SGA Virtual Sessions 5-11 and 5-12
By Katie Ward
The Catholic University of America Student Government Association Senate hosted two virtual meetings, Senate session 5-11 on March 30 and Senate session 5-12 on April 6, using Google Meet and Poll Everywhere. Senators used Poll Everywhere to vote on agendas, minutes, amendments, and resolutions
Session 5-11, held last Monday, saw two pieces of legislation regarding the move of university classes to online meetings.
Resolution 019 was a resolution to allow students to opt into a pass/fail option for their classes, sponsored by Gemma del Carmen. The resolution also requested that the university “widely publishes this opportunity for students, clearly outlines the consequences of pass/fail grading, and makes this choice administratively easy to execute” for students.
“Due to the unprecedented matters in the past few weeks it is important to advocate for the student body,” said del Carmen. “Each member of our community has been hit by COVID-19 in different ways and these uncontrollable circumstances should not harm students’ GPA.”
Del Carmen noted that over 1,500 students had signed a petition asking for the pass/fail option and three of the university’s schools had already enacted in thus far, and asked that the senators “make their community’s voices heard” by approving the resolution.
Thomas Dompkowski asked if there would be a deadline for the option, and del Carmen answered that there was not a deadline in the resolution as it would be up to the university’s discretion but that interested students could refer back to three schools the pass/fail option was already in for a timeline.
Joseph Galassi brought up concerns of students not having a letter grade in major classes which are needed for application to graduate school and that a C in those classes would look better than a P. Del Carmen responded that this legislation is an option that not all students would have to opt into but that the senate would be doing a disservice to students if it didn’t give them an option to choose. She also noted that the option would be only for courses each student chooses, and that the resolution requests that the university clearly outlines the consequences of pass/fail grading for all students.
“1,600 individuals have signed a petition to say that they need this option,” del Carmen said. “For students who don’t have places to study, majors not conducive to studying at home, are in a different time zone – it is extremely considerate for us to give this option and give students the benefit of the doubt to choose this option if they absolutely need it.”
Catherine Churilla noted that the Conway School of Nursing cannot move to the pass/fail option, so not every student would have this option, and asked how students would be educated on what pass/fail would mean for them. Del Carmen thanked Churilla for bringing the nursing school into the discussion but that she didn’t think that all students should be restricted from the ability and opportunity to opt into pass/fail, and that this option would still apply to nursing students’ elective courses. She answered that it would be up to the University on how they would provide details on this plan to the students.
Matthew Toppi asked about study abroad individuals, who, except for on the Rome campus, are
not technically students at Catholic this semester and asked about the possibility of adding a clause to include them. Co-sponsor Christopher Carey answered that they were looking to integrate the study abroad students into a resolution for next week as that was something that should be best handled within its own resolution. Del Carmen echoed Carey’s remarks and added that she personally did not know enough about study abroad and would need a comprehensive resolution for that, with research regarding other universities.
After more debate from Galassi, Jonathan Harrison, and Cecilia Bracey, the resolution passed with 20 yays, 2 nays from Galassi and Harrison, and 2 abstentions from Paviglianiti and Richard Warren.
Resolution 20, titled “A Resolution to Ensure Student Success during the Coronavirus Pandemic” was sponsored by Gerald Sharpe, and requested that professors be cognizant of the challenges students are facing, recognize that not every student can attend virtual classes “live” and not negatively impact students’ finals grades because of it, post recordings of synchronous lectures, and overall “make accommodations to provide virtual office hours and consistent support to students, especially those adversely impacted by the coronavirus.”
The resolution stated in its sixth whereas clause: “Some professors at The Catholic University of America are continuing their classes asynchronously, meaning that most assignments and examinations can be done at students’ own pace within a reasonable time frame. In addition, professors using this style of learning are pre-recording lectures and posting them to Blackboard so students can access them at their own pace. Some of these professors are also substituting class participation points with other forms of participation, such as assigning additional
homework. Professors teaching “discussion based” courses are opting to use Google documents, discussion boards on Blackboard, and virtual chat rooms to host their classes. These methods still allow students to complete course requirements at their own pace while ensuring the course remains discussion oriented.”
After little deliberation, the resolution passed with 20 yays and 4 nays from Dompkowski, Galassi, Harrison, and Daniel Paviglianiti. The meeting ended after Vice President Kaitlin Shanahan’s updates, and general well-wishing comments from senators Carey, Dompkowski, del Carmen, LaFleur, Hagerty, Bracey, and Zentz during the open floor session.
