Adult Film Debate Roundup

As many students know, UMBC has found itself in the ongoing issue over screening adult films on University System of Maryland schools. Here are a few places to get informed about the debate:

• Baltimore Sun summary


• Washington Post editorial


• Commentary and discussion on UMBC


• My personal thoughts


• Paula McCusker, contact person

Remember That Survey?

The National Survey of Student Engagement? Freshmen and Seniors are being invited to participate in this survey to help UMBC's administration make changes to improve the school.

If you're one of the people selected, take the five minutes to go and fill out the survey. In addition to helping benefit the school, if you complete it before May 1st, you'll be entered to win one of four $100 Amazon gift cards.

NSSE: Let Your Voice be Heard!

UMBC students, get ready to have a say about the quality of campus life and the kinds of changes you’d like to see! Some freshmen and seniors have an opportunity to provide feedback in a forum that is taken very seriously by campus leaders. Freshmen and seniors are being invited at random by e-mail to participate in the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) between now and the end of May. The NSSE is a yearly survey administered by UMBC and other private and public institutions across the U.S. UMBC’s Office of Institutional Research explains that NSSE

“gauges the extent to which colleges are providing experiences associated with a quality undergraduate education and the extent to which students are engaging in those educationally meaningful activities.”

Campus leaders have used the results with other information to make changes to curriculum, programs, and resources. In response to initial results, senior administration at UMBC implemented a number of initiatives designed to increase student engagement and success. Some examples include: first-year seminars, Introduction to an Honors University seminars, living learning communities, the new student book experience, and the faculty mentor program.

If you are one of the lucky invitees, please take the opportunity to tell UMBC’s leaders about your experiences. Students who complete the survey by May 1, 2009, will be eligible for one of four $100 Amazon.com gift certificates.

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.

Walter Snowheim

It looks like one of UMBC's patrons, Walter Sondheim, had some fun in the snow last night. He's been decked out in a crazy new outfit. If anybody reads this before the snow melts and sends me a picture I can put up here ( silversteelwolf@gmail.com ), come up to the SGA office in the Commons and I'll give you a prize.

Disclaimer: the prize is a five-pronged massager. That's two more prongs than your typical massager!

Post if You Were at Neuroscience

It would have made a lot more sense to do something like this before Neuroscience 2008, but I didn't think of it then. Anyway, leave a comment if you presented or attended this year's Society for Neuroscience conference in D.C. I ran into several UMBC people while I was there on Monday and I'm curious to see how many others were there as well.

Non-Smoking Policy Forum

About two years ago, as I was only a few weeks into my membership as a Senator my freshman year, I remember having to vote on a campus wide issue - creating a non-smoking policy. This rule would ban smoking 20 feet from any entrance to a building on campus as well as anywhere on the Academic Corridor. With a majority vote from the SGA Senate along with the GSA and one of the staff senates, the policy passed without much attention from the UMBC community. The next semester, the policy officially started and was to be "enforced." SGA actually sponsored a forum for the campus community to voice their concerns, but few showed up. All of a sudden, signs of Designated Smoking Areas popped out of nowhere and ash trays seemed to disappear. After a semester of headaches and frustration, the confusion seemed to go away, not necessarily because it was working, but perhaps because people stopped caring.

Now, thanks to C.E.A.S. and UHS, people finally want to make this work. Working with Campus Police and Chief Williams, implementation and enforcement of this policy will hopefully be taken seriously. Next Wednesday the 9th, CEAS is going to be sponsoring a forum to talk about the policy and concerns about the details. As more information becomes available, I will update this post.

UNC Student Body President Slain

Slain Woman Found Near UNC Was Student Body President

Posted: Today at 12:13 p.m.
Updated: 5 minutes ago

Chapel Hill, N.C. — Chapel Hill police have identified a woman found dead near the University of North Carolina campus Wednesday morning as the university's student body president.

Eve Carson, 22, a UNC senior, was found shot multiple times in the head about a half-mile from campus.

Police have issued a bulletin for Carson's blue 2005 Toyota Highlander with Georgia license plate AIV-6690.

Officers spent most of Wednesday and Thursday morning following up and searching for leads in the case. At a news conference Thursday, they called it a "fairly random crime."

