OCASA

At the beginning of last quarter, the On-Campus Apartment Student Association underwent a change. They created two organizations. One, remained OCASA, while a new organization Association for Commuter Engagement formed.

OCASA has moved to 113 Riverknoll and a location in Colony as well. Since the split, OCASA has been working much more closely with the Residence Life. Their adviser is Brandon Kotler. They serve Colony, UC, Global Village, Perkins and RIT Inn. Their office offers free printing, free coffee and free tea and access to a microwave and  a refrigerator.

Their current e-board has been solidified and they’ve been working to get their organization reorganized and refocused on on-campus apartment students.

President: Shamoy David ocasapres@rit.edu
Vice President: Quinte Osborne ocasavp@rit.edu
Member at Large: Matthew Woodward ocasarep@rit.edu
Director of Finance: Jorge Sandoval ocasafin@rit.edu
Director of Communications: Corrine Newbegin ocasacomm@rit.edu
Director of Programming: Nick Gawreluk ocasaprog@rit.edu

Make sure to check them out at some of these events:

Chocolate on Ice 12/15/12
They’ll be hosting the photo booth table and the cupcake building table! Yummy!

Office Warming/Game Night 01/11/13
Learn more about OCASA, hang out and play some games

Ski Trip with ACE and ACA – no date yet.
Will be travelling to Bristol, NY. Their main goal is to make this affordable and fun!

If you have any questions, make sure to check out their Facebook, Twitter and RIT pages!

Association for Commuter Engagement

ACE, the second organization formed from the split focuses on students who are living off campus. Angelic Brown is the current president and Tamara Dressner is the vice president. They are looking to fill the following positions before break:

• Publicity Coordinator

• Financial Director

• Representative at large

ACE wants to engage the commuter audience and receive feedback about services and facilities for off campus students. However, ACE has no access to their addresses unless the students approach them.

To combat this, ACE will be holding an open forum to allow students to provide their information. The next forum is today (12/14) 10am-12pm. Check out more information via the Facebook event, here.

The office will be fully staffed and open from 9am-5pm, Monday through Friday starting in Week Four. They’re planning several events and services to help better commuter students experiences not only campus but in their housing communities as well.

Some of their tentative plans:

• Off Campus Community Initiatives Task force

• Drafting a letter to inform students about what ACE is how it can help.

• Meeting with public transportation to better target off campus students and provide better routes for them. They will be focusing on areas that have limited services provided.

• Looking for a tool that allows students to report where they’re living and approx. how popular each area is with RIT students.

• Landlord Panel 101 (February 2013) – landlords answer questions, comments and concerns of students.

Check out their Facebook page for more information and the Student Government Video Update with Angelic, the current president (c0ming soon!).

+/- Grades

RIT is continuing its research into the benefits and cons of implementing a +/- grading system with the semester conversion. The idea to change grading began before RIT decided to switch to semesters but was put on hold when the conversion became definite. It was approved by President Destler as well as Academic Senate in 2009.
The scale would include:

A+/-
B +/-
C+/-
D+

But before switching, RIT wanted to see how this would affect the students, specifically financially and in sequence classes where there are multiple sections with possibly different professors (different grading styles).

Concerns about whether a C- would be considered “passing” and good enough for a prerequisite to get into the next level of classes was raised. Currently, a C- would be accepted. Also, the question about how previous grades before the scale change would be affected is a concern. At this time, however, there will be no change made to the transcripts.

There will be a study starting very shortly, for the 2012-13 year, to see how this grading scale would work and what it would all affect/change. Selected faculty will begin to use two rubrics: one that grades the current way and one that uses the +/ scale. RIT is currently looking for students who would like to be involved in this study.

Faculty will ultimately decide on whether the +/- scale will be implemented for their course.

Intersessions and Summer Sessions

With the conversion to semesters, opportunities for Intersessions, during the winter break, and Summer sessions have arose for RIT. Although summer classes were available on the quarter system, ten week sessions are still available after the conversion.

Considerable research has gone into deciding whether or not to offer courses during these breaks. What was found is that many students would take the opportunity to take classes that they may have done poorly in or not had enough time to take. It also would help students who were missing a prerequisite class from the fall semester or spring semester to make that up before missing out on the next part of the sequence.

These sessions would also hope to attract alumni and non-RIT students. Alumni could potentially take classes they were interested in during their time at RIT but never got the chance to take or even just take classes they find interesting. The benefit for non-RIT students would be the chance to take classes for transfer credit, high school credit, or to just continue their education.

With these sessions, RIT academic year would be broken down like this:

Fall Semester: 15 weeks
Winter Session: 3 weeks
Spring Semester: 15 weeks
Summer Session: 10 weeks (A quarter!)

Courses that could possibly be offered would be classes that students generally struggle in or classes that are hard to get in (i.e. popular classes). These courses would be strictly enrollment driven – so if one section did not have enough students sign up, it would close. This would help keep the costs of having these sessions up and running.

Helping to keep costs low is extremely crucial to these sessions since currently there would be no financial aid offered. Finances and how students would be housed (specifically during the winter sessions) are still being discussed and worked out.

A lot has happened over the past ten weeks, and we would just like to thank all students who participated in SG-hosted or co-hosted events such as the Super Bowl party, The Hammer showing and Q&A, the disabilities events and the Amerks hockey game at Blue Cross Arena.

SG is very happy to announce the TE3 bus route to the East End of Rochester has been very successful with hundreds of students already using the service. Just as a friendly reminder, please remove any trash that you bring onto the bus and act appropriately. It would be a shame for the bus to be discontinued because of these actions.

