Office of the Student Body President and Vice President

Office of the Student Body President and Vice President

Session XXXVII Report

Authored by Cameron Cook, Student Body President and Ryan Grogan, Student Body Vice President

Table of contents

3- Report from the Office

6- Reports from each of the individual cabinet members

26- Parting Letter

Report on the Session from the Office’s Perspective

The Office of the Student Body President and Vice President has one sole, inherent mission; to advocate on behalf of the student body at ALL levels. Each officeholder, or administration, has embodied this mission in different ways. Our administration attempted to do this through a three part platform we laid out during our campaign in January 2015. In short, the three parts were to advocate for student safety and health; increase direct student engagement and advocate at all levels for financial efficiency in a way that would benefit students. After assessing our work, we would say we have accomplished our platform and have, in general, accomplished a lot as the elected lobbyists and advocates.

In terms of student health and safety, the focus this year was around Title IX related issues. The University was under a lot of pressure to see our compliance and education around this federal policy significantly improve. These initiatives take time, but this office helped to move things along swiftly. It started with the new UNH Police Department Advisory Council. This student group meets with the Chief of Police to discuss safety issues, and Title IX has been a central topic. The next major thing we did was get a resolution through after months of meetings and frustration around Title IX. Our office wanted to make our efforts in improving our standing with Title IX student policy. We are happy to say that most of what we asked for was delivered upon. University websites have more information and resources, our Title IX office finally is not dependent on one individual, and a few other smaller aspects have been implemented. We also were able to bring back an old program that is useful in combating safety and health issues by resurrecting the “Weekend Walkers” program. Through work with the Dean of Students, the MUB, and SHARPP, the program was temporarily brought back for the spring of 2016 under the MUB and will for the future will be a part of SHARPP through funding students will provide in a three dollar increase in the SHARPP fee. This will allow for campus leaders to help students preemptively without there being any legal and conduct related ramifications. The last thing to highlight, which came through a year of work spearheaded by the Judicial Affairs Council, was a massive overhaul to the University Conduct system. UNH students have wanted to see massive change to the system for some time and through work with OCS, the Dean of Students and other stakeholders, a brand new conduct system with more transparency, speed, and due process that makes sense, will go into effect for the 2016-7 academic year. From a safety perspective, there are tiers to this system and one of them is designed for Title IX cases with new safeguards to prevent second victimization. This was paramount to our office because that is the will of the students. We said it all year that student’s health and safety came first, and we accomplished a lot to improve on this crucial front.

Student engagement is tricky for student leadership. No student leader has the time to talk in person to all thirteen thousand undergraduates and there is no chance for the President and Vice President to engage every student equally at all times. We attempted to find new ways to engage students though and create a concise student opinion that allowed for us to advocate for all undergraduates. The first thing we have done all year is we sent out regular directed communications to the students. This is something past administrations have done. What we did that was unique was we attached reports on major projects that we had tackled with Senate over the span between individual emails. These reports drew student feedback and created more knowledge. From what we see, more students than in the past are reading these emails and engagement seems to be increasing. The second thing we did in general was be available. Ryan and I attempted to be around the Student Senate office a ton, but we also provided our emails and cell phone numbers to the entire population. The goal was to make sure students knew we were open. Another thing we assisted on was the first upperclassmen Pep rally. Cat pack captains and UNH Athletics were the ones who did the work and implemented the rally, which was a great success, our office suggested the idea and it was very rewarding to see a good idea not only work, but to hear that this will not be the end of them. Athletics and Cat Pack have already expressed interest in doing another full student body rally and we hope the magnitude of “pep-rallies” grow, therefore growing student pride in the UNH brand. Next, our office led the first ever “Student Life Address”. We said during our campaign we wanted to do a town hall and address to the students. We ended up doing it on October 25, 2015. It drew a crowd that we hope will grow in the coming years. The last thing was the creation of the Student Master Plan. Ryan and I put in the leg work to survey students, compile the results, create a document and refine it. Universities tend to take over a year to create these types of documents. We created it in six months. While it has gone through refining this year, it is the first time that our office has had a document with student opinion and ideas in our hands to help create policy. This document, we foresee, will be a major player in the future of student advocacy. There is always more to be done to increase student engagement, but this year was another positive step ahead.

