The meeting began with the Game Development Club requesting funding to attend the Annual Game Conference in Montreal this November. The club expressed an interest in advertising RPI students to game development companies that host and attend the conference every year, because only a few come to the annual career fairs at RPI. The E-Board encouraged the club to consider writing the goal of this trip into its annual purpose statement to receive more funding for next year, given that it could prove that attending this annual conference brought something back to campus, ideally more game developers and other related companies interested in RPI students.

Senate member Andrew Neidhardt ’11 attended the E-Board meeting to inform the board members about what the Senate, particularly the Student Life Committee, has been doing to address the smoking issues and some of the sentiment on this topic that has come from the attendance at the Student Life Committees, where the new smoking policy was drafted.

Most of the Student Life Committee feels that cigarettes should not be sold at Father’s Marketplace, but this decision is mainly up to the E-Board. The Student Life Committee focused on drafting new smoking regulations for campus, particularly the Rensselaer Union.

In addition to Senate updates, President of the Union Rob Odell ’09 and Director of the Union Rick Hartt ’70 discussed projects the E-Board will be focusing on in the coming weeks.

The renovation of the Games Room is a main priority at this point, as well as planning for the implementation of an international phone and other services to make life more convenient for foreign students living on campus.

Among other housekeeping issues in finance, the E-Board will also be reconsidering the outdated started budgets for clubs.