A Certified Green Restaurant Right On Campus

Students looking to eat in a "Green" facility will soon be able to enjoy the benefits of a Certified Green Restaurant right on campus with next month's opening of the International Village Dining Hall. The announcement that the dining hall was made a Certified Green Restaurant by the Green Restaurant Association was made by Dining Services on Twitter this morning and the Resident Student Association independently confirmed the information through the Green Restaurant Association's website (see below) just a few minutes ago.


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NUPay Down

If you were hoping to add money to your HuskyCard, pay your tuition, or make a housing deposit tonight, you may not be able to. There is currently an outage of the NUPay (also known as CashNet) service that students can access via the myNEU Portal to make online credit / debit card payments.

The problem seems to have come up after the close of business, but Information Services Customer Service staff informed us that they have assigned a "High" priority to the issue and that the group in charge of the service will "be taking a look at this in the morning."

Affected students will see an error message stating "You have too many outstanding requests, wait for them to complete, then try again," or will see a message like this:


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Students who encounter an error accessing the service can send an e-mail to help@neu.edu to let Northeastern know they are having problems.

Help With Move-In

Move-in for the Fall of 2009 starts September 3rd, and the University is looking for students to volunteer to help out. To learn more, you can attend an information session on August 18th at 6:00 PM in 333 Curry Student Center or e-mail movein.volunteers@neu.edu.

New Dining Hall Opens August 31st

The International Village Dining Hall is set to open on Monday, August 31st, 2009. The newest dining facility to Northeastern will feature a state-of-the-art residential dining experience for Northeastern students, and will supplement the existing facilities at Stetson Hall East & Stetson Hall West helping to meet the volumes of students who will be using the dining facilities.

Columbus Lot Closure

Northeastern is going to be doing work on the Columbus Parking lot (the surface lot between the two garages) this upcoming weekend, and so the lot will be closed on Saturday, July 25th, and Sunday, July 26th. The work should include the fixing of potholes that currently exist in the lot.

Students, faculty, and staff with day parking permits can park in the North Lot during this time, and students, faculty, and staff with overnight parking permits can use the North Lot or Renaissance Park Garage.

If you fail to remove your car from the Columbus Parking lot in a timely fashion, you risk being towed.

Blog Now On Twitter

This blog is now fed over to Twitter. Whenever a new blog post is made, within 30 minutes a tweet will be issued from @RSABlog about the post with a link to it! If you don't yet have Twitter, you can sign up for free at www.Twitter.com.

Recycling

A question that I want to pose to you blog readers: Would you recycle more if recycling bins were more accessible on-campus. For example, if you were throwing a plastic bottle, glass bottle, or paper out and right next to the trash can was a recycling container, would you recycle or just trash it all? If your laundry room had a recycling bin, would you recycle empty laundry detergent bottles versus throwing them away? Or do you already recycle these?

Letting us know will provide some preliminary feedback on a couple ideas that RSA and HEAT discussed in a meeting last night about improving on-campus recycling options and availability.

Another 337 Huntington Update

Since our last update, there's been a few new developments with 337 Huntington Avenue.

• Huntington Avenue is now open to traffic both ways / both sides. Pedestrian access to Opera Place / St. Stephen's Street is also open. Vehicles, however, are still prohibited from accessing St. Stephen's Street. Cars that need to reach North Lot should take Gainsborough St. or Forsyth St. to Hemenway Street and use the back entrance by Stetson Hall East.
• Northeastern has been cited with a violation for operating an unsafe building at 337 Huntington Avenue. When the media inquired, Northeastern declined to comment adding more fuel to the fire regarding poor public relations practices and a lack of forthcoming-ness over the situation.
• All students in 337 Huntington Avenue were relocated to Davenport Commons B this week and will be remaining there the rest of Summer II. They were able to gather all their belongings and move with the support of a moving company.

The Resident Student Association is here for all the students who were displaced and, as always, all on-campus students. We are working to bring programming to the students in Davenport Commons B, and any students having problems can e-mail the Resident Rapid Response Team for help at NortheasternRSA@Northeastern.edu.

337 Huntington Avenue Incident Update

Northeastern University sent the following message out to students just a few minutes ago:

A message from NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY
Message sent - 7/14/2009

Following the collapse of the front building cornice at 337 Huntington Avenue, the University is providing the following updates to the Northeastern community:

- There were no injuries related to this incident.

