ASCSM discusses traditions, curriculum

While largely unattended, last Thursday’s Associated Students of the Colorado School of Mines (ASCSM) meeting discussed many new issues facing the student body including current discussions in the undergraduate council and the possibility of new traditions for students.

The idea of an activity credit is back in the undergraduate council, with the basic idea being that students would do eight semesters of activities (yet to be defined) that would be required for graduation but would not count towards students’ GPAs. This is meant to replace the current system of PA credit.

A number of questions were brought up at this announcement. One student, after pointing out that there is at least one department almost at the state credit limit of 150 credit hours, stated that this seems to be an attempt for the undergraduate council to give us more to do without breaking the law. A question as to whether or not the undergraduate council was looking for student input was met with, “We don’t know. Honestly, the document is dated October 2006. They get stuff done very, very slowly.”

Regarding traditions, Ben Selig met with Dr. Mark Eberhart, head of the faculty senate on the topic of campus traditions disappearing. The three main traditions brought up were the Graduate Student Association Pub Crawl, the M-Climb, and Senior bus. Not much appeared to have been discussed regarding the actual traditions, but Eberhart expressed that the students have faculty support.

Since one of the major issues on campus recently has been pedestrian traffic, a pedestrian corridor will be made out of 16th Street, barring being voted down by city council. It was not discussed at the meeting how this would impact the flow of cars through and around campus, although at least one member expressed dismay at the plan.

Also, because of the cheating incident last semester, Provost Steven Castillo expressed a desire to ASCSM to reevaluate the student honor code to update it for new technologies. It was decided that members would look over the honor code and bring issues and ideas to the next ASCSM meeting.

Important policy changes and possible curriculum changes are also on the agenda for the undergraduate council. The dead week policy is inconsistent between departments and student athletes are taking tests during dead week, a violation of the policy, which will hopefully be revised within the next semester.

The undergraduate council is also considering adding an Underground Construction minor which would involve 7-8 classes. The council appears to be dragging their feet on the issue, although for no apparent reason.

The topic of student employees being classified as state employees was also discussed with Eberhart briefly, with the conclusion that there is the possibility that the school has been switching between them to suit the needs of the job.

The L-Days committee, historically responsible for L-Days and nothing else, may be getting a change to introduce more county and local politicians to the campus. Long-term plans would involve getting involved in more state politics and collaborating with other campuses.

Minor reports included the seniors setting their office hours in Coors Lab on Mondays 3-4 PM. The GSA are planning for the research fair to be in April and noted that there is an award for undergraduate research. The BSO stated that they were attempting to clear some confusion over one-time reallocation.

The vote on freshmen class representatives also occurred at this meeting, during which the freshmen were dismissed from the room during discussion and voting.