Anyone with information about the case is asked to call the Chapel Hill Police Department at 919-968-2760.

Meanwhile, an informal gathering has been scheduled at UNC for 3 p.m. at Polk Place for the UNC community, Chancellor James Moeser said.

In a letter posted on the UNC Web site, Moeser described Carson as a wonderful person and a great friend.

"We are saddened and numb with grief," he said.

Carson, a native of Athens, Ga., was a Morehead scholar and a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. She was a pre-med major studying both political science and biology.

Original Link

Baltimore Sun: Cheer for this; UMBC Students in the Spotlight

The UMBC community has rallied behind the men's basketball season this year in a fury of school spirit. While students have come out in droves to the RAC, students have consistently left unsportsmanlike behavior at the door. David Steele, a lead sports columnist for the Baltimore Sun, highlights the outstanding school spirit and sportsmanship exuded by UMBC students this season.

In the article, Dr. Hrabowski highlighted the efforts that students have taken to make this positive school spirit a reality on our campus. Jake Steel spoke of the student initiatives throughout the season, as well as in recent conversations with Dr. Hrabowski.

Without a doubt, this type of student ownership and responsibility on campus will go a long way in strengthening shared governance and student involvement on the UMBC campus...

Blogwars

wow. today was interesting. i walked into the sga office and bam! there is an all out slug-fest going on online between the retriever staff editor and a bunch of other important people- interestingly their names all started with anonymous. this brings up a lot of woes that many individuals have been expressing over the course of my time at umbc. if you would like to participate or just take a peek follow the link.

Bicycles and School Spirit

There's been some buzz lately about the little reminder that went out about UMBC's Bicycle Policy. Apparently just a few too many students have been riding bikes around lately, prompting this memo that bicycles are to be parked only in designated pods or racks rather than chained willy-nilly to immovable objects around campus.

I'd like to echo some of the recent sentiments on UMBC Underground and ask the question - how does a memo like this affect our campus life experience? Steve and I had an interesting discussion with David Hoffman (Co-Create UMBC) this afternoon about this, so I'm sure at some point this will appear on his blog as well.

At any rate, there are really two conflicting priorities at work on our campus that can be described by thinking about grandmothers. The first grandmother's house is welcoming and inviting - there are the interesting artifacts and family pictures prominently displayed that you are careful to respect, but overall they add to the enjoyable experience you have when you visit. The second grandmother covers her sofas with plastic to ensure that they always remain pristine, but in doing so loses the comfort offered by the furniture. Her precious items are kept far from reach where they cannot be appreciated or enjoyed.

Personally, my priority is the first option - I would like to see UMBC take the plastic off the couch and allow students to feel comfortable and welcomed at their university. It's okay for the university to look and feel like students actually use it, even if that means everything isn't 100% "good as new" all the time. This objective was furthered recently with the posting of a very large banner on the side of the Commons. The game this Thursday will be an interesting experiment. I would like to see the students there excited about the game and their school's team regardless of fears about being "too rowdy." Let's show Morgan State that we are proud to be UMBC students and aren't afraid to enjoy ourselves at an athletic event. If somebody tells our students to sit down and be quiet, I want to see students stand up for themselves, if not at the game itself then in the week afterward. This is our campus, and we have the right to use it.

Another good website...

I've been following Overheard in New York for years now, so when I found out some people were trying to do the same thing for UMBC I was thrilled. Like UMBC Underground, this is another excellent effort by our fellow students to do something good for the community - they deserve our support.

Overheard at UMBC

UMBC Underground

I was just told about another awesome UMBC-related blog, UMBC Underground. I hope linking to it from here doesn't bring them "above ground" but I really liked what I saw at first glance. Hey, it's a blog, and blogs always want more readers, right?

I haven't done much exploring (but I'm sure I will later tonight) so I don't really know who's behind their operation, but it seems like it's just a bunch of concerned students trying to help out the rest of the community. That's the kind of thing that really gets me excited - we need more people like that taking action around our campus. Notice I say "taking action", because I think a whole lot of people here are interested in helping others, they just haven't taken the plunge yet. Or possibly worse, they have but yet others haven't recognized them.

Anyway, check out UMBC Underground, add their feed to your RSS reader, all that good stuff.