Amy May West stands outside Old Main, Thursday, April 11. She was chosen as the Chair of Senate for the 2013-2014 ASG year. (Photo by Amy West)

Newly elected Chair of Senate Amy West discussed changes that will take place in the upcoming year, including both structural and policy changes within the ASG Senate.

“My main project for next year has been working at restructuring the Senate,” West said.

Right now in Senate there is a rule that every two senators must write at least one bill. Originally, this rule was established in an effort to encourage senators to be active and get things accomplished, West said.

“However, I do not foresee that being the policy next year,” West said. A policy like this can end up forcing senators to write bills just to write bills, West said.

Instead of writing bills to genuinely change the UA, senators end up rushing to write bills at the end of the year just to meet this policy, West said.

Committees often run out of time and don’t even get the chance to meet and discuss a bill, West said.

“Next year, one of the goals will be to make committees more active,” West said. Instead of giving a bill requirement to individual senators, it might be more beneficial to give this kind of requirement to committees themselves, West said.

“We want to structure ASG more like the national government,” West said. A lot of the grunt work and research needs to be done by the committees before the bills reach the floor, West said.

“A committee is what drives a well-rounded bill,” West said. “One person cannot look at a bill from all the angles.”

In addition, ASG hopes to be more efficient in allocating funds next year, West said.

“We have a lot of funds left over, and we want to put that money to use,” West said. “We want to find ways to let students know that ASG has funds available for them.”

Another recent development that will be bringing a lot of change to ASG in the next few years is that senators are working toward putting a student on the UA board of trustees, West said.

Sens. Ethan Dollar and Victoria Maloch authored a bill to support whatever steps necessary to “establish a student board member of the University of Arkansas Board of Trustees,” according to the bill.

This would be key to having someone in the decision-making process who has a student perspective, Dollar said.

Dollar and Maloch spoke with Chancellor G. David Gearhart and various other administrators and began discussing the measures that will be necessary to set this project in motion.

One of the biggest obstacles is that in order to increase the size of the board of trustees, there would have to be an amendment to the Arkansas Constitution, Dollar said.

“This is a big project and one that I will probably be working on until I graduate,” Dollar said.

Renner and Keffler received 2,854 votes, while Will Simpson and Ellen Rudolph received 2,399.

“It was a close race,” said Terrence Boyd, ASG elections commissioner, in his speech before announcing the winners.

In the run for secretary, Lindsey Bach received 2,782 votes to Drew Blythe’s 2,471.

Matthew Chaffin and Will Strickland will be holding a runoff election on March 25 and 26 for the position of treasurer. No candidate received a majority of votes.

Amy May West was unanimously voted by the ASG Senate as chair of the senate.

Three congressional referendums were on the ballot along with the candidates. Every measure passed.

The ASG Impeachment Process Act of 2013 is a constitutional amendment that allows the legislative branch (senate and graduate congress) the power to issue and hear cases of impeachment of any executive officer, cabinet member, justice, senator or congress member, striking the powers and duties of the ASG Judiciary to investigate and hear ethics complaints against ASG agents, according to the ASG website.

The Senate Committee Restructuring Act of 2013 changes many committee’s duties. The added committees are Campus Life, Academics, Infrastructure and Internal Relations. Campus Life will take on the responsibilities of Sustainability, Diversity and Campus Safety. Infrastructure will take on the duties of Sustainability and Parking and Transit. Internal Relations will take on the duties of Judiciary and Code and Constitution.

The final act established the Fresh HOGS program, which stands for Freshmen Helping Our Student Government. The program is an autonomous entity within ASG with a budget of 1 percent of the total Program Allocations Board allocation for ASG, according to the ASG website.

Senators for each college were also announced.

Senators for Dale Bumpers College of Agriculture, Food and Life Sciences: Ashton Dawson, Jordan Wilson and Elleott Amick.

For Fay Jones School of Architecture: Amy Kent and Shaelyn Vision.

For J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences: Joe Kieklak, Wil Cheatham, Morgan Farmer, Haley Noga, Luke Brasuell, Mark K. Cameron, Ashton Williams, Sterling Elmore, Joseph C. Holloway, Nathan Chadwick, Conrad Witte, Joe Youngblood and Kelsey S. Boykin.

