Today Student Government Association posted the official language that will be on the ballot for next week’s elections, held April 5-7.

Issues up for vote include the election of a student body president and vice president, senior class president, five proposals for uses of Wyrick Funds and a potential increase in the Student Involvement Fee.

Jacob Swett and Justin Mellish are running unopposed for President and Vice-President of SGA, although students do have an option to vote “no confidence.”

Two candidates are running for Senior Class President; John Gauthier and Corey Honer.

A proposed $9 increase in the Student Involvement Fee is up for a vote, which would up the fee to $26 .The Student Involvement Fee is used by Student Activities Council to sponsor campus events.

As for the Wyrick proposals, the theme this year appears to be signs, banners and marquees.

One projects asks for funding for large campus maps near visitor parking to better direct newcomers around campus at a cost of about $15,500.

Another project involves planting beds with the Missouri State name set in steel letters with back-lighting at a cost of roughly $82,800.

The third project on the ballot asks for about $19,600 to put banners on 68 light poles around campus and paint some campus fences with the Missouri State colors and logo.

For $43,600, students are asked for money to install electronic marquees that will display current events and emergency information to be located in various high-traffic campus areas.

The final Wyrick proposal on the ballot asks to install an electronic counter in Bear Park South to display the number of open parking spaces currently available at a cost of $74,700.

Wyrick funds will go to projects with the most student votes first and then down the line until the funds are depleted.

The full ballot language can be found online at http://sga.missouristate.edu/. Language of the Wyrick proposals is copied below.

Issue 3: Wyrick Fund Project Proposals 2010

Listed below are Wyrick Fund Project Proposals for 2010. You may vote to approve all, some, or none of the projects. Projects will be funded in the order of votes received until the fund is exhausted or until the cost of the projects exceed the amount remaining in the fund.

1)      Wayfinding Signage

a.       This proposal recommends that new basic double-sided wayfinding signs be installed at the entrance of the Visitor Parking Lot (Lot 13), outside the south entrance to Baker Bookstore near the Plaster Student Union, and at the northwest corner of Carrington Hall.  These signs should be roughly 4 foot by 4 foot.  A final sign should also be located at the southeast corner of the Visitor Parking Lot (Lot 13) that is more significant to drive individuals into the main corridor, and it should include both a permanent map and a location for individuals to take their own personal campus map.   This sign should be roughly 4 foot by 6 foot.  These signs should include lettering and directional arrows on both sides pointing to the four major landmarks.  The signs should also be unified in appearance, strongly influenced by Missouri State University colors (Maroon, White, Gray, and Black), and should include strong elements of the university logo.  The total cost of this project would be $15,550.

2)      Four Corner Signage

a.        The proposal includes a half-oval shaped planting bed with a base made to reflect the limestone (including the red-tinted rock) featured in many of the buildings on the main quad to be installed. Furthermore , it would include  four pillars (also made to reflect the limestone) be erected around the new planting beds that have panels and tops that reflect architectural details seen on Carrington Hall.   We also recommend that the current lettering on the cement facades being removed and be replaced with a large stainless steel plate with “Missouri State” cut out of it in the current university lettering.  This lettering should be backlit.  The project also incudes stainless steel plates with cut-out lettering and backlighting be installed at the other three secondary locations.  Total cost for this project is $82,836.

3)      Light Pole Banners and Fence Painting

a.       This proposal would install 68 Banners on light poles in Lots 13 , 15, 18, 22, 25, 35, 38, 40, and 43 that would be designed by a commission of students to promote school spirit, and the fence facing lot 15, the fences facing east towards national, and the fences facing north towards Grand would all be painted with Missouri State Lettering and the Missouri State Bear head logo.  The Total cost for this project would be $19,586

4)      Current Event Marquees

a.       This proposal would install 12 current event marquee screens, to be located in the dining centers, the library, the student union, Bear Park North and South, Park Central Office building, and Brick City that would display current events on the Missouri State Campus, along with emergency notifications.  The total cost for this project would be $43,661

5)      Bear Park South Parking Counter

a.       This proposal would install a car counting system in Bear Park south that would calculate the number of open spaces in the garage and display those on two signs located near the entrances for the garage.  Those signs would also include a variable message system that could display messages such as “Event Parking” or “Upper level closed due to weather.”  The total cost for this proposal is $74,704.70

A group of Missouri State University students are planning to protest construction of the University Recreation Center, a $22.9 building set to break ground next month.

The protest will occur from 2-to-3 p.m. on Tuesday, March 23, outside Carrington Hall on campus.

