Student Union

Dear Student Group Leaders:

If your group is interested in bringing an Assembly Series speaker to campus for the spring semester, please go to http://su.wustl.edu/assembly-series-speaker-application to apply. All applications must be submitted by October 1, 2009.

As you may recall, we have developed a new process for bringing Assembly Series speakers to campus beginning in the Spring 2010 semester. First, the Assembly Series Committee will review each application and recommend to Treasury those that meet the appropriate criteria. Treasury will then consider applications recommended by the Assembly Series Committee for funding from a special $100,000 Assembly Series Speakers appeals account. 

This new process only applies to Assembly Series speakers. Appeals other types of programming will continue to go through the normal Treasury appeals process.

If you want to know more about the new process for Assembly Series speakers, please go to http://su.wustl.edu/blog/proposed-changes-to-the-funding-of-speakers. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Speaker of the Treasury, Neehar Garg, at treasury@su.wustl.edu

Today, I am happy to announce that we have established a new feature on the Student Union website called Open Forum.

Open Forum is simply a message board where anyone can create topics and respond to others. The concept is by no means novel on the internet; however, we hope that Open Forum creates a new level of discussion and interaction among members of the Wash. U. community.

Students have done a great job of providing feedback to Student Union officers via comments on their blog posts. Now each student will be empowered to start a conversation of their own and get feedback from other students, SU representatives and Wash. U. administrators through Open Forum.

To access Open Forum, go to http://su.wustl.edu/open-forum or click the right-most button on the main navigation bar at the top of the website.

We really hope students take advantage of the Open Forum feature. If students consistenly come to the site to have discussions about ways to improve our community then we will all benefit. If you have questions or suggestions, please don't hesistate to let us know.

The Community Service Office is continuing its annual Wellston Summer Program with the leadership of sophomore Victoria Williams. Victoria is working with 15 students from the Wellston school district to implement a student government structure in their high school.

Victoria has asked a number of Student Union leaders to share their experiences and help the students develop a comprehensive student government program. In particular, Sophomore Class President, Morgan Debaun has worked with the group to reflect on her own experiences in high school and college student government.

On July 2nd I had the opportunity to sit on a panel with other Student Union leaders to talk about my experiences and field questions from the Wellson students. They are a very energetic group and I'm excited for the new student government they are going to create at their school.

They have set up a structure that focuses on three areas: Helping Hands & Services, Social Life, and School Improvement. Each of these structures has 5 representatives and 1 Vice President. In addition to those representatives a President, Secretary and Treasurer is elected.

The Wellston students are really focused on improving their school by uniting students to form a cohesive community. Much of their work mirrors what we need to do in Student Union, and I wish them the best.

For more information about the program, please visit http://www.communityservice.wustl.edu/wellston/

Trevor Mattea, Neehar Garg, Nate Ferguson and I received a tour of the temporary dining space in the new Wohl Center on June 23rd. The space is still under construction, but is progressing rapidly. The old Wohl Center has been completely removed. The land will be cleared in about a week and construction will begin on phase 2 of the new Wohl Center. Below are pictures from our tour. Credit goes to Rick Turner from Dining Services for taking the photos and to Trevor Mattea for uploading them to the internet.

Old Wohl: Remains from the old Wohl Center.

This blog post is a response to the Student Life editorial published in the Wednesday, April 15, 2009 issue.

I am very happy that the Student Life editorial board wrote about the Student Union budget in the April 15th issue. While the editorial contribute to a necessary dialogue about the budget, its criticisms are based on infactual information.

First, the editorial suggests that since we are not buying the backpage from Student Life at a cost of over $22,000, we are taking away the ability of student groups to publicize their events. First, Student Union will support student group publicity in a number of ways next year including an all-school calendar, the Student Union website, flyers, and magic box screens around campus at no additional charge.

The Student Email Group met on Friday (4/10) to recieve the responses to our Request for Proposals (RFP) from various vendors. 5 vendors have responded to the RFP, including Microft (Live@Edu) and Salvair (on behalf of Google for the Education and Primier edition of Google Apps). We are also expecting a few more responses to trickle in over the next week.

The goal of the Montana administration is to give student groups more financial resources to plan bigger and better events in a manner that is both strategic and characterized by a vision of the benefits for the greater Wash. U. community. To this end, we are proposing to change the process by which student groups bring speakers to campus.

GOAL

To improve student email while saving money at the same time. The University should provide email accounts to students with the following features:

1. name@wustl.edu email address
2. Increased storage space
3. Integrated document repository
4. Integrated and shareable calendar
5. Minimal or no cost to the University to provide
6. Integration with the WUSTL Key
7. No 3rd party advertisements for student email accounts