Senate 5-12, held this past Monday, started with the approval of minutes from the last meeting and the night’s agenda, and the updates from the committee chairs. Cavan Hagerty announced that the meeting served as the one meeting notification of by-law adjustments, in conjunction with some work the Treasury Board did on its by-laws.
SGA Treasurer Monica Wallace presented a state of the Treasury Board to the Senate, outlining the improvements the Board has made over the year and the remaining budget. These improvements included a move to an earlier meeting start time, director training over the summer, and an increased communication and transparency with the student body. The Board also began the deliberation portion of each meeting with an analysis of the entire student activity fee, a procedural change to the bylaws made by Wallace and approved by the Senate in November after a “controversy over a large allocation last year highlighted the importance of understanding the full context of the student activity fee before making an allocation”, according to Wallace.
According to Wallace’s address, last year’s Treasury Board heard 202 presentations over the course of the entire academic year, compared to the 202 presentations the current board heard before spring break of this year.The size of requests rose as well as the number – student organizations this year asked the current board for about $60,000 more than was asked of the last board, said Wallace. Wallace noted that a remaining balance could not be provided due to the fluidity of the budget, which changes based on the number of enrolled students paying the student activity fee, 26.5% of which goes to the Treasury Board.
“I am incredibly proud of my board’s ability to manage the constraints of the student activity fee with the growing demands for funds from student organizations,” said Wallace. “We maintained a rate of allocating approximately 62% of the amount requested over the entire year, which nears the rate held by the previous board going into spring break. Considering the substantial increase in overall requests, this statistic demonstrates the careful evaluation that the board conducted of each funding request presented before them.”
She noted that if the outbreak of COVID-19 had not caused the end of the on-campus semester experience, the Treasury Board was on track to allocate all of its funds by the end of the semester – an important note due to the board’s goal to get its balance as close to zero as possible every academic year. The money that had been allocated for student events planned after spring break will be returned to the board and will rollover to next year.
After a brief question-and-answers section for the state of the treasury, the senate moved on to new resolutions.
Resolution 021, sponsored by Maura Schlee, focused on the age-old issue of Pryz dining hours. It requested that varsity athletic teams and club sports provide Dining Services their practice and competition schedules for weekdays and Saturdays, and that the Student Restaurant extend its hours on Fridays and Saturdays from the current 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.
The purpose of sports teams providing their schedules to Dining Services was to guarantee that there are enough food stations open for the rush of students that will enter the upstairs Pryz after late-night practices get out, with a student athlete’s perspective provided by co-sponsor Joseph Galassi.
Cavan Hagerty noted his support of the resolution, saying that “anyone who has spent any time in this body knows I am very much in favor of this idea, it’s one that I have worked on a couple of times” during his three years in the senate. He asked if there had been a change in Dining Service’s original objections to the later weekend hours, which were due to employee transportation and student usage after a certain time. Schlee responded that she didn’t think employee transportation would be an issue since the metro is open later on weekend nights, and that regarding student intoxication after a certain time, the closing time for the extended hours would still be early enough that students would not likely be returning from bars.
Christopher Carey asked about the purpose of athletic schedules being provided to Dining Services. Resolution co-sponsor Galassi provided feedback that the Dining Service’s decision to close down certain stations each night is based on the number of swipes into the Pryz beforehand, according to previous Dining Services employee Christian Sapienza.
“A lot of times, the track throwers were competing with the football players to be able to have enough food, so I think it would be very beneficial for them to have an idea of what is going on and know when student athletes would be arriving,” said Galassi.
Gerald Sharpe asked whether the new dining hall, which is scheduled to open sometime in 2021, was mentioned in the Schlee agreed that she would like to include the new dining hall in the conversation with Dining Services but that she thinks it important to improve the current schedule for as many years students have until the new hall opens.
Michael Klein mentioned that on Saturday and Sunday mornings the Student Restaurant opens an hour later, at 8:30 a.m. instead of 7:30 a.m., and said that the resolution could be improved by requesting that the hours be a uniform 7:30 a.m. – 10 p.m. every day of the week. Schlee responded that Dining Services was “pretty against” opening it earlier on weekends because it was not as profitable, and that the office might be less open to accepting the resolution with the morning hours also changed.
Resolution 022 was sponsor Jonathan Harrison’s second resolution regarding a career fair, this one requesting the Career for Academic and Career Success to host “a graduate school fair representing various graduate, medical, business, and law school programs for undergraduate students.” After no deliberation, the resolution passed unanimously.
The next senate meeting will be held on April 20 at 8:15pm over Google Meets, and will serve as the last senate meeting of the academic year.
