Fairfield - Opening Ceremonies

The opening ceremonies on the campus of Fairfield University has started. Regional Director Peck kicked things off after a nice session of cheering. She thanked several guests, discussed NEACURH's mission and discussed making the conference enjoyable as well as the no-tolerance policy on drugs and alcohol and then handed things over to Conference staff. At 7:41 NCCs and NRHH reps were called for boardroom.

In Bridgeport, CT

The delegation has arrived in Bridgeport, Connecticut. We are currently at the Holiday Inn. We'll soon be headed to Fairfield Umiversitu for opening and then the NCC and NRHH boardrooms will be taking place. We'll be wearing great pop rockin' shirts.

To Fairfield We Go...

This weekend a group of 11 RSA members are going to the NEACURH Mini No-Frills conference at Fairfield University in Commecticut. The delegation just left Boston and is currently en route on the Massachusetts Turnpike. I'll try to post some blog updates throughout the weekend from my iPhone.

Live! Blog: Advisor Appreciation

Myself, President Cecil, VP Rose, AVP Brown and others from RSA and are currently at the Advisor Appreciation Reception with members of the administration and other student leaders. The reception is a great way to recognize the hard work and dedication of student group advisors here at Northeastern University. We want to especially thank our own advisors, Stephanie Cave and Darren Conine for their support of RSA and the residential community.

Human Rights Week: March 23rd to March 26th

An extension of GIVE 5, Human Rights Week was the brainchild of Invisible Children, a group that is growing in leaps and bounds on NU’s campus this year. Truly a collaborative event, representatives from many different student groups have been meeting for weeks on Thursdays to discuss how they would bring awareness to the issues affecting people around the globe. The end product is going to be a fabulous week full of educational, awareness and activism programming.

The following organizations are involved:
Invisible Children, RSA + NRHH, NUSTAND, HEAT, PSA, EWB, Globemed, Social Change through Peace Games, Intervarsity, MSinformed, Students for Choice, International Affairs Society, Project NUR and Human Trafficking Students

I hope you can encourage your fellow residents to attend the events and learn more about problems that affect our fellow global citizens. Advertisements will be going up in the residence halls this weekend and there will be some available to distribute in the RSA/NRHH office then.
The schedule is as follows:
Monday 3.23: Global Health Day-- Delectable Diseases
10 Behrakis, 6:30 pm

Tuesday 3.24: EDUCATION as a human right: "Panel of Perspective"
101 Churchill, 6:30 pm

Wednesday 3.25: SAFETY as a human right: PEACE of PIZZA
Come hear Professor Denise Horn speak on her expertise regarding safety of the body as a human right
West Addition 6pm

Thursday 3.26 SUSTENANCE as a human right
Trivia night!!! -- afterhours 8pm

THURSDAY 2-5 pm INDOOR QUAD==HUMAN RIGHTS FAIR + INITIATIVES

Please email nuhumanrights@googlegroups.com with any questions.

We hope to see you at the events!
Thanks!

Meg McCormick
Member, Housing Services Committee, RSA General Council and Husky Energy Action Team
President, National Residence Hall Honorary
megmccormick18@gmail.com

"Ubuntu speaks of the very essence of being human. It is to say, "My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours." We belong in a bund;e of life. We say "A person is a person through other persons." It is not,"I think therefore I am." It says rather: "I am human because I belong. I participate, I share." A person with ubuntu is open and vailable to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished when others are tortured or oppressed, or treated as if the were less than who they are."
--Desmond Tutu -- "No Future Without Forgiveness"

Parcel 18 Vendors

After a long wait, we are finally able to report that the vendors that Northeastern is trying to contract with for the Parcel 18 retail space are Jamba Juice and Peet's Coffee & Tea. These two vendors are not 100% confirmed, but this news follows a long process where RSA and SGA surveyed students, found that there was a lack of venting in the facility, and then had to settle for vendors that could operate without a vent.

Do It in the Dark!

Each year, the Husky Energy Action Team works incredibly hard starting in September to plan “Do It In the Dark” (No, it is not a Sex Week event!), an environmentally sustainable initiative combining programming with activism and education. It is co-sponsored by the Resident Student Association and really important for the University the environment and your tutition bill! The focus of the program is energy conservation, hence the encouragement to shut off lights/ water/ dishwasher, etc whenever possible. This is a competition between residence halls to lower the overall amount of energy expended so make signs and encourage your fellow residents!

