Former SGA president and vice president Garden City senior Brittany Mouzourakis and Muskegon senior Dave Breed swore Cavataio and English in at a 6 p.m. ceremony in Bovee University Center’s Gold Room.

Before swearing in English, Cavataio and other elected SGA positions, both Mouzourakis and Breed gave short farewell speeches.

“All in all, it’s been a great year for SGA,” Mouzourakis said during her farewell speech. “ I hope to see it grow, and I know Vince and Bryant will take good care of the organization.”

Mouzourakis ended her speech with an exclamation of “Peace, love and Lady Gaga! I was born this way!”

Breed told a short story about he and Mouzourakis meeting during their freshman year and deciding at an early stage to work together on campus.

“She was a roommate of one of the girls in my Safari group, and I ended up hanging out in her dorm room, talking about how we both wanted to be involved on campus,” Breed said. “I remember back during that time, we said we’d end up running (for SGA office) together.”

English said since being elected last Thursday, he has been hard at work getting oriented to the responsibilities of his new position, while balancing a heavy class workload as exams loom.

“It has been crazy, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything,” English said.

Port Huron junior Dan Wiley, who has served as treasurer since being appointed by Breed and Mouzourakis in February, was sworn in after being reelected to the same position.

Wiley said he hopes to cut down on unnecessary spending, including the phone in the SGA’s office, which the university charges the group $500 a year for.

“One of the kind of weird things I noticed is we spend $500 on a telephone service,” Wiley said. “I’d like to see some of those costs shift, and do away with some of the old ways of doing things.”

Six of the eight elected senators, Saline junior Evan O’Reilly, Saint Johns junior Sabrina Hebeler, Flat Rock sophomore Brittany Santure, Alma sophomore Anna Dvorak, Sparta freshman Spencer McKellar and Grant junior Mara Kieren, were also sworn in.

Moments after the inauguration, Cavataio and English made their way to Dow Science Complex 171 for their first SGA general assembly meeting in their new positions. Cavataio said general assembly elections will be held at next week’s meeting in the same location, 7 p.m. Monday, to fill open Senate and executive board positions.

At present 15 of the Senate’s 23 seats are open, less than the majority quorum the body needs to operate.

“We would have nominations for those senators, and they would give a two-minute speech, and then we would vote to elect or not elect them,” said Cavataio, adding nominees need not be current members of SGA.

Breed and Mouzourakis, after graduating in May, will both go on to law school. Mouzourakis will attend Pennsylvania State University, and Breed will go to Indiana University. Mouzourakis expressed interest in running for Congress in the future.

Roscoe tendered his resignation to Provost Gary Shapiro on Monday morning after much thought and deliberation between his wife and him. He said he did not make the decision lightly, but he is satisfied with it.

He said, contrary to rumors he heard, he was never asked to resign by the administration.

“I gave a lot of thought and reflection on my personal life and my professional activities here,” Roscoe said. “(I) thought a lot about where the university is going, this is a transitional time.”

Shapiro said Roscoe’s commitment to students allowed him to push for his myriad initiatives at CMU.

“He has been the student-faculty liaison and a major factor in a lot of student services on campus,” Shapiro said. “I’m going to miss working with him.”

Roscoe said he is most proud of four changes made in his time as dean: The Volunteer Center, the Leadership Institute, Sexual Aggression Services and the Centralis Scholarship.

He said he was involved with former Associate Dean of Students Mike Owens in creating the Centralis Scholarship Program when he was the director of the Honors Program in 1989.

The scholarship program has had a significant impact on the university, Roscoe said, because of the high-quality students it has brought to CMU.

“We’ve succeeded in bringing more high-quality students, more highly academically prepared students to CMU,” Roscoe said. “I’m very, very pleased that I was able to be a part of that.”

Helping students, community

He helped develop the Volunteer Center which has been one of the biggest contributers to volunteer work on and off CMU’s campus.

He said without it, much of the work in Isabella County would not be done.

