Sean McMinn
smcminn@mustangdaily.net
Cal Poly’s semester drama isn’t over yet, but Associated Students, Inc. (ASI) hopes to get one step closer to the finale with this week’s vote.
ASI will gauge students’ attitudes toward semesters with a student vote which began Wednesday and will run through Thursday morning.
The vote came from legislation that seven of the 24 student representatives voted against. Those seven argued ASI already has enough information to give a pro-quarter recommendation to University President Jeffrey Armstrong, but the remaining members passed the decision to hold a vote after more than an hour of debate.
The vote, ASI president Katie Morrow said, will give ASI its first look at students’ opinion since the Semester Review Task Force released its pro-quarters report in December.
“If students mobilize and go out and vote, it sends an enormous message,” Morrow said. “If a large percentage gets out and votes, it shows campus we actually care about it and it’s something meaningful to us.”
Morrow, a social sciences senior, said students’ clear opposition to semesters in the past doesn’t subtract from the impact ASI’s could have on the semester conversation.
ASI plans to release the results tomorrow, according to ASI Board of Directors Chair Kaitlin Harr. From there, the board will draft a resolution that will go to Armstrong and will summarize the vote with a final recommendation, Harr said.
The resolution could also be directed toward California State University Chancellor Timothy White, who will make the final decision on whether Cal Poly converts.
Presidential spokesperson Chip Visci said Armstrong plans to meet with White next Wednesday to discuss several issues, including semesters.
ASI will draft — and likely pass — its recommendation at its 5 p.m. meeting that Wednesday.
“I think now it’s time, after we have all this great information and we’ve done the research, now it’s time to say the students have spoken,” said Harr, an agricultural science senior.
Meanwhile, Cal Poly faculty are also preparing to lend their voice to the conversation through the university’s Academic Senate. Similar to the ASI Board of Directors, the Academic Senate represents faculty across all colleges and serves as their official link to campus administrators.
Academic Senate Chair Steve Rein said his members plan to vote on a resolution next Tuesday to support the task force’s report, one day before ASI will vote on its recommendation.
Glen Thorncroft, a mechanical engineering professor at Cal Poly and local faculty union president, said he expects the Academic Senate will endorse the task force’s recommendation to stay on quarters because of preliminary discussions by its members.
Rein and Thorncroft both said the senators have shown little resistance to endorsing the task force report in these conversations.
“I got the sense that it was a done deal,” Thorncroft said. “The report told the whole story and that it was so resounding there wasn’t so much that needed to be talked about the task force report.”
Armstrong began the 2012-13 academic year by asking campus to test his hypothesis that Cal Poly would benefit from a switch to semesters.
Students, faculty and staff met the proposal with hostility at several open forums during Fall 2012, but few students attended a presidential forum in January to discuss the task force report.