This week in Student Senate: Ellen Reynolds, the interim vice president of the Division of Student Affairs, assistant vice president for Student Health and Wellness and director of Health Services, talked about the mask mandate, housing services and dining service for the upcoming fall 2022 semester and the Senate recognized the Korean Student Association.
After singing a cheerful version of “Happy Birthday” to Senator Lauren Peckham and other announcements, Speaker Christopher Bove moved to the public forum and invited Reynolds to speak to the senate.
Reynolds talked about how she was asked by President Marc Parlange to fill in as the vice president of the Division of Student Affairs until they find a replacement for the role. She hopes that Student Services will do a national search to find a qualified person to fill in and lead the division.
Excited about the positivity in the room, mainly for spring break, Reynolds then moved on to talk about the new mask mandate and how the new rules are working for the community.
“We announced that last Friday we were going to eliminate the mandatory masking indoors except for in classrooms and in research labs where active classrooms and research are going on, and I’d be excited to hear how you think that is going,” Reynolds said.
Bove brought up the point he made last week about how this decision was made because students are required to go to class.
“Since then, I’ve spoken to a whole bunch of people and they’ve also made a valid retort [that masks are not required in a] K-12 setting,” Bove said. “If school districts and the governor are saying that it’s okay to go back to classrooms in communities that are much less vaccinated than us. If it’s good enough for the state of Rhode Island, why isn’t it good enough for the University of Rhode Island?”
Reynolds clarified that in terms of the mask mandates in K-12 schools, Gov. Dan McKee put that in the hands of each individual district. She also said there are a lot of school systems that are still masking, Providence being one of them, because of their low vaccination rate.
She then talked about how, in terms of the University, the decision was for the students to stay on campus, but also to respect the diverse community. Instead of just getting rid of masks like last May, when the Delta variant came to light.
“Let’s not go crazy, let’s do a little bit,” Reynolds said. “Know that we can do it well, evaluate the people coming back to our community, and then re-evaluate what other litigation strategies we can continue to reduce. I think, I wanna tell you, by the end of the semester testing’s gonna be gone.”
After discussions on the mask mandate, Reynolds then went on to talk about the news on housing and dining.
For housing, Student Services are anticipating there to be 5,400 new beds in the fall, 3,200 of which will go to first-years and the remaining 2,200 will go to current students at the University. The applications are open now for students to fill out.
In terms of dining, Reynolds talked about how they are changing from the term “grab-and-go” to “dining dollars” and how each one of the meal plans has a certain amount of dining dollars; $90 for the highest, $45 for the middle, and $15 for the weekly allowance.
Bove spoke in opposition to this new plan because it would cost more than the current grab-and-go plan. He mentioned that the Student Senate should have been consulted on this, as they represent the consumers of Dining Services and are the ones who pay for each plan.
After her report, Reynolds gave a sign-off and wished all the senators a happy spring break. The Senate then went on to reports from the outstanding committees.
After the reports from each of the committees, Bove moved into the new business, bringing up the bill calling for the recognition of the Korean Student Association (KSA) as a senate-recognized organization. The bill unanimously passed and the KSA became a recognized senate organization.
The next senate meeting will be held on Wednesday, March 23.