20 April, 1999
Dear Senators:

To give you an idea of what other SGAs are doing, I’ll be collecting news articles on student movements at other schools.  

Hope you enjoy,


Chris


The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.
Friday, April 16, 1999
Clemson shuttle draws MADD official's criticism

CLEMSON, S.C. (AP) - Plans for a late-night shuttle service at Clemson University are being criticized by the president of South Carolina's chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

The purpose is to lessen the impact of drinking and driving on the university community, said students Craig Story and Kendra Worley, who helped put the Safe Ride proposal together.

A Clemson student recently was killed in what the Highway Patrol said was a drunken-driving wreck.

However, Harold Watson, MADD's executive director in the state, said the Safe Ride idea could encourage underage drinking.

"The largest number of students that are going to take advantage of it are underage and not supposed to be drinking in the first place," he said.

"I don't feel like a student government association should encourage and enable students to find it easier to break the law," Watson said.

Story, the student government's chief of staff, said a drinking and driving problem does exist, but the object of the shuttle also is to keep people safe who otherwise would have to walk late at night.

"We're not just catering to the students who want to drink. We're catering to the students who want to go downtown," he said.

The shuttle service could start this fall.

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The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.
Thursday, April 15, 1999

UNH student paper granted injunction against student Senate
By GENE JOHNSON Associated Press Writer

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) - A judge has ordered the University of New Hampshire student Senate not to meet in closed session until he decides whether state open meeting laws apply to it.

The university's student newspaper, The New Hampshire, sought the injunction to keep the Senate from going behind closed doors Thursday night to discuss a January incident in which two senators were caught drinking rum-and-cokes during a meeting.

Strafford County Superior Court Judge Peter Fauver granted the order Thursday and said he would hear arguments Monday. A ruling is expected early next week.

Concord lawyer Joshua Gordon, who is representing the paper, said Thursday there's no reason open meeting laws should not apply to the student government of a public university. The Senate oversees the university's student activity fee.

"They do public business - very narrow public business, but it's still public business," Gordon said. "I don't think they can avoid the right-to-know law, and that's what they're trying to do."

On Sunday, the Senate met in closed session to discuss whether other members had known about the drinking at the time of the incident.

The newspaper objected, and the Senate soon adjourned because it was afraid it might be meeting illegally.

University system lawyer Ronald Rodgers has since told the newspaper and the Senate the laws do not apply because the student Senate is not a governmental body as defined in the statute.

State law specifically says that in the state university system, only the board of trustees and its committees are governmental bodies that must hold open meetings, Rodgers said Thursday. He is not representing either side in the case, but said the student Senate, like the faculty Senate, is exempt.

The newspaper and the Student Press Law Center, based in Arlington, Va., disagree. Mark Goodman, the center's executive director, said the law isn't so narrow.

"It sounds like (the editors) have a very strong legal claim," Goodman said.

Open meetings and records laws generally require meetings of elected or public officials to be open and government records to be public, with narrow exceptions. One exception is meetings or records dealing with personnel issues, such as hiring and firing.

Rebecca Mahoney, the newspaper's editor in chief, said she was pleased Thursday night's session remained open to the public.

During the session, the Senate voted 19-18 with three abstensions to adhere to punishments the university handed down as a result of the drinking incident. The university had ordered all senators to attend a workshop on ethics and one on alcohol abuse and to perform community service. But many senators wanted to reject the sanctions because they considered themselves independent of the administration, Mahoney said.

According to a memorandum by the state attorney general, "a board or committee need not be formally established by statute or ordinance for it to fall within the provisions of the Right-to-Know Law."

Speaker of the Senate Molly McCarthy said the Senate as a whole does not necessarily agree it's immune to the open meeting law. She said senators simply want to know where they stand in terms of it.
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The Associated Press.  
Wednesday, April 14, 1999
Student group posts course evaluations on Web, irking instructors

MURRAY, Ky. (AP) - A student organization at Murray State University has posted student course evaluations, which include instructors' names and how students graded their classroom performances, on the Internet.

The Student Government Association's decision to publish the evaluations from last fall on Wednesday on its Web site - www.start.at/sga - angered many instructors, said Ann Landini, president of the Faculty Senate.

"People are very upset," said Landini, an associate professor of journalism and mass communications. "I have had so many phone calls that I have lost count."

The Faculty Senate's executive committee condemned the action in a resolution.

Todd Earwood, president of the student organization, said the faculty misunderstood the project's nature.

"It's not something against the faculty," Earwood said. "It's for students. Initially there is always a negative response with publishing faculty evaluations."

Dennis Taulbee, general counsel to the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, said student groups at other Kentucky schools have periodically obtained and released course evaluations. In recent years, it has happened at Northern Kentucky University and Morehead State University.

Taulbee said his agency wouldn't otherwise comment on the action taken by the Murray State student organization. The council is responsible for general planning and oversight of the commonwealth's public universities and community and technical colleges.

The evaluations are a component of an instructor's annual performance review and influence decisions made about tenure, promotion and merit.

Obtaining the records from the university was the culmination of two years' work, Earwood said. He set up a committee in April 1997 to help him figure out how to publish the evaluations, then filed an open-records request in January.

Earwood said Kentucky's open-records law covers student course evaluations. In deciding to release the information, MSU President Kern Alexander agreed.

"We read the law and we released them," Alexander said. "I think the open-records law covered the subject and that's what we've done here."

He said releasing the evaluations to the student organization is tantamount to giving them to a newspaper.

As for the faculty members who oppose the information's release, Kern said, "It's a question of their interpretation of the open-records law."

Landini argued that the faculty handbook says evaluations are part of an instructor's personnel record, making them exempt from the open-records law.

The handbook also says the provost's office will notify faculty members before any release of the evaluations. No instructors were notified in this case, Landini said.

She said the Faculty Senate is examining its options, including asking the state attorney general's office for an opinion. In the meantime, the faculty group's resolution asks for the suspension of any further release of the evaluations pending a review by a university committee.