Quality of Life Committee Meeting

September 19, 2006

Location: 7th Floor Crawford Tower

I. Good Morning/ Introduction of New Members

  • Phillip Myer

II. Minutes- Need to Appoint a Secretary

III. Old Business

a. Babcock Street Project

  • Will be wrapped up sometime in October

b. Panthereum completion data

  • Not definite- 3 to 4 weeks out
  • Top is holding up the work
  • Going to have fountains spitting out water on the sides
  • Facilities is going to be putting a project update on FIT and FACT forums

c. Smoking Areas

Stephen Hanna’s report

  • Recommended making one area in the dorm quad for people to go smoke, and make it aesthetically pleasing
  • Move cigarette disposals
  • Need more permanent places in front of Skurla and Crawford
  • Maybe start a trial period and see how it goes- start in Res Quad then fan out to rest of campus

d. New Student Housing Subcommittee

  • Issue: centralized vs. decentralized housing; food services; infrastructure and security
  • Going to look at history of proposals and surveys that have been done
  • Going to prepare scenario comparisons for on and off campus living
  • Going to review actual plans of previous proposals
  • Renovate quad?
  • Keep housing in north of campus?
  • Going to look at sophomore requirement for living on campus
  • Would pose a problem for Greek housing
  • Possibility of year round Southgate housing

e. New Dining Facility Subcommittee

  • To meet later today

f. International Students- Dr. Muzaffar Shaikh

  • Religious and cultural problems with housing and dining facilities
  • They want to cling together and prefer living off campus
  • Uncomfortable performing religious practices in front of other students
  • Ramadon- They have to eat at dawn for the holiday and eating facilities are not open at the time
  • They are going to be give bagged breakfast to eat at sun-up
  • The students have taken academic classes at home and want FIT to give them credit for those classes
  • ELS- teaching in rooms with a mix of 101 and 103 class levels
  • Grad students want a waver of the GRE requirement

IV. New Business

a. Panthereum Dedication

  • No one assigned this task
  • Frank, Zac, Tom, Doug, and Greg suggested for a subcommittee
  • Need to look into this further

b. Website Update

  • With respect to archiving old and new minutes
  • Also want to make website more dynamic & get it out into FIT population
  • Considering adding a suggestion box online or in the Sub for students to add more issues
  • PUBs or Webmaster need to make the link on main website more noticeable

c. Subcommittees- QOL Issues

  • Want to create an undergrad subcommittee to deal with issues
  • Need to improve communication between organizations on campus
  • Invite leaders of other groups to our meetings

V. Miscellaneous

  • Talked about the small number of graduation tickets students are given
  • Going to try to have an overflow room in Olin
  • Try to increase diploma size

Next Meeting Tuesday, October 17, noon, 7th floor of Crawford