It was business as usual when the Student Government Association reassembled for the first time following the winter break – new legislation was read, old legislation was passed, and a crew of new and old SGA members was appointed to Cabinet and B.U.C. Fund positions.The first speaker was Daniel VanZant, electronic content developer, who came to discuss the new and improved Goldlink page that will be launched Feb. 15.

“As many of you know, Goldlink is going to be getting a major face lift,” VanZant said.

The Goldlink page will be a more personal page than before which will allow the user more access to get to pages and sections that they feel is appropriate for them said VanZant.

“When you log in, you are going to get information that is specific to you,” VanZant said, “A lot of students will have some of the same channels as you but some of the information will be specific to you.”

Some of the information that could be seen by a student upon logging on might be employer information or connection to the library, while another student might have the same tabs or completely different tabs.

“These tabs are going to be specific to whatever roles you have here on campus,” VanZant said.

Students and faculty who might be afraid of having to learn a completely new webpage system should not worry because some of the functions of the new Goldlink are the same as the ones we use now.

“The reason we did not change the name is because one of the primary roles of the new Goldlink is the same as the old Goldlink,” VanZant said.

The Goldlink re-design is an expanding project and those who worked on the new Goldlink are interested in the input of the students.

Anthony Kiech, technology development coordinator, said, “We want to know what you guys want, think outside of the box. We may do the coding and the background, but we don’t know what kind of content you want.”

During the open forum, Jeremy Lofquest, acting veteran affairs coordinator and graduate assistant, discussed an East Tennessean article about veterans affairs.

“It had a definite tone that kind of came out of nowhere and we are having issues with the East Tennessean to try and get our responses into it,” Lofquest said, “There are complaints about the misrepresentation of the office and me personally in the article and we have not gotten any sort of response.”

Lofquest presented a list of mistakes and corrections that he believes should be made.

“Our office feels that something needed to be addressed,” Lofquest said, “It was an above-the-fold and front page [article] that misrepresented us.”

Lofquest said that some people quoted in the piece were misquoted or misunderstood. “Some people said I didn’t really say that, at least not like that anyways.”

Lofquest said the Veteran Affairs office is ranked fourth in that state and how many veterans their office helps.

“UT Knoxville has roughly 20 workers in their office and five to seven school certifying officials,” Lofquest said, “We are now up to two acting school certifying officials with four workers while servicing 500 to 700 veterans a semester.”

Editor’s note: The East Tennessean has been in contact with Mr. Lofquest to address his complaint. Arrangements were made on Friday, Jan. 21, 2011, at Mr. Lofquest’s request, to submit our response in writing. The East Tennessean submitted a written response to him by e-mail Wednesday. We stand by the information presented in the Dec. 9, 2010, article, “ETSU takes strides to continue as a veteran-friendly university” by Mary Fish-Salsbury. We’ve thoroughly investigated Mr. Lofquest’s complaint and found there to be no misrepresentation in his case. All complaints will be handled individually but must be in writing and submitted to eteditor@etsu.edu.

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