Halfway through Student Government President Colorado Robertson and Vice President Shannon Bates’ term in office, Robertson says he is still checking things off his to-do list while adding new initiatives at the same time. “You can’t just look at the push-card,” Robertson said. “We’ve been accomplishing other things, too. We should be breaking ground on the class gift over the winter break, and the marketing campaign for that will begin in the spring.”Robertson said he has also been able to save students money through the process of the Student Required Fee Advisory Committee. “We’ve been counting how much money we saved,” Robertson said. “Last year, they approved fees that were higher than the ones we approved. Some of that was because of higher enrollment numbers, but some of that is because we pushed for lower fees.”Robertson said he’s also especially proud of Middleton Library’s new extended hours. The library is open until 2 a.m., rather than closing at midnight. SG has been able to extend Campus Transit hours, establish a bus complaint hotline, open additional student access gates for football games and get debit and credit cards accepted in the Student Union Tiger Lair, Highland Dining and 459 Commons.He has also been able to extend Outtakes’ hours, and hot chocolate and doughnuts will be passed out in front of the library during finals week. Robertson said he is still working to improve campus lighting.”That was started with the lighting walk [Oct. 21],” Robertson said. “They’ve been fixing the lights we found to be broken on the lighting walking and they’ve added new ones. We’re starting on the lighting corridors.”Robertson said his biggest initiative, the 9 percent tax exemption on all textbooks, is proving to be the most time-consuming objective, but he’s making progress. “We’ve started our meetings with members of the [Baton Rouge Metropolitan Council] and the School Board president,” Robertson said. “We’ve had conversations with all the entities that have taxing authority. And we’re working on our economic impact study to see how students contribute to their community.”Robertson said the study results should be ready by the spring semester. SG’s plan to revamp the bus system is well under way, Robertson said. “The request for proposals by Mitch [Skyer, the University-hired bus consultant] has been completed, so the bidding process is about to begin,” Robertson said. “We will have a new bus contract in place for next year. It includes more efficient routes and an expansion of routes, based on the results of the surveys.”Plans are also in the works to increase the bus system’s operating hours from 29,000 to 37,000 a year — just 2,000 hours shy of what the bus system operated at before the cuts were made. Robertson said students can expect to see these changes during the spring semester. One well-received campaign promise, emergency rain ponchos, will be accomplished shortly.”They’ll be here soon — and by soon — I mean as long as it takes them to get here from China,” Robertson said in an interview with The Daily Reveille on Oct. 14. But Robertson said the ponchos had to be re-ordered and will be in before the beginning of the spring semester.Robertson said insurance issues continue to delay the process to bring a farmer’s market to campus. “We’re still stuck on the issue of insurance,” Robertson said. “We’re trying to figure out the cost of insurance so we can pass that on the farmers.”SG is working to change the current hour-based withdrawal policy to one based on year classification.Meghan Hanna, Academics, Athletics and Administration Committee chairwoman, said the SG W committee has been gathering data since early September to form their proposal.”We want to allow three Ws to be used at students’ discretion for their first two years,” Hanna said. “Then three Ws for the next two years, and one W for the remaining years.”Hanna said after looking at other Tier One and flagship universities, the W committee latched on to University of Florida’s W policy.—–Contact Katie Kennedy at [email protected]