Financial responsibility and efficiency is tough to measure. In general, universities have a tough time of keeping costs down in this economic age of inflation and in a culture of higher education being underfunded. Ryan and I did not set out hoping we could lower tuition or lower mandatory fees, though we did certainly try when we could. Instead our goal was to find ways to get the most out of every student’s dollar and create financial efficiency and responsibility where we could. The three ways we did this best were by pushing for certain projects in Housing to be pursued within their capital improvement budget, by bringing down the value of the increase projected for the Campus Recreation fee from four hundred dollars annually to two hundred and thirty dollars, and significant change to the Student Activity fee. With the Housing projects, we pushed for more hydration stations and combination locks within the dormitories. With some lobbying, resolutions, and collaboration; Housing will be making some renovations from their capital improvements budget for Fiscal Year 2017 to add more hydration stations and combination locks. With regards to the Campus Recreation fee increase, we had some historical precedent to overcome. Two years ago, Student Senate approved a resolution that agreed to allowing the Campus Recreation fee to increase by four hundred dollars annually to cover the debt service for the Hamel Recreation Center renovation project. Our office discovered that the Board of Trustees had approved the project at a rate that would actually cost students two hundred and fifty eight dollars annually. As a result, we negotiated with Campus Recreation instead to have the increase to be two hundred and seventy dollars since we understand that any further increase to the fee will not be welcomed by students in the future because of the high cost of the fee. The last initiative our office tackled with the help of many stakeholders was the Student Activity fee. Through the budgets and concepts process, the Student Activity fee is projected to decrease by seven dollars from ninety eight to ninety one dollars. The fee shall further decrease in coming years because Senate is exploring the re-modeling of the Student Legal Services position in order to be more cost effective and provide more assistance for students. Lastly, the structure of the committee was altered through a lot of work and advocacy to create a committee that will, for future years, represent students and allow for more organizations to advocate for themselves and put on quality programming. In the end, financial responsibility is tough to measure, but our office has done a lot to create a culture of good spending and getting the most out of every student dollar.

In general, the statistics indicate a lot of activity in Student Senate. There have been twenty five general Senate meetings and four summer quorum meetings. There were a total of seventy two bills, some were repeated if they were related to personnel, in the Senate session and five during summer quorum presented to the body. Bills are internal motions made, so most of them have no effect on the student body as a whole. Resolutions deal with external matters; usually motions to improve student life or push policy that benefits students. In total, Senate has recognized on the floor fifty five resolutions during the entire session. As context, the previous recorded record was thirty seven resolutions for an entire session. Senate moved at a record pace statistically speaking, but these numbers do not tell the whole story.

In the end, our office’s assessment of the last year is positive. We believe that this Senate body and this administration have done a lot of good work and have worked hard for students. While no administration is perfect, the work was fast paced, efficient and effective. We hope to see further years match or exceed this level of productivity and that the Office of the Student Body President and Vice President will continue to march ahead.

Cameron Cook, Student Body President and Ryan Grogan, Student Body Vice President

External Affair Chair 2015-16 Report

Introduction

The External Affairs position is a very unique chair position. Where all the other chair positions focus on different things that happen within the school, the External Affairs chair covers everything that happens outside of the University. Now, one might think that the External Affairs chair would have a lot of projects but this is not necessarily the case. For the most part, the External Affairs chair has to develop their own initiatives and not a lot of student initiatives/problems just fall on their lap. In this position you need to be able to be independent, a good public speaker and understand that you will not be passing resolutions as frequently as other chairs since your projects will be more long term.

Projects/Initiatives

Student Alumni Network (SAN)

This year we worked with University Advancement to create the Student Alumni Network. This program has a goal of increasing Alumni and student relations. There will be a leadership team that consists of students in all areas who will set up events and represent the University at important Alumni events. After that, all students will be asked to join the general membership in order to have access to different events and information. There will be given away to incentivize students to join the general membership. This should be starting full force in fall 2016.

