The ASI Senate expressed its disappointment Wednesday at the meeting about “Study Week,” an amended proposal to the original “Dead Week” proposed earlier in the semester by the senators.
The Study Week proposal aims to make no assignment or project worth more than 15 percent due the week before finals. The Senate originally had been proposing a week in which no homework and no assignments would be due – essentially, a “dead week” to help students prepare for final exams.
The Senate was asked for its support on the proposed policy on Study Week, which sparked a debate in which many senators expressed their reluctance to support the proposal. Sen. Chris Chavez said he “was disappointed with what the legislative body came up with,” but said he “supports it because it is a start to what we need and want.”
ASI Vice President Hironao Okahana said the proposed policy suggested by the Senate “would never have flown.”
Sen. James Davis, however, did not agree.
“I don’t think we should make any compromises. I think we should stand up for what we want. I still say we go and form a resolution to say, ‘We want a Study Week. Surveys tell us this is what the students want,'” Davis said. “Compromising with what the faculty put forth would be denying the constituency of what they really want and need.”
Sen. Lucy Montano said she supported the amendment only because “it will make it that much closer to really happening.”
Still, Chavez said he feels the “proposal is an unfair compromise. This policy is way off from what we proposed.”
In addition to the meeting, Lee Johnson has been hired as the new recycling coordinator to direct operations at the recycling center on campus.
Johnson has been involved in the recycling and environmental industry almost his entire life. He started the Orange Coast College recycling program in Costa Mesa and said he hopes to clean up what he said is the “recently ignored” recycling facility at Cal State Long Beach.
Johnson said he was astounded by the public’s response to the recycling center, claiming “[CSULB has] a ton of people from the community who come to it. They come for the students and have been coming since the program started. We need to let people on campus know what’s going on.”
Johnson continued to tell the Senate that all the waste from CSULB is sifted and sorted through.
“Here at the university, nothing is getting thrown away,” he said. “We try to recover everything thrown in the trash.”
University Representative Jeane Caveness said “she felt a change when she drove up a few weeks ago. The grass was cleaner and there were several volunteers helping out.”
Johnson responded by saying that “the public has already made numerous comments about the improved facility. We are really working on getting it cleaned up, and by the end of the summer, I would like to come to the center and talk about the idea of ‘zero waste.'”
