The meeting started off with discussion of the primary elections for the freshman class president. A decent number of students turned out to vote, according to the Rules and Elections Committee.

During committee reports, IFC Senator Jonathan Babiec ’09 said that IFC leadership had met with Vice President for Student Life Eddie Ade Knowles to discuss how greek life will play into the new residence housing program, as it has become a major concern for many students on campus. Bids went out yesterday.

Executive Board Senator Liaison Brian Zaik ’09 relayed all of the information discussed at the E-Board’s last meeting. Zaik elaborated on the issue of smoking, which has been brought up repeatedly over the last couple of weeks in the E-Board meetings. Grand Marshal Kara Chesal ’09 is currently drafting policies on smoking regulations and the sale of cigarettes in Father’s as well as the issues regarding the new Residence Life policy. Most of these policies are not public information yet but information will be reported as soon as it is available.

Senator Ben Hunt ’10 passed on information about new and improved printing policies on campus to make printing cheaper and more convenient for students on campus. Hunt benchmarked several other schools, including Colombia and Princeton, which release print jobs by using student cards or usernames and passwords. The new program will eliminate the cost of the cover sheet and increase security and privacy. After seeking approval by the Senate, Hunt will be working on receiving approval from Director of the Union Rick Hartt and Vice President for Information Services and Technology and Chief Information Officer John Kolb about the new program on campus as soon as possible. The cost of implementing this system has not yet been researched but the Senate is willing to push this plan because of the benefit it will have for the students on campus.

Chair of the Academic Affairs Committee Bianca Zongrone ’10 had a meeting last Tuesday with Associate Dean of Students Paul Meyer. The main topic that arose from these discussions is the idea of a J-semester, which is another term during the month of January to take full-credit classes. The implementation of the J-semester would cut down the summer break from 12 to nine weeks. Graduate Senator Dan Horvath mentioned the fact that this would take away from the marketability of students who are interested in internships, co-ops, or study abroad if their summers are cut down.

Other peer institutions, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have been doing this for years and that the students tend to take advantage of it to catch up on classes, try out a lab they are considering working in all summer or other internship opportunities. One Senator asked who or what company would want an intern for just four weeks when they could have an intern over the summer for 12 weeks. Graduate Senator Christina Lawskowski noted that, from a Mechanical Engineering point of view, this could be an advantage for engineering majors because many required courses for engineering are very hard to get into. If those classes were offered during the J-semester, this could be a huge advantage for engineering students who would not otherwise be able to take these courses.

This issue was moved to the Academic Affairs Committee to be considered further. Chesal also asked Senators to find out how far along the J-Semester is in its development. The development of all of these issues will be playing out over the next couple of weeks.

At its previous meeting on Monday, September 15, the Senate also passed a motion regarding Vice President of Human Resources Curtis Powell’s decision not to renew professor emeritus Don Steiner’s RPI e-mail address. The motion stated that, “The Student Senate condemn[s] the inappropriate actions of the Division of Human Resources with regard to the termination of Professor Steiner’s e-mail access [and] the Student Senate directs the Grand Marshal to select a group of students, faculty, staff, and administrators to constitute a group to specifically identify and address issues surrounding the current Policy on Electronic Citizenship via modification of the current policy to include, but not be limited to further clarification on the definition of harassment and clear examples of what specific actions constitute it, and which do not.”