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BY MENGHAN JIN

In print | Published September 23, 2010

StuCo meeting with President Chopp

Last Tuesday, President Rebecca Chopp sat down with StuCo President Simon Zhu ’11 and Vice President Deivid Rojas ’12 to discuss issues regarding the Inn Project and the proposed Bridge Program.

For the past couple of weeks, the Inn Project has raised many concerns from both the student body and the residents of the borough of Swarthmore.

One concern regards the possible outsourcing of the campus bookstore to a chain business, but Chopp quelled these worries for Zhu and Rojas.

“She said … that she had no wish to outsource our bookstore to a big chain or any other big business,” Rojas said. “It’s not logically possible for that to happen.”

Chopp also assured Zhu and Rojas that the proposed inn will not be a chain hotel, such as Quality Inn or Holiday Inn, but rather a more boutique-type establishment.

After meeting with Chopp, members of StuCo decided to halt the implementation of the Bridge Program until they have carried out more research on the place of such a program in our community. Ideally, the Bridge Program would prepare new students for life at Swarthmore through courses or workshops in the summer, Rojas said.

But the question of whether such a program is needed is still up in the air. “We really need to think about what this Bridge program is for,” Zhu said.

Rojas and Zhu also discussed with Chopp the departure of provost, Connie Hungerford, who is currently serving her tenth and last year at Swarthmore. A committee consisting mostly of faculty is projected to be formed sometime before the end of the semester that will search for a new provost for the next academic year.

Board space in Parrish

StuCo is collaborating with Paury Flowers, coordinator of student activities, to revamp the organization and allocation of board space on the halls of first-floor Parrish to open it up to a wider range of student groups.

“Part of my goal as student groups advisor and part of Student Council’s goal is to make groups feel more accepted, to make life more visible and to allow people to get their voices heard,” Anna Stitt ’13 said. “This is a really good way to do it.”

Before the transformations, however, StuCo will need to get a sense of how many groups already have space and how many want space, Rojas said. If not enough room is available, StuCo will need to carry out a reevaluation to determine how to divide up the boards. “It could be a huge feat of organization,” Stitt said.

An e-mail will be sent this week to the entire student body, asking all groups to RSVP if they want board space. StuCo will then hold an event to allow groups to prepare their boards.

But with Discovery Weekend and Garnet Weekend coming up, time restraints will be StuCo’s biggest obstacle.

“We want to give groups time to RSVP about the boards and also to be able to attend the event at a time when everyone is not tied up with everything else,” Stitt said.

StuCo will decide on a timeline after they hear back from student groups.

Short-term goals

With the results from the survey sent out last week, StuCo had hoped to choose three short-term goals for this semester, but due to discrepancies within the group, StuCo decided to table the issue until next week’s meeting.

According to the survey, the majority of the student body found the use of local and organic food in Sharples, the use of meal points in the Ville, and the creation of a comprehensive resource guide to be more important than seeing more student workers in Sharples, TV repairs, and laptop-sharing.

While members of the Student Council did agree with the student body that the two food initiatives were vital concerns, they found it unnecessary to have both as short-term goals. “I don’t think we should choose both,” Rojas said. “If we push Sharples too much, I don’t think we’re going to get good results.”

StuCo will consult with Sharples staff this week to decide which is the better initiative, Appointments Chair Sonja Spoo ’13 said. Also, since TV repairs would be a relatively painless and straightforward task, StuCo plans to attack that issue as soon as possible.

Several members also highlighted the importance of the comprehensive resource guide for planning events and a laptop-sharing program that would allow students to rent out laptops for longer periods of time. But until dining services gives StuCo a clear answer, no short-term goals will be set.

Subscriptions to student publications

Another part of the survey asked for students’ opinions on e-mail subscriptions to news services on campus.

The results showed that the plurality of students who voted, with 41.3 percent, would be fine with both the Daily Gazette News and The Phoenix automatically subscribing all students to their mailing lists.

No plurality was reached in a 4 – 6 vote for both publications to automatically subscribe students, so Spoo suggested for StuCo to vote for the publications individually.

While all council members agreed to allow the Daily Gazette this privilege, StuCo was divided on whether or not to give The Phoenix the rights to automatically subscribe the whole student body to their weekly digest.

“It is clearly spelled out in the Daily Gazette mission statement that they rely on e-mail and The Phoenix — they rely on the print version,” Rojas said. “We spend a lot of money for The Phoenix to get printed and if they want to have that privilege … I would want to see them have less printing.”

A few members, including Zhu, felt as if both news services should be granted the right to automatically subscribe all students to their mailing lists.

“In a world where journalism is more and more not print-based, I think we’d be doing a huge disservice to The Phoenix to say, ‘You can’t do it as well,’” Zhu said.

But in a vote of 3 – 7, StuCo voted against allowing The Phoenix this privilege. A recommendation will be made to Dean Braun before further action is taken.

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