The Student Assembly, which convened as a general assembly for the first time this year, passed several resolutions and made a number of internal committee appointments at a meeting in Rocky 1 last evening.
Headed by Student Body President Molly Stutzman '02, the Assembly also featured brief reports from various committee chairs on their goals for the term ahead.
The meeting -- which was attended by veteran members and freshmen alike -- first dealt with the appointment of committee chairs to the Student Organizations and Student Services committees.
Sean Oh '04 and John Apostolides '03, who were nominated by Stutzman, were approved in a vote to head each of the respective committees. Additionally, Tara Maller '03 was directly appointed by Stutzman to be Assembly Parliamentarian.
Three resolutions were proposed, discussed and adopted during the meeting. In the first of the three, additional funding was approved in order to cover the costs of publishing and distributing Mugshots, the upperclass directory, which is produced by the Assembly each year at a net loss.
Most at the meeting felt that Mugshots was a product of sufficient value to the campus to justify the continued expenditure, which constitutes a significant portion of the Assembly's $32,000 yearly budget -- though all but a small portion of the publishing cost is later recovered in sales.
"It's only the second week of the term, so we're way out ahead on schedule," Stutzman said of the directory, which is due to be released for sale in Thayer early next week, months ahead of last year's winter term release, and at a slightly reduced cost to buyers.
Another resolution approved increased initial funding for the Student Services Board -- a move which President's Advisor Joshua Marcuse '04 said would promote greater independence for the committee.
Finally, in a third resolution proposed by Student Body Vice President Mike Newton '04, the existing system for appointing freshmen representatives to the committee was restructured to reflect recent changes in residential patterns.
With a greater percentage of the freshman population concentrated in the River and Choates this year, the traditional system -- which provided for a fixed number of freshmen representatives from each cluster -- was now obsolete and in need of revision, according to Newton.
The new system will still allocate representatives by location, but many of those dorms and clusters in which few or no freshmen reside, such as Mass Row, will have their previous allocations altered.
"We hope the changes achieve the best and fairest representative system for all '05s," Newton said of the amendment.
Chair of Academic Affairs Aly Rahim '02 also announced plans for an Undergraduate Teaching Initiative, or UTI, to be launched next week. Other committee chairs also discussed plans for each of their respective committees.
By next week's meeting, all 10 freshmen representatives will have been elected and will sit on the board as voting members, according to Newton, while new appointments will also be made to each of the committees.
"[The new representatives] will give us a tremendous influx of energy," Newton said. "Once we have them, we are really off and running at full speed."
Dean of the College James Larimore, Dean of Residential Life Martin Redman and Dean of Student Life Holly Sateia will also address the Assembly at next week's meeting, Stutzman said.
