Several long-term Student Association initiatives to improve issues related to textbook affordability, American Sign Language and the new first-year forum will be implemented at Syracuse University after the 2018-19 academic year.

Ryan Golden, chair of the Academic Affairs Committee and a columnist for The Daily Orange, said the initiatives are not going as quickly as planned because several SU administrators have not responded to his emails. Initiatives to lower textbook costs and make American Sign Language an official language at SU have both been delayed.

The administration’s limited response doesn’t come as a surprise, Golden added. During the 2017-18 academic year, while working on initiatives concerning sexual assault, he said SU “was not too responsive” to his emails.

He said he is hoping that he will have appointments with administrators by the end of the semester about the implementation of ASL as an official language. SA President Ghufran Salih said a petition is currently circulating around the student body to gauge interest in having ASL fulfill a language requirement. Her goal was to make ASL an official language by the beginning of next school year, a timeline she said was “very, very ambitious.”

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Reforms to SEM 100, the new first-year forum, are also being discussed in the University Senate. The reforms will go through a less formal process at the Senate level, Golden said. Administrators are looking at feedback that will inform how they change the first-year forum curriculum. Students and peer facilitators for SEM 100 have said it failed to address issues of diversity and inclusion.

“For SEM 100, we’ve really increased the number of students that are involved in this discussion,” SA Vice President Kyle Rosenblum said.

Golden, who worked as a peer facilitator for the course, said he had criticisms of SEM 100 but he is glad that SU is taking the necessary time to create a permanent replacement for the first-year forum.

Another initiative that SA has helped facilitate is lowering textbook prices at the university. Increased textbook affordability is still an ongoing process, Golden said.

Rosenblum said other universities have already implemented textbook affordability programs that SA can use as a guide for creating a similar program at SU. The current focus is to help facilitate the transition with SU administrators and the university bookstore, he said.

“That’s a long-running issue that’s going to take a lot of research and a lot of change to the university,”  Golden said.

Published on November 25, 2018 at 8:13 pm

Contact Gabe: gkstern@syr.edu | @gabestern326