Committee Minutes, Thursday, February 21st 2008

Secretary Ashleigh Davis submitted the following report to the Student Senate on Wednesday, February 27th 2008, on behalf of the University Affairs Committee, and pursuant to its Thursday, February 21st 2008 recommendations:

Attendance:

There were seven (7) members (A. Davis, Demanovich, Ellis, Howard, Robinson, Webb, Womack) present.

There was one (1) member (Trickel) absent.

A quorum was present.

Meeting Overview:

Met with Jennifer Bell regarding possible changes to the student handbook. Also present was Dave Rainer who discussed campus safety.

Meeting Minutes:

Jennifer Bell

Handbook and new ideas about handbook. All new undergrads recive a handbook. 2001 had a day planner style and going to a completely online format. UA helped to keep a smaller print copy. Handbook is no longer funded by student fees

Other option instead of all online is to use a notebook in conjunction with the website.

All members said an all online format would be useful.

Mrs. Bell asked about providing a hard copy of the Student Code of Conduct, the committee stated that the code was covered enough in orientation. She also asked about creating a day-planner style book. The committee not to follow that route.

She asked for suggestions for the inserts that would be in the notebook. A number of suggestions were provided. She asked for more information from the committee and from other members of the senate. The dead line for the handbook is in early May.

Dave Rainer

Emergency notification  there is an emergency and communication  what to do .

57 officers 20th largest city in NC
A lot of notification are ineffective and over priced, he cited a few examples

Cell networks can not handle a lot of traffic cited football games.

~30min to get all campus e-mails out
Other ways to do this campus liaisons, campus radio, local media outlets

Text messaging

12,000 registered users our of 40,000 possible users, test happened yesterday around 11am most of the providers delivered the message with in 11-17mins, Messages were sent in packets of 1,000, traffic was low on the network yesterday. Cell numbers from the sign up will be used advertise. The University can not find out of sure that the students received the message.

Wolf Alert system
11 speakers and sirens covering all of campus including Centennial and CVM, tone or a voice message, the system is battery operated.

shelter ----- shut ------ listen get some where safe, lock your self in and listen, the campus website has the ability to change from a completely text based screen to handle major traffic in case of a major emergency. All residents around campus have received letters about the warning system.
A committee member asked about causing a “panic” using the system, Mr. Rainer said that the university felt that getting information to the students was the most important part of this process. He also said that telling someone that there is an emergency is easy but telling people what to do is hard. 2 large universities have recently had inappropriately activated their warning systems.

Stuff the committee can help with…..how to increase enrollment, The university is against mandatory sign up. Committee member expressed a need to streamline the sign up process. Scrolling message on tvs and computers, the current campus network does not allow for this. He suggested looking at the website under emergency information link.

Transportation, reverse route, new parking costs, want to move more parking off main campus. And possible changes to Dan Allen ~ 60% of traffic is through traffic on Dan Allen.