Town Gown Initiative

There was an interest in getting more students on different committees that the town has. This would help create better town relations and hopefully give students more input in town affairs. Town Administrator Todd Selig has expressed support for this to happen and has sent us a list of town committees. Since this was accomplished late in the year, the decision was made to assign students for next year so that they can sit on the committees for a full year.

Summons Initiative

This initiative would allow for students if found by police to be intoxicated (not a dangerous level) or have committed minor violations to receive a summons instead of being fully arrested. A summons is essentially a ticket that tells a student they need to be in court at this date and they will be charged with this. However, the summons would mean the student does not need to be taken to jail for the night which can be expensive for the student and our police departments. UNH Police Chief Paul Dean and Durham Police Chief David Kurz have expressed interest in this but will need to see how the arrest record look at the end of the year.

The Granite (Yearbook)

A few years ago, Student Senate had to defund the Student organization that created the Yearbook because of its failures to follow proper procedures and provide quality services to students. The consequence in doing so was that the Yearbook for students was also cut. There has been some concern about this from Alumni who do not want to see this happen. Currently, this council is working to gather student opinion about whether or not students want a yearbook through a survey. This issue will need to be resolved during the summer.

Conclusion/Future

There are many things that are on the horizon for this council. This upcoming year is a budget year for the University which means the state has to approve how much money it gives UNH. This is something this council will want to be involved in. There will be continuation/finishing of all the projects above since they are long term projects. This council will need to attend more town hall meetings to be as effective as possible. There will be an opportunity to work with the Fraternity and Sorority Life Chair on Greek zoning in the town. I would recommend this council work to have more student senate members at Alumni events as well representing the University. If you have any questions please feel free to reach out to Jonathan Dean at

Community Development-Session 37

I assumed the role of Community Development chairperson on January 29th of this year, meaning I was in the unique position of assuming a council chair position at the mid-point of the session. Because of this, getting work off the ground to start the semester was a challenge and most certainly hindered the amount of policy we could craft. Gathering Senators to join a council should not be a task left until the spring semester, rather it should be established very early on in the fall. Moreover, I was not fully acclimated to take over the job on day one, but by mid-February our council began to form a more cohesive strategy as to how we implement policy.

That brings me to my first suggestion to next year’s council chair, go out and find Senators who want to do this work, don’t wait until they come to you; you must be proactive in your approach. Second, you must set the expectation that your council members should be handling a relatively heavy workload. Weekly meetings should be the norm with our group if we intend to properly do outreach. Furthermore, delegate all of your council members to tackle one or more of the student groups individually and have them report back on the progress made at each council meeting.

As a council chair during my tenure, we only proposed one resolution: The gender-inclusive bathroom resolution which passed with overwhelming support. This policy came about from only one meeting with an administrator and was just about the easiest thing I’ve done during my time in Senate. There are several other policies that I wish I had more time to pursue, that list includes:

- Medical Amnesty for drugs

- Reviewing the RA hiring process

- Push for more training among faculty with how they interact/teach disabled students

As a council, it is critically important that we establish connections early on in the school year to let the various student groups know that Senate is there for them to help them with any problem they have, and to help them with any policy. DO NOT RELY ON SURVEYS to gauge how and what policy you should pursue, get on in the community and develop the relationship necessary to help senate help students.

Danny O’Leary

Community Development Chairperson, Session 37

Dear New Health and Wellness Chair,

You have just been granted one of the most tiring and rewarding jobs in student senate. You have been blessed with the best administrators who will love to work with you and care about you as person. This job works with every area of health and wellness which is great because if you have a subject you are passionate about, you can do work with it. In the same vein it is very easy to neglect one aspect of this job. I have struggled with keeping a pulse on everything, but if you are organized and good working relationships with the administrators, you’ll do great. I can’t wait to see all the positive change you are able to accomplish in this coming year. Good luck!