New residential director addresses concerns at Senate
Helen Wang, the new director of residential life, presented at Senate this week and explained that she and residential staff are working on creating a curriculum to address stress and other on-campus issues. She acknowledged that the current physical state of some dorms is a cause of stress and addressed the issue of termites in Dower, which had been brought to her attention by a Wellesley News article last week. She said that she had worked with residential life to relocate the student who was mentioned in the article and worked with facilities to resolve this issue. She also addressed the issue of compensation and said that compensation for residential life would be under discussion with an emphasis on having RAs be “compensated fairly, with equity across systems.” Her hope is that in the future, “students will not have to yell for what they want.”
Updates on Honor Code proceedings, future changes
The new Chief Justice Maya Nandakumar ’19 presented on the status of the Honor Code. There have been 18 honor code trials so far this year, with 12 of them being academic and six being social. In addition, there will be several more trials before the end of the year, with the expected number being 20 to 25 trials, which is in line with past years. In order to address the large backlog of Honor Code cases, the Chief Justice proposed changes that would expedite the process. Currently, faculty-staff resolutions, which are agreements between students and their professors about the appropriate punishment for plagiarism, have to be reviewed by a three-member panel composed of a faculty member, a student and a dean. In the new system, these agreements will be reviewed by the academic coordinator and the Chief Justice, or alternatives if there is a conflict of interest. The Chief Justice hopes that this will expedite the process of Honor Code trials.
Updates on the activities of College Government Treasury
The new College Government Treasurer Gina Scorpiniti ’19 presented on the status of the treasury and funding from the past year. Tower Court was the most funded House Council, followed by Stone Davis and Munger. Next year, House Council funding will be made more equitable by basing funding on the number of students living in each dorm. One proposed change is be a cap on the funding per student for an event. This year, funding changes meant that organizations had their budgets for events cut. However, the CG Treasurer proposed a new system that would only cut the funding of more expensive events, i.e. those with a cost per student above a certain amount. This would mean that less expensive events would not be as affected by budget cuts.