“It has made a tremendous difference at CMU and has really enhanced our students’ involvement beyond the campus, and has positively served Mount Pleasant and Isabella County,” Roscoe said. “I have no doubt Mount Pleasant is a better place to live because of the involvement of our students.”

Roscoe said he would not have been able to accomplish the things he did without the help of others on campus. He worked closely with Director of Admissions Betty Wagner in creating the Leadership Institute, he said.

Student Government Association President Brittany Mouzourakis, a Garden City senior, said the Leadership Institute was crucial in helping her develop as a leader both on and off campus. She also said it was essential in the development of her networking skills.

“It has helped shape me into the leader I am today,” Mouzourakis said. “It really helped me develop my leadership style.”

Roscoe said development of Sexual Assault Services and associated programs such as Sexual Aggression Peer Advocates created a much more supportive environment on campus. He said the programs give students who have been affected by sexual aggression an avenue to get the support they need.

“It started out focused solely on dealing with traditional sexual aggression, but it has become much more broad and includes now all aspects of interpersonal mistreatment,” Roscoe said.

In an emailed statement, Michael Rao, who served as CMU president for nine years until 2009, said Roscoe’s intensity, intelligence and personal commitment are “unmatchable.”

“(CMU) has been extraordinarily fortunate to have Bruce’s leadership over these years,” wrote Rao, who is now president of Virginia Commonwealth University. “Students will benefit for many generations from Bruce’s career.”

As a dean, Roscoe said he hopes he is remembered as at least a competent, good guy.

“Hopefully I made a difference,” he said.

The next step

Roscoe intends to return to the classroom to teach human environmental studies courses as early as January 2012.

He said he has a lot of work to do over the summer to prepare for teaching again, but it will be worth it.

“It is kind of nice how cyclical everything is,” Roscoe said. “I’m very happy with my decision.”

Both presidential candidates, Grand Blanc junior Robert Brooks and Shelby Township senior Vincent Cavataio, and respective vice presidential candidates, Brighton sophomore Colleen McNeely and Jackson junior Bryant English, have proposed changing SGA into a unicameral body.

Currently the SGA is a bicameral system with a Senate and a House. The Senate comprises 23 members representing the various colleges on campus. The House consists of representatives from all registered student organizations receiving funding from the Student Budget Allocations Committee.

Present SGA President Brittany Mouzourakis said favor for a bicameral or unicameral system, both at Central Michigan University and statewide, has been recurring and is currently trending toward single-body assemblies.

The Garden City senior said CMU is just one of a shrinking number of bicameral student governments in Michigan.

“We’d just be following pace,” she said.

Mouzourakis said she and her vice president, Muskegon senior Dave Breed, had discussed making the change to a unicameral assembly this year, but it never came to fruition.

A major reason for the change, cited by Breed, Mouzourakis and both presidential tickets, is widespread apathy and lack of participation in the House. RSOs are required to participate to receive SBAC funding, which Mouzourakis said results in many students being at SGA meetings just because they have to be.

“When I speak to the House, sometimes I see people who genuinely don’t want to be there, and I think that’s a problem,” she said.

Wyoming senior Katie Birdsall, the SGA representative for the Student Enrichment Council, is opposed to the change, which she said would result in a loss of representation for RSOs on campus.

“I don’t really like that because the representation we get here is really important to us,” Birdsall said. “Even though I do other things while I’m here, I do take a lot of information back to my RSO and we use it. I think it’s a little naive to say (representatives) don’t participate.”

Breed said one compromise that was discussed was having “all-RSO meetings” once a month, to discuss what the SGA assembly has been doing, take questions and discussions and hear from speakers within the university.

“Administrators still want to talk to students … and SGA has traditionally been that place,” Breed said. “I hope if (the new president and vice president) do move to a unicameral system, they do put something like that in place, at least once a month.”

The Brooks/McNeely campaign is proposing an immediate change to the SGA at the beginning of next semester, creating a 35-member assembly with two representatives from each college and three graduate-student representatives. The Cavataio/English campaign wants to take the fall semester to create a transition team and determine the best way to become unicameral and how the assembly should be composed, and then make the change as soon as the spring semester.

