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.

Legislation Passes, Part II

The legislation passed by the Resident Student Association on Wednesday regarding the Student Disciplinary Bill of Rights was passed by the Student Senate today. We don't have the exact vote count for you, but as someone present for the recorded vote, I can report that not a single Senator voted against the legislation. There was not, however a X-0-0 count like RSA had on Wednesday as some Senators abstained from the vote.

Updated: myNEU & Northeastern Websites Down

UPDATE: As of 3:00 PM, it appears that all is fine. The outage was due to a power issue in the University data center according to Robert Weir, Northeastern's Vice President for Information Services who posted a statement on the myNEU Portal once it was back up.

It appears that something has gone wrong in the Information Services data center at Northeastern, which has led to a big outage this morning. At present, I.S. is working to restore several websites including the myNEU Portal. They were unable to provide us with a timeframe.

RSA Television Information

The February schedule and other information about RSA Television has gone up on the RSA website. In addition, we are soon going to be doing a lot of pen and popcorn giveaways around campus, so look out for that to take place in the next couple of weeks.

Legislation Passes

Last night the General Council heard legislation regarding a Student Disciplinary Bill of Rights. The legislation passed with a 74-0-0 vote! It is being sent onto the formal Code of Conduct Review Committee this afternoon.

Juicy Campus Closing

The popular college gossip and rumor site Juicy Campus will be closing today. The announcement came from Matt Ivester, the site's Founder and Chief Executive Officer. In a letter about the shutdown Ivester cited plummeting ad revenue and a lack of venture capital as reasons for the site's shutdown.

Juicy Campus, because of its anonymous nature and refusal to divulge IP addresses that can sometimes identify a computer without a subpoena created controversy on many campuses, including here at Northeastern. Some institutions banned the website from their networks, and at other institutions Student Governments expressed outrage towards the site, which often would feature lies, insults, and demeaning content towards individuals or groups of individuals.

Salting of Campus

We've heard the student concerns about a lack of timely salting on campus after snow/ice events. We'll be working in the near future to address these concerns to Facilities. If you know of any specific problem areas, let us know.

Beanpot

The Housing Services Committee would like to wish both the men's and women's hockey teams luck in their Beanpot games. Northeastern's men take on Boston College in the men's Beanpot at 8:00 PM tomorrow at the T.D. Banknorth Garden and on Tuesday the NU women taken on Boston College right here at Matthews Arena.

News on RSA TV

We have two new ideas for RSATV this spring.

First, we would like to hold a contest for student bands on campus. We would like bands to submit songs to us. The Housing Services Committee will pick one song each month to be the featured song that will play during the Movie Listing Slideshow. This will give us some great music to make the channel more exciting while giving exposure to more student bands on campus.

Second, we are interested in featuring more student content on RSA TV. One idea is to feature student films and documentaries on the channel. I am working on getting in touch with someone who runs the Northeastern Film Festival so the winners will be featured on the channel.

Please, comment and let me know what you think of these new ideas. In addition if you are a band that would like to feature music or a student with a film, please contact me at ouellette.c@neu.edu.

OSCCR Survey

Please help out the Student OSCCR Assessment Committee by taking a short survey about the Office of Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution. The survey can be found here.