Student Government awarded $16,000 for the creation of new service-learning classes and rehashed several old issues Wednesday night in its last meeting of the semester.
A bill to allocate $16,000 from the Senate Surplus account to fund the establishment of eight new service-learning courses passed with an overwhelming majority.
The money will be used as a stipend for faculty who enroll in the Center for Community Engagement, Learning and Leadership’s Faculty Scholars programs, where they will learn how to establish and run a service-learning course, according to Marybeth Lima, director of CCELL.
The money, combined with funds remaining from an allocation made in May, will allow CCELL to bring service-learning courses to animal science, electrical and computer engineering, finance, information systems and decision sciences, international studies, philosophy, psychology, mass communication concentrations advertising and journalism, and mechanical engineering, according to Lima. CCELL would like to bring service-learning to every department, Lima said.
Some debate occurred whether to take the money from the Senate Surplus account or the Senate Initiatives account. SG President J Hudson had warned the dean of students may not sign off on the money being taken from the Surplus account, which is for one-time expenditures.
But an amendment by College of Humanities and Social Sciences Sen. David Jones to take the money from the Initiatives account, which would only require SG approval, was voted down.
Faculty Senate President Kevin Cope came to the meeting to dispel “rumors” about graduation regalia.
Cope said no change in policy had been made by Faculty Senate, but it was planning to enforce a previously-existing rule from the ’90s that does not allow students to wear cords at the main commencement ceremony.
“We are concerned with the quality of commencement overall,” Cope said. “Commencement serves many other purposes other than conferring degrees.”
Cope said commencement should be a “moment of happiness to the parents of those students and perhaps even the grandparents of those students who came through with a D+ average” and who have no cords to wear.
Cope said the Faculty Senate was looking into adding a separate “honor ceremony” to hand out awards to students either the night or in the morning before commencement.
The SG Senate also debated at length the “trinket bill,” which came up for override after being vetoed by Hudson.
“We should think about it as much more than trinkets,” said Brooksie Bonvillain, SG Senate speaker and one of the bill’s co-authors. “This opens the door for creativity.”
The veto was overridden by a vast majority.
SG also passed a concurrent resolution to urge and request the state government to protect the University from budget cuts.
 
—-
Contact Frederick Holl at [email protected]