SA approves alcohol policy committee

Publicizing prof. evaluations also discussed

March 20, 2006 —

The SVSU Student Association unanimously passed a resolution to recommend the establishment of an Ad-Hoc committee to review SVSU's alcohol policies and procedures during its Monday, Feb. 27 House meeting.

SA passed the resolution after a short discussion and some words from SVSU President Eric R. Gilbertson.

Andy Suszek, SA speaker of the house and author of the resolution, emphasized to the representatives that the resolution was not agreeing or disagreeing with the University's alcohol policies. Rather, it was simply recommending a committee to review them.

"By no means do you have to disagree with these policies," he said. "If you agree with them, that doesn't mean you have to disagree with the resolution."

Suszek also emphasized to those representatives that are resident's assistants to vote on the resolution. Usually, when issues that concern campus residence policies are brought up, RAs in SA tend to abstain from voting.

"I very much encourage you to not abstain," Suszek told them. "I intentionally wrote it as I did so it could be voted on by everyone."

Following several representatives' views, Gilbertson, who said he attended the meeting for several reasons, spoke to SA. The president explained that he had no objection to the creation of such a committee.

"It is hard to be part of a university and not be open to change," he explained. "I haven't seen a policy that couldn't be improved."

Gilbertson added, though, that some changes may be hard to make.

"This is more complicated than it seems," he explained. "It is hard to be specific and not be vague when it comes to alcohol."

The resolution points to several examples within the University's policy as unnecessary and vague, including the certain amounts of alcohol in possession it takes to be considered "excessive," and an expectation of "good judgment" and "appropriate action."

The resolution passed 21-0.

A resolution to encourage the University to make student course evaluation results accessible to all students followed. Parliamentarian Nick Madaj introduced his resolution, claiming that the resolution would make faculty more accountable to students.

Madaj said this would be different than a system used by ratemyprofessor.com; he argued that students who use those types of online evaluations typically either love or hate the professor they are evaluating. Making course evaluations accessible would offer a better sampling of results, he concluded.

Once it was discovered that the process of making these results public had yet to be decided, SA President Emily Hammerbacher proposed tabling the resolution.

Before SA could vote on tabling the discussion, Gilbertson alerted the representatives that the results could not be made public. He pointed to the current collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between the SVSU and the Faculty Association and the privacy clause agreed upon between the two.

"This is also more complicated than it appears at first," he said.

Gilbertson said that before these results could be made public, the University would need to go back and renegotiate the CBA, which he explained was not an easy task.

With this knowledge, the House voted to send the resolution back to the Legislative Committee.