Student Government passed a finance bill Tuesday night to use nearly $6,000 for new tables and chairs for Middleton Library.
Even though Thomas Rodgers, director of academic affairs, said Middleton normally purchases its own equipment, 93 percent of Senate voted to use $5,887.25 from its surplus account to provide Middleton with new equipment.
“The library would normally fund that out of their general fund, but currently they are under a spending freeze and they cannot spend any money essentially that wasn’t already [in the] operating cost,” Rodgers said.
Students are always looking to see how SG is helping them, said Karla Frias, an environmental engineer senior who wrote the bill. Frias said if they see how SG supported the library, students will acknowledge that SG is doing more than purchasing computers.
“I looked up a couple of statistics on how many people go there and it said 3,000 to 4,000 during the normal school year, and 6,000 to 7,000 during finals and midterm, so that’s a very big increase, so we hope that these tables and chairs are going to make it a lot easier for people to find space to study,” Frias said.
Currently, Middleton has empty space on the first floor by the Community Coffee Shop since the removal of several shelves in that area, according to the bill. Frias said Middleton could use the new space to provide study areas for students, especially with the large increase of freshman added.
Rodgers updated the Senate on the status of Faculty Senate’s proposal to create a plus/minus grading system at the University. Still in opposition to the proposal, Rodgers evaluated the Faculty Senate’s Ad Hoc Committee report that was shared with students via email and found several issues with the types of institutions they were compared to. He also said the data used was from anonymous sources.
“In our opinion, it wasn’t legitimate, and I also heard that from faculty members,” Rodgers said.
Rodgers said he plans to write a lengthy report to outline SG’s position on plus/minus grading that will review the benefits and consequences of the grading system.
Senate also approved two resolutions to thank the University community’s response to Hurricane Issac and to the bomb threat.
