On Wednesday, September 4th, the Lyndon Student Government Association held its first meeting of the school year in the new SGA Office on the 3rd floor of Vail in the former Student Administrative Services office. The meeting focused on business from the summer break regarding both SGA updates and campus updates.
The most pressing issue brought up at the start of the meeting was a collection of cuts made to the Lyndon campus by the upper university administration. On-campus services such as the Mailroom and the Hornet’s Nest are having their hours cut, with the mailroom losing Friday service and reducing their closing time from 3 pm to 2 pm on remaining days. The Hornet’s Nest also lost night service this semester, reducing their hours to daytime service only.
Alongside cuts to service hours, the school budgets for both student direct hire and work-study positions have been reduced. Many students at the meeting expressed their concern for student employees who rely on employment through the school to afford bills while working around the tight schedule of a part-time or full-time student. Currently, a meeting between Director of Student Activities Matt Patry and each campus’ SGA president is scheduled to make plans to bring the students’ concerns to the Board of Trustees alongside the Mailroom and Hornet’s Nest concerns.
A new SGA policy states that any items purchased by a club using SGA funds are now the property of the SGA, including items purchased in prior years. Any items acquired by other means such as fundraising or private donations will remain the property of the clubs. Clubs will now be required to inventory all of the items in their possession to determine who the owner is, and club members may purchase certain sentimental items from SGA at a reduced rate as decided by the SGA board.
Another issue brought up was that of electronic payments, which are now unable to be taken for fundraising due to a contract dispute between the university and the former electronic payment vendor, GiveCampus. Until a contract with an electronic payment provider is agreed upon, clubs and other organizations will only be allowed to take cash donations.
Finally, a new policy requires that all clubs move their online documents to a school-provided Microsoft Outlook e-mail and OneDrive, which will require many clubs to transfer several gigabytes of files from existing Google accounts. This change also requires IT to maintain an active list of all executive board members of every club, as the change will give every club board member access to the Microsoft e-mail for each club.