Students may have an additional two weeks in fall 2005 to add or drop their courses if the VCU administration approves the measure the SGA drafted Monday.
“I was really pleased with the Senate’s decision when they voted for our bill,” said Jithin Veer, one of the sponsors. “It’s really great for students and hopefully it can be taken to the administration to extend it more.”
Veer said he and the SGA’s Student Services Committee in fall 2004 surveyed VCU students and found that 77 percent of the respondents favored the bill, while 80 percent said they had withdrawn from one or more courses but would have considered not dropping the course if a two-week period were provided.
“Last semester we drafted up research about what students want. We had a total of 300 surveys and got 196 back,” Veer said. “I think it’s a great bill, I know some concerns are what other universities similar to VCU are doing. Other universities already have a two-week drop period.”
Veer pointed out that negative and positive issues about the bill still exist.
“Faculty members can bring up issues of costs, refunds for students and reimbursements,” he said. “If you extend the add-drop period, some professors who have to add new students after two weeks may get headaches trying to catch other students up.”
Sen. Tin-Htut Myint told the senators he believes this bill will benefit VCU students.
“I believe this bill is really necessary,” Myint said. “One week is really short. Two weeks is a good amount of time for VCU students.”
In other business Monday, senators voted on the SGA’s Leadership Accountability Act. That act called for changing the SGA’s Web site to allow students to obtain relevant information about the current and past activities of SGA’s elected officials.
Sens. Getty Chowdhury, Emad Maghsoudi and Jean Lin drafted the bill to tighten the communication gap between the SGA and the student population. Mark Brewster, special assistant to external affairs, also patroned the bill.
This academic year the SGA has tried to improve the student government, Sen. Maghsoudi said.
“What we are trying to do with this bill is make a law that requires certain information to be put up on our Web site from each branch,” he said. “Next time if you want to know what senators are doing, students can access the Web site.”
Maghsoudi further explained that the Web site will show meetings that the senators attended, their profiles, committee reports, as well as the bills they voted on and sponsored.
“It will also show what their voting records are,” he said. “It is important for students to have access to information about their elected officials. “We all thought this was a problem that needed to be addressed. We’re trying to move the SGA into an electronic age.”
In all, 26 Senators voted for the SGA Accountability Act, and seven abstained. Maghsoudi said that the Web site will be implemented sometime after spring break.
As for the add-drop measure sponsored by Sens. Ali Khan, Hoda Eydgahi and Veer, the Senate unanimously approved it.