The weekly AS round-up for Wednesday, Oct. 28. New policies discussed at the Associated Students Board of Directors meeting concerning grade replacement and textbook transactions may help Western student’s GPA’s and wallets Highlights of the meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 28: Texts.com: Western is looking to work with Texts.com, a website that allows students to trade and sell textbooks back and forth with ease. It is a secure site that can only be logged into using a student email from Western. The website is completely free and could be a great resource to students who are looking to buy books at a decent price and sell books in order to gain a more reasonable amount back. Hannah Brock, vice president for business and operations, voiced concern for the bookstore. She said that before rolling out the new website and making it available to students, there should be a meeting set up with the bookstore to discuss implications. “We really don’t want to step on anyone’s toes with this,” Brock said. “The bookstore is part of the AS and so we don’t want to do something they wouldn’t be in favor of,” she said. That being said, Brock said she thinks there are two separate markets that will be shopping for textbooks. There will be the bargain shoppers, and the convenience shoppers. Because many are still looking for a convenient way to shop, its doubtful the bookstore will notice a difference in business, Brock said. Once the approval from the bookstore is granted, AS plans to move forward with the roll out of texts.com. Grade replacement policy: Zachary Dove, vice president for academic affairs announced that the grade replacement policy change was passed by the Academic Commission. The current policy states that a student who retakes a class will have both grades averaged in order to produce their final grade. Western is one of very few universities that has this policy and the AS recently passed the motion to change. The new policy will take the final grade of the last time the class is taken and use that to count towards the student’s GPA. That means the grade a student receives for the retaken class will be the final grade, unless he or she chooses to petition the Registrar’s office. After a vote with the faculty senate, it will be phased in the fall of 2016. Office of Civil Rights follow-up: As a follow up from the meeting on Oct. 21, the board of directors discussed the upcoming visit from Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education on Nov. 1 and Nov. 3. The investigation will be surrounding the topic of sexual violence only, said Abby Ramos, Vice President for Diversity. OCR plans to politely let students know that if they have concerns regarding other discriminatory issues on campus they will need to file a separate report and that the OCR will not directly be dealing with those issues. The focus is merely on sexual violence, Ramos said. Other news included:
- The Women’s Center is currently looking to change their name.
- Currently there is a proposal for the state to pay for the wireless network upgrades as well as the computer lab upgrades. If this is passed it would significantly lower the student technology fee as the upgrades currently make up almost $30 of the $35 student fee.
- Electronic locks are to be implemented in all the buildings on campus in the case of an emergency.
- The Housing Department is thinking of reassessing the lottery system used to choose living situations.
