Saint Louis University’s Information Technology Services department had a monopoly on the most recent Student Government Association meeting.
With the meeting lasting less than an hour, Director of ITS Customer Service Edward Wichmann gave his annual ITS update presentation that took the majority of senate’s time this week.
Wichmann expressed that there was a lot of work done in the ITS department this past summer, even though there are generally limited events and activities on campus during the summer months.
One big accomplishment for ITS was the doubling of its wireless bandwidth to 500 Mbps. This equates to faster wireless Internet access for students.
“We’re also in the process of evaluating our wireless here on campus,” Wichmann said.
Another relatively new addition to the ITS is the Student Service Desk located on the lower level of the Busch Student Center. The service desk was relocated from Des Peres Hall last year.
“The Student Service Desk is fully managed by students, except for one full-time staff member,” Wichmann said. The said staff member allows for increased hours of ITS service accessibility to students.
Wichmann said that the availability that the Student Service Desk provides students was especially apparent during the week of move-in and the following couple of weeks.
“Traditionally [Griesedieck] is mobbed by students who want to access the wireless. This year there were none,” said Wichmann. “They were all here in the Busch Student Center.”
Not only does the Student Service Desk provide students an opportunity to reach out to ITS, but the department also has a Facebook profile and a Twitter page.
When asked if the social media sites—which were launched last year—have seen widespread student communication, Wichmann expressed his disappointment in the matter.
“We are on Facebook and Twitter. We don’t tweet a lot but we’ve not seen as much student involvement as we would like to,” Wichmann said.
Other ways of reaching out to ITS include contacting the head of the SGA Information Technology Committee or through the SGA “Fixes the Little Things” campaign.
Though ITS occupied a large part of SGA’s meeting time this week, two senate bills were also passed. The first bill that was passed was the allocation of $367.50 from the Student Activity Fund to the SLU Pakistan Relief Task Force through a special-projects funding request.
After a student presented to SGA about the implications of the July 2010 Pakistani floods, SGA created the Task Force with intentions to gather attention and donations for the relief funds in place.
“It was unanimous to allocate $367.50 to the task force,” Financial Vice President Tim Janczewski said in response to how the Finance Committee viewed this request before the bill was presented to senate.
The last action was the senate approval of a 2010-2011 Election Commissioner.
According to Vice President of Internal Affairs Murphy Vandenberg, the Committee for Internal Affairs voted 4-1 to recommend Chris McGeehan for the position.
McGeehan was approved by the senate to serve as the commissioner for the upcoming spring student government elections.
McGeehan was recommended based on his past SGA experience, as he served on senate last year.