A lot has happened in the past week. Last Wednesday, the Senate had its first communication barbeque in front of the Student Union. We used the barbeque as an opportunity to collect information for specific projects and to show students what we are working on and how much progress we have made. Surveys regarding Public Safety and the Advising System were distributed and collected to help us as we move forward in working with Public Safety on a customer service and communication plan, and with the Administration in re-architecting the advising system. We received lots of useful feedback and I thank everyone who took the time to fill out a survey.

If you missed the barbeque, there are several opportunities to talk with the Senate this semester. First, you can attend our meetings from 8:00-9:00 pm on Mondays in the Union 3202. Second, the Senate will be visiting the dorms on October 2 and again each month for the entire semester. We will also be visiting every greek house on campus, several Union clubs, and athletic teams this semester. We will publish the dates of these events on our website very soon.

Recently, I have been spending a significant amount of time thinking about how to increase attendance at our sports games. I’ve begun work with the athletic director, members of different athletic teams, and the President of the Union to build programs that will encourage participation in athletics and increase our enthusiasm and spirit at RPI.

One idea is to pick one game per team and create incentives for students to go to that game. There are several incentives that we have been working on. The IFC has a point system in which fraternities compete for points obtained by winning sports competitions and participating in philanthropy. I will be working with the IFC president over the next few days to create points for attending these specific games. In addition, we are working with the city of Troy to get businesses to offer students discounts who display a ticket stub from a game. In turn, the businesses could stamp a ticket stub and students would get a discount for the next game.

There are a lot of ideas being thrown around about this. This is an example of an idea that we will be working very hard to make a reality in the next few weeks. I’m very interested in hearing what you have to say. Please contact me with any thoughts or suggestions at gm@rpi.edu.