Grand Marshal Paul Ilori ’17 opened the Student Senate meeting with committee reports. Those began with Facilities and Services Chairperson Austin Miller ’17 who followed up with a meeting with Director of Public Safety Jerry Matthews. Miller is working to get Public Safety on social media and is currently looking at benchmarking for other schools in order to determine the most effective use of integrating public safety with social media. Miller noted that Matthews was greatly receptive of the proposal and Miller also plans to meet shortly with the director for strategic communications to confirm the viability of the plan.
Following Miller, Hospitality Services Advisory Committee member Joshua Thomas ’20 said that the committee is continuing benchmarking in response to the two year old petition Do Not Extend Sodexo’s Contract, and is reviewing peer institutions that employ Sodexo, their prices, other food providers, and how these data sets compare to Sodexo at Rensselaer. Student Life Committee Chairperson Justin Etzine ’18 continued by discussing his recent meeting with Assistant Vice President and Dean of Students Travis Apgar. Etzine summarized that the meeting consisted primarily in discussing Apgar’s new role in the student life portfolio and the proposed pilot program for multiple points of entry. Etzine anticipates that a pilot program can launch later in the semester, and would potentially include Barton, Hall, and Bryckwyck residence halls.
Following committee reports, curators of the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center gave a presentation to the Senate about the different arms of EMPAC and their functions throughout the year. Details of the presentation included EMPAC’s scheduling in which there is high demand on-campus for EMPAC programming as well as physical space. To conclude this presentation, the curators stated that EMPAC currently hosts 60–90 curated events, 250+ campus events and has over 525 days of residency each year, which could include multiple artists hosting events on the same day.