Your49erPresident.com

The new CIO, Jay Dominick, keeps his own blog. The most recent entry is about their trip to UNCG to find out more about Gmail. As you know Gmail is something that SGA has been working on and something I’m personally very excited about.

You can view Jay Dominick’s blog post at this link:

http://cio.uncc.edu/?p=25

As I feared cost was the only consideration at the trustees’ discussion of football today. I don’t want to trivialize the importance of how much football will cost students and the university, but there’s much more to this equation that was never talked about. If we’re going to give this thing its due diligence at some point we have to discuss the intangibles of football. The things that count but can’t be counted; quality of student life, connections to alumni, connections to the community, national recognition, etc.

I’m also worried that the chancellor’s research overshadowed the research of the Football Feasibility Committee. There’s already been a committee to look at the whole picture of football and make a recommendation. But that report seems to be nearly forgotten about.

We still have a lot of work to do, and it’s very hard to read whether a majority of the trustees are for or against football so these next few meetings are going to make or break things.

Decisions can’t be made based purely on emotion, but I don’t think they can be made based purely on whether it makes perfect fiscal sense, and I’m an economics major. I just hope that at some point the intangibles of football are given their fair weight.

There seem to be a lot of rumors flying around about football at Charlotte so I wanted to clear up a few of them. As far as the time line goes, the chancellor will present his research to the trustees on Thursday (6/04/08), and we will be discussing it in further detail. The chancellor will then make a recommendation to the Board of Trustees who will make a decision probably at the September board meeting. If the BOT recommends football we will have to ask the state to waive the tuition and fee cap so that we would be able to gradually instate the approximately $300 additional fee for football. Recently a received a letter regarding football from the new president of ASG, T. Greg Doucette. He fairly well summarized the arguments against football, which shows that he’s been paying attention to the issue and done his homework. You can read his letter and my response here:

Letter from T. Greg Doucette

Response from Tim Ernst

Check back soon because I’ll be sure and write a post about how the Board of Trustees meeting goes tomorrow.

Vice President Jacob Pierce (left) and President Tim Ernst (right) in the SGA office after winning the election.

As the new Student Body President at UNC Charlotte I thought I would take a minute to introduce myself and give some background information;

I’m a senior Economics major from Fullerton, CA. This will be my third year in SGA. My first year I was a senator for the Belk College of Business, and last year I was the Student Body Vice President. I’ve also been involved in other areas around campus. I’ve been an Emerging Leader, an RA, an Alumni Ambassador, a Leadershape graduate, and an officer in the Young Entrepreneurs Association.

I just wanted to thank everyone who voted for me and those that helped with the campaign. This next year is going to be a very pivotal one, and I’m excited to have the opportunity to represent students in those decisions. This blog is an excellent form of communication but if you’d ever like to get a hold of me please don’t hesitate to e-mail me at sbpres@uncc.edu, call me at 704.687.4607, or feel free to drop by the office in Cone 369A. Go NINERS!

Dear UNC Charlotte Friends and Family,

I have had an amazing
year working with you while we built a stronger community on UNC
Charlotte’s campus and in the city of Charlotte. Now that my time as
Student Body President is over, I look back on the year as being
consistently rewarding and exhilarating. We have worked together as an
organization to compile our work this past year in the SGA 2008 Final
Report available online at http://sga.uncc.edu/08finalreport. I hope that you will find some time to review the many remarkable things that this group of students have accomplished.

After I complete the 2nd summer of my work at Pisgah Astronomical
Research Institute I will be back on campus in the fall to finish my
dual-degree program receiving a BS Electrical Engineering and BS
Physics while hopefully working as an intern in the Charlotte area (not
sure where yet) before graduating in December 2008. I aim to begin
graduate school soon after that either abroad or domestically.

Even though I am now retired from the Student Government
Association at UNC Charlotte, I will remain an active and integrated
member of the Charlotte community. I’m sure you will see me several
times throughout the coming year in that role.

