Union loses power
Election campaigning will begin September 9. Nomination forms will also be avialable that day. Primary elections will be held on September 17, from 9 am to 11 pm.
Conway steps down
Tuesday night the Union experienced two major power outages. While the outage effected all three levels of the Union, the Rathskellar was particularly hard hit. The Rathskeller, which houses Fathers’ and the Union Grille, lost power at approxiamately 11:30 pm and regained power at 1am.
Flags at half staff
After almost 30 years of service, Bob Conway, Director of the Advising and Learning Assistance Center, has stepped down from his position as director and has started a new position as Assistant to the Vice Provost, Gary Gabriele. He will continue to provide academic advising services to the athletic teams and will be working on a number of issues of importance to the Undergraduate Education’s Performance Plan.
Jeannie Steigler, who has spearheaded many of Rensselaer’s English as a Second Language (ESL) programs, will be serving as the interim director during the transition.
River quality tested
The flags will be flown at half-staff until September 11 per order of Governor George Pataki in order to commemorate the death of former Governor Charles Poletti.
DiTursi named chair
Members of the governor’s Hudson River Task Force pressed the US Environmental Protection Agency to expand the sampling of the upper Hudson River to include more analysis of other contaminants besides PCB’s.
The current program only calls for limited testing for contaminants including heavy metals and dioxin that may have been dumped into the river years before the widley publized PCB polluting. However, area residents believe that there is more toxic material to be found on the bottom of the Hudson. Rensselaer Professor, Richard Bopp, has already found high levels of cadmium and lead, which leaked from a former Queensbury factory that made wallpaper and pigments, in the Thompson Island Pool, found near Schuylerville.
Lectures presented
The Student Senate approved Mary Kate DiTursi as the new RNE chair, as well as the freshmen elections handbook with a 16-0 vote on both. The Senate also encouraged all students to visit its new website at www.rpi.edu/dept/union/senate. The GM will publicize his meetings with the President as a part of public record on the senate’s website.
Cultural reception
Beginning September 10 and ending on November 12, 9-11 Open Response Committee, will sponsor a Global Citizen Lecture Series on Tuesdays from 6-8 pm in DCC 308 throughout the semester. To kick-off the series, filmmaker, Brent Scarpo of New Light Media, will be hosting Journey to a Hate Free Millennium on September 10. Additional lectures will be held on October 1, October 22, and November 12, with the following respective topics: What Polls Reveal About Our World and About the News Media; Social Justice and the Global Economy, hosted by Njoki Njehu, Director of 50 Years is Enough: US Network for Global Economic Justice, and Dennis Brutus, leader of Jubilee 2000; and Religious Fundamentalism in America.
Freshman elections
The Committee on Cultural Pluralism of the Hudson Mohawk Association invites you to their Annual Fall Reception and Excellence in Diversity Awards.
The reception, initially designed to welcome new faculty and staff of color to our higher education community, has now been expanded to include all faculty and staff of color and all friends and allies from each of its 20 member campuses. Please come and make new friends, reunite with old ones and begin or expand your network of colleagues and friends.
The reception will be held from 4-6 pm at the SUNY Albany Assembly Hall.
