W James
The Florida Southern College student body received direct answers to their questions at the Town Hall on Feb. 7.
One concern students felt needed to be adressed was the hours of Shuttle No. 3. The hours originally ended at 4:30 p.m., but some felt the hours needed to be extended past that.
“We have a person that works eight and a half hours, and then, that person goes home, and then, there’s a break,” Director of Campus Safety and Security Bill Carew said. “We definitely try to work on that. It’s just a man power issue, but we will work through it.”
Five minutes after the question was asked, Carew announced the shuttle will run until 6 p.m. on weekdays.
At the mention of the science program expanding, one student asked if there were any plans to build a new science building in the near future.
“Were always looking at that, and the Campus Master Planning committee have talked about the needs for some of the students,” Dr. Anne Kerr said. “We will be working on upgrading labs in the Berry building.”
Kerr said there are discussions about constructing a new science building. They are currently discussing logistics concerning the split between Biology and Chemistry, as well as the location of the prospective building.
Kerr specifically used the phrase “heavy discussion” to describe how the talks for the science building are going. Cigarette smoking was brought up and some asked whether it were a possibility for Florida Southern to become a smoke free campus.
“There really aren’t really any designated smoking areas at this juncture,” Dean of Student Development Bill Langston said. “SGA several years ago brought forth the possibility of designated smoking areas, and at the time there wasn’t support form the student body at large.”
About five years ago, SGA sent out a survey to faculty members and students to see if there was any interest in having designated smoking areas. However, there wasn’t enough statistical significance to deem it a campus-wide problem.
Langston told the audience that if there is in fact enough people who want designated smoking areas that the administration would heavily consider it.
“Well it’s a possibility however when the survey was conducted there was not support for that. If that something SGA wants to repeat we’ll of course take a look at that,” Kerr said.
Other topics that were covered at Town hall included food options, parking and academic life.
For more information about those topics and others the entire event was livestreamed, and the video recording is on SGA’s Facebook page.
