Student Body President’s Report to the Board of Trustees
September 7th, 2007 Chancellor’s Board Room
Justin Ritchie Student Body President UNC Charlotte
- Welcome back to campus
- Great dinner last night
- Vote Against Repeal Campaign
- Met
with Vote Against Repeal Campaign Organizer to discuss how UNC
Charlotte can be proactive in preventing the half-cent sales tax repeal - Attended information session yesterday at Chamber and gained a lot of great knowlege
- Voter Registration Cards distributed to every RA, RA’s distributed the cards to every resident, students will be mailing them in
- Same
day voter registration makes this less of an urgent issue but letter
was included with voter registration cards sent to RAs which included
information about light rail - Two executive cabinet members attended same-day voter registration workshop uptown yesterday
- Plans
for future include getting our freshmen council involved with putting
up road signs and attending events in Charlotte region with information
to pass out and getting a shuttle system/vanpool team set up to bus
students over to the University City Library on November 6th to get
students to vote if it is too late to get a voting precinct on campus - Elections
- Students
will vote next Tuesday and Wednesday for their class presidents and
at-large senators. Fall elections are never quite as emphasized as the
elections in the spring but we still have 10 people running for 4
separate positions - Main focus of fall
elections is the Green Fee poll question on the ballot. Last spring
Student Organization of the Year, Earth Club worked with the Student
Affairs committee in the senate to push through legislation that called
for a poll question to be placed on the fall 2007 ballot to determine
the financial support of the student body for the Charlotte Green
Initiative. The question asks if students wish to pay $2.50 cents per
semester to be placed into a fund that a committee of students will use
to plan sustainable projects. Depending on the poll results I will be
bringing forth a proposal to establish a fee in the range of $1 to $2
per semester. Other institutions in the state have student fees that go
to sustainable projects, for example UNC Chapel Hill students pay $4 a
semester. The goal of the question is to shoot for a higher fee value
than we’ll actually ask for so that way we can determine support for
future growth of the fee. Example of sustainable projects include
utilizing our significant roof space for solar panels, or installing
White LEDs manufactured by CREE Inc. which is right next to the campus.
CREE recently converted a Raleigh parking deck to White LEDs which not
only resulted in the deck utilizing 40% less energy but also,
respondents who “perceived the garage as very safe increased by
76-percent after the LED fixtures were installed.” - Student Senate Issues
- 4 seats short of a full senate of 39 members
- Due
to new laws implemented by the NC General Assembly, smoking can no
longer occur within 100 feet of buildings on UNC campus’, I have
presented the issue to the senate and they will be weighing in on how
we can proceed in either finding designated smoking areas or
determining how a campus wide smoking ban could even be enforced - Make
a recommendation on where to move the Norm the Niner statue that is at
the front entrance to either future plans for the Library Quad or the
Belk Tower Quad - Presented with resolutions on establishing one
shade of green for Charlotte 49er green because of the disparity in
colors and also on supporting light rail. - SGA 5 Year Plan (Coordinate tie to match #24 in the notebook)
- Had
the pleasure of creating the initial document 2 years ago and after
revising it in detail with the last 2 student body presidents I am
excited to be creating the document once again. - Highlights include:
- (page
5) Making a student Rec Center a priority, this semester we will take a
group of students out to App St. or South Carolina to visit their rec
center, many students pay $30/40 a month to attend an off campus gym,
taking life away from campus and draining their financial resources. If
we can channel that money towards a rec center on campus we can improve
student life on campus and enhance our health and fitness offerings. - (page 7)Working to bring local foods on campus to provide students with seasonal and fresh options in campus dining
- (page
8)Student plans to help with the results of the STAMATS branding study,
which I’m excited to attend a presentation on today - No
study body president report is complete without a mention of football!
Spoke to freshmen seminar and when I asked them what reasons
friends/people they knew gave for not attending UNC Charlotte and they
all said, almost in unison football. - Football
- Finalized list of participants in the student forum to be held later in the semester
- List
included representatives of student organizations and random students
that fit the demographic breakdown of our university as identified by Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Dr. Ted Elling - Analyzing
the statistics of the SGA football poll in the Spring of 2007 we have
determined that the results hold up with a 99% Confidence Level at +-
1.1% because our sample size was 8399 students out of a population size
of 21519
