SG quickreader: What happened at this week’s SG meeting, Wednesday March 25

Broadband for Skaptopara, equipment for JMC

Senator Filip Taseski reported on the decisions taken during the Information Resources (IR) Committee meeting. As for campus internet coverage, "the priorities are to keep financial sources for bandwidth rather than wireless coverage," Taseski said. Office of Communications and Computing (OCC) plans to increase bandwidth by 10 Mb/s (megabits per second), which is 50 percent of the current Skaptopara bandwidth. All improvements will be directed at Skaptopara Residence Halls, and not other university buildings, Taseski said.

IR Committee also submitted a request for $35,000 to the Budgetary Committee for Journalism and Mass Communications (JMC) Department equipment. This will be the second of the four yearly payments to the department, which will add up to roughly $150,000 if approved and which will be used to buy TV and photographic equipment, and software.

Money granted for a soccer game

SG will pay slightly over 145 leva for a soccer game between AUBG and South-West University (SWU), 100 of which will come from SG Chair's Discretionary Fund. Youth Empowerment Initiative Club (YEI) is the organizer of the game. The 100 leva from the Discretionary Fund will cover rent of the buses to take and bring back students to Bachinovo, said SG Treasurer Leorand Ndoni. SG Budget cannot cover this amount, because SG does not cover transportation expenses for student activities. It was decided to take money out of the Chair's Discretionary Fund because YEI is "the only club which does something outside the university, aside from Better Community Club (BCC)," Taseski said.

The decision to grant money for the game does not go against the fact that SG does not fund sport events, said SG President Vasile Valcov. "We always grant money for promotion of sports events, not [equipment]," he added.

In related news, SG granted 625 leva to BCC for one of the Environmental Week workshops, and 200 leva for WTF started all this?, a Macedonian play part of this AUBG theater season. The production was already granted about 300 leva from SG in one of its previous meetings.

Wiis for main lobbies

SG bought two Wii game stations for Skaptopara main lobbies using SG Contingency Fund. The request submitted to Vice President for Finance and Administration Alexander Alexandrov for the purchases was approved on March 26, and the game stations can already be used by the students. Wiis were chosen among other game stations because they are "of better quality and newer," Ndoni said. SG Vice President Vaska Dimitrova said Dean of Students Lydia Krise supported the decision to buy Wiis because they are popular in American campuses and "have applications which can be used for campus life."

The game stations cost SG 986 leva, including a 5% discount which AUBG gets from Technopolis, and came with five games pre-installed. Ndoni encouraged next year's SG to include game CDs in the funding request for capital items.

Administration response to draft schedule complaints

Dimitrova presented the official response of the administration to student complaints about the draft course schedule for the Fall 2009 semester.

The number of Computer Science courses offered will be smaller next semester because of the decreasing number of Computer Science students at AUBG, which is also a general tendency. Another reason is the need to provide enough courses for the new Information Systems (INF) major. "Graduating [COS] students will have enough courses to graduate," Dimitrova said.

Design courses in the Journalism and Mass Communications (JMC) department and acting courses won't be taught because professors Dinka Spirovska and Nedyalko Delchev, who teach them, will be on a leave during the Fall 2009 semester.

Students majoring in Business Adminsitration (BUS) won't be able to pre-register for BUS courses if they have already completed twelve or more of them. These students can still sign up for the courses during the add-drop week, Dimitrova said.