This Thursday, the SUUSA Senate met to make announcements and discuss the recently formed Smoking/Tobacco Free Campus ad hoc committee.
The meeting began with executive reports, notably including Senate President Hayden Carroll announcing a Board of Trustees meeting on March 23, and inviting any Senate member interested in seeing how the Board makes decisions and affects the school to join him in attending.
Following, Vice President of Academics Parker Hess requested Senate members to volunteer time for the Senate booth at Lunch on the Main, an annual day celebrating the founding of SUU. Hess requested members sign up after meeting privately and that the day would be March 21.
Also announced was the opening of applications for appointed SUUSA and Student Programming Board (SPB) positions. Applications for those positions can be found here on the Student Involvement and Leadership website.
Following brief representative reports and no old business, the Senate moved to the only item of new business: the proposed policy change based on the Smoking/Tobacco Free ad hoc committee.
The committee, chaired by Upper Division Senator Jeremy Osborne, first decided the issue brought before the Senate was a valid concern, and secondly, decided the role the ad hoc committee had in changing any policies.
The policy change will create several Designated Smoking Areas (DSA) on campus in an effort to prevent exposure to secondhand smoke to non-smoking students.
While the language of the policy will likely change, according to Osborne the “spirit of it will not.” Osborne hopes the Senate will help in creating greater specifics for the policy, including location, number, funding and design of the DSA. The number of DSA´s mentioned in Senate by Osborne was three or four.
The Senate voted to sponsor the change, passing with one abstention and one dissention. The policy change will be presented to the President’s Council, and the following review will be brought back to the Senate with more specific language added to the policy.
After a brief recounting of events on the SUU calendar, the Senate adjourned.
The meeting in its entirety can be viewed here.
Story By
Andrew Leavitt
life@suunews.com