- All residents of 337 Huntington Avenue have been relocated.

- The university is working closely with structural engineers and the City of Boston to determine the cause of the incident and to make sure the building is safe for occupancy.

- It appears that the circumstances surrounding the incident are isolated to this building.

- We routinely evaluate our facilities and perform necessary maintenance. We take great pride and care in our work to maintain a safe Northeastern campus.

- University Student Affairs is working closely with the students who have been relocated to assist them in this transition.

- As a precautionary measure, the University will remove the remaining cornice on the side of the building.

- Members of the community are advised to avoid the area surrounding 337 Huntington Avenue and seek alternative routes. Some street closures will continue as the incident is cleaned up and investigated.

We will continue to provide updates to the Northeastern community as needed.

337 Huntington Avenue

Many of you may already be aware, but this morning around 8:30 AM, the facade of 337 Huntington Avenue came crashing down to the sidewalk/street in what the Boston Police Department called a "construction accident." The building was undergoing roof work by Progressive Roofing, a firm based in Haverhill, Massachusetts. It is not yet known if their actions led to the collapse of the facade which was about 200 feet in length and weighed several tons.

While Northeastern spokesperson Samantha Fodrowski said there did not appear to be injuries, media reports indicate that there was one police officer who suffered minor injuries. The officer was in the area working construction detail.

Huntington Avenue was closed down for a portion of the morning due to fears that the building might be structurally unsound. Inspectors have deemed that the building is not at risk of collapse, and the MBTA is now running. Students were evacuated from the building, and Northeastern is working with Boston's inspectional services division to determine if they can return to their residence hall or if they will need to be relocated to a different space by the University.

For more information as updates come in, you can check out the following web sites:

Boston Globe: www.boston.com

WHDH [NBC Boston]: www.whdh.com

The Boston Channel [ABC Boston]: www.thebostonchannel.com

WBZ-TV [CBS Boston: www.cbs4boston.com

The Boston Herald: www.bostonherald.com

Also, on Twitter, you can search for "#Northeastern" or "337 Huntington" to see users who have posted pictures and tweets about the situation.

MBTA Fare Hike Hearings

An MBTA spokesperson has informed us that later this week they should be announcing the details of public hearings on possible fare increases and possible service cuts. The fare increases could raise the cost of taking public transit in the Boston area by as much as 20%, which would have a financial impact on students relying on the T to get to class, co-op, and other activities. We'll update once we have details later in the week.

Move In / Out / To / From Problems

Did you, your friends, or fellow residents have problems this summer or last year with move in, move out, or move to/from?

If so, we want to know so we can work on fixing moving problems at Northeastern University. Please let us know by e-mailing RSA (at) Northeastern.edu or posting on the blog. Anonymous posts are not identifiable by IP Address, so you can rest assured your identity will be truly anonymous if you post on this blog.

Equipment Borrowing

One of the great things that our Hall Councils do in the residence halls is purchase equipment that residents can borrow (as well as fixed equipment like table tennis tables). This includes items such as billiards balls and sticks, movies on DVD / BD, and video games and systems.

At present, it is difficult for residents to tell what exactly their hall has, and it is even more difficult to see what other halls have. What this can result in is a single DVD movie being purchased 5 or 6 or even 10 times over, when only 2 or 3 residents will want to simultaneously have it. Likewise, when residence halls want to do video game tournaments and want to see what other halls have a Wii (for example), they don't have an easy way to tell who does.

Even worse, the process for borrowing & returning equipment is not consistent campus-wide. Some residence hall staffs have created their own procedures which have limited accessibility to equipment for students. Others have no documented procedure.

The potential solution that was looked at by the Advocacy Subcommittee is to have a database of what equipment is owned by each hall, and where it resides, which would be accessible to all residents. This would help cut down on wasteful purchasing and let students know what is available. Also, developing a unified policy campus-wide for equipment borrowing is the other idea we have looked at, as well as looking at ensuring that students are billed for items they fail to return.

We want to know what you think, so post on the blog about it!

Article About West Campus Architect

This weekend in the Boston Globe there was an article about William Rawn & his architecture firm which was responsible for the design of the award-winning West Campus residence halls at Northeastern. You can read the article here.

