Although you don’t need to be elected to get involved with the Senate or class council, doing so will give you voting rights. Also, you can learn a lot from running a campaign. Most importantly, you will have the opportunity to meet a lot of new people. If you’re interested in running for a freshman position on a class council or the Senate you can learn more by visiting the Rules and Elections Committee (http://elections.union.rpi.edu) or Senate (http://senate.union.rpi.edu) websites. The home page for the Senate website has all of the important candidate meeting dates and dates of the primary and final elections.

There are plenty of ways to get involved without running for a position. The Senate is working on a number of projects that need more help. You can choose to work on one specific project or several. You can also attend and participate in any Senate meeting.

The Senate is making progress on several important projects. We are working side by side with the President’s cabinet and administrators to redesign the faculty advising system. As many older students know, the current advising system leaves much to be desired. We will work very hard to keep you informed of the progress and collect ideas and feedback.

The Senate will also be working on several “customer service” plans for students. For example, we will be working with students and Public Safety to identify areas for improvement in service. In addition, we’re going to develop a long term plan to ensure that students are satisfied by the level of service they are getting. Also, we will be working with Campus Planning and Facilties Design department, in charge of buildings on campus, to develop a similar plan and to let students know what they are working on.

For example, did you know that Campus Planning and Facilities Design spent thousands of dollars renovating the freshmen dorms and plan on having all of them completely renovated by the fall of 2003? Did you know that all of the upperclass dorms will be renovated by 2004 or that RPI is building a new graduate housing complex in an effort to provide housing and also to raise the bar for Troy landlords in terms of quality of living? In addition to working on the customer service plan, we are going to work to make it easy for you to access this information.

The Senate is having a barbeque on September 18 outside the Union. We will have information regarding the projects we are working on and where we stand. It will give you an opportunity to provide valuable feedback and possibly get involved. I hope to see everyone there! We will also be coming around to all the dorms, greek houses, and lots of other organizations to collect and disseminate information.

Before I go to bed, I’d like to tell everyone about the great time I had this past weekend. I attended the RPI Women’s Tennis Tournament in Prospect Park. They played several other schools in a two-day tournament. I was amazed at how well they played. I was truly entertained watching the matches and found myself wanting to stay for more. I really think everyone would enjoy it, and I suggest that everyone try to attend one of the matches. The tennis schedule can be found at http://www.rpi.edu/dept/athletics (click on the women’s tennis link in the schedules section in the lower right-hand corner).