From the president

I hope everyone had a pleasant Thanksgiving. The semester has almost ended, and I want to thank you all for reading these columns and being involved. One of our last big projects of this semester is our fight to change the VCU Fight Song. The current fight song was composed in a music theory class several years ago. Currently, the Student Senate Publicity Committee is consulting with the VCU Athletics Department and we’re discussing the idea of having a fight song composition contest during homecoming week. The VCU fight song can be found on the VCU Web site. E-mail Executive Director Kaitlin Bowles at sgaexecdir@vcu.edu to voice your opinions about whether or not we should try to revamp the VCU fight song.

Listen to the Ram fight song!
www.vcu.edu/vcurams/ra/omg/fightsong.ram

At last week’s senate meeting they passed two bills and elected a new Student Life Committee Chair. The Simpler SGA Act was passed. This bill renames certain SGA positions to make them more intuitive and easier to understand. The second bill was the Students’ Decree. This bill supports voting rights for students in the cities that they attend school. The bill passed, although some senators disagreed with the proposal. This bill is being voted on in student senates across the state and will eventually go before the Virginia General Assembly for approval.

The newest bill that is under discussion is the VCU Freedom Act. The VCU Freedom Act proposes that Veterans Day and Freedom Day should be observed by the university with some kind of activities and events on these days. While Veterans Day is pretty well known, National Freedom Day is not as familiar. Freedom Day is observed on Feb. 1 and commemorates the fall of the Berlin Wall. The VCU Freedom Act urges VCU to observe the days with activities on campus.

The student senate heard a presentation Nov. 27 from MyRegistry.com. This vendor wants to create a customized online VCU registry system for students so they can add items they want people to buy for them and allow friends and family to access this registry through the VCU Web site and easily purchase these things. VCU is the first school to consider such a program and MyRegistry.com is offering to share a portion of the profits with VCU. Do you think this is a good idea? E-mail your thoughts to sgasenate@vcu.edu.

A couple of weeks ago, several fire alarms went off in residence halls at VCU. I want to remind students that pulling fire alarms as a prank is a crime in Virginia and has very serious ramifications. The alarms caused much confusion and inconvenience to students in these residence halls because some of them were at very early hours.

On Wednesday, SGA members, myself included, met with Willie B. Fuller, chief of University Police. Issues discussed included evaluating the campus emergency phones, increasing parking deck patrols and the safety issues at the Floyd Avenue crosswalk. Other issues included the escort service reform, increasing lighting on campus and larceny issues. The SGA meets with Chief Fuller about every two weeks to discuss student safety concerns. If you have any concerns that you’d like us to bring to Chief Fuller’s attention, e-mail me at sgapresident@vcu.edu.