Parking, fall break part of ASB Cabinet

Riley McDermid
DM MAnaging editor

The Associated Student Body Cabinet touched yesterday afternoon on several ongoing projects, including a proposal from a University Relations delegate, parking diagrams from the engineering department and the elated passing of a long-standing Joseph administration proposal for fall break Tuesday evening in the ASB Senate.

"We knew it could happen," said Task Force Director Stephen Hammack. "Now all we have to do is get the student body excited about this break they'll be getting."

The cabinet has also actively begun preparing for a Jan. 29 visit by the Center for Academic Integrity.

The CAI visit will be from Patrick Drinan who is a former president of CAI and is currently dean at the University of California-San Diego. The CAI is the nation's foremost authority on the creation and implementation of academic honor codes. They have been working with the ASB to design a comprehensive, eventually mandatory honor code for the University of Mississippi's curriculum.

"They (the Center) are the nation's best 'think-tank' on this subject. I am thrilled that he (Drinan) is going to be here, I'm sure it'll be a real help to us," said ASB President John Joseph.

The concept of a campus-wide honor code was first proposed nearly three years ago and has remained solidly on the agenda of the last three ASB presidents. Though an existing honor code has been in place in the School of Pharmacy since 1974 and has functioned effectively there for 25 years, a campus-wide code would affect all enrolled students and has just recently moved into the final phases of debate. The upcoming CAI visit will be the ASB's first collective opportunity to meet with Drinan and trouble-shoot potential problems with the honor code proposal.

University Relations delegate Ellie Ross brought a tentative outline of Ole Miss' "Commitment to Excellence Campaign Event Week," which will run from March 27-31. The week will include several days of campus entertainment, seminars, celebrity visits and campus clean-up. It will encompass most of the campus organizations and is designed to function as a fundraiser for the university. No performers or events have been scheduled yet for the week.

A "Geological Studies" class in the engineering department conducted a project last year on how to solve Ole Miss' parking problem. Diagrams from this study were on display at the cabinet meeting and were presented briefly by Chief of Staff Jay Hollis. Hollis explained that although the class had not taken into account the cost of the changes they proposed to solve the parking problem, they had reached a solution.

Further investigation into this study is currently being conducted by the university's Physical Plant and the ASB.

"If there's any way to 'solve' the parking problem, these maps and charts are going to pave the way for it." said Joseph.

The cabinet will also begin its active push for faculty recommendations regarding textbooks this week. This is the formal beginning to a program recently suggested by Joseph. Joseph drafted a letter to all faculty members last week asking for their participation in the program and signaled an ongoing ASB commitment to minimum student spending each semester on textbooks in one of his recent DM columns.

Other business included the ASB completion of project headed by Attorney General Andrew Laws to post the entire Associated Student Body Code on the Web. The code will have a link directly from the ASB Web site and includes elections requirements, ASB rules and codes and information on how to get involved.

Director of Student Services Whitney Wilt recently received confirmation from university administration that parking, housing and graduation applications will be posted online. These postings will be final within the next year, when the installation of a new computer network is completed.