On Wednesday Nov. 4, four resolutions were presented to the Student Senate General Assembly and all passed their first readings. They included the appointment of vice chairs for three of the Senate’s four committees and an encouragement for professors to use open-source materials in order to reduce the cost of textbooks for students. The election meeting for Student Senate will be on Nov. 18. Additionally, Open Forum yielded concerns about due dates during online learning and professors’ use of Canvas.
Student Senate’s first proposal of the year was presented at the meeting. Resolution #04-2021 encourages professors to use open-source materials in their courses as a way to mitigate the high costs of textbooks and other course materials. It was a collaborative proposal written by the Academic Rights and Affairs Committee and the Student Rights and Affairs Committee.
The resolution explains that course material costs are often quite high, yet there is no maximum on the amount of money a student may be required to pay. This, the resolution argues, is compounded with several other concerns that can make it very difficult for students to pay for materials. Among them are potentially increased financial stress in the wake of COVID-19, the inability to apply financial aid towards course materials and limited opportunities and awareness for textbook grants.
“I’m hoping that it will help the college emphasize the use of open-source books and remind professors that those are tools available. I think this will help reduce the price students are paying for textbooks in the long run and help everyone financially,” Danielle Crowley, interim chair of the Student Rights and Affairs Committee, said.
Following the presentation of the resolution were question and answer and discussion periods. Senators who speak during General Assembly meetings are anonymous in the meeting’s minutes. Some questioned if the resolution’s original intent was to set a cap for how much professors could require students to pay in course materials.
“In the original proposal, we planned on placing a cap on the amount of money per course professors could require students to spend on course materials. However, we felt that trying to place a cap and finding an appropriate number to cap it at would be kind of difficult to prove, and I think there would be more apprehension to this proposal if that was the case, considering some books are more expensive,” Sabrina Schumacher, chair of the Academic Rights and Affairs Committee, said. “So, we kind of changed the proposal to encourage professors to use open-source materials instead of purchasing books to try to decrease the amount of money students spend.”
Another senator pointed out that putting a cap on course materials would likely face many more problems from the administration than the current resolution. They posited that issues lie more with school than professors as the school makes the bulk of its income through the bookstore’s textbook sales, regardless of professors’ desires on student spending.
Resolution #04-2021 passed its first reading on Wednesday Nov. 4. At the next general assembly meeting, it will be presented and voted on again. If it passes, Senate will look into ways to implement the resolution at Geneseo.
Regarding the Vice-Chair appointments for the Academic Rights and Affairs Committee international relations and political science dual major junior Itzel Mialma was appointed as vice chair.
For the Campus and Residence Life Committee, biology major sophomore Zana Sawas was appointed Vice-Chair.
For the Student Rights and Affairs Committee, physics and mathematics major junior Luis Yanez was appointed Vice-Chair.
Also, at the meeting, Laura Benjamin, chair of Student Senate and Student Association vice president, announced that elections will be held at the general assembly meeting on Nov. 18. The positions of secretary, chair of Campus and Residential Life and chair of Student Rights and Affairs are open to run for.
“We’re doing Committee Chair Elections because two of our current committee chairs are only interim. This is because no one ran for their positions in the spring, so we resorted to an application process over the summer,” Benjamin said. “In order for there to be official chairs of the Campus and Residential Life and Student Rights and Affairs Committees, candidates must be elected to the position by the General Assembly. The elections are open for anyone to run, not just the interim position holders.”
The final part of the meeting was the Open Forum, where concerns were expressed regarding frequent assignments due on weekends and professors’ difficulty in properly using Canvas. For the former, students spoke about having many assignments due on Sunday afternoon or evening, which can make the weekends an overwhelming time. The concern was charged to Academic Rights and Affairs.
The latter concern focused on some professors’ difficulties with using Canvas and suggested establishing a formal training program. A member of CIT at the meeting pointed out that there are many self-help documents available for faculty, staff and students on wiki.geneseo.edu, but no official training class. The concern was charged to both the Student Rights and Affairs and Academic Rights and Affairs Committees.