I could not be more excited about the prospect of Tim Ernst leading
SGA to future goals and aspirations during 2008 and 2009. Knowing that
I am leaving the organization in good hands gives me a lot of
confidence in the future of Charlotte 49er student leadership.

As of today, the email address of sbpres@uncc.edu, the http://your49erpresident.com blog
and the Student Body President’s office belong entirely to Mr. Ernst as
he takes on all the responsibilities of being “the prez”.

For the future, please do not hesitate to contact me via my personal blog at http://jritch.net
and over the phone at 7043235977. I would welcome the opportunity to
work with you again on projects to improve the Charlotte community.

Thank you once again.

Sincerely,

Justin Ritchie

The work on UNC Charlotte’s new front entrance is moving fast. Current plans include an aggressive time line that will hopefully allow two-way traffic before graduation on May 10th. As you can see from the photo below, the roundabout is already complete and the traffic pattern for the new entrance is ready to go.

Charlotte 49er Students,

I am writing today to update you on football at UNC Charlotte as of April 13th, 2008. The Chancellor appointed a Football Feasibility Committee last February after you turned out in force, voting in the Spring 2007 SGA football poll to say that you wanted football and that you wanted to pay for it. The Football Feasibility committee reported back in February 2008 with a unanimous recommendation to kickoff in 2012.

Now the Chancellor is exploring the topic even deeper and will discuss some of his findings to the UNC Charlotte Board of Trustees in June and will likely present his yes or no decision at the September 18th Board of Trustees meeting. After seeing some of his initial work, he is delving into the topic and exploring how football has been implemented at other schools to ensure that a permanent decision on adding football will be a success. Any Charlotte football program may lose money on the balance sheet for a long time but I think Chancellor Dubois understands that we would lose that money to gain the community which a shared experience on a Saturday afternoon between 20,000 49er fans can be.

The Athletic Department has engaged leaders in the community and its own staff in generating plans on how to deal with a yes-to-football/no-to-football decision by the Chancellor and I have been impressed by their diligence on the issue.

A national football stadium consulting firm recently took a look at Memorial Stadium and determined that the upgrades would be expensive and ineffective for the future. Likely our best option is to upgrade the Belk Track facility as any long-term commitment to that facility would benefit the soccer programs and the track team. Even successful Division 1AA programs like App St. play football on a field with a track running around it.

Clearly these are exciting times for Niner Nation so stay posted for the latest developments.

According to the Chancellor’s timeline, we’ll know the final decision on Charlotte 49er football by the 3rd week of September, 2008.

Go Niners!

Cordially,

Justin Ritchie

Student Body President

Recently benches were placed in the Education/Woodward Hall/Health and Human Services Quad (from now on referred to as the Student Union Quad) and the area has finally taken shape as a quality spot on campus.

As you can see from the photo above, students use the benches. However, often overlooked is the contribution that these benches have on the student experience. UNC Charlotte is frequently classified as a “commuter school” even though more the 50% of our students live within one mile of the campus, as much as any other traditional university in the state. Part of the reason we have the commuter school stigma is that there aren’t any real areas on campus that students hang out in. Benches give students a place to stay between and before classes, encouraging more students to hang out in the area.

This not only plays into campus safety, because the more students in an area decreases the likelihood of criminal activity, but it also gives a sense of community because people have a place to exchange ideas.

Sadly, the way our campus is set up, even if we get rid of the stigmas of a commuter school by adding football, having more residents, gaining a rec center and moving into the student union, we’ll still have a commuter feel. Why?

The campus is set up just like a suburban/urban environment that is the bane of smart growth and development.

On the outer parts of the campus are the residence halls while the inner portions of the campus contain all of the classroom buildings. Thus, students living on campus perpetually must “commute” by walking which can take just as long as students that have to drive in and park.

Hopefully our master planners will consider this in future recommendations and will think about replacing the Denny building with a future residence hall. Think of the different atmosphere our campus would have if there were 300-400 students always near the academic buildings. We would have a much more welcoming atmosphere and people would hang out, starting the avalanche effect… leading towards more students hanging out.