You can see the list of events at http://www.heat.neu.edu/events. Some of the highlights include Bill Nye The Science Guy [3/22/2009, 7 PM], a showing of Everything's Cool [3/19/2009, 7 PM, 105 Shillman], and the Student Body President Debate [Monday, 7pm, 10 Behrakis] in which our own Vice President of Housing Services, Matthew Soleyn, will be speaking. If you are interested in helping out, send an e-mail to heat@neu.edu. They are looking for Residence Hall stormers to advertise in the residence halls. The competition for Do It In the Dark kicks off this Friday and the winning hall gets free massages for a day during finals week as well as being entered into a raffle for prizes!

Tips:
• Make signs or post-it notes for next to the light switches to remind guests and roommates to turn off the lights.
• Unplug appliances like coffee makers or cell-phone chargers when you are not using them- this helps save little amounts of energy.
• Turn the water off while washing your hair or brushing your teeth, then back on to rinse.
• Wash clothes in cold water.
• Air dry clothes instead of using a dry cycle (saves laundry bucks too!)

Thanks!
Meg McCormick
Member, Housing Services Committee, RSA General Council and Husky Energy Action Team
President, National Residence Hall Honorary
megmccormick18@gmail.com

E-Mail Bounces

On Monday there was a big problem with e-mail to @neu.edu addresses being rejected because the mail servers treated the messages as spam. Vice President Weir of Information Services explained the situation on myNEU:

Northeastern receives over 1 million emails per day to faculty, staff, and students and over 90% of those are SPAM and are rejected accordingly. This afternoon at approximately 2pm, one of the two systems that filter out incoming SPAM malfunctioned. That system was taken offline at approximately 2:30 pm and is being repaired.
During that 30 minute period, the system in question rejected about 6000 incoming emails as SPAM. Unfortunately, a number of valid emails were rejected as well. In those cases, the sender will be notified that the address on the original Northeastern email was invalid and, in most cases, senders will simply resend the message which should be delivered normally.

If you were expecting an email from someone outside Northeastern which has not arrived, you may wish to contact the sender to ask that the message be resent. If you have additional problems or issues, please contact the IS help line (617-373-HELP(4357) or help@neu.edu) for assistance.

We apologize for any inconvenience this problem may have caused.

Bob Weir
Vice President, Information Services

Bids Up

Many members of the Resident Student Association have put hard work, late nights, and lots of dedication into writing a series of various Association-wide and individual bids for Regional Awards that will be announced at the upcoming North East Affiliate of College and University Residence Halls [NEACURH] conference at Fairfield University. Savannah Rose, the National Communication Coordinator for the Resident Student Association has posted Northeastern's bids online. You can download them and read about them here.

UPDATE: If you are looking for other institution's bids, they will be posted on the NEACURH website on Wednesday, March 11, 2009.

City Hearing Today

Today at 1:00 PM the City of Boston is holding a hearing regarding an ordinance/amendment proposed by City Council President Michael P. Ross that would result in Universities having to report the addresses of all off-campus students to the City of Boston to help enforce the "no more than four undergraduate students" law that prohibits five or more undergraduate students from sharing the same apartment. Given that it is apartment hunting season and many current residents may be looking to head off-campus this summer or in the fall, we wanted to pass along the information on today's hearing:

Docket #0283 - An Ordinance Increasing University Accountability
Time: 1:00 PM
Date: Tuesday, March 10th, 2009
Location: City Hall - Christopher Iannella Chambers (5th Floor)
Address: 1 City Hall Square, Boston, MA 02201-1020

You can read more information on this topic at The Boston Globe, at the blog of Student Body President Rob Ranley, and from Councilor Ross himself.

Schedule Updated

The new RSA Television schedule is online.

Survey Up!

Please take our survey about issues affecting on-campus students. We hope to use the results to better advocate for the students living in the residence halls.

Spring Break

Sex Week has come and gone, and now it is Spring Break. The blog was a bit inactive the past week and a half, but we'll be posting a lot more updates this week and the rest of March.

Clean The Lint Filter

The Housing Services Committee would like to remind residents to clean the lint filter after drying clothes in the laundry rooms. Also, remember to double-check before you dry your clothes if the lint filter is clean, just in case a bad resident failed to clean the filter out.

