Student Senate discussed an immediate need for $4,200 as requested by the URI Dressage Team. The Dressage team is a team designed to support those interested in equestrian and competitive riding. Last year, the team had a very successful year and made it to Region A at Nationals. The Dressage Team met with Senate due to an unfortunate situation concerning the cost of their horses. This problem stemmed from an unknown “verbal contract†with the horse coach and owner. The extent of this verbal contract meant that the Dressage Team would have to pay an additional $4,200 to the horse owner. If they could not pay the owner, then the owner would have to sell the horses to a home and the Dressage Team would have to shut down. Senate felt very strongly about not supporting this verbal contract and making Dressage Team shut down for a semester and reemerge in the fall equipt with a new coach and owner. However, the Dressage Team tried to stress that by not giving them this money they would not only shut down for a semester, but there is a very likely chance of shutting down completely for good. In the end, Senate decided to ignore their pleas and decided not to give the Dressage Team the money, possibly shutting down the Dressage Team permanently.
Senate also discussed options for the cable situation. The cable proposal has come down to three options, with the first being to remove cable entirely. The second is to augment the cable to go wireless, which would result in a significantly fewer amount of channels, but all the remaining channels would be in high definition. The third option is to give students a package plan of Netflix and Hulu. However, the IT department is not seriously considering the third option. The IT department also appears to be leaning towards the first option, but are considering leaving cable in the lounges of dorms. The one thing Senate stressed mostly was that this is not just a housing problem, because this will be a problem university wide as there are classes that utilize cable as well. Senate is looking to get student feedback for their opinion on the cable dilemma. Senate will be looking for emails on opinions as well as through social media polls.
Senate also talked about the campus security. After the events of San Bernardino, California, the URI Campus Security Response Team had a meeting to discuss campus safety. This meeting included the decision to put a flyer in every dorm at some point in the future ,which will include information on what to do in a campus emergency including, an active shooter, bomb threat, medical threat and much more. They also decided to do an all-campus emergency systems drill to make sure all security systems work. Additionally from this meeting came the idea of bumping up security at basketball games, including bomb squads. “It’s a changing world, we need to do these kinds of things now,†said Student Senate Liaison for Public Safety.