Each week, Student Senate President Caitlin Hoffman will summarize what happens during Student Senate meetings. This is a condensed version of the meeting minutes.
Caitlin Hoffman | Student Senate President
I just wanted to give you a few quick words from our meeting on Thursday (the 27th) evening. I know many of you have felt a communication divide between Student Senate and you as a student body, so we are hoping this address every week helps with that!
We were lucky enough to have President Moore visit this week and he talked about two important subjects. He told us the Vice President of Student Affairs search is going well. He noted that our candidate pool is down from 30+ applicants to 6 interviewees. Said interviews will begin next week. He also discussed the topic of the week: tuition. He was slightly frustrated because many students are using the phrase, “I am paying 40,000 a year to go to school here…” when most aren’t actually paying near that full amount. He and his team do their best to make sure the cost stays as affordable as possible. He noted that most of our students receive aid and that the average BVU student cost after grant aid is $16,200. He hopes that every student finds the information easy to understand. If you have any more questions regarding tuition increases, he and his office are more than willing to answer them.
We also had Ken and Nate from Sodexo visit this week. They gave us some great dates: March 6th is Wing Night and March 9th is a Marquis Brunch – more awesome dates after that to follow! They reminded us to fill out the survey that recently went live. This is an opportunity for Sodexo to hear student opinion and they assured us that they do consider the feedback and appreciate hearing from us. They are here for us, so please give them opinions and concerns! Plus – you can win $10 in Beaver Bucks!
We ended our meeting working on proposals. Many of you have probably heard about these proposals so we are ready to share what work is being done.
1) Beaver’s Creed remodel – the Policy Advisory Committee is re-writing and reforming our Senate’s creed for the student body. More on this soon!
2) Servery hours are being discussed with Ken Allen – we have high hopes in keeping the doors open later for athletes at night and getting them opened earlier on the weekends for toast, cereal, and fruit! More on this as we work through the details.
3) The Rec Center hours are also being discussed and outlined in a proposal from one of our Senate teams. They want better weekend hours and improved accessibility. More on this one later as well.
4) The final team is writing a proposal about the Underground and how best to utilize the space. This one is still very much in preliminary stages, so please feel free to voice your thoughts and opinions on what you would like to see!
Send us a Facebook message, give us a shout-out on Twitter, talk to one of your senators and let us know what you think about the proposals we are working on. Or if you’d like to see us try for something different, we’d be happy to accommodate you!
We had a great conversation at our meeting about the best ways to reach you as a student body. We are going to continue with a letter from me each week so you know a little more about what we are doing, as well as implementing more strategies to reach you. We are excited about some new ideas and hope that you begin to feel connected to us as we finish out the year strongly!
As always, we encourage you to visit our Thursday meetings in Forum 1 at 6:00pm. We also invite you to like our Facebook page (Facebook Page Link) and to follow our Twitter, @BVUSenate to get more updates. You can access our meeting minutes and agendas on our webpage (Senate Meeting Minutes).
Graphic by Aaron Burns