It would be great!

@ 3pm in the Student Activity Center.

I’ll post up some photos after the event. I’m not a Democrat but it is nice that NC finally is getting attention in the election process.

What a miserable event. Clinton gave a good speech but the speakers
before he came out were just plain horrible. The event was planned
great on the universities end, however the campaign had no clue when
Clinton was coming and the guy with the t-shirts who started everything
off was so obnoxious I almost left.

Everyone thought they were at UNCCH. Susan Burgess, from our own city council, even thought so! How disappointing.

The representative from the Virgin Islands did alright bringing up the
49ers but then she said “let’s give a big warm UNC welcome” and “go
UNC”.

But then again, I can’t blame them… to anyone not associated with the
university we will always be UNC at Charlotte (which technically is our
name). Even worse is what Anderson Cooper said a few weeks ago: UNC in
Charlotte.

I’m just glad no one “wished us luck in the Final Four”.

Brian Carlton from the UTimes just put up some great commentary which echoes my sentiments.

The University of California system recently appointed its 16th chief administrator in Mark G. Yudof who was the former president of the University of Minnesota system and University of Texas systems.

One major thing that really struck me about some of the initial comments made by Dr. Yudof centered around the policies that his administration would pursue in the interest of California students. From an article about him on InsideHigherEd:

…he noted that one of the reasons why the UC job attracted him was because there is widespread agreement — characterized in proposals like one last month from the university’s current provost, which would cut the size and budget of the president’s office by 20 percent next year — that such changes are necessary. “Intellectually everyone’s bought into it,” he said, and “they want someone who will implement those changes and also look for other savings and economies.”

UC’s campus chancellors, who have bristled at times under what they characterize as a president’s office that impedes ingenuity and agility, are likely to have found Yudof’s message to them appealing. “I want you to think about three questions,” the incoming president said he told the chancellors he met during the search process. “What business is the office of the president in that it should not be in at all, that adds to your workload and adds no value? Think about the things that inevitably have to be dealt with at the system level or are more efficiently dealt with at the system level. How can we make those processes work better? And third, what businesses should the president’s office be in that it isn’t in now that would help the campuses reach the higher levels” they strive for?

This seems like an entirely different philosophy from the one that the University of North Carolina system holds.  The recent initiatives rolled out by UNC offices seem to be bogging down the administrations of each campus to the point where local goals seem out of reach.

The UNC PACE initiative led to subpar results such as, Blackboard sharing across campuses in order to conserve resources… which sounds like a great idea until you compensate for the cost of collaborating and coordinating multiple very different institutions. What ended up happening is Blackoard worked very poorly and now campuses are scrambling to find a way to invest in an alternative without losing out on a ton of money.

This all relates back to the inability of the UNC system to understand that while the 17 NC public institutions all receive money from the same source, they are very different. We can’t expect blanket policies to apply while at the same time enabling chancellors across the state.

Currently, UNC system schools are forced to adhere to a very complex and rapidly approaching response time frame for the UNC Tomorrow (UNC-T) initiative… which once again sounds like a great idea. But after a long and drawn out exploratory phase, the UNC-T commission found out some really vague recommendations for universities such as, “increase access to education” and “prepare students for a global economy”.

I value the time that many important people have invested in this effort but forcing campuses to develop huge and unwieldy programs that will ultimately lack funding (except in Chapel Hill and Raleigh) is little more than an exercise in appealing to public opinion. However I truly hope that I am proven wrong on this point.

At the end of each day, we have to evaluate whether the UNC system administration is helping  our our public universities or if by trying to build a strong “system” we’ll end up hurting the institutions that make up our state. Running a university system like a business might be appealing to potential investors, but as a participant in the process I haven’t seen any benefits that outweigh the costs in Charlotte. Moving to a “soviet” university model instead of a confederate model will have its initial appeal but little success. Institutions have a hard time meeting their own needs and are sadly often know for bureaucracy and an inability to communicate within themselves, I am unfortunately pessimistic about the ability for these schools to work amongst each other. (Kind of like the UNCCH Medical School moving into Charlotte without even communicating with UNC Charlotte until we contacted them.)

