The Student Government Association will elect officers to the Texas Student Association out of candidates from 16 state universities Saturday at UH’-Clear Lake.
SGA Vice President Prince Wilson announced the trip at Wednesday’s SGA meeting.
‘This meeting in Clear Lake is going to be pretty much electing new leaders and setting up an agenda for this coming year,’ Wilson said.
Wilson spoke to the SGA Senate about the continuing efforts to increase UH students commuting through use of Metro.
‘If we get more student involvement in riding Metro, we can reduce pollution,’ Wilson said. ‘We can also avoid some of the parking problems.’
Wilson, SGA President Kenneth Fomunung, assistant vice president for University Services Emily Messa, and members of the Transportation and Parking Advisory Committee met with Metro officials April 17 to try to resolve some of the difficulties students have met while using public transportation.
‘Some people who live close to campus, like near the Texas Medical Center, said it took them an hour and a half to get to campus,’ Messa said.
During the meeting at Metro headquarters, deputy director Danicel Whitaker gave committee members an electronic copy of Metro’s system map.
Committee members created a map with only the bus routes most pertinent to UH commuters in hopes to quell students’ confusion.’
‘We need to communicate what the existing routes are to our community,’ Messa said. ‘We’re the one(s) with accessibility problems and we’re going to continue to grow.’
The new map is available online at http://www.uh.edu/parking, and hard copies will soon be available at the UH Welcome Center, Messa said.’
Students or organizations interested in getting a hard copy should contact Messa at [email protected] with the number of copies needed.
Messa said the Transportation and Parking Advisory committee also intends to explore the possibility of merging Metro’s Q Card and the University’s Cougar 1Card to make commuting on Metro’s buses more convenient for students.
Geoffrey Herbert, director of operations for UH Dining Services and Aramark, spoke to the Senate Wednesday to encourage continued student involvement as plans for the Moody Towers dining facility renovation move forward.
‘There’s obviously going to need to be a lot more dialogue,’ Herbert said. ‘We’ll need to be sensitive to the changing needs of the students.’
The new dining facility is scheduled to be completed by fall 2010 and serve an additional 1,000 students; currently 2,800 students eat at Moody Towers each day.
Sen. John Price, Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management, said he hopes collaboration between his college and Aramark will improve the quality of the food served at UH.’
‘In the past, there really hasn’t been any involvement between HRM and Aramark,’ Price said.
Price said he has tried to foster more cooperation by setting up internships between the hotel and restaurant management students and Aramark. Hotel and restaurant management junior Carolina Frias has one such internship.
‘(Frias) will be assisting the chef with creating a new menu that all the students will be eating next semester,’ Price said. ‘Hopefully she’ll be able to provide a meal that people expect from a dining service, not what they’ve currently been getting.’
