The meeting started at 6:02 p.m. with no objections to the agenda, followed by the land acknowledgment.
Speaker Keeley Reiners gave a reminder to do the transition materials to all of the ASSOU, and they need to be done by the next one on one meeting.
A reminder that ASSOU will be tabling at the Earth Day Farm this Friday.
The executive branch is working with the Sexual Violence Prevention Program with a committee plan for April 21st. SFAC voted for their funding allocations, and that will be presented to ASSOU next Tuesday.
Elections have opened, and 12 people are running; students will have until the 29th to apply.
Judicial branch will be putting in their final calendars for committees this term. ASSOU PR stated that some are having trouble with the link to apply for Chief Justice; reach out to ASSOU if students have a problem with this.
The Prom Committee is looking for more volunteers.
Several members of OPSIRG showed up to the meeting and attempted to get an appeal over their funding cut, but due to a misunderstanding, they are not able to give an appeal at this time. However, they spoke for a couple of minutes to explain why they need their funding.
Last week, RHA had to cancel their general assembly meeting due to being lockout of the room and talking about moving locations.
NHA is looking at themes for the pancake feed, such as a beach theme.
Clubs updated that the woman’s lacrosse club made nationals and are currently looking for funding to go to nationals.
Athletics mentioned that woman’s wrestling is putting on a spike ball event on May 13th.
There was a presentation by Open Educational Resources (OEP) for new business. OER provides free or low-cost materials for teaching and learning; these are often electronic resources and are in the public domain or have a license for free use. These items were textbooks, tests, assignments, lecture notes, audio clips, images, syllabi, and even a class module for a whole semester. OER has saved students money, improved their grades, and has good student retention. They have often benefited underrepresented students in funding for education. An advisory group for OER was started in June of 2021 and has accomplished things such as low cost and zero cost listed on class schedules, creating a textbook cost in class schedules, and developing an SOU textbook affordability plan. They also manage a text share program at the Hannon library, where you can request the library to buy course materials that will include eBooks and have no minimum price requirements. The library now has a budget of $10,000, and this program begins on July 1st. The point of this presentation was for OER to provide a reason for ASSOU to advocate for them, as they provide various resources to students in order not to have to pay for expensive textbooks. For those wanting to know more, contact Holly Gabriel at gabrielh@sou.edu.
Next was a follow-up for EAC, the EAC portion of the bylaws, and their changes.
ASSOU was informed about the various changes that the environmental committee and bylaws committee had made. The motion to pass the changes went 6-0-0.
For announcements, Mason Healy-Patterson gave a reminder for elections: students can’t begin campaigning until May 6th, and those running should show up to all ASSOU meetings to know how they run. Bekah Kennedy gave a reminder that The Next Best Thing will be hosting an improv show this Friday.
6:52 p.m. meeting adjourned.
