THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MONDAY; JUNE 2, 2014
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STUDENT SENATE
PAGE 3
Senate builds momentum for upcoming year
MIRANDA DAVIS
news@kansan.com
While the majority of the student body has taken a vacation from campus and classes, members of the Student Senate executive board are back on campus starting work for the 2014-2015 school year.
Student Body President Morgan Said and Vice President Miranda Wagner have been working since the school year ended and will spend the summer in Lawrence meeting with faculty and staff and starting work on platforms.
One of the first things on Said's agenda is the creation of the social equity director position on the executive staff. Said said she hopes this position will work with whoever is hired as the University's new vice provost of diversity and equity. According to the Grow KU website, this person will
also work in partnership with the Office of Multicultural Affairs.
"Our hope is that these two individuals can work together on their projects throughout the year from the administrative side but also from the student side," Said said.
Once the executive staff writes the details of the position, it will go before the first cycle of the new Senate. If it's adopted, hiring will begin, and Said said she hopes to have someone by mid-September.
The executive staff is also rewriting some parts of the Senate Rules and Regulations as well as many of the job descriptions for the executive staff and make them clear and specific.
"We've been looking through our Rules and Regulations and some of the old things that have been in Senate for a really long time," Said said. "We're saying, 'Do they meet the standards of today's time?' If they don't,
we are reconfiguring it."
Said also noted that the mental health platform will take precedence. She said she hopes to hire another psychologist at Student Health Services if the funding is available.
"Last year there was a wait list of a couple months for students to get into CAPS, which is just outrageous," she said. "We are really looking into seeing if we can find a way to find some funding to hire a new psychologist pretty immediately so that problem doesn't occur ever again."
Along with mental health, Said is also looking into the protocol on campus in case a shooter situation did occur.
"We have talked to the Student Health Advisory Board and Active Minds quite a bit about our mental wellness platform. In light of some of the recent occurrences on other college campuses, we are taking a look
at the University's protocol if there were to be a campus shooter," she said. "We're taking looks at all sorts of things on campus, these 'what if, god forbid' situations. It's important to make sure we are up to standard on things of that sort."
Chief of Staff Mitchell Cota is in Lawrence working with Said and Wagner. He said that once the school year ended he, Said and Wagner started meeting to decide what the executive staff would do this summer and next school year.
Cota said in addition to working to add a social justice minor at the University, he's also working with Said and Wagner to create the social equity director position.
"Working in the summer sets the tone for the rest of the year," Cota said. "This is the time when the executive staff builds momentum for beginning platform initiatives as well
MIRANDA DAVIS/KANSAN Student Body President Morgan Said poses in her new office.
as finishing some."
— Edited by Emma LeGault
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