Student Senate met on Tuesday to focus on the possible addition of a graduate chair, which would be called vice president of graduate affairs.
The amendment to facilitate communications would provide a different viewpoint from a graduate student’s perspective and voice graduate students’ concerns.
According to the amendment’s authors, this is a necessary change because there is currently a weak connection of communication and understanding between the graduate student body and undergraduate students.
The benefit would be that possible troubles due to lack of shared experiences and understanding would be avoided in the future. Also graduates’ needs could be more adequately assessed.
Focus on communication is crucial to the perspective of the graduate members, like understanding issues such as funding and full-time student status that are difficult to understand for undergraduates.
One problem that needs to be resolved is that graduate students do not have access to the Altshuler Learning Enhancement Center (A-L.E.C.). For some graduate students, English is a second language, and they would deeply benefit from shared access to the A-L.E.C. Also this would be the first time a graduate student will hold an executive position on the student senate.
“This amendment will allow for undergraduate and graduate students to effectively work together on a level never before achieved in student senate in order to adequately represent the interests of the 4,421 graduate, professional and doctoral students who make up 44 percent of the SMU student body,” Law Senator James Miers said about the proposed amendment.
“I agree with the sentiment that graduate students need more representation on senate. However, I feel that creating a SBO position to compensate for that would be opening Pandora’s box. Historically, the undergraduate vice president controls the senate chamber. What would this vice president do?” Senator Savannah Stephens said.
A resolution concerning the extension of course drop dates was another topic discussed. The proposed plan will extend the drop date to two weeks after classes begin.
The hope is that this proposed resolution would reduce the amounts of “Ws.”
The add date is not under discussion due to the amount of class work that will be missed, however, current enrollments would be able to be dropped after the first two week period if approved.
The question of how to deal with waiting lists still needs to beworked out.
Senate also congratulated the football team for a successful 2011 to 2012 season and the women’s basketball Head Coach Rhonda Rompola.
A biking safety campaign regarding biking lanes on campus was also briefly discussed.
