Technician
thursday february
25 2010
Raleigh, North Carolina
technicianonline.com
Leaders promote campus unity Alternate New Student Orientation options considered to solve campus divisions Rachel Port Staff Writer
The Chancellor’s Liaison meeting, held Wednesday afternoon at Talley Student Center, began with a discussion about how to change the collegecentric culture of N.C. State. According to Kelly Hook, student chief of staff, the Chancellor’s Liaison meeting is an opportunity for Student Government, University faculty and student organizations to bring their concerns before the Chancellor. Neither Chancellor Randy Woodson nor Interim Provost Warwick Arden were present at the meeting and Jim Ceresnak, student body president, said both would instead be able to watch footage of the meeting, filmed by WolfBYTES, and would comment at a later time. Kimberly Rochester/Technician Developing a University-wide value statement and improving New Student Chancellor’s Liason meeting wednesday. Jim Ceresnak, student body president, started off the meeting which focused Orientation were the two most dis- on instilling a strong connection to the N.C. State community among students. New Student Orientation and Wolfpack Welcome Weel were dicussed among other topics. cussed items. “What is the University’s message?” value statement to encompass all of ent ways at New Student Orientation Wolfpack Welcome Week and Hook Ceresnak asked at one point. Vice Provost Louis Hunt said he NCSU might be too great a challenge once a message is defined. Orienta- suggested hiring students or profesliked the idea of a value statement but, and instead suggested asking what the tion counselors, college faculty and sionals from outside the University if used at New Student Orientation, it common set of experiences students resident advisers are all influential to make New Student Orientation would just be more talking at students take away from NCSU are and pre- parts of a new student’s orientation presentations more exciting. Developing cross-college programs instead of generating excitement about senting those to incoming students. experience. Director of Campus Activities Deb and working with individual colleges Gabe Wical, director of New Student the University. Vice Chancellor Nevin Kessler said Orientation, said a consistent mes- Luckadoo suggested coordinating to change the University’s collegedeveloping a coherent, meaningful sage could be delivered lots of differ- New Student Orientation with the centric culture were also issued dis-
Senate considers reapportionment New method for distributing Senate seats presented to better represent students
Office of Equal Opportunity address racial issues Diversity, Discrimination and Affirmative Action workshop educates students on persisting race divisions
Nick Tran News Editor
Joanna Banegas
Student Senate is considering a bill which will change the way in which students are represented by reapportioning the number of seats each college receives. Reapportionment generally occurs every three years in order to maintain a balance in student representation according to the size of each college, with the First Year College and graduate program awarded their own set of seats. The previous method was purely proportional, with solely the size of the college dictating the number of seats the college received in Senate. The new method is designed so each senator represents a relatively identical population of the student body. Previously, smaller colleges would be awarded very few senators while larger colleges were given more. The result was an individual Senator from the smaller college would be carrying a larger population. The new method awards each Senate seat a mean number of students relative to the entire population and distributes seats to colleges based this mean and the population of the individual college. This makes the number of students represented per senator more equal. The bill also calls for the First Year College and graduate college seats to be relegated to the general population seats. Sen. Stephen said he saw this new approach as inventive and innovative. “In the past it was done solely by
numbers with the intent to provide proportional representation to the student population,” he said. “Now we are making Senate more accessible.” According to Kouba, because each senator will be representing a smaller fraction of the population in certain colleges, it makes the overall representation more equal. “I see a need to look into apportionment,” Kouba said. “Previously smaller colleges were underrepresented, but now representing the smaller colleges will be at the expense of larger ones.” Some of the larger colleges will lose seats in order to distribute the representation more evenly among students. Sen. Bethany Hrischuk said the bill takes representation away from the larger colleges who otherwise represent a larger part of the student body. “I feel this would take away from the larger colleges like the College of Engineering,” she said. “I don’t want to see students from a larger college not have the proper representation.”
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Jonathon Smith from CALS addresses the N.C. State Student Senate Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2010 in Witherspoon Student Center.
