Victoria McCaslin
Contributing Writer
Campus Council has made some minor changes to the school’s noise policy in the Scot’s Key. The changes come from an extended Campus Council project that will continue to the end of 2018, aimed at revising the Scot’s Key to make it more concise and easier for students to use. So far, no changes have been made that will affect students directly.
The main changes have been the streamlining of the noise policy by combining the two sections of the Scot’s Key that contain noise policies. While the actual policies remain unchanged, the language has been cleaned up.
“We’re adding some policies that we don’t have and then we are making sure everything’s consistent across the different documents that the campus uses,” council member Jordan Griffith ’19 said. These included policies to clarify indecent exposure and disorderly conduct.
This task has been taken on by a subcommittee of Campus Council, headed by co-chairs Griffith and council member Bryan Robb ’18, Dean Scott Brown and Angela Johnston.
“Ultimately we’re going to open it up to the campus as a whole, to make sure that there are no other problems,” said Robb.
The Scot’s Key should be updated every academic year; however, Griffith said, “Generally, this hasn’t been done either ever or in a long time.”
While Dean Buxton goes through it and cleans it up from year to year, no drastic changes can be made without the Council’s approval.
“We’re going through this piece by piece,” said Griffith. The 2016 physical handouts of the Scot’s Key have still not been finished and distributed to the student body, despite it being the end of 2016.
Griffith and Robb attribute this to the lack of manpower behind the task. “It’s late, but understandable,” Griffith said.
Another goal is to virtualize the Scot’s Key to make it more accessible. The goal is to create online pages for every section of the key, enabling students to quickly and easily find information that pertains to them.
For example, instead of going through the PDF or physical booklet to find out what to do if a student has an alcohol problem, the student will have access to an online page containing the full alcohol policy, along with a link to apply to see a counselor.
The format would make it much easier for students to use the Scot’s Key and follow the next steps.
While the Council votes on new additions and changes as they go, all changes made to the key won’t become effective until the beginning of the next academic year.
“Nothing we do today would influence the day to day lives of students this year, only next year,” says Robb.
Campus Council meetings occur every Thursday at 11 a.m. in the Scot Center Governance room, and students are welcome attend either to sit in or to voice their concerns.
If there are any major issues students should approach Jack Johanning ’17, president of Campus Council, but all Council members can take student concerns and share them with the group.
Robb suggests letting a council member know your issue ahead of time. “It would be the difference between showing up and catching everybody flat footed,” said Robb.