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Monday, April 12, 2015
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Fun at the Huskie Bowl
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SA Senate to amend election bylaws Ashley Morse Staff writer T @amnorthernstar
DeKalb | The Student Association Senate is considering 12 amendments to its bylaws to reflect the move to online elections. The 2015 executive elections saw the SA’s first use of online voting through HuskieLink, a social media platform for student groups. Now, the SA Senate will look to move its fall elections to the spring, when the executive election is held, as well as move to the online-only ballot platform. The Senate held first readings for amendments related to elections, which include a change to the membership of the Board of Elections, districts of the Senate and Internet outage policies, at its meeting on Sunday. Nick Smith | Northern Star
People crowd around Mission, the Huskies’ mascot, at the Communiversity Block Party outside Huskie Stadium on Saturday. The block party was held just before the Huskie Bowl, an annual scrimmage where the Huskies split into the Black and Cardinal teams. Children were invited to stretch and warm up with the Huskies on the field before the Black Team took a 21-0 win over the Cardinal Team. Go to bit.ly/1I5RGTT for a photo gallery of the party and game.
Nick Smith | Northern Star
Victor E. Huskie rides a Huskie Pup at the Communiversity Block Party outside Huskie Stadium on Saturday. The Huskie Pups made their first appearance this semester Saturday after being stopped by cold weather last semester. The Pups will return to campus today with two new routes and two new, larger vehicles donated by the Alumni Association.
Nick Smith | Northern Star
Victor E. Huskie waves to crowds at the Communiversity Block Party outside Huskie Stadium on Saturday. The block party included autographs from student-athletes, music from DJ Toxic and face painting and games for kids.
Huskie Pups make spring return
Pups come back to NIU at block party
points other than stops. Brett Williams, Student Association director of Mass Transit, said Augustin Zehnder the changes reflect concerns stuStaff writer dents have voiced in focus groups DeKalb | The Huskie Pups are held throughout the semester. scheduled to return today with an expanded route and two new vehicles. We actually have a total The Huskie Pups, a fleet of elechere for the spring semestric passenger vehicles, were introter of six vehicles that will duced in fall 2014 as part of NIU be involved in transporting President Doug Baker’s Master Plan students, faculty and staff Thesis. Intended to help make NIU to different locations on into a 10-minute campus, the four campus.” Pups were temporarily retired in Brad Hoey NIU spokesman November due to issues with operating them in cold weather, but they came back out for the Huskie Bowl “We feel that this is the route on Saturday. that serves the students best,” In contrast to the fall route, Williams said. which went between the Holmes Along with mechanical probStudent Center and Recreation lems the Pups experienced while Center, the relaunched Pups sys- operating in cold weather, a major tem will have two routes: one route issue last semester was lack of stuwill serve the residence halls while dent awareness, Williams said. The another will go from the Rec to Huskie Pups were not adequately Founders Memorial Library with publicized; as a result they had a stops at points along the way. ridership much lower than preThe Rec will serve as a transfer dicted, he said. Some students in point between the routes and stu- focus groups said they had been dents will be able to flag Pups at unaware the Huskie Pups were an
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open service, as opposed to a restricted line designed for students with disabilities, Williams said. Ron Carpenter, junior pre-physical therapy major, said he has never ridden a Pup though he sees how the Huskie Pups could be useful. NIU spokesman Brad Hoey said NIU is working to address the issues that led to the Huskie Pups being retired. Some of the mechanical problems, which stem from the limitations of battery technology, have been resolved, Hoey said; his division is looking for further solutions which will enable the Huskie Pups to operate further into the fall semester. The vehicles “don’t work particularly well, as anything does, in the extreme cold,” Hoey said. “But, we do believe in the spring they’re going to work well. We’re going to address [mechanical] issues in the fall, try to get them to run as deep into the fall semester as we can.” A problem that contributed to lack of awareness was the service started with too few vehicles, Hoey said. “The first few Pups arrived and were deployed in early October, and the entire fleet didn’t come
Huskie Pup routes
The Huskie Pups will now operate on two routes: • One route between the residence halls • One route from the Recreation Center to Founders Memorial Library, with stops along the way online until after that,” Hoey said. “I think that now what we have is a full complement of pups that are ready to go. That will have a big advantage because they’ll all be useful and ready to be used and they’ll all be running at the same time.” To ensure there are always enough Pups to meet student needs, two new, larger vehicles have been added to the fleet. Hoey said they are like “large golf carts” and they were donated by the Alumni Association. The new Pups won’t be operating today, but they will join the Pups later this week. “We actually have a total here for the spring semester of six vehicles that will be involved in transporting students, faculty and staff to different locations on campus,” Hoey said.
Ad hoc committee An ad hoc committee was created to lessen gray areas with elections and to correct “any issues that are apparent with the online election system,” said SA Senate Speaker Dillon Domke. Deputy Speaker Robert Kreml, who was the vice presidential candidate of the Standing for Every Student ticket during the March executive election, was appointed chair of the ad hoc committee. Domke said the Senate is looking to get a “diverse set of students” to serve the committee. Kreml wrote additional bylaws but said he would not throw out the ones already in place. The committee would make sure what happened with this election and the misunderstanding of the new online elections does not happen next year, Kreml said, citing a Northern Star editorial calling for the SA to clarify gray areas in the election policy. One senator from each district will be able to sit on the committee and review election policy to make amendments for online voting. Election policies Senator Rachel Gorsuch read proposed bylaws regarding a Internet outage during the times of the elections. The bylaw amendment will call for any minutes or hours of an Internet outage to be added to the election. Gorsuch read another amendment proposing to no longer hold the election commissioner solely responsible for staying in contact with Information Technology Services during election days. If the amendment passes, the commissioner would be able to delegate the responsibility to Board of Elections members. Districts Kreml read and authored a bill to redistrict the Senate due to the closure of Lincoln Hall and deconstruction of Douglas Hall.
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