THE STUDENT VOICE SINCE 1904
SPORTS
INSIDE New details come to light in the Oct. 1 shooting
2018 offers a chance to watch some of Kansas’ best
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athletes in action The University Daily Kansan
vol. 135 // iss. 1 Monday, Jan. 15, 2018
Comedian Jim Norton to perform set at Liberty Hall p. 8
SEE ATHLETES • PAGE 11
Senate leaders look to final semester Both internal and campus issues are on the agenda for KU’s Student Senate this spring
SAVANNA SMITH @savsmith20 Heading into the new year, Student Senate leadership will move forward with plans to address food insecurity on campus, difficulties with sexual assault reporting at the University and outdated Student Senate Rules and Regulations. According to Student Body President Mady Womack, Senate will be looking for a new location for Campus Cupboard, currently located at 1421 West Ninth Street, in order to better provide food for students who may not have regular access. Roughly half of Douglas County is affected by food insecurity, Womack said. “I’m very excited that we will be able to find a workable solution for students,” she said. Additionally, the administration will continue pursuing costeffective technology that will help students report sexual assault more easily. According to Womack, Senate is working with a couple of different companies to find the best solution. Womack said she could not disclose company names during the procurement process. Womack, who began her career in Student Senate as a freshman, said it is time to start thinking about the mark her administration will leave behind after she
Savanna Smith/KANSAN Mattie Carter (left) and Mady Womack (right) want to work on sexual assault reporting, food insecurity and even how Senate meetings are run during the second half of their time as vice president and president, respectively, of the 2017-2018 Student Senate. graduates in the spring. “I hope that we inspire people to do the work and check out the issues that matter,” Womack said. While the administration will be addressing public issues such as food insecurity and sexual assault, one of Student Body Vice President Mattie Carter’s major focuses will be fee review. Carter said she hopes finance committee balances student fees to best serve students with the available funds. Senate will
take into account the rising cost of higher education as it moves through the fee review process, according to Carter. “It’s really clear from students that they don’t want an increase in fees, so we’ll be very careful,” Carter said. Reflecting on last semester, Carter said misunderstandings and inconsistencies between Robert’s Rules and Student Senate Rules and Regulations will be addressed moving forward.
Additionally, the current senate body is new and may not be aware of certain rules of conduct, Carter said. Senators not adhering to Robert’s Rules was an issue in the final full Senate meeting of last semester. “There are just some things that are inappropriate when we conduct — for example, clapping, especially when the losing team is there,” Carter said. “It happened one time.” However, she said she is impressed with
the new Senate’s level of engagement. “I’ve been really impressed with how easily they’ve been able to jump in,” Carter said. “A lot of them have really come out of their shells.” Due to the many inconsistencies of SSRR, Carter and Chief of Staff Charles Jetty said reforming those rules is a top priority. At the end of the fall semester, SSRR election reform was passed, now allowing for a 36-hour grace period after the
deadline for potential senators to address any invalid signatures on their petitions to run. If any of the 25 signatures required are still invalid, the student may not be included on the ballot. However, Jetty said, like the election’s code, other sections of SSRR are outdated and in need of attention. “It would certainly be good to evaluate all of it, and streamline and modernize it,” Jetty said. In addressing some of the inconsistencies and disorganization she has seen in Senate, Carter has worked to change internal processes that keep Senate efficient, including SSRR. “If Senate is run better and is more functional, I think that will benefit students, because they have representatives that know what they are doing and are being held accountable,” Carter said. According to Womack, this year’s Senate and students show more desire to be involved than the bodies of the last few years. All Senate positions were filled this year, which has not happened in the time Womack has been involved with Senate, she said. “Really bringing issues of diversity and equity to the forefront of what we deal with ... I think has been an important change for Senate in the time that I’ve been here,” Womack said.
KU developing plans to reduce out-of-state tuition SYDNEY HOOVER @sydhoover17
Chancellor Douglas Girod announced the University’s plan to cut outof-state tuition prices and redirect scholarship funds to the Board of Regents over the break. According to Dr. Girod, the University will begin granting “tuition waivers” to high achieving students from out of state in order to make the school more appealing to “high-ability” students. This would discount their tuition from the start. Subsequently, the University would redirect scholarship money to in-state students, which would be granted based on financial need. “The changes that Chancellor Girod discussed at the Kansas Board of Regents meeting last month are a tweak to the existing scholarship awards for out-of-state students,” Director for News and Media Relations Erinn Barcomb-Peterson said in an email. “This tweak provides tuition waivers to high-achieving out-ofstate students while freeing
up scholarship money for Kansas students in need.” However, current students worry that these waivers may not be as appealing as the current scholarships the University offers to out-of-state students. Scholarship eligibility would be restructured, according to Girod, and awards would no longer be based off of the University’s current policy, in which students receive scholarships based on their GPA and ACT score. It is unclear under what circumstances students would receive scholarships and whether or not these changes would affect current students. For instance, Emma Faciane, a freshman business marketing major from Thousand Oaks, California, chose to attend school in Kansas due to an already relatively low out-of-state tuition plus a scholarship on top of that made it the best financial choice for her family. Faciane had also applied to several private and state schools, along with Baylor University. “It was cheaper for me to
go out of state than for me to go to some of the private universities in-state [in California], so that actually played a really big role for me because it was kind of a perk,” Faciane said. “I think it [the waivers] would be less appealing to me because when I was looking at KU, their tuition matched a lot of other schools I was looking at, but then because of the financial aid, I felt that it was more of a viable situation and so with what they had to offer, I thought it was really helpful.” For sophomore elementary education major Allison Kmiecik, the Jayhawk Generations Scholarship made the University a financially feasible option. The scholarship, which she received largely based on her ACT score, made her tuition only a few hundred dollars more than at the University of NebraskaLincoln, where she would have received in-state tuition. “I think it definitely depends how much lower [tuition would be] as well, but I definitely know a big thing for me is with the
Sarah Wright/KANSAN Chancellor Douglas Girod plans to increase the number of out-of-state students through special tuition-cutting scholarship programs. scholarship that I’m on, there’s three different tiers of it and so those tiers depend on your ACT score,” Kmiecik said. She continued to take the ACT until she was eligible for the highest tier of scholarships. According to Girod during the meeting with the Regents, the new tuition policy would restructure the existing model based on grades and test scores, but did not specify how.
For other students, such as Natalie Gibson, a sophomore journalism major from St. Louis, the changes may not have made a difference. Because Gibson knew she wanted to attend a university outside of Missouri, with an overall lower tuition, the University may appear much more attractive in comparison to other outof-state schools, despite the change in scholarship funds.
While it is still unclear how drastic these changes to tuition and financial aid will be, Girod plans to have the policy in place as soon as the upcoming fall, and intends to have the details of the plan sorted out this month. According to BarcombPeterson, more information about the potential changes will be available at the next Board of Regents meeting on Wednesday.