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At 7:30 PM EDT today, I will end my tenure as RSA Executive Vice President. Elections for my replacement take place next Wednesday at the RSA General Council meeting.

RA Guest Passes

Thanks to the great work of our Student Government Association, it has been announced that starting Fall 2010 all RAs will get guest passes with their meal plans that are provided to them. The full announcement can be found here, and comes after years of work by both SGA, RSA, and RAs.

This Blog

The last couple weeks has been intensive with a lot in the Resident Student Association. Unfortunately, that took a toll on operations like blog updates. As the transition of RSA's Advocacy role takes place, though, we will be working to update the blog more frequently with project information.

Projects

Blogging has been slow the last week due to a lot of busy work at the Resident Student Association. We've been hard at work on many projects, and some of the projects that are going to be big focuses this year are:

- Electronic guest sign in
- New roommate matching for first-year students and upperclassmen
- Increasing the guest limit
- Adding new dining hall options
- Working to get move to/from information on the myNEU Portal
- Adding printing to residence hall spaces using the printq uota

There are also many smaller projects, and new ones that will pop up. Keep checking this blog and our Twitter accounts to learn more.

Husky Card Vendor List

A student posted a comment on a post yesterday about where to find a list of vendors that take Dining Dollars. You can find a list of vendors that take Dining / Husky Dollars through the Registrar's website.

Dining Hall Menus

Many students have been wondering how they can tell what's going to be available each day at our dining halls. Often times, the offerings can make the difference in choosing whether to go to International Village versus Stetson East versus Stetson West, and thanks to the Dining Services website you can learn what's going to be served each day in the dining halls. The website can be found here and you'll want to go to "Places to Eat" and then "What's On The Menu" in the top navigation. Menu's are subject to last minute changes, due to stocking of food, recalls, and food deliveries.

Piketoberfest Today!

If you've wondered why there haven't been blog posts for a couple days, it's been due to people supporting a high amount of RSA recruitment efforts and programs. Thursday we had several hall council information sessions and an activities fair table. Friday we had two programs, and today is Piketoberfest. Join RSA on the Centennial Commons at 3 PM for free food and a free concert by State Radio & Longwave. Prior to the concert, RSA is helping prepare and setup pretty much all day. Follow us on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/rsalive for updates.

Free Google Apps Training

Via Twitter, the Resident Student Association has learned of a Free Google Applications training workshop for students. The training will take place Wednesday, September 23rd during Activities Period (11:45 AM) in 145 Snell Library.

Google Applications is the new platform for student e-mail, calendar, and document sharing. Through Google Applications, students can organize meetings for classes, share documents, create new documents, chat with other students, and have a powerful e-mail platform available.

You can register for the training on the Information Services Training website.

Problems? We Can Help

Have a problem on-campus? If so, e-mail NortheasternRSA@neu.edu and you'll get an answer by the end of the next business day, but often much faster. With 80 percent of e-mails responded to within 8 hours, the Resident Rapid Response Team is here for any student living on-campus at Northeastern who has any question, problem, or concern. The Resident Rapid Response Team has produced quick results, solutions, and answered questions for hundreds of students already, and looks forward to serving many more.

Recycling Bins

If you live in an upperclass apartment-style residence hall and don't yet have a recycling bin, check with your RAs. If they aren't able to help, e-mail RSA (at) Northeastern.edu and we'll try to help out.

Last Day of Move-In

Today's the last day of move-in, and if everything runs as well as it did the last few days, this will be one of the most successful move-in weeks ever, especially given that this is the largest move-in ever with the addition of International Village.

There are plenty of Welcome Week events coming up, including Duck Tours tomorrow at 5:00 PM, so check out www.northeastern.edu/welcomeweek for more information or stop by the Welcome Week booth on the Krentzman Quad in front of Ell Hall to learn more.

