By Opinion & Editorial Editor James Mellen III

Like every SGA meeting, the afternoon of Monday October 21st started with an open forum where non-SGA members of the campus community are permitted to speak to the senate. This week the Umass Dartmouth black room announced that they were cutting their hours as well as changing the type of positions offered in the black room. The Umass Dartmouth chapter of MassPIRG gave a presentation on making college more affordable and their open-access textbook week.

The meeting moved to information about commuters, SGA is trying to get a loyalty card made for commuters who take the Daatco bus, as well as have more merchandise made for commuters. SGA also discussed the issue of the power outage and how that affected students who live in The Dells.

The meeting then moved to officer reports, these are reports from the five members of the SGA e-board. The five positions that they have are president, vice president, treasurer, corresponding secretary, and recording secretary. Among these updates were updates from last week, an announcement of the return of senator of the month and election updates.

Part of the E-Board update was a treasurer’s update, this is especially important because every club on campus took a sizeable funding cut this academic year. The treasurer is looking into how other colleges in the state of Massachusetts balance their budget in order to get a better understanding of how to improve the budgeting process for student groups across campus.

The student trustee took to the floor after the E-board to talk about sate wide reports that affect Umass Dartmouth. The student trustee met with Chancellor Johnson about ways to improve enrollment for September 2020. The student trustee also spoke about getting trustees more votes at a state level for things such as tuition increases..

SGA committees gave their reports after the student trustee. The academic affairs committee had big updates on the biology department’s lack of funding, as well as the way that the nursing school gets its funding. Because nursing is not a school the same way that  the Charleston School of Business is a school, they receive funding from sources outside of traditional resources. Foster had four employees retire this year, which has lead to difficulties with finding and training new staff. Some students feel as though professors move to fast during lectures, and should be required to put their powerpoints online.

The library has had an issue with it’s wifi and with some power outlets, SGA discussed possible solutions for this problem. There was also discussion on how to fix the HVAC problem within the woodland buildings. The HVAC system will not be fixed until next spring, if your building is too hot them Umass recommends that you open a window. There is a Dell Pond clean up scheduled for October 26th from 11 to 12. The diversity committee ended the meeting, and announced the creation of a committee that is focused on LGBTQ inclusion, the committee will focus on finding out how other schools are more inclusive and making that an administration goal.