By Kassondra Granata
Due to the university being closed on Wednesday, the Student Government Association had to cancel their weekly meeting while administrators scrambled to make decisions about classes and events on campus.
Despite the meeting being missed, there were no crucial issues to be addressed or unfinished business to attend to, according to SGA President Eric Bergenn.
The due date for the financial request forms for clubs has been pushed back a week to Friday November 11. The corresponding hearing dates will be delayed until the 14th.
“It’s been an interesting week,” said Bergenn. “There were a lot of very tough decisions that had to be made.”
He disagreed with the university’s decisions this week in regards to cancellations and facilities updates.
“There were a couple things that were handled well halfway through the process, I appreciate the improved communications from the administration but I think that overall some of the decisions that were made were of poor judgment and wrong,” Bergenn said.
The method of notifying students regarding to classes on a 12 hour basis instead of a 24 hour basis was claimed to be “misguided” by Bergenn and in his opinion would have been more beneficial to have a 24 hour at a time notice.
Bergenn also disagreed with the decision to cancel all events held on campus and to only hold classes.
“The idea to make the decision to cancel all events, because they have no way to get a hold of all the people running the events to see if they could still make it, should have been the same decision for the students and faculty to get here for classes,” said Bergenn.
Bergenn hopes that the university will keep the graduate and undergraduate students in mind, on and off campus.
“There are over 10,000 that don’t live on campus,” said Bergenn. “It’s great that campus got their power back, but it doesn’t affect the ability of people to get the information and to get here especially with only six hours notice that they may or may not have gotten.”
A main concern that Bergenn has is the safety of the commuting students and their commute back and forth to campus.
“It’s not a good situation, the state is still in crisis right now and we have students here from all across the state.”
He took the time to reiterate his appreciation towards President Miller and his Q&A with the students on Wednesday, but does not like how it was quickly planned and its location.
He was surprised by the amount of students that attended the meeting and the amount of commuters he saw, especially since Memorial is mainly known to on-campus residents.
Bergenn hopes that the university will be thinking of all possible options that can be taken in times of crisis, and wants the administration to form a more operational crisis system.
“What the university needs to do is assemble a team of people to scrutinize all sorts of emergency planning,” said Bergenn.
Bergenn plans on releasing a statement to the administration on his reaction to this past week and what he thinks can be changed at CCSU in similar future situations.
