The Executive Board started off its meeting last week by passing a motion to recognize the Materials Science Club as part of the Rensselaer Union. The club has been around under various names with the national organization for materials science since 1987, but requested to be recognized by the Union this past week. The Materials Science Club is supported in large part by the Materials Science Department at RPI. The club has a close relationship with the Professional Society of Materials Science in Albany and has already hosted three events this year in liaison with the national organization. The club has nearly tripled its membership in the past year and hopes to increase awareness and membership by being recognized under the Union.
President of the Union Rob Odell ’09 notified the Board members they would soon need to be on E-Board committees, and that next week, a first-year student will be joining the E-Board after being appointed by the PU and approved by the Senate. Odell also noted that the Budget committee needed to review the starter budgets once members are assigned to committees next week. In addition, the constitution committee will be working with new clubs to draft their purpose statements. The correspondence committee will be appointing one or two members to represent the E-Board on the Student Activities Agency, which will be collaborating with as many clubs as possible, including RPI TV and sectors of Senate committees such as Concerto, as well as outside organizations such as the Red Army, to stimulate a more collaborative student life on campus.
In two weeks, Dr. Leslie Lawrence, medical director of the RPI Health Center, and John Fusco, general manager of Rensselaer Dining Services, will be attending the E-Board meeting to help inform them further on how the sale of cigarettes or lack thereof will affect student life. Based on this information, the E-Board will try to come to a decision as quickly as possible.
A second motion was approved to install an international telephone at the Rensselaer Welcome Desk to accommodate international students. The use of the phone will be free under certain time limits and will be programmed for students to be able to call home to the countries the RPI student body represents. The E-Board is also looking into installing an international fax machine that students will be able to use for free. Initially, the international phone will not cost the Union any money, because Director of the Union Rick Hartt ’79 along with other RPI faculty, re-arranged the use of phone lines throughout campus over the summer into a more efficient telephone network that left room in the already established budget for the installment of the international telephone. Senator August Fietkau ’09 was personally thanked by Hartt and the rest of the E-Board for spearheading the effort to install the international telephone, which has required months of research and effort.
Brian Zaik ’09 also noted that the RPI Alert system-wide test was successful, along with the lesser-known Concerto test, both of which occurred on Wednesday, October 8. Concerto is working with Public Safety, who have not yet fully secured the infrastructure for their emergency management system. Public Safety has found many advantages in using Concerto and is currently aiming at incorporating more of the Concerto program into their system in the near future.
