From the president

At the senate meeting last Monday, VCU’s head librarian John Ulmschneider made a presentation about some exciting changes at Cabell library. Because SGA has been strongly advocating for better library furniture, an extra $300,000 has been allocated for furniture replacement. This means that there will be newer, better furniture in Cabell library for students to study on. This newer furniture is also more efficient so the total furniture replacements will result in 129 additional seats for student study in Cabell library! Other changes include new floor carpets and current renovations on the fourth floor of Cabell, which will include better designed study spaces.

Probably the most exiting change at Cabell library is the new Starbucks that is now open and ready for business! There was an official opening ceremony held last Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. that featured free muffins and coffee for attendees. I got a chance to make some remarks and I thanked the administration for creating such a great social space for students. The new, fully functional Starbucks has expanded hours of operation which means more coffee for students at the hours they need it!

Last Thursday, several SGA members attended customer service training sessions for the student commons Subway employees. SGA members were concerned about the rude behavior towards students. Aramark is the company that has been contracted to run the Subway and other food services offered at VCU. SGA has been working with Aramark to address the customer service issues in the commons subway and other food lines. SGA members who attended the training were student affairs director Kiffy Johnson and deputy directors Nishant Parikh and Bryan Banning. For more info, e-mail students@vcusga.com.

The most dramatic event that took place at last Monday’s student senate was the final passage of the academic bill of rights. This bill has been in and out of committee for quite some time now. Outlining proposals dealing with professor accessibility, freedom of information, academic grievance procedures and examination flexibility, the bill of rights demands that professors be fair and consistent with their students in the classroom. We want to use this academic bill of rights to increase awareness among students of what rights they already have in terms in class. We also want to expand some of these rights to empower students in the classroom to better control their academic futures.

If you are interested in learning how the academic bill of rights will affect you, you may want to attend the academic affairs committee’s student speak-out, which will feature a formal presentation of the bill of rights. The event is an open forum scheduled for Thursday at 7:00 p.m. in the Forum Room of the student Commons. Free food will be provided. Tell your friends, all of our students are welcome to come and express their opinions!

As some of you may already know, there are plans to renovate Monroe Park that are well underway. Myself, senate chair Jessica Lee, student affairs director Kiffy Johnson and student life chair Doug Allen met with the architects who’ve been hired to renovate Monroe Park this past Tuesday. We urged the architects to expand the green space in Monroe Park, so students may have more space to play recreational sports such as soccer and football. We hope that a renovated Monroe Park will provide additional recreation sports space for students so that more students can play pickup soccer and football. We also want student organizations to be able to hold outdoor events in the park.

There was a celebration for the VCU men’s basketball team on their spectacular season and NCAA tournament run. The celebration took place last Monday at 7 p.m. in the Siegel Center. Around 2,000 students and alumni came to celebrate and thank the men’s basketball team for their hard work this season. Richmond Mayor Doug Wilder attended the event and thanked the team for “putting Richmond on the map.”

As always, I strongly encourage all of you find out what SGA is doing for you on our Web site at www.vcusga.com and voice your opinions on our discussion forums at forums.vcusga.com. Feel free to contact me anytime with your questions or concerns at SGApresident@vcu.edu. Thanks for reading!