ASB president Gregory Alston presents a resolution during a meeting earlier this year.
Phillip Waller I The Daily Mississippian
The Associated Student Body senators voted unanimously Tuesday night to approve the Last Week of Class policy.
Authors of the resolution ASB President Gregory Alston, ASB Cabinet member Jessica Broukaert, Senator Thor Goodfellow and Senator Austin Powell presented the resolution.
The policy was previously known as the Reading Days Resolution that passed in the ASB senate last semester. This resolution stated that professors could not give students assignments worth 10 percent or more of their final grade the week before final exams. The resolution was then presented at the Faculty Senate where it did not pass.
Broukaert said the idea to rewrite the bill with the new title, “Last Week of Class,” came after the previous title caused confusion when presented to the Faculty Senate.
“Some of the faculty senators were concerned that the title ‘Reading Days’ might lead students to believe that those were five days where the students didn’t have to come to class,” Broukaert said. “That was obviously not the case, but we just wanted to be very clear and intentional about that.”
Alston explained that he and the authors are unsure as to when the new resolution will be presented to the Faculty Senate.
“That’s something that we have to figure out the date for,” Alston said. “We still need to do a lot more work before we take it to the Faculty Senate again. We need to meet with a couple more people from the Faculty Senate and from the Provost’s Office, but we are planning on taking it back to the Faculty Senate whenever we are ready to do so.”
The ASB senators also passed a bill amending the number of seats in the Senate.
Senator Rod Bridges presented the Increased Campus Senate Apportionment Act of 2014. This act will increase the number of Senate seats from 60 to 70. Eight of the 10 seats will be distributed evenly and designated for each class. The two remaining seats will be designated for academic schools.
“We wrote the bill primarily to help alleviate the predicted pressures of increased enrollment next year because we know that there is going to be such a large jump in enrollment that senate also needs to grow as well,” Bridges said.
