State of the School 11/19, 7:30pm College Hall 200

State of the School – Town Hall!
WHEN: November 19th – 7:30-8:30 pm
WHERE: College Hall 200
WHAT: Come hear leaders from all six student government branches (UA, Class Boards, SAC, SPEC, SCUE, and the NEC) present and answer questions about what they have done for you this past year.
WHY: Because this is your chance to find out what Penn Student Government (PSG) does for you AND it is your opportunity to ask PSG leaders why they made the decisions they did.
FREE DESSERT and HOT CHOCOLATEwill be provided courtesy of the NEC.

SEPTA SURVEY

Take the SEPTA survey here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=vwgBZBXYTi3hnVun8kDydA_3d_3d

iTunes U Public Launch

iTunes U is finally here!

This Friday we hosted the public launch of iTunes U! This is a really exciting development after about a year of work by the UA and ISC. For those unfamiliar with the program, iTunes U is a central electronic resource that consolidates any Penn related media for students, faculty, Alumni, perspective students and the general public.

Here's the link for iTunes U at Penn: http://www.upenn.edu/itunes/ All you have to do is open your iTunes program and then click the link above on then the link on right that says "Take me to iTunes U."

Now that iTunes U is here, I really want to focus on wide-scale adoption of the program with an immediate focus on getting student group media on.

Please check it out and share your thoughts!

Calendar Proposal

Considering the amount of feedback given during last meeting's communication regarding the UA's decision to table Jay's Calendar Proposal, I thought that our blog would be a great place to continue our discussion and offer our personal insight and feedback.

Sunday night I voted to table the proposal. In retrospect I think that this vote may have been a bit premature, however, I still believe that there were enough main issues mentioned in the discussion and pro/con that could be improved on for the future proposal.

Personally, I really appreciate and agree with the spirit of Jay's proposal. I think that having a consolidated calendar system would do wonders for students. I'm looking forward to the progress that Jay makes on this proposal. That being said, I still have some reservations regarding the lack of screening and moderating associated with the calendar. It seemed like there would be no moderator and that this idea hadn't been thoroughly considered. The reason I feel this is really important is because the only thing worse than having no calendar is putting a lot of work and effort into a calendar that is inundated with frivolous and ridiculous events (think Facebook invites). Also having a poorly run temporary calendar would hurt the credibility and success of the permanent calendar to come. I think this is something that should be looked into and discussed before bringing the proposal back to the table.

Again I really enjoyed Jay's proposal and I'm looking forward to seeing it come back to the body again.

Scope of the UA

For the first post on the UA's blog, it seems appropriate to discuss the scope of the UA, that is what issues we are authorized to handle. The body had a lively discussion about our scope at our annual UA retreat this past weekend, which can hopefully be recreated here.

Liz Lee, a new member to the body this year, pointed out that the scope of an organization is ultimately derived from its mission. The following is a passage from our constitution:

The function of the UA shall be to provide an opportunity for its members to discuss and express their views upon any matter which they deem of general University interest and to make recommendations and pass resolutions with respect thereto.

This implies that the mission or "function" of the UA is largely subjective. With Liz's statement in mind, as long as a sufficient number of UA representatives feel that an issue is "of general University interest", it is within the scope of the UA to address it.

So now the question becomes, what is "of general University interest?" I'll follow up later but I hope others contribute until then!