“There’s a Facebook group of over 150 students against the construction,” said protest organizer and Missouri State student Heather Welborn. “The most commonly posted reasons to rethink the project range from, ‘I’ll never use it,’ to ‘I don’t want to pay for it.’”

Welborn believes the construction is a waste of valuable resources during a time when the budget is incredibly tight.

“My goal is to shed light on an issue many at Missouri State feel strongly about,” she said. “This project is largely an awareness campaign.”

Welborn plans to circulate a petition calling for a student body re-vote “to see if this project is still in line with how students want their money spent.” Students originally approved a $16.5 million renovation of McDonald Arena in 2006, which later evolved into the construction of an entirely new building.

Welborn said students who cannot attend the protest but are interested in the cause should join a Facebook group called “MSU Students Against Construction of the University Recreation Center.” Information about further efforts to stop this construction will be posted there, she said.

“A protest is a great way to increase awareness on campus,” Welborn said. “It encourages student involvement in shaping and questioning the policies that directly effect them. If you hear about the Rec project for the first time through the protest, we made a difference.”

]]> http://www.msu-underground.com/archives/1114/feed 3 http://www.msu-underground.com/archives/1066 http://www.msu-underground.com/archives/1066#comments Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:10:32 +0000 http://www.msu-underground.com/?p=1066 by Nate Bassett

The story of Mary Jean Price was never forgotten, but failed to receive much attention over the years.

Dare To Excel, a promotional publication that reviews the history of the Missouri State University, mentions Price as the first African American applicant to Missouri State – and her rejection – but fails to detail the situation.

In light of the resurgence of interest in her story, students are surprised to learn about this forgotten part of the school’s history.

“She really needs to be brought to the limelight instead of being brushed off into history,” said Jeremy Fain, a member of the Delta Tau Christian fraternity. As far as recognizing the past, he said the school should at least do something to acknowledge her, because we all make mistakes. Still, he wonders, “Should we be responsible for the wrongs of the previous generation?”

But Terry Walls, son of Price, is very insistent on the need for reconciliation.

“If this is what we’re learning, we need to start re-learning,” he said. “It’s a sad commentary this type of apathy exists in 2010. You can’t rectify what you don’t recognize.”

Other students agree as well. Nursing student Stephanie Neuman suggested the school at least say something, maybe apologize outright.

Since the renewed interest in Mary Jean Price, Missouri State officials are still trying to figure out how to deal with this issue.

“Several individuals at the university have seen this story and found it historically interesting and personally inspiring,” Chief of Staff and Assistant to the President Paul Kincaid said in an emailed statement. “The university is still determining an appropriate response.”

Wes Pratt, Coordinator for Diversity Outreach and Recruitment, emailed that, “the best apology for any racial transgressions of the past” was to continue to improve diversity and provide and increase opportunities for all students at Missouri State.

Although diversity on campus has increased 36 percent in the last two years, African American students still only constitute about three percent of the student body.

And despite the assurances of university officials, Walls remains unimpressed.

When he found the letter, he says he was holding a piece of history, which was “no longer a mystery,” forgotten in the years of neglect.

“We have to learn from the past,” he said. “More things change, more things remain the same.”

His concern is that the mindset and apathy towards the issue perpetuate themselves for future generations. To hear students on campus say they have never heard of this story and see how racism continues to be an issue today brings legitimacy to his worry.

“An injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere,” Walls said, citing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

To know that injustices have occurred is only half of his concern.

He believes Missouri State must come forward on the issue publicly to bring closure to the issue.

Terry Walls wanted to know the truth; the ugly, racist truth.

In 1950, his mother, Mary Jean Price, became the first African American applicant to Missouri State University (then a white’s-only institution known as Southwest Missouri State College).

The college failed to respond to her application, and a Greene County judge ruled against her when she filed suit against the school for their inaction. Denied the opportunity for an education, Price moved on with her life, but the scar of the racially-motivated denial have never really healed.

Sixty-years later, after wafting through the Meyer Library Archives, her son found the sordid details of how the Board of Regents was prepared to go to the Supreme Court to deny his mother’s admission to the school. Price found originally-confidential correspondence letters that indicated this intent in the file along with his mother’s original application to the school.

In 1950, four years prior to when the Supreme Court case Brown vs. Board of Education ordered the desegregation of schools, African American students were unable to attend Southwest Missouri State College unless the studies they wanted to pursue were not offered at Lincoln University, the state’s African American college.

Price, 18 at the time, wanted to be a schoolteacher. She submitted her transcripts and a letter, stating her intentions to study library science, which was not offered at Lincoln.

