The Undergraduate Council of Students meeting last night hosted several visitors, including Vice President for Campus Life and Student Services David Greene, who said that with the housing lottery approaching, the time to voice final concerns about proposed coed optional housing in Grad Center was "going, going, gone."
"I think it's fair to say that there's a pretty good consensus in this room in support" of coed housing said UCS President Joel Payne '05.
Greene said he had encountered concern from only one individual in his talks to various campus groups on the subject.
The Brown chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union also presented a resolution against the USA Patriot Act that it urged the council to support. "There are a lot of aspects of the Patriot Acts that have direct impact on students' daily lives," said EllaRose Chary '07, vice president of the Brown ACLU.
"Because Brown students are so involved, we stand to be more targeted by the Patriot Act," she said. "If we pass this (resolution), we're setting an example."
According to the Brown ACLU, 21 other universities have already passed a similar resolution, and "the national ACLU believes that other resolutions of this kind ... are a reason 'Patriot Act II' (the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003) didn't get passed," Chary said.
The resolution will come up for a vote in the next few weeks.
Director of Institutional Diversity Brenda Allen came to present a draft of the Ad Hoc Committee to Review Bias Policy's nondiscrimination and harassment policy, which is a culmination of work done over the past two semesters.
The committee was created last spring by President Ruth Simmons to create "a clear policy statement and a clear set procedure," Allen said.
She told the council that the policy is consistent with all federal and state statutes and that the recommendations made "ended up clarifying a process we already have in place here."
The policy makes recommendations about the processes of dealing with bias, discrimination and harassment. Allen emphasized preserving a certain level of flexibility when dealing with bias-related issues to "deal with things that are inconsistent with the community we are trying to achieve" even if they are not determined to be harassment, as well as having individuals well trained in dealing with harassment issues.
Allen said that there would eventually be an open forum and that she wants feedback on the draft, which is posted on the Brown Office of Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action Web site.
In an internal election, UCS elected Will Cunningham '07 its new appointments chair. Jess Maddox '08 was appointed to the Brown Alcohol Advisory Board and Sara Damiano '08 was appointed to the search committee for a new dean for campus life. Currently, Margaret Klawunn serves as interim dean for campus life. The former dean, Margaret Jablonski, left Brown for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill last summer.
