The student senate discussed issues with students being unable to check out library books, promoting various health services for students and a proposed revision to Carolina Core requirements during its virtual meeting on Wednesday evening.
The Health and Safety Committee proposed a “guide” for students that would list all of the Student Health Center’s provided services.
Student senator Morgiana McDevitt said the goal is to create “a simple place that describes all the services that Student Health Center offers, and then hyperlinks or web links in this one kind of page document, that then you can take more information from that link."
It specifically touched on the Student Health Center’s tele-counseling services. The student senate is trying to partner with the Health Center to promote the service and “give students a better understanding of what health counseling is and what it looks like,” student senator Whitney Garland said.
The senate continued its discussion from last week about concerns that students have been unable to check out textbooks from the library. Student Body President Issy Rushton said she was working with the dean of libraries to address the problem.
Rushton said library staff got in touch with her about issues with checking out books. She said they referenced “research that suggests that COVID can sit on books for six days” as one of the issues.
“I want to make sure that students, whether it's through renting out through the library or through another mechanism, have the opportunity to have textbooks affordable and accessible to them,” Rushton said.
The senate discussed what student senator Katherine Zeller called a “2020 revision and revamp” of the Carolina Core requirements. In a period of open discussion, senators proposed ideas for changes to the requirements.
Student senator Joshua Pate suggested allowing computer programming languages to be accepted as foreign language courses, extending this to “not just computer languages, but any languages that are engineering and computing together could also be included,” Pate said.
Student senator Claire Windsor suggested that requirements for climate issues should be included in Carolina Core. Windsor said she got the idea after giving a presentation to a group of freshmen.
“It just kind of struck me how novel the entire conversation seemed to be to them, or, you know, what they could do or just their basic knowledge about the subject,” Windsor said.
When asked at the end of the meeting if senate would continue to meet completely online, Speaker of the Senate JD Jacobus said no decision has been reached, because the senate is "at the will of the university."