Issue 79, Volume 78

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THE DAILY COUGAR

T H E

O F F I C I A L

S T U D E N T

N E W S PA P E R

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T H E

U N I V E R S I T Y

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Monday, February 24, 2014

Issue 79, Volume 79

H O U S T O N

S I N C E

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ONLINE EXCLUSIVES AT THEDAILYCOUGAR.COM

STUDENT GOVERNMENT

REDvolution put on trial

Presidential and vice presidential candidates at risk of being dropped from upcoming elections Nora Olabi Assistant news editor

REDvolution party presidential candidate Charles Haston will be on trial today at 8:30 p.m. in the Senate Chambers of the University Center North to determine whether he will be removed from the Student Government Association election ballot. The Class A violation was filed against Haston by the Election Commission for falsifying financial disclosure documents, alleging that he omitted possible payments made to host the campaign’s site, uhredvolution.com. “The candidate (Charles Haston) submitted his party’s financial disclosure document and signed that it was completely accurate. However, the candidate omitted the cost of the

campaign website on the form,” the complaint said. “Omitting the cost of the website from the financial disclosure is falsifying the document. Evidence has been brought to the Election Commission providing that this website had to be paid for in order to be ‘live’ at all.” The website was hosted on GoDaddy.com, which requires payment for hosting. His vice presidential candidate, Erica Tat, was named as the site’s administrator. Haston has called the allegations “baseless” and “unfounded,” saying that the site was only live for testing purposes.

Low score, high achievement No. 15 UH bolstered its program with a decisive nine-stroke win at the Bayou City Collegiate Championship against nationally ranked programs like No. 21 Texas, No. 19 Arkansas and No. 14 South Florida. For more coverage turn to page 5. — Esteban Portillo/The Daily Cougar

SGA continues on page 3

ACADEMIC AFFAIRS

School is in sessions Administrators aim to make students, faculty more aware of shorter course offerings Natalie Harms Managing editor

Provost Paula Short announced the University’s efforts to spread awareness about the academic sessions offered throughout the semester at her inaugural Pizza with the Provost, hosted by the Student Government Association earlier this month. | Courtesy of the Student Government Association

The Office of Academic Affairs is shining light on an often-overlooked option that has a lot to offer students looking to earn course credit outside the 15-week semester. UH has six academic sessions each semester; in addition to the 15-week session, there are two half-semester sessions and three five-week sessions. But before last week, when Provost Paula Short sent out an email about the sessions, most students didn’t know they existed, and colleges and departments weren’t offering many courses. This semester, it’s on Short’s agenda to make students and faculty aware of the benefits of these scheduling options, and she’s tasked Associate Provost for Education Innovation and Technology Jeff Morgan with this challenge.

“We wanted to just sort of run it and see if it worked or if it didn’t work, which is very unusual for higher education to do things like that,” Short said in her inaugural Pizza with the Provost event. “Usually, we have to sort of test it for five years before we decide if we want to implement it. And so we said, ‘Well, let’s just try the idea out.’” Short and Morgan both said they think the announcement and development of the sessions will benefit the student body, but are excited to see throughout this semester how interested students are in taking classes in shorter sessions. “I can see instances where this would be helpful for students,” Morgan said. “We’ve already been contacted by a couple of different departments where students are just a course away from graduating, and they’re thinking, ‘Oh, if we can get a course on for this little session and the last five weeks in the spring, they can take that and they can graduate.’” Students who are required to take a certain amount of hours each semester — to be eligible for a scholarship, for instance — and find themselves

in a more difficult class than they expected can drop it and opt into a less-challenging class in a session later in the semester without dropping below their required hours, Morgan said. “So, I think that there are a handful of reasons for doing this for students, on top of the fact that there are students who would just like to pick up an extra course for whatever reason,” Morgan said. While the shorter summer sessions and the spring mini-session, which offers classes during winter break, have plenty of classes each time, Morgan said he hasn’t seen as many departments taking advantage of the fall and spring semester sessions and hopes to encourage them. In addition to the pre-existing classes during the sessions — the C.T. Bauer College of Business has been one of the few departments to offer classes during the shorter sessions, for instance — more than 20 courses have been added to sessions five and six, which begin March 17 and 31, SESSIONS continues on page 7


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