After more than 90 minutes of questions, discussion and debate, the Student Government Association passed a resolution demanding that the School of Medicine change its policy towards admissions. Senators also expressed their outrage at the housing rate increase at the meeting last night.
The resolution at hand “demanded the immediate revocation of the admissions policy that discriminates against international students seeking entrance to the Saint Louis University School of Medicine.”
Mary Fenton, the assistant dean of Student Financial Planning at the School of Medicine, came to answer questions regarding the resolution. She defended the position of the medical school to require international students to provide financial backing for the four years of school in the form of a financial escrow account.
The reason for this account, according to Fenton, deals with past occurrences of international students losing financial assistance from their countries. “Many other private medical schools have this policy,” Fenton said.
Senators were arguing for that account to be lessened to the amount of tuition and expenses for two years.
Fenton clarified that these restrictions are to help international students, not keep them from applying to the medical school. “The school benefits tremendously from the international program. We do the best we can to make sure that students do not have to drop out of school,” she said.
School of Medicine Senator Joseph Clever agreed with the policy. “From day one, med school is a four-year commitment. There are generally no transfers,” he said. “If someone drops out after two years because they don’t have enough money, someone else cannot just begin at year two.”
“I think this bill is too strongly worded and should not pass, but that we should keep communicating with the med school,” Clever said.
Undergraduate commuter Rich Bergin also supported the bill.
If international students are required to have a four-year escrow account, then every student could be forced to have one, he said.
After ending debate, the resolution passed with a vote of 24 to 6.
Other Business
During the open forum when Chris Coleman, president of the Residence Hall Association, spoke about the raise in housing rates.
“I am enraged about the room rates. It was my understanding that these improvements were funded by the SLU2000 project,” Coleman said. “I ask and petition the Senate to work with the RHA to prevent this from being done in the future.”
Undergraduate commuter senator Adam Altman felt the same way. “They shouldn’t be charging us for improvements that should have been made years ago like air-conditioning in Gries,” he said.
Several senators expressed their desire to submit legislation concerning the housing increases.
