Student Council’s 2nd Zoom Meeting
After a full month of quarantined school most of Missouri University of Science and Technology’s (Missouri S&T) students and faculty have finally become used to this new socially distanced lifestyle, or at least as used to it as anyone can be. After working out most of the kinks related to moving meetings online, the Student Council (STUCO) meeting last week was focused on plans for next semester. The remainder of this semester's time in semi-isolation will be used to revise various rules and prepare for the fall semester, when students are hoping to move back onto campus.
The Student Councils 2nd zoom meeting had a heavy emphasis on reorganization of various bylaws in several different facets of STUCO. Reorganization led to various committees being renamed while others were merged , but before further details on that topic, there were several questions left unanswered in the first STUCO zoom meeting which were addressed in the second. First, in response to students requesting refunding for various services, the school has done what it can to accommodate these requests.The housing service on campus is willing to refund up to 40% of the semester’s total cost, class specific fees such as labs will not be refunded as those labs are supposed to be continued and that money is often used to help fund teaching assistants, and lastly fees to use the recreational center and other services could potentially be refunded, however after reviewing that only about $10 could actually be given back to each student, STUCO is considering using the money to reinvest in the recreation center. Any input you have should be emailed to a STUCO executive as the decision has not been voted on at this point in time. Input from the student body is always welcome and encouraged.
The reorganization of committees and revision of bylaws discussed earlier were debated during the meeting and voting to pass them will occur next week. Most of these revisions, if passed, will only really pertain to members of STUCO themselves, however there are some that affect the student body at large. These are listed below:
Club Sports has decided that funding for team travel will be covered, under the condition that it affects the entire team, and funding for these teams will also now be partially based on a symmetrical point based system. In short, this system is meant to encourage activities such as team performance improvement, keeping contact with alumni, and improving Missouri S&T as a whole.
There have been SAFB (responsible for dispersing funding between nearly all student organizations) code revisions in order to make fund dispersion easier for clubs. Spending on organizations will now be based on a lump sum amount rather than list items (budgets still required to prevent overspending) and meeting with SAFB before submitting applications is now only recommended rather than required. This will decrease the SAFB workload near budget application deadlines.
That concludes the proposed bylaw revisions. Announcements made at the end of the meeting are relayed here.Student health is again encouraging all students to follow CDC guidelines, and various student services are still available albeit available online. Student counseling has started a special seminar for students struggling with isolation and test anxiety, if that interests you see their website for more details.
With the last meeting all wrapped up Missouri Miner once again encourages all students and faculty to do their best during this period to stay clean and happy, and if anyone has any concerns they wish to be brought up to either contact a STUCO representative or officer and it will be discussed at the next meeting.
