News

By: Nayra Halajian On Oct. 13, the Associated Students of the University of Puget Sound (ASUPS) had to reapprove all of the items they had already voted on in the Fall 2016 semester thus far. ASUPS Vice President Lydia Bauer said, “None of us realized that anything was off until Kathryn Queirolo… came in and was basically like ‘I’ve been looking at the bylaws and you all haven’t had official quorum.’” In order to have quorum, a two-thirds minimum of Senate members must be in the meeting to make the proceedings...

By: Aneyceia Brim ASUPS is concerned with listening to the interests of students on campus. Peyton Anstine, Director of Student Interests (DSI) is a member of the ASUPS executive office. Historically, the DSI position was called Director of Sustainability and the position pertained to issues regarding sustainable practices on campus. Anstine’s predecessor, Austin Burningham, worked with the ASUPS executive team to revise the position to include student life as well as sustainability. “If students have a particular problem or a project that interest them, they are more than welcome to come...

By Keely Coxwell A common period allows for shared governance and is a time for our community as a whole to connect. As early as the 2017-2018 academic year the common period will be implemented at the University. The common period will be a 90 minute period time every Wednesday from 12:00 to 1:30 where there will be no classes scheduled. There are many benefits of having a common period, but the primary reason is a solution to the difficulty of scheduling faculty meetings, according to Academic Vice President and Dean...

By Aneyceia Brim Four staff members from across the globe visited the Puget Sound community to teach. Farizah Ahmad, Megan Daniels, Liling (Lily) Lin, and Sarah Makeschin, are all foreign instructors. Farizah Ahmad is from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She taught English as a secondary teacher there. Ahmad is also a Fulbright Scholar which allows her to assist in an Indonesian language class at the university. The program that Ahmad is a part of  is called Foreign Language Teaching Assistant and is funded by the United States government. The application process is...

By Madeleine Scypinski Counseling, Health & Wellness Services (CHWS) has been located on the second floor of Wheelock Student Center since the early ‘80s, but in recent years, it has become increasingly clear that CHWS is outgrowing this space. “If you gave me money for a staff member,” CHWS Director Donn Marshall said, “we wouldn’t have any place to put that staff member.” This exact scenario played out last year when the department hired a temporary counselor for 16 hours a week, which forced Marshall to move to an auxiliary office...

By: Aneyceia Brim The University has launched a new Diversity Strategic Plan for the fall, aimed at making the school a more diverse community. “Diversity includes attention to identity characteristics such as age, disability, sex, race, ethnicity, religion/spiritual tradition, gender identity and expression, sexual identity, veteran status, job status or socioeconomic class, nation of origin, language spoken, documentation status, personal appearance and political beliefs,” as the University defines it within the plan. The plan is broken into four goals that the institution hopes to focus on: recruitment and retention, a more...

By: Val Bauer In August, incoming freshmen at the University of Chicago received a controversial letter from Dean of Students Jay Ellison, in which ‘trigger warnings’ and ‘safe spaces’ were disregarded as an excuse for “individuals retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.”   The letter, published online by Intellectual Takeout, cites UChicago’s “commitment to freedom of inquiry and expression” as a defining characteristic of their academic setting, Ellison said. “Members of community are encouraged to speak, write, listen, challenge and learn, without fear of censorship.” Trigger...

Dozens of students from across student groups at the University set up tents and camped out in front of Jones Circle on Thursday, April 28th to protest the Board of Trustee’s slow progress on divestment from fossil fuels. Led by the ECO club, the protesters met at 12 pm on the 28th and planned on remaining in front of the fountain until a board member personally met with the students and took their newly drafted resolution. The resolution was collected from the ECO club on Saturday, April 30th by a...