For College of Education and Health Professions: Molly McDaniel and Samantha Gerner.

For College of Engineering: Katy Thompson, Will McComas, Ethan Dollar, Fallon Briana Pennington and Parker Korita.

For Graduate School / School of Law: Madeleine Forrest, Alex Marino, Sanket Desai, Michael Powers, Rick Eyi and James Wesolowki.

For Sam M. Walton College of Business: Clare Davis, Ralph Bray, Molly Hiller, Omar Kasim, Tori McChesney, Rowan O’Brien-Williams and Ray Todd.

More than 90 percent of students who responded enjoyed having Scantrons and Blue Books provided for them last semester, according to a recent ASG Student Poll.

The bill proposes “a minimal credit-hour raise in tuition to provide Scantrons, Blue Books and other testing materials for students.”

Although a tuition increase is normally a buzzword that most people would presume the student population would be against, the results from the ASG poll showed the contrary, said Sen. Joe Kieklak, author of the bill.

In addition, the Kieklak proposes university officials put in place a regulatory measure where departments must use a request form and provide class numbers before they can obtain testing materials for their students.

When a bill is written by two authors and supported by eight sponsors, who represent a majority of the colleges on campus, it goes to show that the representatives agree this is a cost-effective and convenient solution, Kieklak said.

“We are going to put on our bootstraps and work with administration to make this happen,” Kieklak said.

If the bill passes, the most immediate course of action will be to meet with the provost, Kieklak said.

There are two main reasons that the university only provided testing materials for one semester, Kieklak said.

Last semester, departments and teachers in certain colleges overestimated how many Scantrons they would need for their classes and supplies ran short, Kieklak said.

Because there was no system in place to regulate the use of the testing materials, it is not fair to blame the faculty alone, Kieklak said.

Besides this bill, ASG also proposed last night to allow syllabi to be added to the course information on ISIS before enrollment begins.

“Students who are better informed about the demands of a course will be less likely to drop once classes begin,” according to the bill.

In addition, ASG voted last night to pass two bills that  support lowering parking fines and creating a more consistent warning system for first-time parking violations.

In accordance with the first bill, the fine for parking in a space not authorized by a permit will lower from $50 to $30.

Because the fine for parking on campus without a permit at all is only $40, it seemed unfair to issue a driver without a permit a lower fine than a driver with a permit, according to the bill.

Presidential Candidate Bo Renner’s ASG experience includes serving as an ASG senator, chairman of Transit and Parking, and chairman of the Walton College of Business Caucus.

“Dad told me at a young age that there are plenty of people who will call out problems, but there are very few who will fix them,” Renner said. “I have always tried to be somebody who will be the solution rather than someone who just calls out the problems.”

If elected, Renner plans to permanently provide students with Scantrons, improve parking for off-campus students and the UA as a whole, consider alternative ways for students to pay off parking fines, and make syllabi available for students online before enrollment.

One idea that could help alleviate parking issues is to relocate freshmen parking to a different lot, Renner said.

Renner also said that allowing students to work off parking fines through community service would be a great alternative to paying off parking fines.

“I’ve lived here my entire life, was born and raised here in Fayetteville,” Renner said. “All I’ve known my entire life is the Razorbacks, and no one is going to work harder for it than me for it.”

Ellie Keffler is running for vice president on Renner’s ticket. Keffler serves as the campus environment manager, where she works on various aspects of campus experience as a whole.

If elected, Keffler said she is most excited to put a syllabus bank online.

This initiative is beneficial for both faculty and students because it will give students a heads up about class expectations and hopefully decrease the number of students who drop classes, Keffler said.

Keffler said she has already begun work to set this legislation in motion. Faculty members are in favor of this idea just as much as students, Keffler said.

Matt Chaffin is running for treasurer on Renner’s ticket. Chaffin is a finance major and the treasurer of his pledge class.

Chaffin hopes to set up a fund to provide students with Scantrons, increase student involvement by hosting more university events and improve campus safety through mobile apps.

“I want to give back to the school who has given so much to me,” Chaffin said.