Annual Electrical Shutdown

Each year over the weekend of the Federal Holiday of Independence Day (4th of July), an electrical shutdown takes place across campus as they perform inspections. On Saturday, July 4th between 6 AM and 8 PM, several buildings will experience power loss. The below notice from the Facilities Division lists the buildings affected and provides guidance on how to prepare for the shutdowns as well as why the shutdowns must happen:

As part of the required annual inspections and preventative maintenance program of the Northeastern University electrical utility system, the buildings listed below require a prolonged electrical shutdown or interruption of power. This shutdown is necessary for proper isolation and inspection of the buildings’ step-down transformers, high-voltage switchgear and distribution switchboard equipment.

As has been the case in previous years, to minimize disruption to University operations, this maintenance shutdown will occur over a weekend.

The electrical outage will commence on Saturday, July 4 at 6:00 AM and it will conclude by 8:00 PM that same day and will affect the following buildings:

Architecture Studio (located at MBTA station)
Behrakis Health Sciences Center
Cargill Hall
Dana Research Center
Dockser Hall
Egan Engineering/Science Research Center
Holmes Hall
Kariotis Hall
Knowles Center
Lake Hall
Latino/a Student Cultural Center
Meserve Hall
Nightingale Hall
Ryder Hall
Shillman Hall
Snell Engineering Center
Stearns Center
West Campus Building A
West Campus Building B
West Campus Building C
West Campus Building E
West Campus Building F
West Campus Building G
West Campus Building H
West Campus Parking Garage
Willis Hall
Power Plant

Only the buildings/locations listed above in this communication are affected by this electrical shutdown. All other campus buildings/locations will not be affected.

It should be noted that as a building/location passes inspection and testing, power will be restored to that particular building. As such, some buildings may have their electrical power restored ahead of the established restoration deadline of 8:00 PM.

To reduce the risk of damage to computer and other sensitive electronic equipment, please turn off all such equipment prior to the shutdowns.

The Facilities Division undertakes these actions to insure that the Northeastern University community is provided with safe and reliable electrical energy. We sincerely appreciate your cooperation and apologize for the inconvenience.

Committee Notes

A few quick notes & questions from committee last night:

• If you have had any issues with move in/out or move to/from, please e-mail them to RSA@Northeastern.edu or comment here. If you want to be anonymous, just post a comment on this blog as an anonymous user. The blog system does not provide us with your IP Address or any other identifying information, so rest assured that you'll be anonymous.
• Do you think International Village should have a display of flags from around the world? If so, how should it be arranged? Send your thoughts to RSA@Northeastern.edu or post them here.
• On an average cross-campus walk, count the number of outdoor recycling bins you see on the way. Odds are, you'll see zero or one if you go by Snell Library. Trash cans are plentiful, however. If you had just as easy an opportunity to recycle a bottle or can versus trashing it, would you?
• Your residence hall probably will lose power on July 4th, for some part of the day, due to electrical inspections and testing.
• Audits are being done to see if people actually moved in. We still don't understand why Residential Life & Housing Services use a better method for this process, but will be working to see if it can be improved.

International Village To Have Trays!

The Huntington News this morning has printed a story about yesterday's news that International Village will have trays available to students, along with modifications to make it so that students won't need a tray to return their dishes. You can read more here.

This news brings to a conclusion a months-long debate in which the Resident Student Association worked to defend the integrity of student opinion and defend the rights of students living in the residence halls. We are going to be continuing work on educating students about sustainable practices in the dining halls, while still ensuring that students' rights are being protected and preserved.

Laundry Bucks Are Active

The Resident Student Association received word from Campus Life and independently has confirmed that Summer II 2009 Laundry Bucks are now active. Residents should now have $22.50 available to use towards washing and/or drying clothes in the on-campus laundry rooms.

Where Are My Laundry Bucks?

If you were hoping to start using your Summer II Laundry Bucks today and have some nice, clean clothes... you're out of luck. Due to what has been deemed "a slight delay" by staff members in Enrollment Management & Student Affairs, Laundry Bucks were not activated at the same time as meal plans. We have been told they should be coming forward within "the next few days."

Dining Tweets

For those of you who utilize Twitter, Dining Services now has a Twitter account. You can follow @NEU_Dining on Twitter, along with @NortheasternRSA.