In a flurry of activity, the Student Assembly unanimously passed three bills during Tuesday night’s meeting.
The Student Activities Fee Allocation Act of 2009 finally passed next year’s budget after it had been percolating in committee for a few weeks. If anyone actually cares about the budget, let me know, I’ll send it to you. It’s not terribly exciting and I didn’t notice anything particularly offensive in it. Most importantly, next year’s student activities fee is projected at $87, one dollar less than last year’s.
The Free Planners for Students to Keep Them Organized Act allocates $8,750 from the consolidated reserve to the Office of Health Education to produce and distribute planners to all undergraduate students in the fall of 2009. As of now only freshman and seniors are given planners.
Honestly, I’m not really sure about this bill. The SA is spending almost nine grand on planners that may or may not uselessly wallow in thousands of desks — or trash cans — across Williamsburg. I’m aware that most College of William and Mary students are big fans of planners and other devices designed to structure their lives so that they aren’t burdened by free time. Personally, I’m not the biggest fan, but I’m optimistic that if I were given a planner that I might start planning things. I’ll be able to give a full report sometime in the fall.
The Open Billing Act requests that the bursar’s office fully detail the various mandatory fees that appear, but are unspecified, on student’s bills. This is a great idea because we should all be aware of what we (or our financial backers) are paying for, but I’m not optimistic that this bill will have any real impact. If the administration uses the umbrella of student fees to fund their summer vacations, and I assume they do, then it is in their interest to keep us in the dark about it.
More important than the fairly benign legislation passed tonight, Vice President Kristin Slawter ’09 informed the senate that in the fall the Marketplace’s Home Zone will become a Panda Express. Home Zone is by far my favorite place to get food on campus and this move offends me to the core, especially since every other establishment in the Marketplace is vastly inferior to Home Zone. If people actually like those stupid little bread things with weak cheese and salt on them then I guess I’m the only one with taste on this campus, but if I am not alone in my love of Home Zone (and I suspect I am not) please tell someone! Tell anyone! Tell them that you would rather eat actual food than chicken nuggets. Hopefully the person you tell has a lot of pull in the Marketplace.