Keffler also plans to give students a better sense of security by bringing a blue-light safety app to the UA.

An app like this could really alleviate parents’ concerns for their children’s safety and make students feel more secure as well, Keffler said.

Lindsey Bach, running for secretary on Renner’s ticket, serves on the cabinet as the administrative assistant to the Fresh Hogs vice president and the assistant coordinator of membership for the Fresh Hogs program.

Over the past year, Bach has been working on legislation to bring Tusk, the Razorbacks’ official mascot, to live on campus.

If elected, Bach plans to create a Listserv for students who are interested in learning about what ASG is doing.

Of course, this would be optional and only for those students who are interested, but this is one way to get the student body more involved and knowledgeable about ASG, Bach said.

SIMPSON TICKET

Presidential Candidate Will Simpson served as director of legislative affairs in cabinet during his sophomore year and serves as a senator this year.

If elected, Simpson plans to help the UA reach its goal of becoming a top-20 research university without sacrificing teacher quality.

Simpson is also dedicated to getting better student seating in Bud Walton Arena and to easing student parking issues by creating a commuter parking lot for freshmen.

Simpson said he would rather ASG be a “go-and-do organization instead of a come-and-see group.”

He also plans to make ASG activity more transparent to students and to make its website more accessible.

“The UA is in a good position to grow,” Simpson said. “We just have to control it so that we don’t sacrifice quality for quantity.”

Ellen Rudolph, running for vice president on Simpson’s ticket, worked as a senator for Residents’ Interhall Congress her freshman year and is currently a senator for the Walton College of Business. Rudolph helped re-create an organization called Greeks Going Green along with her opponent Ellie Keffler. Rudolph serves as vice president of the group.

If elected, Rudolph said she wants to make Homecoming a more sustainable event, open up communication lines between different groups on campus to encourage more collaboration and make ASG more transparent to the student body.

Rudolph also said she is passionate about increasing the caliber for earning a degree from the UA.

Will Strickland, running for treasurer on Simpson’s ticket, is a junior accounting major who served as the treasurer of Beta Epsilon Chi and currently serves on the Distinguished Lectures Committee.

“It is my job to be personable and open to RSOs,” Strickland said. “RSOs need to know that I’m there as treasurer to help them and that my door is always open to RSOs.”

Strickland plans to allocate more money to RSOs and provide students with testing materials by reallocating funds that are already in place.

“There is over $100,000 of student-fee money that has not been allocated to RSOs yet, and that money needs to be allocated this semester,” Strickland said.

RSOs need to be educated on how to apply for funding, Strickland said.

“It is a daunting and intimidating task, and they need to know how to do it and be educated on the process,” he said.

Drew Blythe is running for secretary on Simpson’s ticket. Although Blythe does not currently have any ASG experience, she said she feels that the various other roles of leadership she has held have prepared her for the position.

If elected, Blythe wants to make classrooms more user-friendly to students.

“I really want to work on quality classrooms with English-proficient teachers,” Blythe said. One idea in the works is to make a UA website similar to Rate My Professor where teacher evaluations are public for students to see, Blythe said.

STEWART PENCE (Independent Treasurer Ticket)

Stewart Pence is an independent candidate running for treasurer. Pence serves as president of Student Organization Outreach and Involvement Experience (SOOIE). Through his work with the program, Pence is familiar with and has experience working with RSOs.

Pence has also had six years of experience as vice president of finance at a multimillion-dollar fabrication company and serves as vice president of finance for Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity.

“I’m here to make sure RSOs get their funding,” Pence said. “I make sure these events run well, they’re publicized, and that processes and procedures are well-maintained.”

Pence said he chose to run without a ticket to challenge the system.

“Even though I am a Greek candidate, I feel that our campus does not represent Greeks well in ASG and as a result we isolate just a segment of the population to vote,” Pence said. “If we do that, we are not a student government; we are a special-interest group.”

John Legend

John Legend has accepted an offer with the UA Distinguished Lectures Committee to perform April 29 at Barnhill Arena.

Legend has verbally accepted the offer but has not yet signed an official contract, said Autumn Lewis, chairwoman of the Distinguished Lectures Committee.

