7 November 2011

Roll Call

Senators Absent: Gosa-Lewis, Hames, Kennedy, Kirkpatrick, Jackson, Coleman, Wilt, Fallon, Fishel, Nesbit

Approval of the Minutes

-Minutes from last meeting approved by acclimation.

Officer Reports

President Al-Greene – This Thursday we’re going to meet with Dean Mitchell and the people from grounds to talk about renovations we’re going to make to the pavilion. That includes possible putting in outdoor fans and then re-doing the sign and then either painting or re-staining. Also doing something with the concrete space since they took up the basketball goals, maybe we’ll add a tennis court or something I don’t know. Next Tuesday I’m going to meet with Dr. Smith about a couple of things, one being the resolution that passed last April. I spoke to someone in the attorney’s office and they changed the harassment policy to reflect the resolution but they haven’t updated the discrimination policy so that’s something that we’ll be discussing. We’ll also discuss parking in terms of housing; trying to improve that and then maybe trying to get the crosswalks in better spots. If there’s anything else you would like me to bring up just let me know.

Vice President Byrd – Next Monday are our composite pictures; it’s from 11:00 to 4:00. I have the sign-up sheet on my door in the office so you can come by and check to see what your times are or sign up for a time. Guys need to wear a blue jacket, red tie, and white shirt. Girls need to wear a tank top so you can pull down the straps for the drapes and then any jewelry that you want to wear. This Wednesday at 6:00 we are having another one of the senate meetings to discuss senate projects. We talked about a lot of them last Tuesday and we’ve gotten some started, so if you would like to be a part of that please come Wednesday at 6:00 in the SGA office and we’ll work on stuff. I would also like to introduce Garrett, who is our chair for Athletics and for PR.

Johnson – Hey I’m Garrett Johnson, I’m a sophomore and I really wanted to get into the SGA and I thought why not be on a committee. I want to show that football is not the only sport; we have a lot of other sports as well so I want to show that.

President Al-Greene – I’ll also bring a few ties on Monday so everyone has the same shade of red.

Vice President Byrd – He’ll also leave a jacket in the office as well in case someone forgets to bring one or doesn’t have one.

Treasurer Lawkis – Is anyone still interested in having social hour tonight? As you can tell I have been testing all day. If you want to go to Ollie’s or something let me know.

Attorney General Arditi – I want to thank the Governmental Affairs Committee for going to Jackson High School on Thursday. We somewhat had a good time. I just want to let everyone know that our next big thing will be our parade float we get to build for Higher Education Day. I’m also still looking for a Defense Attorney, so if you know of anyone please let me know.

Chief Justice Wolf – Under New Business I’d like for the Senate to talk about the JagTran. I got some layouts for some new routes for next fall. I’ll talk more about that in New Business.

Pro Tem Wilson- Just remember to get your office hours and keep in mind that you won’t get your stipend at the end of the semester if you don’t get your office hours.

New Business

Floor opened for discussion of Sean Moore.

Ramsey – Are we supposed to just discuss him?

Vice President Byrd – If you are completely satisfied you can certainly make a motion to appoint him.

Ramsey – Has he gone through and application and interview process?

President Al-Greene – Yes I have two people that I’m recommending for Associate Justice positions, the other one being Nicholas Frazier (who could not come tonight). He’s one of the people that would like to get involved with the first year council. I’ve talked to both of them and they are both enthusiastic about getting involved with SGA in some capacity. I’ll have Nicholas in here next week. But I’ve spoken to them both about what the job entails and what things we’ll be doing.

Moore – Hey guys my name is Sean Moore I’m trying for the Associate position. I’m a Political Science major and I deal with Constitutional Law specifically. I believe this job is right up my alley; I’m disciplinarian in my fraternity and manager at work and this is something I would be good at and enjoy doing. I’ve always wanted to go to school here since I was little and I’d be honored to have this position.

Chastain – I know one of the biggest problems we’ve had is not being able to find time and I know there will be times when you are called upon and may have to make arrangements. Will this be a problem for you?

Moore – No I mean I’m free Monday nights when ya’ll meet and 24 hours would be enough time for me to make any arrangements.

Ramsey – As Associate Justice you wouldn’t be so much a part of this SGA body; you would be more in the Judicial branch of SGA. I just wanted to clarify that.

Moore – I understand. Again, this is something I would like to do.

Senator – He did go through an application process right?

President Al-Greene – The way the Associate Justice and Defense Attorney positions work is they’re actually an appointment by the president. Generally how it works is whoever they recommend is…I’ll give my seal of approval. These are the two people who both approached me about wanting to get involved and I talked to both of them and they seemed like they wanted to get more involved with SGA so I gave them my recommendation.

Davis – You said the other one couldn’t be here because of conflicts?

President Al-Greene – He sent his resume on Friday and I wasn’t able to get in contact with him before the end of the day, so I was going to send him a message tonight about coming to the next meeting.

Ramsey – What are some of the organizations you are involved in on campus?

