BY RAEGAN NEUFELD
In a concise meeting Thursday night in the Memorial Union, the Fort Hays State University Student Government Association discussed upcoming elections, the university’s Digital Master Plan and heard from President Ryan Stanley about the most recent Kansas Board of Regents meeting.
As the result of a vote taken during the March 9 meeting, SGA elections are set for next week. In the past, elections had been during the second week of April. But according to Stanley, he wanted to give the new executive staff time to meet each other on campus before the semester ends.
The bill states, “Moving up the dates for elections would allow for a smoother and more efficient transition from administration to administration.”
Intent to run forms are now open on TigerLink and will be until 4:30 p.m. March 27. TigerLink is also where students will cast their votes for president, vice president and senators. Voting opens at 8 a.m. March 29 and closes at 4:30 p.m. March 30.
In other campus news, Vice President Austin Ruff discussed the university’s Digital Master Plan, which is being worked on by the Digital Master Plan Steering Committee.
“(It’s) a project that they’re working on to align the digital campus with the physical campus,” he said, “to kind of make it a little more seamless and easier for everybody on both ends. They would really appreciate the on-campus perspective.”
The committee is hosting a focus group, where six to 10 student volunteers will be able to share input. That is scheduled for 3 p.m. April 5 in Hammond Hall 238. More information will be available after next week, when Magdalene Moy, an instructional technologist for Teaching Innovations and Learning Technologies, will be the guest speaker.
In his executive report, Stanley informed senators about the most recent KBOR meeting. There, he and other student body presidents, the Students Advisory Council, discussed two policies. One involves transferring college credits high-schoolers take and making sure they transfer to any college in Kansas. It also deals with the type of credits high-schoolers are able to take.
“No matter if they go to a small high school or a school in Kansas City, they have the opportunity to take speech, college algebra, composition I and II, those kinds of things,” Stanley said.
The other policy discusses what Stanley said the council determined an “imbalance” with student rights in the classroom.
“Professors have a lot of rights and few responsibilities, and students have a lot of responsibilities and few rights. So we’re looking at ways we can balance that out, just making sure that the academic grievance process is fair for students as well as just for faculty members,” he said.
The next SGA meeting will be at 7 p.m. March 30 in the Black and Gold Room.