If he signs, he will give a lecture and play four songs, Lewis said. The committee thought he could appeal to a broad range of students, she said.

After being suggested by committee members, he also scored well with students in a poll, Lewis said.

Legend is known for “Used to Love U,” “Ordinary People,” “Number One” and “So High.” He also won three Grammy Awards and contributed a track for the film “Django Unchained.”

Presidential Candidates:

Bo Renner

Will Simpson

Vice-Presidential Candidates:

Ellen Rudolph

Ellie Keffler

Treasurer Candidates:

Matt Chaffin

Will Strickland

Stewart Pence

Secretary Candidates:

Drew Blythe

Lindsey Bach

The current warning system runs on a case-by-case basis, and this makes it really difficult to for warnings to be issued consistently, said Sen. Amy West, author of the bill. The system is very confusing for and unfamiliar to students because warnings are given based on how the ticket issuers see fit, West said.

The University of Arkansas Parking and Traffic Regulations is 12 pages and over 4,500 words in length. The regulations are sometimes difficult for students to understand, and “students often pay hefty fees for first-time violations without knowledge of the regulation,” according to the bill.

ASG senators talked with Gary Smith, director of transit and parking, about ways to improve the warning system and make it more coherent for students.

Gary Smith was very open and receptive to ideas about revising the warning system and making it more consistent and clear for students, West said.

Next week, ASG will also vote on a bill last night to lower the fine for parking in a space not authorized by a permit from $50 to $30.

This change was proposed in light of the fact that the fine for parking on campus without a permit at all is only $40.

“There is a regulation dissonance in that a driver without a permit would face a lower fine than a driver with a permit,” according to the bill.

Other ASG proposals include a bill to allow syllabi to be added to the course information on ISIS before students enroll and a resolution to permanently provide students with testing materials.

With course syllabi available to students before they enroll, ASG senators hope this will give students a better idea about the expectations of the course, so that they can enroll in the courses that best suit their learning styles.

“Students who are better informed about the demands of a course will be less likely to drop once classes begin,” according to the bill.

In order to permanently provide students with testing materials, ASG senators proposed a minimal raise in tuition.

According to the ASG Student Poll, over 90 percent of students enjoyed having testing materials such as Scantrons and Blue Books provided for them last semester. In addition, 7 out of 10 students who responded to the poll said they would be in favor of a small increase in tuition in order to have these materials provided by the UA.

ASG will vote on these proposals next week as well.

Tony Cosgrove, the primary student pioneer of the project, said he felt like students needed to be more aware of what was going on around campus and that the kiosks would be a great way to increase student engagement as well as retention.

“A lot of the information that you find (at the kiosks) will be easy to scan and easy to look at,” said Chris Nixon, director of digital design development for the UA. “You get it as you walk by. It almost creates this situational awareness. You know what’s going on in the building. You know what’s going on when you get out of class, and even whether it’s raining or not when you leave.”

A digital kiosk is  a cross between an iPhone 5 and the monolith from “2001: A Space Odyssey” mounted on a wall. With a price range from $5,500 to $9,500, the kiosks come in with a wide range of functions, including interactive campus maps, news and weather.

Mike Duncan, the project manager for the kiosk project, said there were also functions like “way-finding,” the ability to navigate from building to building, as well as internal way-finding, which can reveal levels and locations within the building the kiosk is stationed.

Duncan also spoke about the need for uniformity in design in terms of signage around campus. The new model kiosks will all be of the same make and model, and have held places on cruise ships, in hotels and in a number of Vegas locations, which speaks to their attractiveness.

Speaking of attraction, the kiosks also features something called “attract mode,” which is a form of specialized display meant to advertise content directly to the student — a much-desired ability for any RSO to utilize on campus.

Duncan said other campuses that had adopted the technology were able to improve attendance rates to events where before only a handful of students would have even been aware. The kiosks also have a video function with the intention to display UATV programming in the future.

“The goal is for students to really drive the content,” said Susan Adkins, IT Services associate director and deputy CIO. Adkins also noted the ability of the kiosks to convey information during times of urgency through emergency broadcasts and the potential prevalence that RazALERT  may play.

