The Best GM Week Political Team at RPI

It’s that time of year again! Election fever has descended upon RPI this year even earlier than usual. The DCC’s windows are covered in posters in the shape of candidates’ names, the CII is once again a seven story billboard for a political party, and all over campus one can find banners adorned with campaign slogans. Yes, GM Week is upon us, and the battle to represent you, the students, has commenced. But who to vote for? Here at RPInsider we’ve assembled the best RPI political team on the internet (even better than last year’s) to help you decide just that.

Just as we did last year, we asked each of the GM/PU candidates by email to submit a short statement about themselves and why we should endorse them. For the GM candidates, we received responses from Ben Hunt, Andrew Neidhardt, and Michael Zwack. For PU, responses came from Mike Spitz and Stefan Dicker.

Based on the statements submitted, general campaign activity, and the debates, we have finally reached a decision:

RPInsider endorses Andrew Neidhardt for Grand Marshal and Stefan Dicker for the President of the Union.

Find out why below.
Read more…

Share Uncategorized elections, GM, Gm Week, RPInsider, Student Senate, students

RPI is getting rid of housing grants.  In an email sent by Dr. Eddie Ade Knowles  and Dr. Paul Marthers on Wednesday, the administration’s policy on these scholarships was clarified.  The full text is below our analysis.

Some important highlights:

• Housing grants are scholarships which are intended for use to offset on-campus living costs.
• Housing grants will not be offered to the class of 2014.
• Classes of 2011, 2012, and 2013 will keep their grants if they stay on campus.
• Greeks who have the grants will be able to keep them as long as it doesn’t exceed the cost of living in the fraternity.
• If you move off campus voluntarily, you forfeit the grant.
• If you can’t get a room in the lottery, you will get 50% of the grant for one semester.
• Important exception: If you already have a lease, you can use your housing grant for the cost of a meal plan ONLY, for one year.

Almost immediately after the email was sent,  the Grand Marshal Michael Zwack posted a tweet saying, “According to today’s email from Dr. Knowles, 10 months of work finally paid off….”  I applaud the GM for the work he has done in fixing these housing grants.

I’m a little confused about why this was published in the Poly before the email was sent out, mostly because it’s the first time that we know of the Poly breaking a story before we did!

I should also say that I’m very happy that the email was the first from an administrator which used bullet points and lists for the first time in recent memory.  This is a huge improvement, and it makes the email much clearer for students.  Keep that up, RPI!

As for the housing grants themselves, it looks like RPI is doing some effective damage control on a volatile issue.  This was upsetting a lot of students for a long time, and it seems like students will be glad to have these concessions. The Poly editorial had one line of opinion:

The Poly extends its thanks to the administration for working diligently to make a fair decision, and we hope that this policy has helped alleviate the confusion that has occurred over the past few weeks.

I agree with this comment, but I would like to also applaud the GM for “working diligently” on this issue.  This is something that might not have been addressed if it hadn’t been for the GM bringing it up in his meetings.

Here’s the full text:

Read more…

Share Uncategorized Dr. Knowles, GM, housing, Paul Marthers

Apparently, Monopoly houses = RPI residence halls?

You may have heard of a few changes to housing at RPI coming our way. You also might be one of the more than 1200 members in the Facebook group “Students Against RPI Housing Reform” Well, your elected student leaders hear you. The following is a response from GM Michael Zwack:

Hi Everyone,
I’ve been following the comments for most of the break and was wondering how both myself and the Student Senate could capture what everyone is trying to say to bring to Student Life.
I’m hosting a informal discussion about the housing process at 8pm on Thursday in the Student Government Suite (3rd floor of the Student Union), it would be great if anyone with comments to share would stop by!
Thanks,
The GM

There is a Facebook event here. If you’d like to talk with the people that represent you, this event might be worth your while!

Share Uncategorized CLASS, GM, housing, sophomore housing

We have left the original post intact, and added clarification at the bottom of the article. Please read both parts.

We couldn't resist...

$1,598,247

(approximately)

Or, the full tuition of 41.94874 students.

That’s how much Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, our beloved President, received in compensation for the fiscal year running 2007-2008. That’s the highest in the nation among university presidents.   This made a big news splash today because of a report published by The Chronicle of Higher Education. The story was picked up by The New York Times, Bloomberg, the Huffington Post, All Over Albany, and many more media outlets, because it far exceeds the median average salary of college presidents, which is currently $358,746.

The Chairman of the RPI (well, technically Rensselaer) Board of Trustees also released a statement today on behalf of the board, defending their decision to set her salary at such a high rate, claiming that “Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson’s leadership embodies prescient vision, meticulous strategic planning, and persistent implementation.”  We’re not sure about that, but we do know one thing: Sam Heffner has a thesaurus with some pretty good adjectives.

Read more…

Share Uncategorized Dr. Jackson, economy, GM, media, salary

We’ve made a few small changes in the past couple of weeks that you might like to know about. We took away the Event Calendar, in part because we weren’t updating it enough, and it was sitting mostly empty. We just added the latest tweet from the Grand Marshal’s twitter account below the Troy weather in the sidebar, as well as a Popular Tags section towards the bottom.

These are some small changes that we hope will bring more useful features to you, our loyal readers.

Stay tuned, as there are some more sitewide changes that we are planning on implementing in the coming weeks. If only we didn’t have so much work that we should be doing…

Share Uncategorized GM, RPInsider