UA Update
The fall semester’s introductory Senate meeting was held on Monday, October 5 at 7:30 p.m. in W20-400. Before the Special Budgetary Session, Chancellor Philip L. Clay PhD ’75, Dean for Student Life Chris Colombo, Dean for Undergraduate Education Daniel E. Hastings ’78, and Vice Chancellor and Dean for Graduate Education Steven R. Lerman ’72 discussed the Institute-wide Planning Task Force recommendations. The Chancellor and deans emphasized that they are looking for as much feedback on the recommendations as possible — especially implementation possibilities that would not involve completely cutting an entire service, but would still save money. They also noted that many of the recommendations which would save large amounts of money would take significant research and time to implement.
During the Special Budgetary Session, the Senate discussed the UA’s budget for the fall semester. The budget can be found at http://ua.mit.edu/finances/ and will be voted on at the next Senate meeting.
The next Senate meeting will be on held Tuesday, October 13 at 7:30 p.m. in W20-400. In addition to voting on the fall budget, Senate will be discussing a report written by the Executive Committee, detailing the overall undergraduate stance on the recommendations from the Institute-wide Planning Task Force. The Senate will also debate a bill to create an ad-hoc UA Committee on Alumni Relations.
The UA has been working on increasing transparency around the Student Life Fee. Information about where the $2.72 million raised through the Student Life Fee goes can be found at http://ua.mit.edu/slf/.
—Elizabeth A. Denys, UA Secretary General