Moore – This past spring was the first time I really got involved with the campus, and that was with my fraternity. From there I went straight to disciplinarian. Honestly I mainly just played intramurals and studied for the first three years.

Chief Justice Wolf - You would be working with me a lot; I’m head of the Judicial Branch here and being a member of the court, like they said we do UDC hearings and those types of things. I have had to miss class multiple times and so have many of my Associates. We don’t have a set schedule like the Senate does. I just have one question for you – we do a lot with the University’s policies with things like drugs, alcohol, and academic dishonesty. How strict do you think we should be on students? Should it be a case by case type thing or just strictly by the book?

Moore – That’s a tough question. I’d say for the most part laws and rules are generally black and white; you either broke the rule or you didn’t. I understand that there are always different instances in each case, but with a group of people that’s something we could all look at it together. Honestly I would have to hear the case; it’s a general question not having heard the case previously. I guess not so much - probably by the book.

Ramsey – You mentioned that the other candidate was interested in doing FYC – this has a little more to do with that than SGA but I know we have certain bylaws that say that if you are a senator you can’t be a Chief Justice or you can’t be an Associate Justice. We would have to make sure that when we do our bylaws for FYC, we either want them to be able to do other positions or if it would just be an FYC body.

President Al-Greene – Right now there is nothing in writing about FYC in the Code of Laws or in FYC’s constitution. However you would like to address that when the legislation is completed and the program launches, whether it would be treated as a committee or something else.

Floor opened for discussion of JagTran routes.

Chief Justice Wolf – I’m talking to the head of the JagTran system and the planning for the new routes starts in January and I will be attending those meetings. Since before then I went ahead and started planning my routes that I’d like to propose and – I know it’s not very official – but there’s three routes that I would like to see happen. The first one is basically the academics route (the Blue route). You would go basically from the Student Center and only to academic buildings including Allied Health, Humanities, ILB, Laidlaw, the College of Business. Anywhere there are classrooms, that would be the only route that you take. You wouldn’t have two or three giant routes going all over campus it would just be academics and one for housing. And the third route would be strictly from the Student Center to Health Services and then to the UCOM and back. That would help take out some of the time it takes for our Blue route right now to go out of their way and then come back on campus. And I just want to get your opinions and what ya’ll would like to see because not a lot of people showed up to the JagTran meeting after the last meeting.

Bubbett – I actually talked to a couple of the Education advisors today and I could see that the main problems were with the College of Education being at the UCOM. I can’t really picture what you’re saying though.

Chief Justice Wolf – I’ll pass these maps around. The arrows point in the direction that the routes would go.

Swindle – Does the one that goes to the Student Health Center, does it stop by the Allied Health building?

Chief Justice Wolf – No it would be strictly Student Center, Health Services, UCOM, and back.

Swindle – Is there any way I could get a ride from that parking lot to my classes?

Ward – Are you keeping the Red route?

Wolf – The Red route will be incorporated into the academics route.

President Al-Greene – Basically what we were trying to do with this was to have a route that picks you up in housing and drops you off at a main point on campus, and then you have the ones that take you to the different buildings on campus, and then a third route that goes to the outlying buildings. We feel that the way it is now – with 27 stops on campus- is kind of inefficient, especially with mid day traffic.

Fornoff – Is the Student Center going to be open next semester? I know it’s undergoing renovations.

Dean Mitchell – The food court will open in January but the Student Center itself will probably be closed for another year and a half.

Fornoff – Well tit would make sense for the Student Center to be the main hub if it was open, but if it won’t be open next semester is that the best place?

Vice President Byrd – In my opinion it is, just because it’s right there in Central Parking. So it’s kind of like dead in the center; it’s not necessarily that it’s the Student Center but that it’s the center of the campus.

Chastain – And also these won’t take effect until next fall, correct?

Chief Justice Wolf – Right this will not take effect until next fall.

President Al-Greene – And I would imagine that once the food court opens a lot more people will be in that area between there and the Humanities building.

Bubbett – Would they be open to taking out some of the stops? Because I know that when they get to housing, I’m not sure they need to take all that time for the different stops.

Chief Justice Wolf – Again, in the meetings in January we will be evaluating the traffic that’s used for each route and some stops will be taken out and some will be added in. A year ago the Tan route was taken out which ran to ILB the back way, and that was taken out because it didn’t have a lot of traffic.

Gayton – Is there any way that they could stop stopping when there’s no one at the stop?

Chief Justice Wolf – There are laws that the JagTrans have to obey. I can bring it up but I’m not sure if they can do anything about that.

Gayton – And also the chatting while the drivers are switching out takes a lot of time.

Chief Justice Wolf – Yes I’ll make a note about that.

Reeves – Do you have plans for the Grove?

Chief Justice Wolf – Yeah that was an issue too, it would probably be a separate route straight from the Student Center to the Grove.

President Al-Greene – I would like to see the new apartments opening up across from the UCOM being incorporated as well, maybe getting a WAVE bus.

Fornoff – Is there a way to contact the Jag Tran drivers? If five or six people were waiting at a stop maybe they could call a number or something or a button to press to show that we’re waiting?

