strom to discuss racial profiling and any improvements that can be made on campus. Please come and share your thoughts on the issue, and we hope to see you there!
We'll also vote on the executives' recommendation for VP of Programming, which will be announced soon. Our full agenda for Wednesday night is attached below.
SU Calls to Rename the Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization, New Senators Inducted, and Senate Internal Elections
Last night, SU Senate unanimously passed a resolution advocated for the renaming of the University's Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization, which is attached below. Thank you to all the students who came out to show your passion and support, and moving forward we aspire to continue addressing issues that are of such great interest to you.
Senate also inducted 12 senators for the new term, 7 of which are new to Senate (denoted with a *):
Architecture - Taylor Epskamp*
Art - Kelsey Eng
Arts & Sciences - Ross Passo*, Mamatha Challa, Alex Cooper*, Michael Post, Dan Robinson*, Eric Schwartz, Jacqui Germain*
Business - Jason Yakabu
Engineering - Pat Kelly*, Cody Katz*
Finally, Senate held our internal elections for this new term last night:
Speaker of the Senate - Chase Sackett
Academic Affairs Committee Chair - Michelle Chen
Campus Services Committee Chair - Liz Jordan
University Initiatives Committee Chair - Kirsten Miller
Thank you again to everyone who came last night, and please let us know however we can help you with an issue on campus! As a preview, next week WUPD Chief Don Strom will be coming to our meeting and discussing ways to address the issue of racial profiling on campus.
Liaison Meeting with Art Ackermann- Bikes on Campus!
Hey everyone! My name is Mamatha Challa, and I'm in the College of Arts and Sciences. Currently, I am serving as a senator on Student Union, and I work on SU Senate’s “University Initiatives” Committee.
On October 30th, I had a wonderful meeting with my assigned Administrator, Mr. Art Ackermann. Art Ackermann is the Associate Vice Chancellor for Facilities Planning and Management. Our conversation focused on two main topics: making the Danforth campus more bike-friendly, and the idea of implementing a bicycle sharing system on campus.
Bike-Friendly Pathways/Docks
In case you don’t know, our Administration is currently in the middle of a large initiative to make the Danforth Campus more bike-friendly. In our meeting, Mr. Ackermann discussed many plans related to this initiative. Examples of projects that the Administration is considering are separated rider and pedestrian pathways, specific bicycle parking docks strategically located around campus, and teaming up with the “Great Rivers Greenway.” Part of Great Rivers Greenway’s mission is to interconnect St. Louis with one long bicycle path, and our University is considering helping out by placing a part of the City’s bicycle path through the Danforth campus.
Implementing a University-recognized Bicycle-Sharing Program on Campus
After hearing all this fascinating news about our school’s current movement towards increasing and maintaining bicycle usage on campus, I was incredibly excited to present Mr. Ackermann with our idea of implementing a bike-sharing program on campus. Bike sharing systems are systems where a fleet of bicycles is available at a network of unattended stations for short-term use. Currently, our committee would consider strategically placing Bike Share docks at locations that have a lot of bicycle traffic, such as the DUC, the South 40, and the Sam Fox School. Students would be able to access a bicycle at a station by either keying in or swiping their campus card. Then, the student could use that bike to travel to another station on-campus. After dropping off the bike at that station, any other student would be able to access it.
Mr. Ackermann seemed interested to learn more about the idea, and is going to be contacting one of the company’s that we proposed as a system supplier. In return, he asked for our committee to get him more information on how exactly bike-sharing systems work on other college campuses. Our next step will be contacting other universities with these types of programs, in order to get student testimonials about the true quality of these systems on campuses, as well as to get any extra advice. Additionally, our committee is putting together a student survey, which will help gauge the amount of student interest there is in SU working to implement such a system. I’ll be meeting with Mr. Ackermann in two weeks, and he’s also asked Liz Kramer (who works on Sustainability issues for the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor of Administration) to help out. Our hope, as of right now, is to use all this information and discussion in order to properly implement some sort of pilot program in the future.
That’s it for now! If you are even remotely interested in this topic, have some suggestions, or would like to learn more, feel free to comment/email me and let me know!
Thanks!
-Mamatha Challa
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