The Student Senate had their first official meeting of the semester and discussed President David Glassman’s latest email in regards to Eastern’s current financial situation.
Student body president Shirmeen Ahmad said she thinks Glassman chose the quickest way to inform the students of the information laid out in the email.
“Email is the fastest response and I think right now it’s something that needs to be done,” Ahmad said. “You can hold a press conference and stuff, but this is the best way to get it out.”
Ahmad said Glassman’s main concern is to make sure students know that Eastern knows what it is doing.
“They have plans, they’re just looking at the ‘if this happens, if that happens, if that’s going to continue to happen’, so that they’re prepared,” Ahmad said. “In the end, it’s all about where the university is, and I think students are just looking at it as an ‘oh man, this could happen’ instead of a ‘But this is where we’re actually at right now’.”
Glassman’s email was not originally meant to be included in the senate agenda, but Maralea Negron, the speaker of the senate, passed a motion before the meeting began to include the email for further discussion by the senators.
Courtney Sage, the student vice president for student affairs, said the reason for bringing up the matter to the other senators was so they could tell other students on campus who are confused what is actually happening.
“This is a state budget issue, this is something that is out of our control,” Sage said. “We do known for certain that students have been going to different faculty, trying to find out what is going on.”
Sage said it is important for senate to tell nervous students the school is not closing down to keep morale up.
“In times like these, we do find that students get a little nervous, and it causes morale to go down,” Sage said.
Senator JaLisa Smith said she felt like Glassman’s email was “impersonal”.
“I know that this is his first year here, so a lot of students don’t really know who he is,” Smith said. “I love his optimism about it, yes we have the Prowlin’ with the President, but I just feel like to see his face more regarding issues like him telling students personally everything is going to be okay and all that.”
Smith asked how many students outside of student senate and not in leadership positions across campus check their email regularly enough to see Glassman’s latest email.
Senator Gabriella Ramirez said she felt like she would liked to have heard more information regarding the 200 layoffs Glassman brought up during the Faculty Senate meeting Tuesday.
“I felt like I got more from the DEN article than what he said because he was being very general,” Ramirez said. “I asked a question earlier like how are we able to stay open this whole semester. I wished he would have given us more information because it’s very general.”
Sage said she agree with Smith in terms of having more of a face-to-face interaction with Glassman about Eastern’s financial future, but because times are becoming more hectic, it would be hard to do so.
“His schedule is so booked. I mean we had to move our meeting today just because he’s on the phone with all of the presidents of the other universities trying to figure out what to do,” Sage said. “It is something that he’s spoken about with the (executives). He wishes that he would have gotten more face time with us to begin with but he came in as president with bigger issues than he even knew about.”
Sage said the reason Glassman does not want to go into detail is to try to avoid scaring students more.
“He didn’t want it to be like that which is why he asked for our feedback,” Sage said. “He doesn’t want to freak people out more.”
Luis Martinez can be reached at 581-2812 or lpmartinez@eiu.edu