Vice President Byrd – Well they have a route they have to follow; they can’t just be going zig-zag around campus.

Fornoff – Yeah but maybe it would speed up the waiting a little bit.

Dean Mitchell – All the routes are designed so that there are a number of buses on each route, so that there should only be seven minutes in between each bus. So it’s designed to basically be on a seven minute interval. I think the question is more about if you’re waiting at a stop, you’re not really sure where you are on that seven minute interval. A lot of students have asked if there was a way to tell when the next bus was coming so they could decide to wait or not.

Treasurer Lawkis – At Mississippi State all their JagTrans have GPS systems in them and there’s a digital map in their student center to see where each bus is on that route. If that’s not included in the Student Center’s renovations maybe it would be a cool senate project.

President Al-Greene – We’ve talked to the JagTran people about that before, and to buy that system it would be $700,000 and $100,000 per year to maintain. One thing we’ve talked about is maybe getting with the Engineering Department and getting their students to design something similar to that.

Senator Ramsey – I know last year Troy Shephard talked about getting with CIS or Engineering to use this as a senior project to make some sort of homegrown system like this. I’m not a CIS major so I don’t know how feasible a project like that would be. I don’t know how far Troy got with that project last year but maybe we should do some consulting to find out if this would be a reasonable project.

Tevepaugh – When I went to the STAT meeting the other day they were talking this, and they said that in other schools you can go to an app on your phone to see where the buses are on the route. If that’s not too expensive I feel like that would be a great idea.

Vice President Byrd – Yeah at Alabama they have that and it’s pretty cool. But I think we need to make sure whatever we do is cost effective.

Reeves – I know that at Auburn they have a route that runs until 2:30, and then after that it’s call to tell them where you are and they will come pick you up. I know you said they have laws but maybe they could amend a bylaw or something.

Chief Justice Wolf – We do have a late route that runs thorough Housing until I believe 9:00.

Reeves – Yeah I know there’s a late route but wouldn’t it be more feasible if there were maybe three buses on call and just have them moving when there’s people that need to be moved.

Chief Justice Wolf – Yeah but they would have to pay for that gas for that time period and pay the driver and someone in the office so…it all depends on the cost.

Purnell – Maybe we could set up a system that, when a JagTran departs from a stop, it could activate a seven-minute timer displayed in the stop that could count down from there.

Vice President Byrd – Yeah they actually had those in Madrid this summer and it was really nice to have when you were waiting for the subway. Yeah when we went to Auburn for the college tour they had a similar system. I just don’t know how much that would cost.

Fornoff – I know radios are being used for communication between drivers, so maybe we could put in speakers at the stops so students could hear what was being said on the radios. That would probably be the simplest way to do it.

Chief Justice Wolf – A lot of what they say is code and it’s not always very clear what they say. Again, I can propose all this and see what they say.

Bubbett – Maybe we could just offer this project to the Engineering Department and see what they come up with. That way we could get a better cost estimate.

Adams – The capstone projects that the Engineering students do are in the fall. We could get a group of students to put in nine months for it, but it would have to start next fall.

Weatherly – The timer idea is good, but I’ve waited thirty minutes for a bus before, so the timer might make students a little more hostile toward the drivers.

Vice President Byrd – Yeah and they’ll ride the routes to make sure they can be done in seven minutes. And also what ya’ll said about the talking in between changing drivers, that does hold people up.

Purnell – I guess find out how much time is between each stop and set the timer accordingly.

President Al-Greene – We’ve had a lot of good ideas. I think we should pick a day that we ride the JagTrans around and see what is efficient and what isn’t. Then after we get some observations we can come back and say what we want to change. I encourage everyone to use that time to brainstorm so we can talk about it again later.

Vice President Byrd – For those of you that really want to do something about this, be sure to come to the meetings with Coleman. It’s also easier to brainstorm in smaller groups.

Floor closed for discussion of JagTran routes.

Ramsey – Point of inquiry about the SGA Pavilion: how long has it been and do they expect us to put up the initial cost?

Treasurer Lawkis – From what I understand they had some money left over about six years ago and they said if they didn’t spend it then it would be taken away. So that’s kind of why you have an SGA Pavilion. But it definitely needs a facelift.

Vice President Byrd - We’re meeting Thursday at 2:00 to talk about things like that.

Sean Moore was confirmed as Associate Justice with the following abstentions: Mitchell, Alvey, Weatherly, Maxime, Berryhill and was sworn into office.

Announcements

McDonald – I just wanted to thank everyone who contributed to Songfest and shout out to Chief Justice Wolf for being Senator Tevepaugh and I’s favorite performer.

Attorney General Jean-Pierre Arditi - I need to see the Governmental Affairs Committee after the meeting.

Purnell – I just wanted to thank everyone who helped with our trip to Jackson last week.

Chastain – There’s going to be a survey going out to all the Allied Health majors in the next week so please participate.

Pittman – McBingo for Panhellinic Council is tomorrow night at 7:00 in the sorority commons and they would greatly appreciate your participation.

Adjourn