SGA Kicks Off 2020 Spring Semester

This past Thursday, Feb. 6th in the Atkinson room located in the Lane University Center the Student Government Association held it’s first meeting of the Spring 2020 semester.

The meeting began with the swearing-in of new senators for the Spring 2020 semester.

Immediately afterward, the session was given to President Nowaczyk and the newly appointed Vice President of Student Affairs Dr. Artie Lee Travis for a 30-minute information meeting in regards to an abhorrent video that was posted by a University student within the past week. For coverage of the video, click here.

After the session regarding the video ended, Associate Registrar, Dr. Mike Methias gave an update in regards to the student complaint process, student academic integrity, and the general education program. Dr. Mathias had much to say about these topics, “With respect to student complaints, academic affairs and student affairs are working together to do a comprehensive review of our policies and processes relating to student complaints. We want to ensure that we have a clear mechanism that students can utilize to report complaints and we have fair processes for reviewing and resolving complaints.”

“Academic integrity is an institution value. How do we ensure that it is understood and lived by our students, faculty, and staff? We will be sure to keep you up to date as that moves forward,” he continued. “We are in the middle of a comprehensive revision of our general education program. Last year we had a tremendous amount of information from all members of the campus community. We received about 400 survey responses from students. We had three focus groups for different student constituencies. We had a town hall for students as well so again student voices were heard.”

Next in the Agenda came an announcement from President Puffinburger in regards to the Frostburg First Survey.

“We sent a student email out late earlier this week. Frostburg First is a group of leaders in the community who really try to ensure the campus is connected to the community that Main Street is a place people want to be and downtown Frostburg is the popping downtown district that we want it to be,” she said.  “Your  answers will be heard and seen by Frostburg First Leaders.”

Next in the Agenda came the HB245:Student Voter Empowerment Act of 2020. Vice President Benjamin Forest said, “It would change a lot of mandates for the state institutions. That’s not just system institutions that include St. Mary’s College of Maryland and Morgan State as well. It’s an attempt to increase student voter participation, student voter turnout, student voter engagement. Things like that. Some of the things it would do would require the state board of elections to establish a polling place at the university. It would require the university to allow students to miss class on primary and general election days to vote.”

Vice President Forest continued on with the second bill noting, “That would just change some display and recording requirements to make more accessible resources on free and low-cost textbooks.” Vice President Forest went on to mention both of these house bills are something SGA would like to be involved in.

Then, came the old business of resolutions 14-2019 Chair of Diversity & Inclusion Committee and Resolution 1-2019 Additional Seats on the Senate. Both of these resolutions were passed unanimously.

Event funding was the next item on the senate agenda for the evening. The only student organization that requested funding this session was the Geography Club in the sum of $883.04 to cover the cost of hotels to Attend the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting from April 6th to April 10th in Denver, Colorado. The funding packet passed unanimously.