Power Outage Notification Procedure Questioned
A representative from one of the governing groups came to Student Government (SG) on behalf of a professor who was never informed about the power outage on February 11. An email was sent out via the Message Center that told students and faculty that Rochester Gas and Electric was responsible for the outage. According to the Message Center, the message was categorized as an “important institute announcement.” Many of the senators considered the incident to be an emergency, and were surprised that no text message notifications were sent out. Questions were raised about the emergency notification system on campus and when exactly the RIT community should be notified about incidents such as the power outage. The senate voted to send an email to find out exactly when the emergency notification is used to inform students about incidents on campus.
Intellectual Property Management Presentation
Bill Bond, director of the Intellectual Property Management Office (IPMO), presented possible revisions to the intellectual property policy. Ed Wolf, SG president, and Fabiana Kotority, graduate senator, are both on the writing team for the V12.9 revisions. IPMO is “responsible for managing RIT’s intellectual property portfolio and bring that intellectual property to the marketplace through licenses and formation of start-up companies,” according to the IPMO website. The proposed revisions further clarified issues like ownership of class projects, the definition of a graduate student, and how one’s work will be protected at RIT. The discussion that followed the presentation clarified any confusion on how the student’s work is protected.
Community Watch Update
Jahanavi Gauthaman, representative of the Campus Improvement and Development Committee, presented an update of the community watch. The community watch would be “for the students by the students” and a community service for the RIT community that would further institute involvement. The volunteers would report any suspicious activity on campus, open doors for locked out residents, give rides to students and “lend assistance where needed when contacted by Public Safety.” The point of the program is to help out students without incriminating them.
Volunteers would help run this program and a student operations manager would be paid minimum wage to oversee the volunteers. The volunteers would have to be in good standing at RIT, mature and with a clean criminal record. Interested students would apply online and qualifying students would be interviewed and tested with an applicable skills exam.
The community watch program would work closely with Public Safety and Chris Denninger, director of Public Safety. Denninger was also present to clear up any confusion on the role of Public Safety in the program. The main office for the program would be at the SG office and applications would be available on the SG website as well.
Since this program will be in conjunction with SG, the senate will further discuss the program at the next meeting.
No Bus Shelters at Park Point
Gerry Brunelle reported that Parking and Transportations Services (PATS) heard back from Park Point about the bus shelters. Since PATS is not able to put up shelters in Park Point, the apartment complex has chosen not to accommodate the students.