What NC really needs is a bond package for higher education and I’m hoping we’ll see one soon.

Now that Tim Ernst is taking over for me at the end of the month as the new UNC Charlotte student body president, I wanted to post all of our campaign videos in one place… because they are awesome. If anyone knows of campaign videos from other student body president campaigns, please post them in the comments section.

Tim is the new student body president at UNC Charlotte, and has been featured in two years worth of election videos including my campaign last year.

A video from the SGA Public Relations Committee

Ernst-Pierce for Campus Safety

Ritchie-Ernst for UNC Charlotte’s Future

The Making of Ritchie-Ernst for UNC Charlotte’s Future

Vote Justin Ritchie for Student Body President

Vote Ritchie-Ernst in the runoff!

Best of luck to my colleague at UNC Greensboro. I’m pulling for ya John.

From the UNCG Student Newspaper, the Carolinian:

SGA temporarily loses affiliation, nullifies elections Stephanie Patton Issue date: 3/25/08 Section: Campus News

Last week’s SGA Senate meeting was spent discussing issues SGA has recently encountered, including a temporary loss of the group’s affiliation and the nullification of the recent SGA elections.

The SGA recently lost its affiliation for nearly two weeks when President John Bryant failed to turn in affiliation-related paperwork. Bryant stated that he is not quite sure how the error occurred.

“I believe that I turned it in,” said Bryant regarding the necessary forms to apply for re-affiliation. “I don’t know why it wasn’t [turned in].”

Bryant did not inform members of the SGA or the organizations funded by the SGA of the predicament until the SGA meeting on March 18. The organizations lost funding for those two weeks, and the lack of money is how some came to realize they were no longer affiliated with the university.

“The reason that it was not brought up and talked about with the entire student body before,” explained Bryant, “was because I thought it could get handled quickly.”

Bryant sent an apology letter explaining the predicament and the SGA regained its affiliation, but is now on probation until Spring 2009. If the SGA has another violation during the probation, a council set up by Student Affairs will become the student government. This is the second time the SGA has lost affiliation, as far as Bryant can remember, he said.

The UNCG SGA was also placed on probation in February of 2007, after failing to inform the university 12 hours before holding an event on campus. That probation carried

Contested election

In addition to affiliation complications, the SGA was also dealing with the trouble of this year’s elections. Elections were held the first week of March, but the results have been nullified.

As stated in a letter drafted by Mekia Taylor, Elections and Publicity Committee chair, the elections will be re-done. The decision was made after members of the Elections and Publicity Committee felt the integrity of the elections was compromised. According to Taylor, two candidates were left off the ballot during a process of rearranging some candidates in order to give them a better chance of being elected. In addition, emails explaining the voting process were not sent out to all UNCG students due to technological difficulties, and some candidates allegedly failed to remove campaigning materials after campaigning had ended.

Read the rest of the story at the Carolinian

It is time for your Spring 2008 Elections!

Vote now for your SGA Senators, Student Body President, a new name for the UTimes and the logo for your new student union!

http://vote.uncc.edu

The campaigns are starting to put out their opening round of videos, as each campaign releases videos I’ll post them on here.

1st one I’ve seen is the one by Ernst-Pierce on campus safety:

2nd video up is a lyrical tribute to Moorehead-Wolfson:

Senate Public Relations committee tells you why you should vote:

Here’s why:

UNC Charlotte ranks 14th out of 16 schools in state $s allocated per student and has less than half of the sq. ft per student of our sister state schools. Imagine if we took the same number of students and faculty we have now and then doubled the amount of buildings on campus.

When we were out as an SGA watching Charlotte vs Temple in the A10 semi-finals, we couldn’t help but notice this motto on the shirt of a UNCCH fan: “Take Everything Give Up Nothing”

That explains a lot when we start looking at the institutional funding discrepancies UNC Charlotte faces.

SGA Senator Paul represents for the Charlotte 49ers!