Katheryn Thayer keeps you informed:

• At an hour overtime, tonight’s meeting was a nail-biter, folks. Most of that time was filled with debate over constitutional amendments. The president got downright snarly when representatives discussed having exclusively two-thirds majority votes, taking away her power to decide when 50+1 votes require a stronger consensus. The discussion was so heated that a Rep even jokingly implemented a filibuster. In the end, the Rep council member, Executive member, and third party were given the veto power originally given to the President and Vice President. SGA approved a change
• Angela Haddad visited to share the major changes to General Education requirements. A study on the class of 2000-2004, the first to experience the new Nine Ways of Knowing, was cited as the basis for adjustments to Social Analysis, Cultures in Comparison, and Reason and Value, three “ways of knowing” that students found confusingly similar. For Reason and Value, now Reason and Ethics, faculty developed and approved new descriptions and aims. Because there was no consensus on Cultures in Comparison, it was left unchanged for the time being. For all of the Nine Ways, Student Learning Outcomes, the intended benefits and skills to be gained from the courses, will be more explicitly defined in the future to help differentiate between them. She admitted that the changes in the GER are somewhat moving slowly because the Provost took a new job, but the work of gathering information and analyzing the issues is happening as planned. Inevitably, the science requirement came up. SGA was in strong favor of flexibility or complementary pairings of departments, rather than rigid tracks in the same science.
• SSC suggested recognition of the Entrepreneur Club, and it was approved—Happy 0th Birthday!
• On April 18th Debora Spar is coming to the RepCouncil meeting. Leaders asked who would be able to attend and were disappointed that many representatives would miss the meeting. They chided, “This has been on the calendar for a long time,” to which a councilmember replied, “So has Passover!”