The college registrar, Guy Thompson, forwarded the letter up the ranks to Southwest Missouri State College President Roy Ellis.

According to facsimile correspondence available from the library archives, President Ellis considered her application a “test case.”

While waiting on the opinion of the college attorney, he mailed four other Missouri college presidents.

In a confidential letter dated November 13, 1950, he related the difficulty of trying to formulate a policy on the admission of potential black students who were eligible under the conditional laws of the time.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., fought for equal rights for African Americans during the Civil Rights movement. He worked to erase racial inequalities such as policies that denied Mary Jean Price admission to Missouri State University in 1950.

“The College should ask a local Circuit Court for a declaratory judgment,” the letter stated. President Ellis related the feelings of the Board of Regents and how they were discussing, “carrying the matter on to the Supreme Court in case the local Court decided the girl could be admitted.”

This conviction to preventing her admission proved unnecessary, as events would reveal. After the college failed to respond to Price, Tac Kaplan hired attorney Irving Schwab to file a lawsuit against the school on Price’s behalf.

But in the declaratory judgment the Board had hoped for, a judge of the Circuit Court of Greene County ruled against Price. Her chances of attending Missouri State were finished.

“Can you imagine being an 18 year old kid, and having your ambitions dashed?” Walls said. “Sixty years later; nobody acknowledges it, as though it never happened. It did happen, and we were a part of it.”

For him, and others, the fact that the story has gone untold for so long is a shock. According to Walls, his mother never spoke about it until he found the letter and local television station KSPR ran a story on it recently.

Although it was good for Price to finally speak on the matter, “it opened up old wounds,” according to Walls. Price never went on to teach and worked as an elevator operator before marrying and having children. She is now in her late 70s.

See Related Story: Students debate how MSU should respond to story of Mary Jean Price

Missouri State University President Michael T. Nietzel discussed his intention to step down as president at a press conference on November 3.

Nietzel, 62, said he would remain in the post through December 2010 to allow adequate time for the Board of Governors to find his successor.

Nietzel began thinking of leaving the presidency early this year, and he came to the decision to stay resign in August.

“I know Dr. Nietzel has been wrestling with this since early in the summer,” said Paul Kincaid, Nietzel’s chief of staff, in a press release. “It has been difficult for him, but he is confident that it is the best decision.

Nietzel mulled the decision over until last Friday, when he first informed the Board of his intention.

Photo by Jenna Drew. MSU President Michael Nietzel speaks during Legacy Day during August.

He then informed the administrative staff, followed by a mass email sent to campus the following Monday, informing them of the decision.

“At both the personal and professional levels, I want and need a change,” Nietzel said. “The presidency of MSU is a very public, demanding, and complex job. I have concluded that I cannot continue to do that job at a level of achievement that I want from myself and that the university has every right to expect from its president.”

When asked what role his wife’s illness played in his decision, Nietzel said the personal reasons for his decision were personal, and he would not elaborate on them.

Nietzel mentioned interest in a teaching position with the psychology department at MSU, but said he had no definite plans and no one had approached him about a job before or since the announcement.

Board of Governors Chair Brian Hammons said the Board will develop a plan for the search process in the near future.

“He has been a great leader for the university and a strong spokesperson for higher education in the State of Missouri,” Hammons said in a press release. “By any measure, the past four years under Dr. Nietzel have been tremendous years for Missouri State. He will be missed and he will be very difficult to replace.”

Nietzel (pronounced KNIT-zel) was hired in July 2005 after a national search for the ninth president of what was then called Southwest Missouri State University. Before that, Nietzel served 32 years at the University of Kentucky.

“Like all of us, I think his goal was to leave the university in better shape than it was when he arrived. He definitely succeeded,” Kincaid said.

Finding a tutor on campus has never been easier.

Thanks to the new Bear Claw (Center for Learning and Writing), students needing assistance in writing, math, or any subject taught on campus can find tutors quickly, easily, and all under one roof.

Located conveniently on the first floor of Meyer Library, the Bear Claw is designed to be “a comfortable place for students to come together and work,” according to Mike Frizell, Director of the Bear Claw.

With a staff of highly trained student tutors, Missouri State students are free to drop by to get some extra help with their assignments, free of charge, in the 10,000 square foot space.

The center is in the process of hiring subject-area tutors for any classes that students request, such as Chemistry 160 or Psychology 121.

“These are difficult, high demand classes where we never really had organized tutoring for them,” Frizell said.

The center already employs student tutors in writing and math.

Photo by Zach Becker. At right, Bear Claw Writing Center tutor Sarah Viehmann, graduate student in English Composition and Rhetoric, gives writing tips for a class paper to senior Allison Bates, an English Education major.

