Should the library be open longer than 12 AM?

So some SGA Senators have been discussing the current operating hours of the AOK Library. UMBC seriously lacks a study place where students can study, what is considered, "after hours." Although the atrium is open 24/7, the library closes at 12 on school nights and earlier over the weekends except Sunday. Personally, I've always found the atrium space not big enough for all the students that head down there once the semester really starts back up. There aren't enough tables, and there surely don't seem to be enough outlets. Compared to our peer institutions as well, like U of Alabama or U of Arkansas and others, our library closes down 2-3 hours earlier every school night.

In an attempt to understand the situation better, we contacted Larry Wilt, Director of the Library and spoke to him about this issue. We talked about possibly only having one or two floors of the library open for an extended period of time - 2 to 3 hours every night. While the library understood the need to extend hours, he told us that the current budget could not possibly support such a venture. With this economy and the budget cuts, finding money to fund another 2 hours of running the library becomes much harder as well. According to Larry Wilt, Director fo the AOK library, research was done in 2003 to come up with estimated costs of extending the library hours by 2 hours every night of the week. For Fiscal Year 2003, costs came up to about $35,000. We can add inflation costs to that and come up with a rough idea for costs for now.

So here is our question:

1. Would longer library hours help us? Would you want to see the AOK library hours extended?

Public Transcript Fee Discussion

Tonight, the SGA Senate hosted an open discussion with Yvette Mozie-Ross (Vice Provost for Enrollment Management) and Dr. Steve Robinson (Registrar) about the $8 per transcript fee that students are being charged. This is a discussion that has been going on with administrators and SGA members for some time, but tonight involved both SGA members and about forty other concerned students.

I was very excited to see so many students take the time out of their evening to attend this meeting. Their commentary was both insightful and respectful, and those present demonstrated a willingness to work towards some kind of a compromise that would help alleviate the current burden on the student body. At this time, the sentiment of compromise was not reflected in the responses by Mozie-Ross and Robinson.

Because Credentials, Inc. charges only $2 for their transcript processing, many questions were raised by students about where the additional $6 was going. While no budgetary figures were presented by Mozie-Ross and Robinson, one area where money was described as going toward was the development of digital transcripts in a secure .pdf format, that would expire after a certain amount of time.

The minutes from this meeting will be posted as usual on SGA's announcements blog. I'm interested in hearing any further reactions to the meeting from students who had to leave early or were unable to attend.

Finally, it was stated by Mozie-Ross that when the transcript fee was still in the planning stages, she and Robinson consulted with then-SGA president, Jay Lagorio, along with the president of the Graduate Student Association. She said that a $10 fee was proposed to Jay, and after objections were voiced a "compromise" of $8 per transcript was reached.

I took the liberty of contacting Jay myself, and he said he was initially approached about a low per transcript fee that would be under $5. He raised objections to something that high, but agreed that $1-2 would be reasonable to pay for better transcript services (incidentially, $2/transcript is what Credentials charges). Jay also supported the development of a secure .pdf transcript format because that way, graduating students could get a single transcript and use it again and again, since there is no envelope to unseal and a digital signature would verify that the document had not been altered. Clearly, a .pdf with an "expiration date" runs contrary to this idea.

Hopefully this information will resolve any confusion in the minds of students about the role of last year's SGA administration in this process. Contact information for people involved is as follows:

Jay Lagorio: lagorio1@umbc.edu
Yvette Mozie-Ross: mozie@umbc.edu
Dr. Steve Robinson: robinsos@umbc.edu
Gabe Rettaliata (current Speaker of the SGA Senate): gabriel2@umbc.edu
Myself: michael.c@umbc.edu

Walter Snowheim Update

From Zwybak!

Several of Zwybak's loyal readers sent in pictures of UMBC's Walter Sondheim having fun in the snow - including the awesome students who did it. Jordan, Mariah, Ian, and Ian's pals are welcome to come by the SGA office this week and collect your rewards.

I've added the pictures to the Zwybak gallery, so they should be showing up in "recent pictures" soon. Or, just click the link to go there now.