Mouzourakis said to create the unicameral assembly, the House will first have to vote to dissolve itself. Then the vote will be taken to a student body referendum, where at least half the number of students who voted in this week’s SGA election must vote to dissolve the House.

Assistant Dean of Students Tony Voisin said SGA will continue to operate either way, and that getting enough students to vote for the referendum will be up to the SGA members.

“Presented properly … depending on how they put a spin on it, it could potentially be easy,” Voisin said.

SGA is more important than many realize. While it does not have the power to make drastic policy changes at CMU with a swipe of its pen, it does have influence with those who do. The SGA president acts as a conduit to the CMU administration and it is crucial the student body elect a leader willing to go to bat for students and their interests with the administration.

In the past two years under former SGA President Jason Nichol and current President Brittany Mouzourakis, SGA has had growing influence in enacting change at CMU. The progress included the Print Q allocation fund, which is a reserve for students who require more money for the paid-printing system than what is allotted at the beginning of the semester. It also spearheaded a pro bono legal clinic for students to utilize when in need of legal advice.

It also approved a resolution supporting gender-neutral housing and is pushing for off-campus apartment complexes to have more recycling services available to students.

SGA is only as effectual as its leaders, and if the student body does not elect someone willing to do what it takes, it could spell trouble for the organization and campus as a whole.

Additionally, both the SGA president and vice president receive 12 credit hours paid for by the university, which means students are ultimately footing the bill. Students should know their money is helping pay for their education and should expect the favor to be returned with good leadership.

SGA presidential candidates, Shelby Township senior Vincent Cavataio and Grand Blanc junior Robert Brooks, and vice presidential candidates, Jackson junior Bryant English and Brighton sophomore Colleen McNeely, need to step up to the plate and be ready to go to task when required.

Having a strong student voice that consistently works with the administration and Academic Senate is crucial to ensure student opinion is heard.

Students should be prepared to vote for whom they feel will best represent them with a firm, cohesive voice.

If state lawmakers approve the proposal as is, CMU will receive $61,431,100 in state appropriations for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 — a 23.3-percent cut in funding from the current fiscal year when CMU received $80,132,000.

Snyder set aside $83 million of additional funding for universities that do not raise tuition above 7.1 percent as an incentive.

“The cut is even for everyone at 15 percent,” said Kurt Weiss, spokesman for the state budget office. “Where the variation comes into play is if universities do not hold their tuition costs down.”

CMU could qualify for an additional $6,677,800 from the tuition incentive grant.

In an interview March 17 with the CM Life Editorial Board, University President George Ross said there is no possibility that tuition will be raised by 7.1 percent or more.

“There will be an increase,” he said. “It will be modest.”

Weiss said that cutoff of 7.1 percent was selected because it was the average five-year tuition increase at all public universities. If a university cannot keep tuition below that figure, Weiss said its cut becomes what the average tuition hike was at that school. He said CMU’s average tuition hike was 8.3 percent.

When calculating CMU’s tuition hikes, Ross hypothesized the state budget office did not account for the CMU Promise, which froze tuition for incoming students from 2005 to the summer of 2008. He said this could have resulted in an artificially higher average tuition increase for students with expiring eligibility.

“I want (the budget office) to understand we graduated thousands of students with no (tuition) increases,” he said of the CMU Promise.

Weiss said Snyder understands the cuts are painful, but they will help balance the budget so education can be a priority in the future.

State Rep. Kevin Cotter, R-Mount Pleasant, who serves on the appropriations committee and higher education sub-committee, said he likes the tuition incentive grant.

“It prevents the schools from passing along the full cut to the students,” he said.

David Burdette, vice president of Finance and Administrative Services, said $5.2 million in expense reductions was identified when a number of employee groups took zero percent wage increases in 2010.

“Those funds are ready for budget reductions,” he said during the March 17 meeting.

