The Northern Vermont University – Johnson President’s Student Advisory Council held its first meeting of the semester on Nov 12.
In the previous few weeks, Michele Whitmore recruited students to be on board. Two co-chairs were elected, senior and Education major Karina Williams, and senior and Journalism and Studio Art major Adriana Eldred. Mia Blackwell, sophomore Outdoor Education major assumed role of secretary, and social media manager was delegated to junior and Education major Calleen Ferris.
Supporting staff members on the council are Michele Whitmore, Jonathan Davis and President Elaine Collins.
The meeting began with highlighting the previous year’s agenda, including extending WLLC hours during finals; the possibility of installing Wi-Fi in the college apartments; allowing commuters access to the dining hall for social functions; and the possibility of turning the largely-unused veterans center into a student lounge. Another topic in question involves the state the student parking lots are in, and the issue of maintenance, especially in the winter.
A new topics suggested by the mostly new committee included student concerns about administrative transparency. For example, a shuttle bus to Lyndon was at one point talked about to incoming students, but it was something administratively that couldn’t be done. The committee wants to investigate a shuttle that could take students to the respective campus’s sports events, which was received well.
Another concern that was brought forth involved the inundation of emails in the NVU Outlook inboxes. The council would like to figure out a way to consolidate and lessen the number of emails students are sent on a daily basis, so that students can pay more attention to the important events happening around campus.
Another topic brought forward was about the quality of telepresence classrooms because of possibly outdated technology. The council plans to address these issues with IT.
Because of the general lack of knowledge about PSAC in the past, the council plans to have better communication with the student body about who is on it and what we can do.
We plan to create a Facebook page that students can follow and receive updates on topics and issues discussed during our meetings, possibly live streaming it, and receiving better press-coverage on what we do.
If you have any issues, concerns or complaints that involve campus life or academic issues, we sincerely hope you will reach out to any of us. We plan to meet once every three weeks.
If you’d like to email us your concerns, you can reach us at [email protected].