COVID-19 and the university’s response to the worldwide pandemic was the main topic of the Undergraduate Student Government general council meeting, held remotely on a Zoom video call Thursday, March 19.
Student Body President Logan Monahan discussed the continuity plan for USG, including having all future USG related meetings being held remotely for the remainder of the semester.
“We will continue to be an organization on this campus that represents students,” Monahan said, “and I think that in this time it’s even more important for the students.”
Students remaining on campus will be housed and fed
Patricia Conde-Brooks, executive director for campus inclusion and community and USG co-adviser, made it clear that students unable to go home would be provided with what they need.
“As a university, we’re committed to being here for the students, and providing housing and food for the students,” Conde-Brooks said.
Conde-Brooks also noted that the university is considering barring access to the Anderson Student Center for all except staff and students living on campus.
“We don’t want the public coming to the building that doesn’t need to be in the building, and part of it is mostly for the safety and health of our students,” she said.
Pass/fail grading option
A petition which was shared among the St. Thomas community asking the university to offer a pass/fail grading option this semester was also discussed.
Hunter Santos, diversity relations representative, noted that there are “two narratives going around.”
“One is that people really want a pass/fail to be a university-wide thing because of the different obstacles people are going to face,” Santos said. “I’ve also heard that half the people who are signing it think it’s a joke, and they’re signing it just to be funny.”
Kate Dolan, senior class senator, notes that students “would at least like to have the option.”
“There are some students that feel like they have to pick up their GPA, so they’d rather just go for the A then just get a pass/fail,” Dolan said.
Olivia Wong, sustainability committee representative, pitched the idea of waiting until the last week of classes before students needed to make their choice, noting decisions made by other universities.
“I think they want to give students the opportunity to say that if their grades are good enough and they’re not going to hurt their GPA, that they can keep that grade,” Wong said.
The university has since announced that all undergraduate courses would move to a pass-fail system and students could choose between that or traditional grading by May 1.
Class of 2020 commencement
The class of 2020 graduation commencement, and the worry of it getting potentially canceled due to COVID-19 concerns was also discussed.
“The feedback I’ve been hearing is that seniors don’t want it canceled, they would rather have it postponed and have it pushed way, way back,” Monahan said. “Even if a third to half of the seniors are able to come, they would rather have that happen.”
Monahan explained that the university is looking at the contracts that they have with various vendors that help put on graduation and seeing when they are able to drop those contracts without losing money.
Margaret Cahill, director of campus life and USG co-adviser, noted that a feedback form would be sent out to seniors about graduation.
“There is going to be an effort to collect feedback from seniors on what would be meaningful for seniors as a way to end your academic career at St. Thomas,” Cahill said.
Emergency fund for students, other funding
Vice President of Financial Affairs Derek Nauman, along with Monahan, discussed using the remainder of USG funding towards an emergency fund for undergraduate students, overseen by Student Affairs, since that money will not be as heavily used towards clubs and organizations this semester.
“One of the biggest things that we felt is important is that this money needs to go back to students and needs to be given to students,” Monahan said.
Student Affairs has had an emergency fund, normally approximately $30,000 a year for students in crisis. It was mutually agreed on that USG should not be in charge of allocating where emergency funding goes to, and that it should go towards the Student Affairs fund.
“I think that can very quickly snowball into a lot of people gaining animosity towards us for apparent favoritism or anything like that,” Student Veteran Representative Jesse Lowinske said.
A committee will be formed inside USG on this topic, which will decide how they will want to move forward with this plan.
Club funding and internal requests were not discussed in this meeting.
Justin Amaker can be reached at justin.amaker@stthomas.edu.