Hi everyone!  Hope you all had a great week.  Mine was quite full, as you can tell by this slide. 

First, on Thursday of last week, I was able to attend the Ohio University Board of Trustees Finance Committee meeting and the Student Life Committee meeting.  I met Trustee Dewire before the meeting began and he asked me to give an impromptu presentation about Student Senate’s goals for the year to the committee.  I was ecstatic to do so, and the four goals I expressed were budget transparency (helping students be able to easily access information about how every dollar of their tuition and general fee are being spent), including students in real shared-governance, helping to create a sense of community (with activities like Party Smart) and establishing student expectations of themselves as Ohio students and of the university, and finally, looking closely at retention rates and what we can do to improve them.  You might be happy, and maybe even surprised to hear that Faculty Senate expressed very similar concerns in their reports including retention rates of faculty, shared governance, expectations and time demands, and transparency in decision making at the university

Commissioner Heery, VP Crites and I attended a meeting with two representative from the Faculty Senate committee EPSA, and I’ll refer you to Commissioner Heery’s report for more information about what I thought was an excellent meeting.

This weekend I was a judge for the Homecoming parade and a judge for the Omega Mouth competition.  Congrats to the winners! 

I also went to a meeting discussing the current and potential standards placed on Greek Organizations.

I enjoyed visiting and speaking at the Town Hall meeting on Monday.  Some interesting perspectives were raised and some valid concerns.  On the next slide are the topics that I was present for discussion of.  As you can see, many of these issues Student Senate has been working on, and a few may need our attention, so I’ll be in contact with the Commissioners that these issues might be pertinent to.

At the Council of Student Leaders lunch yesterday we discussed retention rates and the rather poor quality of academic advising in many colleges at the university.  I applaud the Student Senate for feeling the pulse of the retention problem early this quarter and beginning work to combat it.

Also, on the topics of congrats.  Thanks to the Off-Campus Life Commission for their hard work on Party Smart! yesterday.  Great job.  Today, I went to a press conference between Mayor Abel and Pres. McDavis about the upcoming Halloween weekend.  They, too, congratulated the efforts of Party Smart to reach students and provide an avenue for information about rights and responsibilities.  Not much will change from the city management perspective for this year’s Halloween, except 50 usually volunteer police officers will be paid for their services this year. 

Also today I had lunch with Faculty Senate Chair Phyllis Bernt, Administrative Senate Chair Wendy Merb-Brown, and Classified Senate Chair Gail Houlette

We talked about the communication gap that seems to exist between the top level administrators and us as the constituent group leaders.  We’re all meeting with Pres. McDavis, Provost Krendl, and VP Decatur this Monday to talk about our concerns and brainstorm ways to fix them.  We also discussed two new standing committees.  I know that the Senate supports a standing committee on safety because of a resolution we passed last year, and we had another committee idea that I’d appreciate the consideration of you all.  The proposed committee is a standing committee on interdisciplinary studies across the university, and the proposal called for 17 members, 10 of which are faculty, 2 students (one undergrad and one grad).  I’ve got more information, if anyone would like to discuss this after the meeting.

Finally, Commissioner Vonville, President Barbato of GSS, and I have been looking into the Master Plan committee the last few weeks, and got some answers today!  I round-about invited myself to a meeting today led by campus planners Pam Callahan and John Kotowski to the president, provost, and VP for finance about the Master Planning Report.  A new committee similar in set-up and power to the Budget Planning Council will be formed and convened this month.  I and Pres. Barbato will be sitting on the committee, and I’ll update you with progress as soon I get it.