Move-In Going Well

Reports from all of the residence halls we have talked to so far (Stetson Hall West, West Village A, West Village B, West Village C, West Village G, West Village H, Speare Hall) indicate that move-in is going well. Elevators are working and there are no serious backlogs. Traffic around campus is orderly, and the weather couldn't be better. There are no major issues with ResNet/HuskyCable, and the dining halls are in good shape. If you notice anything amiss, let us know! E-mail RSA (at) Northeastern.edu.

Useful Phone Numbers

Here's a quick list of many useful Northeastern phone numbers. Many offices are open today, tomorrow, and even Labor Day.

Housing & Residential Life: 617.373.2814
Registrar's Office: 617.373.2300
Husky Card Office: 617.373.2270
ResMail: 617.373.5108
Information Services Service Desk: 617.373.4357

Our phone number is 617.373.8682, and if you don't think any of the above offices can help with your issue or want to find out just who to call, we encourage you to call us.

ResNet On-Site

Thanks to Twitter, we have learned that ResNet teams will be dispatched on-site to residence halls around campus to provide assistance to students who need to connect their computers to the network and activate them. The teams are expected to hit the residence halls around Noon, and will also be able to help with HuskyCable issues.

Biggest Day of Move-In

Today is the biggest day of move-in at Northeastern University. The weather is great, the moving bins were being unloaded as early as 7 AM, and the dining halls were open at 6 AM for breakfast. The Resident Student Association is here for you during move in. Feel free to e-mail us at RSA (at) Northeastern.edu with any issues or for faster response send tweets on Twitter to @RSALive.

Cable TV Channels Fixed

HuskyCable channels in the area of Channel 16 to 22 recently were very fuzzy, miscolored, or distorted for students campus wide. Today, we're happy to report that thanks to the work of people in various groups of Information Services (ResNet, Customer Service, and Network Services) the channels should now be coming in clear. After determining the issue was campus wide and investigating, Information Services found that it was found that the problem stemmed back to an issue with Comcast, who provides a feed to Northeastern that gives us most of our standard definition cable television channels. Comcast fixed the problem quickly, and students can now enjoy clear channels like CNBC, the New England Sports Network, and ABC Family.

Profiler Plan Bonuses, Part II

Some good news tonight. It turns out you have until September 17, 2009 to sign up for a Profiler Meal Plan and recieve the 10 percent bonus of meals. Despite the extra time, there's little reason to wait. International Village Dining hall is currently open and has been impressing students, parents, faculty, staff, and even alumni with its unique offerings. Now is a better time than ever to sign up for a meal plan because thanks to the Banner system, meal plans take effect quicker and are easy to enroll in as you can sign up on the Self-Service tab of the myNEU Portal.

Correction on Jamba Juice Hours

This week we posted that the normal hours of operation for Jamba Juice and Peet's Coffee & Tea at International Village will have both locations open until 11 PM most nights. This was incorrect, and we apologize for the mistake. The correct hours of Peet's Coffee & Tea will indeed keep it open until 11:00 PM Monday to Thursday and 8:00 PM Friday to Sunday, however Jamba Juice will only be open until 8:00 PM Monday to Thursday and 6:00 PM Friday to Sunday.

Should the student body find these hours to be inadequate, it is possible that they will be changed in the future, so let us know what you think.

International Village Station Poll

Dining Services wants to know what station at International Village students like the most. They have put four options up on a poll on their website. The options, and the results of the poll as of 3:02 PM Eastern Daylight Time are:

Sushi Station (42.3%)
Tandoor Station (23.1%)
Wood Stone Oven Station (19.2%)
Charbroil Station (15.4%)

E-Mail Outage - Why It Happened

On September 1st, 2009, Google Applications and Google Mail users saw an e-mail outage that lasted for several minutes to several hours for some accounts. The outage affected Northeastern University's new Husky Mail, which is powered by Google Applications. Google has posted an explanation of what caused the outage, and what they plan to do to prevent similar outages in the future. You can read about it here.

In one sentence, and without too much technical jargon what happened was some of Google's computers became overloaded and stopped accepting requests from users trying to open their e-mail on the web which resulted in the downtime.