Alcohol Limits & Medical Amnesty

The Resident Student Association is planning to raise the issue of alcohol limits in the residence halls for students who are of legal drinking age. At present, students are limited to:

• 144 ounces of beer
• 64 ounces of wine
• 16 ounces of hard liquor

The Code of Conduct and Guide to Residence Hall Living do not prohibit or limit other types of alcohol, and do prohibit kegs, beer balls, alcohol by the case, and central sources of alcohol such as trash-can punches.

On a personal level, my initial thoughts are to push for the allowance of 24 beers (so 288 ounces), 5 liters of wine (a box), and 1.75 liters of hard liquor (a handle). However, I know that other students would like to see more, some feel the policy is fine, and others want to see no limit. Thus, I ask that everyone please provide their feedback and thoughts. Post a comment or e-mail RSA (at) Northeastern.edu.

On a related note, we are also looking at the current medical amnesty policy and how it could be clarified and made more concise to be in line with other institutions like the University of Pennsylvania.

Dining Hall Overcrowding

This semester dining hall overcrowding has become a serious issue. While Parcel 18 will have a new dining hall which will alleviate this issue come Fall 2009, it is still a big program this semester. We have suggested to Dining Services that Stetson Hall West open earlier on Sundays and possibly on Saturdays in order to help reduce the overcrowding in Stetson East, and are hoping to hear back from them next week about this. We also suggested having Outtakes available on the weekends, so people can get food without going to the dining halls. If you have ideas, let us know. E-Mail RSA (at) Northeastern.edu

Countering Vandalism

Have ideas on countering vandalism in the residence halls? If so, send them to RSA (at) Northeastern.edu. We're currently looking to help cut down on repair costs for vandalism campus-wide.

Ruckus No More

The music download service Ruckus is no more. The company abruptly ended its music service last week, and a company representative has confirmed that Ruckus is shutting down business.

Ruckus was a system which allowed students to download or listen to music if they were a college student. Initially free, Ruckus then turned into a service where institutions had to sign up or be cut off. Many institutions signed up, Northeastern University did not, taking the advice of the Resident Student Association through our Summer I 2008 legislation opposing Ruckus. We're thankful that Northeastern didn't sign up for Ruckus, otherwise the investment of time and money would have been a waste.

Laundry Rapid Response Team

The Housing Services Committee runs the Laundry Rapid Response Team, an effort designed to provide students with fast e-mail responses to their laundry problem reports and concerns when they e-mail laundry@neu.edu.

The laundry@neu.edu e-mail was first created in the 2007-2008 session, and promoted as a resource to students. Initially handled by a two-person team, in the Fall of 2008 the concept was expanded into the was expanded and has been expanded yet again. The team is now staffed by:

• Matthew Soleyn, Vice President for Housing Services
• Mallory Brown, Assistant Vice President for Housing Services
• Sarah Huyck, Housing Services Committee Laundry Manager
• Catherine Armato, Vice President Emeritus

The Laundry Rapid Response Team aims to respond to constituent e-mail about routine laundry issues like broken machines or card readers as fast as possible. We promise replies by the close of the next business day, but 95% of e-mail is responded to within 12 hours and a super-majority within 4 hours.

Warm Weather, But Still Business as Usual

Despite the warm weather today and expectations of 50+ degree weather tomorrow, the Housing Services Committee and its members have been quite active working for the residents. Some of us started the day off at 7:00 AM with a trip to Parcel 18 to look at the dining facilities that are under construction. We saw that the pizza oven was put in, and that the new dining hall is going to be huge and have a lot of options available that just weren't possible due to the limited size of Stetson Hall East and Stetson Hall West. We also had a nice discussion with Dining Services about improving our existing dining hall and Outtakes.

This morning and afternoon we were working on OSCCR matters in conjunction with several dedicated members of the Student Government Association who stayed up late into the morning working on finalizing a proposal regarding disciplinary sanctioning reform. A big shoutout goes to them for their hard work!

At noon today, we held the second meeting of the Party Registration Subcommittee. The subcommittee talked about the possibility of looking at social events in the Curry Student Center as well as the residence halls, and reviewed research.

This evening the Resident Student Association General Council meets. It is my hope that the General Council will pass two pieces of legislation tonight. The first regarding disciplinary sanctioning, and the second regarding housing prices for next year. With these tough economic times, we are looking out for the students and want to send a strong message. The meeting is at 7:30 PM in 305 Shillman Hall.