Students will have the opportunity to discuss the proposal at a University Budget Forum from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday in the Charles V. Park Library auditorium. Burdette will explain the impact the state budget will have on CMU’s budget, tuition and room and board.

Garden City senior Brittany Mouzourakis, president of the Student Government Association, said Kathy Wilbur, vice president of Development and External Relations, will cover the politics behind the budget cuts and the “state of higher education in general.”

Project 989 ep. 16 from CMLifeVideo on Vimeo.

Student Government Association President Brittany Mouzourakis announced the opening of the proposed clinic at Monday’s meeting.

Three licensed attorneys, all CMU instructors, have agreed to participate in the clinic which will offer its services to students on a by-appointment basis.

Hope May, associate professor of philosophy and religion, will be one of the attorneys volunteering their time for the clinic. May is a full-time professor who still practices as an attorney, but she limits herself to taking on one case at a time to focus on her work at the university, she said.

Finance and law assistant professors Matt Coffey and Gerald White also agreed to volunteer their time at the clinic. Mouzourakis said she has talked to the three for some time, and they formally agreed to participate during a meeting Feb. 15.

May, the director of CMU’s Center for Professional and Personal Ethics, is also building the legal clinic’s website, which is up but unfinished at http://legalclinic.cmich.edu.

“I’m doing the website as part of the Ethics Center … so we’re contributing that and some other resources down the road,” May said.

When finished, the website will include an application students can file to set up an appointment with one of the clinic’s attorneys, as well as documents and legal resources for students to use. Already up on the site is information about small claims courts, tenant-landlord agreements and a copy of Mount Pleasant’s nuisance party law.

The clinic will be primarily run out of Mouzourakis’ office in the Student Organization Center in the basement of the Bovee University Center.

“This has been Brittany’s project from the beginning,” said Dave Breed, SGA vice president and Muskegon senior.

Mouzourakis said the completed application will include an option for students to specify whether they would rather see a male or female attorney to take matters such as criminal sexual conduct into consideration.

At last week’s meeting, it was decided that the attorneys could, at their prerogative, choose to represent students who came to the clinic for advice, Mouzourakis said. She said the students will often only know one lawyer, and that is the one advising them.

“One other thing we discussed (was) whether the attorneys could take on students as a client, and we decided that was fine, but that would be done separately from the clinic, as an outside contract,” Mouzourakis said.

One of the attorneys will be available every week for two hours a week, broken up into four half-hour appointments. The schedule for the clinic will change week-to-week to accommodate the attorneys.

May said she benefitted from advice she received at Michigan State University’s pro bono legal clinic while a student there, and wants to similarly “enable students with empowering knowledge.”

“Typically, when somebody makes an appointment to talk to an attorney, they are usually in a state of emotional distress and in need of guidance,” May said. “I know that was true in my case. Ultimately the goal for me, always, is empowering students.”

Coffey has taught at CMU for 15 years, and practices primarily as a defense attorney in civil business cases, he said.

“My first reaction (when asked to participate in the clinic) was ‘I can’t believe we don’t have one already,’” Coffey said. “In a university this big … I’m surprised we don’t have this already.”

White is recently retired, but still occasionally takes cases, Mouzourakis said.

William Shirley, a finance and law assistant professor, has also agreed to participate with the clinic, but on a more limited basis. Shirley is a practicing attorney and public defender in Mount Pleasant.

White and Shirley could not be reached for comment in time for publication.

Mouzourakis said another faculty member has expressed interest in volunteering with the clinic, but has not yet formally agreed to do so.

Three licensed attorneys, all Central Michigan University instructors, have agreed to participate in the clinic, which will offer free legal advice to students on a by-appointment basis.

Hope May, faculty in the department of philosophy and religion, Matt Coffey, temporary faculty in the department of finance and law and Gerald White, finance and law instructor, have agreed to volunteer their time to the clinic. Mouzourakis said she had been talking to the three for some time, and they formally agreed to participate in a meeting last week.

As previously reported, the clinic will offer legal advice, but not legal representation.