As of now, the kiosk project is in its pilot phase, with two installments planned for the Arkansas Union and one for the library. The UA is currently in possession of 30 licenses that will be distributed to campus groups, departments and other interests, which Adkins says will have the ability to “customize based on their functions.”

When asked about the future role of technology, like that of the digital kiosks, will play in the UA’s future, Duncan said, “I think it’s going to be useful in the way it ties in students’ mobile devices, to get information to coincide with an app on your phone.”

Donnie Blagg, another kiosk project team member, responded by noting his own excitement for not only the kiosks themselves, but the whole infrastructure that comes with it that “allows us to spread awareness across campus.”

“We have a network of public display devices, which we can utilize across campus when we need to,” Nixon said. Harkening back to his comment on the ability of technology to raise situational awareness, he emphasized the importance of rapid message deployment in times of trouble.

“The main thing for me is that students become more involved,” Duncan said.

With a dedicated team and innovative technology like the digital kiosks, that goal will hopefully soon become a reality.

Questions for the poll came from ASG executives, cabinet members and senators. There were 115 questions in total, but some answers determined how many questions each student answered in total. For example, if a student did not have a car, that would lower the number of questions.

“We are taking everything into account,” Pohlner said.

Selected responses include:

• 60 percent of students said they would not use a free ride from campus to the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport.

• 77 percent of students said that the road closing near Dickson Street has been beneficial.

• 82 percent of students said they would use the Safe Ride program if it had a mobile app.

• 80 percent of students said they were unfamiliar with the Razorback Readership Program.

• 33 percent of students said they were uninformed about ASG initiatives and programs.

• 38 percent of students said they feel unfavorable about Pepsi on campus.

69 percent of students said they do not feel the need for an outdoor swimming pool on campus.

• 66 percent of students said they would be interested in seeing Tusk live on campus.

80 percent of students said they would like to see an increase in organic and healthy food in on-campus dining venues.

• 65 percent of students said they would not change the default delivery time of Arkansas Newswire.

• 92 percent of students said they like Scantrons, Blue Books and other testing materials provided for them.

• 73 percent of students said they were in favor of a two- or three-cent-per-credit-hour increase in tuition for UA officials to provide test materials.

• 83 percent of students said students would benefit from having the opportunity to minor in journalism.

There have been complaints in the past that the current impeachment process is too vague, said Sen. Amy West, author of the bill. If a student had wanted to propose an impeachment, the current process is so confusing that the student would have no idea as to how to begin, West said.

The old process required seven stages, which was so difficult that no one ever made it that far, said Senator Grant Addison, co-author of the bill.

The new process is modeled after the American government’s national impeachment system and will make the ASG impeachment process more coherent, West said.

The new process is also based off of the impeachment system at LSU, West said.

ASG members learned about the impeachment processes at other colleges when they attended the SEC Exchange Conference earlier this year. This is an annual conference where student governments across the Southeastern Conference exchange ideas and programs in use at other universities.

“This is not something we are doing because there was someone in office who we wanted to impeach,” West said.

The goal of the bill is to model the process after a more real-life experience, West said. The idea was to modify the system so that it could be applied to a real-life situation, rather than just using a process that would only work for this particular group on campus, West said.

Under this new process, a bill of impeachment must be proposed by one author and at least four additional sponsors. In addition, a simple majority must be acquired by both the Senate and the Graduate Congress for the impeachment to be “classified as New Business at a special Joint Legislative Session,” according to the bill.

The bill also mandates that an impeachment will not be heard by a committee. Instead, ASG Senate and Graduate Congress members will hear the case and vote, with a two-thirds majority required in order to convict.

Other ASG proposals include a bill to modify the current warning system for parking violations and a bill to lower the fine for parking in a space not authorized by a permit.

A new warning system was proposed in light of the fact that “students often pay hefty fees for first-time violations without knowledge of the regulation,” according to the bill.

This bill asks that the transit and parking department allow a more consistent warning system for first-time parking violations.

The second bill proposes to lower the unauthorized permit parking fee from $50 to $30. The bill states that since “the penalty for ‘parking on U of A property without permit’ is a $40 penalty,” it is not fair that a driver without a permit should pay a lower fee than a driver with a permit.