Student Senate met on Wednesday evening to discuss two resolutions presented by the Judicial Council and Hall President’s Council (HPC).
Kathryn Peruski, president of the Judicial Council, presented a resolution that defines social media rules for campaigning for student government. According to Peruski, candidates are allowed to make social media accounts and pages as part of their campaign, but the amendment will require that everything, every post, tweet and video, has to be specifically approved by the Judicial Council.
This amendment tightens the procedure for campaigns from what used to be a “blanket approval” that lacked “specific rules and regulations," Peruski said.
“This change is very necessary as there was no clear cut way to deal with questions of ethics in social media previously,” she said.
Michael Wajda, chairperson for the Hall President’s Council, presented a resolution that will change the name of the “treasurer” on HPC to “finance chair.” The resolution also changes the election process for the finance chair, who will now be nominated by the co-chairs at the beginning of the term.
“We dropped the voting requirement and the term “treasurer” for consistency across the board in regards to the election of chair persons,” Wajda said. “Beyond that, we are an information disseminating body and these changes reflect on the different nature of HPC.”
Both of the resolutions were passed by the Senate.
Phil Gilroy, a student senator, presented findings from a recent study regarding DARTing procedures. Gilroy’s committee looked at prevalent issues with the DARTing system and tried to find some solutions.
“We realized that we’ve been simply tolerating the current DARTing system and class search options for a while now,” Gilroy said. “It quickly became clear to us that a change was necessary.”
According to Gilroy, common problems that students face include difficulties comparing classes side by side, difficulty finding specific college and university requirements and time constraints.
“To modernize the DARTing system as well as increase ease of use, the committee came up with the idea to enable the program to have a mock schedule planner such as Schedulizer,” Gilroy said.
Other ideas include a waitlist system to notify students when a class has an open spot, as well as more time between DARTing sections.
These preliminary ideas will work to help students in the process of registering for classes, and the Senate plans to discuss the ideas further.
