At the January 9th meeting of the Student Government Association, former SGA president Caitlin Revene spoke about the presidential search. She serves as the student representative on the president search committee. She explained that Longwood had 124 applicants for the position.
Not only did they hire a search firm, but they also had more people apply for this position then they ever had for any other position. Revene explained that everyone came together on a committee and compiled a list of 15 candidates, which was then narrowed down to a list of nine. The nine were interviewed at an undisclosed off-campus location. They were flown in, interviewed for about an hour, and flown back out. After this process, the nine were narrowed down to four. Revene explained that they are all great candidates, but when the committee went around the table to go from nine to four, everyone but one person had picked the exact same top four. "All of these people have different backgrounds and will take a totally different approach to this position, but would all do a wonderful job," said Revene. She thinks that people are going to be really surprised when they hear where some of the candidates come from and she encourages everyone to keep an open mind because they are all definitely very qualified. Revene says that the announcement of who the candidate is should hopefully be made in March.
In other news, there were vacant positions on Judicial Board. Luke Emory and Blake Whitacre were sworn in during the meeting. Jameka Jones stepped down as greek board representative and Callie Darling was sworn into Jameka's previous position.
Due to the recent budget cuts, students in the Resident Technical Assistant (RTA) program are afraid that the program will feel the negative effects of less funding. This is a program that is of great importance to students. Cam Patterson asked the student services committee to look into the issue with the aid of Kim Redford, director of user support services.
A new bill was presented before the senate called the Student Services by Student Act of 2010. The bill makes changes to Article B Section 6, which concerns printing on campus. The bill proposes that each fiscal year $27,500 ($5 per student for 5,500 students) should be set aside from the student activity fees for the purpose of providing a balance for all students to pay for printing. These funds would be separated from all funding including but not limited to funds allocated by the student finance committee. The bill is just a proposal and no changes have yet been made.
Randy Jones from the New York Times was on campus visiting faculty members and decided to stop by the meeting. Jones said that he knew that in the past Longwood had been part of the Collegiate Readership Program. He explained that he is the contact for the New York Times and if Longwood was looking to get the New York Times back on campus that's something he could help facilitate. He also wanted to make sure the SGA was aware of the additional resources they offer. Right now, about 100 copies of the Times come to campus due to requirements from faculty. At the threshold of 200, they start to supply additional resources such as having New York City journalists come out to campus.
Also, the New York Times can sponsor projects, such as SGA initiatives. He explained that if it something that fits well with the times; this could be about civic engagement or something where Longwood would have a day in honor of an event in which we would need financial support. In this case, the New York Times could look into helping out with that. Jones explained that he could probably offer the university a pilot with half priced issues for two months to see how the paper takes off. It's fifty cents a copy (education price). Jones was simply stopping in to make a suggestion; again, nothing has been decided.
$841.72 was allocated to the women's soccer club for three tournaments.
$2400.69 was allocated to the wrestling club; $300 is for a referee for a home event and the remainder goes to tournaments.
Last semester Dr. Amos sent the SGA some questions for consideration that focused on the issue of prayer and religion. The questions came from faculty members who were interested to hear what the senate thought. The senate had a debate at the end of the fall semester. "We want to do as much as we can to create a community at Longwood that's accepting of all students, regardless of their religious background," said SGA President Cam Patterson.
The resolution suggests that the university should exclude prayer from graduation and conduct a moment of silence instead. Patterson explained that the resolution will be sent to the Office of Multicultural Affairs for further review. "I am pleased that the student government has developed a compromise for this important issue. When students come together and discuss difficult topics, they can take credit for the solutions," said Lonnie Calhoun, Director of Multicultural Affairs.
The next meeting will be held on January 26th at 3:45 in the BC room of Lankford Student Union.
