Executive members of the student senate address senators

By Paul Biasco

In the Thursday, Aug. 28 edition of The Daily Illini, the article titled “Student Senate sets its agenda,” included information and a quotation about the Big Ten student government conference attributed to Mike Boshardy.

The information should have been attributed to Rohit Dhake, vice president internal for the Illinois Student Senate.

The Daily Illini regrets the error.

The first meeting of the Illinois Student Senate began Wednesday night with announcements by the members of the executive board to the senate on progress made over the summer as well as issues that the senate will be facing this semester.

Student Body President Jaclyn O’Day, senior in LAS, gave her first announcement of the semester by informing the student senate of the four issues that the Senate Executive Committee thought would be the most important and relevant this year: energy conservation, research at the University, “e-learning” and the campus budget process.

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“Energy is becoming more of a concern to administration and it should be to us,” O’Day said.

Elaborating on her second point, O’Day said that there is some inter-disciplinary research currently, but the Senate Executive Committee would like to see more, as well as possible inter-disciplinary courses in the classroom.

O’Day said the state of the funding for the University is currently flat and state increases are questionable.

Rohit Dhake, vice president internal for the Illinois Student Senate, mentioned the Big Ten student government conference over the summer at which the ISS was represented.

“It is a really great form of collaboration,” Dhake said, “It gives us the ability to do things on the national level.”

The next Big Ten student government conference will be held at the University from Jan. 16 through Jan. 18.

Vikram Chaudhery, vice president of the senate and senior in Engineering, informed the senate about his outreach work over the summer and the importance of outreach for the senate this year. He urged senators to work within the colleges they represent by reaching out to them.

“Most people don’t know about the student senate,” Chaudhery said. “We need to make the student senate an active force. We need to start reaching out as senators.”

Chaudhery also announced that the search is underway for a Vice Chancellor of Public Safety, but would not disclose candidates for the position.