Bear Claw tutor Kelly Bextermueller, a senior majoring in speech and language pathology, has enjoyed helping students improve their writing by working hand-in-hand with them.

“The one-on-one basis is more of a laid back environment,” Bextermueller said. “You see people improve over the course of time. It’s really rewarding.”

“In the classroom environment it’s really hard to get to know your students,” said Bear Claw tutor Sarah Viehmann, a graduate student in English composition and rhetoric. “(As a tutor), you get to form a relationship in order to help them with something as intimate as writing.”

While Missouri State did offer tutoring prior to the creation of the Bear Claw, students had to go to many different places to get it.

“We had a lot of splintering of services,” Frizell said. “Tutoring was handled by individual departments. Tutors had no formal training, other than being good at the subject.”

Frizell took over the Writing Center, which is now a separate entity within the Bear Claw, in 2005 and has worked to expand the service.

“(The Writing Center) had laid fallow for about a year and people weren’t really advertising it,” Frizell said. “There had been no new pedagogy (teaching methods) being introduced.”

Since Frizell took over, the Writing Center has grown from employing 10 writing tutors to 32. Student use of the Writing Center increased from 350 students in 2005 to 3,800 students last year.

Previously located in Pummill Hall and most recently Siceluff Hall, Frizell believes the new location for the Writing Center in Meyer Library will make it possible for even more students to utilize its services.

Writing Center tutors can assist students of any writing level, from undergraduate to doctoral. In fact, about 80 faculty members sent research papers through the Writing Center for suggestions last year.

The effort to incorporate these tutoring services under one roof through the Bear Claw was spearheaded by Frizell, as well as Diana Garland, Director of the Learning Commons, and Rachelle Darabi, Associate Provost of Student Development and Public Affairs.

About nine months were spent designing the space, accounting for “everything from colors to table top shape all the way to what would work best for student learning,” Frizell said. “We’ve got to make it convenient for students. Otherwise, they won’t use it.”

Frizell believes the central location in the library will increase student traffic for all tutoring services. He has also been working diligently to spread the word about the Bear Claw, promoting it to freshmen students during orientation and pitching the service to faculty to suggest to their students.

Students who try the service usually return.

“Most students who try it will come back more than once,” Frizell said. “Ninety-two percent of our clients (at the Writing Center) last year were repeat customers.”

“We try to get people excited about writing,” said Bear Claw tutor Rebecca James, a junior majoring in literature and gender studies. “I think it’s the hardest part but the best part.”

The Bear Claw Center for Learning and Writing can be found online at bearclaw.missouristate.edu.

Editor-in-Chief

The message on the signs are clear. Firearms are not allowed on the Missouri State campus, concealed or otherwise.

But will those signs stop a maniacal gunman?

Not according to MSU non-traditional student Andrew Simpson, who believes tragedies like the shooting at Virginia Tech could have been averted had law-abiding students been allowed to carry licensed concealed weapons on campus.

Students are protesting concealed carry bans on campus by wearing an empty holster.

All this week, Simpson and thousands of other students at MSU and around the nation will be protesting bans on concealed weapons on college campuses. But they won’t be carrying signs or shouting on megaphones. Instead, the message will be conveyed simply by wearing an empty holster.

“The empty holsters show that there really is not a whole lot of protection between you and (the assailant),” Simpson said. “Give us equality on campus. If bad guys can have (guns), why not us?”

A determined maniac willing to die in the process of killing others could obtain weapons, including automatic rifles, illegally through black market channels fairly easily, according to Simpson, which is why it is so important that students be allowed to carry concealed weapons to defend themselves. The mere threat of return fire may be enough to scare some assailants away.

According to Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, 11 schools around the country allow concealed carry on campus, and none have reported incidents of gun violence in the several years since it has been allowed.

“Virginia Tech was a disaster,” Simpson said. “We need to do something creative and new (to prevent future disasters).”

Students who wish to know more information about this cause can contact Nelson at (417) 551-1210. He is encouraging other students to participate in the protest by simply wearing an empty holster. Information from Students for Concealed Carry on Campus can be found at www.concealedcampus.org.

Webmaster

If you dislike the fact that all of your information is disclosed on the people search website, you may rest a little easier now.

The wonderful folks over at Missouri State University’s Department of Web & New Media have taken measures to protect your information that you don’t want people to see by implementing a “Hide from People Search” option, located here. While the ability to hide yourself isn’t inherently new, this way of providing it is. Previous to this implementation, you would have to have a FERPA hold put on yourself, which would then complicate everything surrounding your user account with the university, and could even limit what positions you could hold on student government, as some require your position within the organization to be public.

