Student senate is seeing some interesting changes as the semester starts back up but are they good or bad?

With a new constitution, committees and a new price tag for our tuition, the school is already facing some tough struggles that student senate has already began to deal with.

Student senate has approved its new constitution, changing some bi-laws and adding committees for the class officers. Also, the Saturday Eagle’s Nest hours have changed: 7 p.m. to midnight will be the new schedule. The tuition has been approved for next year and will go up 4 percent in total.

Mark your calendars – the late night breakfast date was changed from April 25 to April 30. Also, student senate voted that freshmen next year will be living in learning communities and will require incoming freshmen to have laptops. If they cannot afford one, they will be able to rent from the school.

The largest project student senate has been working on is a revised calendar for next year. After a series of unfortunate incidents on last semester’s reading day, the faculty and administration have permanently taken reading days off the table for next year. Still, student feedback has been nothing but negative when it came to this year’s calendar: Saturday finals, three week Christmas vacation, and of course the infamous reading days were huge thorns in all of our sides.

Though the proposed alternative calendar will not be perfect, it’s hoped that it helps soften the blow from last year’s changes. The architect of the new calendar is Dan Mitchell, the executive officer of Academic Affairs. After receiving multiple complaints about this year’s misfortunes, he has worked tirelessly since December along with Amie Miller, Christopher Goffos and Jake Ewing to offer a better option for next year.

“After hearing the issues with Saturday finals and reading days, we tried to come up with a schedule that eliminates that as much as possible. Also, the calendar for next year is slated to end the second week of May, and most students felt that ending school earlier in May was a more attractive option and that is something we took into consideration,” Mitchell said.

Though Christmas break will still be short, this plan has eliminated most of this year’s troubles. There was a second alternative calendar proposed which would elongate our breaks but it proved to be impossible, according to Mitchell.

“In proposing a calendar that would add five minutes to each class, we were met with responses from education majors that there would not be enough time for student teaching programs,” Mitchell said. “Also, this would change the times that classes were offered and that would cut into the times where athletes do not take classes because of practice. Upon hearing these concerns, it became clear that we could not add five minutes to each class at this present time.”

Instead of making a drastic change, the Academic Affairs executive used moderation.

“There is not really a new calendar for next year, but one that resembles the structure of this current school year…I think the plan we proposed to the Provost and cabinet will most benefit the students and have the lowest overall impact.”