The Student Government Association heard from Jeff Howard, associate dean of students, regarding ETSU’s Student Complaint Policy. Along with this, they debated and heard various pieces of legislation at their Tuesday meeting.Howard presented the complaint policy, what it does cover and what it does not.

“That policy is meant to be a gateway for students to file an official complaint about some thing,” Howard said. “Some things that it does not deal with is any kind of hate crime or bias-related incidents, or sexual, racial or other harassment. There is a specific policy for those things that are handled through the Office of Equity and Diversity or through the Division of Student Affairs if it is a student-against-student complaint.”

Howard went on to talk about how grade appeals, housing or tuition appeals, disciplinary appeals or financial appeals are not a part of the complaint policy.

An example would be if someone is rude to you in a department, like the bursar’s office, while you are trying to make a payment. So, you wish to file a complaint about how they acted towards you.

“Basically, this complaint system goes through the appropriate chain of command all the way up to the vice president of that area,” Howard said.

“I came to talk to you as student representatives so that you know there is such a policy in existence and that you can at least direct a student to it on the website.”

This can be found on the ETSU website under the A-Z catalog at the top of the screen.

The SGA also debated various pieces of legislation. One piece of legislation that passed called for for additional T-shirt sales at the East and West sections of the Mini-Dome because there is a lack of merchandise for students sitting in those sections at concerts.

SGA also passed legislation requesting the implementation of an online system for reserving space in the Culp University Center.

The piece of legislation that was up for the most debate was centered on ETSU participating in a complementary trial run of USA Today newspaper that would be distributed in kiosks on campus.

If this trial run went well and the university wanted to make the program permanent, there would be a cost associated with continuing the service.

Sen. Iqra Ahmad, who sponsored this legislation with Senators Shae Keane and Nicki Zaveri, discussed Walden’s concerns about the trial run and the cost to the university if it went forward with the issuing of USA Today papers.

“From what I got from the presentation was that it would only be $3 to $5 per student and that is depending on the trial run,” Ahmad said. “Once it is seen how many papers go out and how many people are using it.”

One of the concerns was in regards to the paying for this program of giving away a national paper to the students.

Sen. Alyssa Belanger mentioned the additional small fee, but that there is no charge for those papers that are not picked up.

Some other points by the members of the SGA concerned how students can get information online or simply do not care to read the paper.

“I think it is a good idea for people that would be interested, but I don’t think the majority of kids on this campus would be interested in reading a paper,” Sen. Andy Price said. “I just do not think $3 to $5 per student is justified.”

SGA President Chad Hall talked about how the numbers could possibly be skewed from this trial run along with other issues.

“There are going to be some significant costs and who is going to head this up because it is going to be a lot of work,” Hall said.

Dr. Sally Lee, associate vice president for Student Affairs and SGA adviser, said, “The point that is not being made is that we have already done this,” Lee said. “We have already done a pilot and we have already had the USA Today on this campus distributed and the SGA did it.

“After we had it for a while, we determined it was not good use of our money,” Lee said. “It’s a free complimentary trial, but it is really designed as the first step in doing this program.”

“I don’t think we should do a pilot for a program that we don’t have the money to do,” Lee said.

After much discussion and debate, this legislation failed with a 5-13-0 vote.

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