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According to Hrischuk, the new bill would give the COE and the College of Agricultural and Live Sciences the same number of seats despite COE having 1,000 more students. “I think the student body should have a voice in this,” she said. Sen. Madison Green, however, said she thought it gave smaller colleges much needed representation. Previously, it became such that a single senator from a smaller college would be representing more than 1,000 students while a larger college would have more senators with each representing marginally less students. “I don’t like feeling like I’m not in Senate,” Green, a senator for the College of Natural Resources, said. “I want support representing my college and to feel like I have some other people to lean on within Senate.”
cusssed. Sen. Arialle Crabtree said individual colleges don’t set a good example for students. Jefferson Scholars and Franklin Scholars are both crosscollege programs and they are rivals and compete with each other all the time, she said. To get colleges to change their modus operandi, more evidence collegecentrism is a bigger issue than stagnant Alumni Association numbers will be needed, Wical said. It would be a “restructuring of [NCSU’s] culture … That’s what we’re talking about,” he said. Representatives from Student Government, Office of the Chancellor, Office of the Provost, the Alumni Association and various student organizations who had raised concerns at the presidents’ round table last week attended. Cody Williams, assistant director of marketing and business relations, said students need something else to buy into. Athletics, over long periods of time, are not consistent and students from different years don’t share the same experience. “We want to continue to make this clear to the new administration,” Kelli Rogers, Student Senate president, said. “They need to know that students care about this problem [of campus unity].”
The Office for Equal Opportunity hosted the Diversity, Discrimination and Affirmative Action workshop Wednesday at Talley Student Center. The purpose of this workshop was to inform participants about affirmative action and related concepts. The Equal Opportunity Institute is a program designed to provide the University’s faculty, staff, students and the general public with a means for developing a comprehensive understanding of equal opportunity issues. Beverly Williams, coordinator of outreach and education for Office for Equal Opportunity, said the purpose of the office is to offer people information so they can help establish an environment at the University that welcomes all peoples. “People will feel welcome and feel comfortable interacting with others that are different from them,” Williams said. “The office is making sure that people are not being harassed or discriminated against and making sure people have equal opportunities.” According to the EOI Web site, EOI is a certificate program offered by the University Office for Equal Opportunity in collaboration with Human Resources and the Center for Student Leadership, Ethics and Public Service. EOI participants develop an individualized education plan enabling them to increase their knowledge about equal opportunity issues. Williams said living in a diverse environment sometimes causes difficulty and misunderstanding for people. “We have these workshops where people can gain knowledge and information, interact effectively and have productive conversations in the work environment,” she said. Vincent Joiner, an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) trainer, conducted the Diversity, Discrimination and Affirmative Action workshop. Joiner said people should participate
in this program because they have been miss-educated about race and there are problems associated with race even today in our society. “Race is the number one problem keeping America from its true greatness,” Joiner said. “I want them to be aware of the race problem and be aware of how they relate to other Americans.” Shawnette Jenkins-Price-Luca, a senior in communication, said her goal is to get an EOI certification so it will help her in the work environment. “I believe that education is very important and if you don’t know what you can and cannot do at the work place then you are subject to make a lot of mistakes,” Jenkins-Price-Luca said. Jenkins-Price-Luca said another one of her goals is to educate and be a trainer in the natural resources department. “I think we all want to see change,” she said. “We hope things will change but if we don’t educate ourselves and don’t educate others then how can anything change?” Jenkins-Price-Luca also said she learned a lot from the workshops. “I have learned that we all have some biased or prejudice judgments but we have to learn how to work through them,” Jenkins-Price-Luca said. Jenkins-Price-Luca said the classes have taught her a lot about herself and how “we” judge people. “I think it makes you realize how much you need to change and how much we judge others,” she said. “Once you realize that, you can move that element and tell yourself ‘I am doing this because it’s the right thing to do or am I doing this because I have some prejudice or bias towards that person.’ There is a great deal of power that comes into the classes.” Joiner said most of the time people will not have a true discussion about race. “They avoid it and don’t feel comfortable with it,” Joiner said. “But when you come to EOI you get to discuss those issues in a comfortable environment with other people that hopefully have a goal of impacting their work areas.”