In addition to this, the whole search look has been revamped, and those of you that may have the FireFox plugin Operator may now add people to your email’s contact list directly from the detailed results page. You may wonder why we need these features, as probably less than 1% of FireFox users have this plugin, but Missouri State’s website takes an active stance to stay up-to-date with emerging technologies. Implementing hCards is not difficult, but it’s another way to stay ahead of the game. The functionality is provided for those that would want it.

As the Student Government Association transitions into the 2009-2010 session, the new administration would do well to look into record-keeping practices at SGA that are at best suspicious and at worst illegal.

On February 23, The Underground requested SGA budget and attendance records going back to 2005, the year that SGA became wholly funded by student fees.

It took 18 days for SGA to produce this year’s budget, and no explanation for the delay was given outside of being busy.

The attendance information provided for the current year was incomplete, as it didn’t list the names or total number in attendance for many of the meetings.

Courtney Wendell, a junior and SGA’s director of public relations, referred reporters to the SGA archive in Meyer Library to obtain attendance and budget information from previous years. However, there were no recent attendance records on file, and the most recent complete budget in the archive dates back to 1993.

Missouri’s Sunshine Law states that all records of public governmental bodies, with certain explicit exceptions, shall be open to public inspection.

The law also mandates that such bodies appoint a custodian of records, who will respond within three business days in writing to any records request.

It also states that in the minutes of public meetings, a record of members both absent and present will be included.

Currently, SGA minutes do not include information on attendance.

Jon Stubblefield, sophomore and SGA’s sergeant-at-arms, said that sign-in sheets, the method of taking attendance at Senate meetings, are used primarily to track absences and determine if a quorum is present.

“When I first took on the position, I don’t know if I counted everyone in attendance,” Stubblefield said, “but since January I’ve had a numerical count.”

Overall attendance numbers and trends are not collected or reported to anyone.

Additionally, in the Bylaws of the Senate, Article I, Section 2, Paragraph A states that minutes will be available in the Senate office and, “on the SGA website no later than 5 p.m. one day prior to the next meeting.”

The minutes from February 17, 24 and from March 3 were not posted on the website until March 13.
As of press time, minutes from SGA meetings since March 3 are not on the website.

Far from a small matter, Article IV, Section 9, Paragraph D of the SGA Constitution states that SGA officers are subject to impeachment by the Senate for, “failure to uphold this constitution and its bylaws.”

SGA does not have a custodian of records position, but Ashley Hoyer, junior and SGA’s chief of staff, said that she is in charge of keeping records and uploading minutes to the website.

SGA has no equivalent to an inspector general or government accountability office, according to Hoyer.

“Our Senate is our accountability office,” she said. However, in the SGA Constitution, the Senate is not given the power to conduct investigations, compel witnesses, or audit records.

Without a complete record, nor a clear charge of responsibility for checking and auditing records, accountability becomes impossible.

For example, Wendell said there were significant decreases in the amount of payroll taken by the cabinet in the past couple of years.

“I’ve only taken six hours (of payroll) this semester. Whitney (Paul) works entirely for free,” Wendell said.

As of December 2008, salaries in the current budget accounted for 40 cents of the one dollar charge each student pays to support SGA. This is roughly in line with the amount spent in 1993 (thirty-nine percent).

But, without recent budgets to compare, it’s impossible to gauge how much progress is being made in saving money, or even whether Wendell’s statement is accurate.

The SGA Senate Archival Act of 2009, passed on February 3 of this year, begins to address the problem of record keeping.

It mandates that all resolutions, memoranda, executive papers, and Campus Judicial Board decisions be delivered to the library archive and that all those documents from the current session and the past two sessions be available in SGA’s Document Management System, a computer based system.

However, attendance and voting records are not addressed in the act and neither are budgets.

There is also no mention of a system for organizing the records or summarizing their content, making it onerous for students or SGA members to sift meaningful information from the data.

The act does not create a system for handling open record requests, nor does it charge any officer or committee with investigating and auditing records.

Nick Maddux, leader of the College Republicans and a former SGA Senator, said accountability is the number one issue that needs to be addressed in the Senate, and that a better system of accountability would help attract and retain quality Senators.

“You have thirty or so Senators that are good Senators, that do their office hours,” he said. “I’ll bet half the Senate doesn’t sit their office hours.”

Maddux said that he thinks some Senators use their position primarily to pad their resumes.

“Not all, but some Senators speak out and raise motions just to make it look like they’re doing something,” he said.