Institute Council, after much deliberation, has chosen the 2013-2014 academic calendar. All information, including the calendar broken down by day, can be found online at the official conversion website. If you feel uncomfortable with any part of the transition you can always set up an appointment with your academic advisor. If you would like your voice to be heard when it comes to decisions the school makes about the change, your college senator is available to talk to. Just send them an email to set up a meeting. All senator contact information can be found on the SG website, www.rit.edu/sg under the About Us section.

RIT has proposed a new smoking policy on campus due to complaints about air quality around doorways. In an earlier survey, about 8% of students that responded were smokers. With such a large percentage of the student population, RIT is trying to find a solution to please everyone. RIT has proposed to eliminate smoking on campus except for designated areas far from buildings. Many people had problems with what was proposed. Arguments included how long it would take a student to just go smoke one cigarette resulting in being late to class and exposure of those students to the Rochester weather in the winter.  In order to combat some of these arguments, the school will make sure the areas are covered. Classes and help will always be available through RIT if you are seeking to quit smoking. This seemingly drastic step could help improve the health of many students if they decide to use this help offered.

Lastly, as many people have noticed, card swipes are being installed on the outer doors of every UC apartment. It is the school’s goal to have swipe access on all on-campus housing, but the funds for this are not currently available. With the new arena coming, RIT felt like UC was the first priority for the card swipes at this time. The swipes will either go live sometime spring quarter or over the summer depending on when installation in completed.

Remember that any SG recognized club or organization can advertise on SG TV. Just email me at sgconmgr@rit.edu if you are interested.

SG Update February 24th, 2012 from RIT Student Government on Vimeo.

The second SG Update newsletter is now available and ready for download on line! The full newsletter can be viewed here.

There are a lot of events coming up in the next few weeks, including a showing of “The Hammer” and a Q&A with Matt Hamill on January 30th and a hockey viewing party on January 20th. Additionally, the Tiger East End Express Bus Route officially kicks off tomorrow night at 9pm! As always, please let us know if you have any feedback or suggestions on how Student Government can its services for students.

As you all should know, fall of 2013 will mark the start date of the semester system at RIT. If you have any questions or concerns you can go to www.rit.edu/conversion. The school doesn’t have all of the kinks worked out yet, but over time more information will be available to us.

Facilities Management Services recently proposed adding another bus route that would go somewhere students have a hard time getting to.  Student Government voted on making that bus go to the East End of Rochester. We decided on this because so much is available in this area including many restaurants, nightclubs and theaters. For now, it is just a pilot program running from January to May of this school year. The bus will be operational from 9:30pm to 2:30am. Exact schedules are still being developed.

A very hot topic on campus lately is the Henrietta Family Law. The town of Henrietta wants to update a law that prohibits more than three unrelated people from living in the same house. Hundreds of RIT students would be affected by this change. Two weeks ago, Student Government held an open forum discussing the matter. The general consensus was that the law would not help solve the issues present in the neighborhoods, but the family residents don’t know what to do to really solve the problem. A town hall meeting was held last week as well. To see a video explaining everything that has been going on, see the SG Facebook page.

And finally, SG has officially elected the two remaining senator positions.

The Freshman Senator is Shantavia Edwards. Shantavia is a psychology major who wishes to strengthen the bond between the freshmen and upperclassmen. She believes by doing this, people who are unsure of career paths may settle on something without so much difficulty.

The new College of Health Sciences and Technology senator is Jamar Frater. Jamar is a biomedical science major and hopes to help make the transition of students into the new college as smooth as possible.

SG Update December 2nd, 2011 from RIT Student Government on Vimeo.

Although the school year has just begun, many projects are already underway.

There has been a proposal to start up a collegiate sprint football team. This league would be different from textbook heavy weight football for many reasons.

- There is a player weight limit of 172lbs

- It is much less expensive to start up and maintain.

- There would be no recruitment and no scholarships awarded to players.

- The season consists of seven games from September to November.

The initial cost to start up the team would be around $200,000 and about $165,000 to maintain every year. The cost of the team would have to come out of student pockets through tuition. The coordinators of the team are optimistic about financial support from alumni to cover some of the cost but students should be prepared to cover the whole cost if that support doesn’t come through.

Hopefully the creation of a football team will help to raise the spirit of the school and establish connections with other schools that didn’t previously exist.

Student Government has shown its support of investigating student interest and feasibility of the league by creating a committee that will come back with a decision on whether or not the program is a good idea later in the year.

In an attempt to bring RIT up from the 8^th most ugly college campus in the United States, a committee for campus beautification was created. They have decided to construct a graffiti wall. It will be built sometime this quarter. All students will be allowed to add to the wall.

Student Government has some very exciting news for the RIT community!  We have signed a contract to broadcast the live B2 feed of all away hockey games.  The games will be shown on SG TV channel 15.

If you weren’t lucky enough to pass by the table in the breezeway, SG just recently hosted Nick Tahou’s as our first Tour de Rochester. Every quarter there will be a new restaurant on campus. They will be providing small sample meals to students at no charge. This program was created to introduce a little bit of the Rochester community to RIT students who might not know what is available off campus.

The first Gray Matter presentation, “The odds are good…” was a success. The series is funded by SG and Student Affairs and talks about controversial topics that might address many problems you may face as a college student.

Make sure to check out our website www.rit.edu/sg to view upcoming Tour de Rochesters or Gray Matter presentations.

The Department of Parking and Transportation here at RIT would like to remind all students that just because you might not be able to find a parking spot on campus during the day doesn’t mean they are not available. Chances are you are just picking the most convenient lot rather than open lots. Lots that consistently have open spaces throughout the day include H, G and K lots.

Watch out for flyers about “meet your senator” events. If you need to contact your senator, you can find their information on the SG website under the ‘About Us’ section.

SG Update October 7th, 2011 from RIT Student Government on Vimeo.