“Hope May is helping to build a website for us,” Mouzourakis said. The site will be found at legalclinic.cmich.edu.

Further reports on the clinic’s development will be forthcoming at CM-Life.com and in Central Michigan Life.

“A Resolution Supporting Equal Recycling Services for Off-Campus Residents” passed unanimously through both the SGA house and senate, and will be sent to the Mount Pleasant city commission, area landlords and university administrators.

During the discussion of the resolution at the house meeting, Muskegon senior and SGA vice president Dave Breed said no off-campus apartment complexes in the city of Mount Pleasant or Union Township offer recycling service.

“It’s nice for us, because now we have a unified voice saying this is what the student body wants,” Breed said. “It has been 20 years that they have been trying on and off to do something with recycling and it never seems to take. Going green and sustainability … has been such a big movement that we’re hoping this will be the year.”

Previous to passing this resolution, SGA collected 3,000 signatures on a petition in support of recycling services at apartment complexes.

SGA president Brittany Mouzourakis said the poll of on-campus students conducted for the final report of the presidential transition team, of which she is a member, revealed environmental sustainability is one of the top five student priorities.

“Now is the time,” Mouzourakis said. “There is really a green movement going through campus and this was evident in the transition team survey. I guarantee that five years ago, that would not have been one of the top five student priorities.”

After a campaign by the SGA Student Services Committee, the Isabella County Material Recovery Facility has agreed to a 2 percent grant to measure the cost-effectiveness of recycling service at one area apartment complex. Which apartment complex would take part in the study has not yet been determined.

SGA presidential and vice presidential requirements changed

Also at Monday’s meetings, both houses of the SGA passed legislation to raise the GPA requirements for its president and vice president, although they did not agree on a number.

Both positions, which come with a 12-credit-hour scholarship, require a minimum 2.5 GPA. The legislation called for the minimum GPA to be raised to 3.0, and passed as such through the house. The senate passed the bill, but amended the minimum GPA to 2.75.

To rectify the difference between the two versions of the legislation, “a special committee forms … and they have to work out a compromise between the two, or else it just dies,” Mouzourakis said.

Both Breed and Mouzourakis were in favor of raising the minimum to 3.0, since the minimum GPA to receive scholarships range from 2.75 to 3.25.

“It holds SGA presidents and vice presidents just as accountable as anybody else with a full-tuition scholarship on campus,” Mouzourakis said. “2.5 is lower than any other scholarship on campus.”

It’s the first time since the summer that the university president has received a progress report of any kind.

The team submitted an initial report on July 1. It was scheduled to submit a second report on Oct. 1, but was later rescheduled to for Nov. 15 before ultimately being combined with the final.

Kathy Wilbur, transition team co-chairwoman and vice president of Development and External Relations, said she and Phil Squattrito, co-chairman and chemistry professor, will review the reports before giving them to Ross.

She said the reports will be available at “some point” next month. She couldn’t get specific, however, because February is a “crazy” month with the board of trustees meeting and the release of Gov. Rick Snyder’s proposed state budget.

Garden City senior Brittany Mouzourakis, co-chairwoman of the student priorities team, said her team’s report will focus on five key priorities students highlighted in a survey sent out in November.

The Student Government Association president said a big part of her job on the team involved creating the survey, acquiring student responses, and analyzing survey results for hers and other committees. The transition team also frequently spoke to Ross and hosted open forums throughout the year, Mouzourakis said.

“Our team created really feasible solutions to the issues students had,” she said, “and I feel confident it will provide CMU administration with strategies for them to pursue when they begin to start the future strategic planning process.”

The transition team, Wilbur said, was created to give Ross recommendations from various constituency groups around the university on what he should consider doing as president.

“He wanted a broader view of what folks recommended on how the campus should look, the kinds of events he should take the time to participate in,” she said. “It’s a very broad view of what a president should consider doing.”

The team, comprised of several members of the campus community, focused in the following areas: Academic priorities, student priorities, administrative and staff priorities, community and business priorities, and public affairs and communication.