Students voice concerns at town hall meeting

O¬¬n Tuesday Nov. 20, Interim Chancellor Margaret Ambrose attended the second town hall meeting of the semester in the Cotillion Ballroom of the Smith Brown Memorial Union.
“A university is a business even when we mess up it is still a business and because of that we will not be able to cater to everyone,” said Ambrose.
Before the students were able to voice concerns about the university to the chancellor, she voiced some the concerns she had about the student body.
“I attended a lot events on campus that are thrown by student organizations, like the Smith Brown commemoration that was held on Monday and I am disappointed by the low amount of student attendance,” said Ambrose.
Ambrose also voiced her concerns also about students not taking advantage of the academic assistance available to students.
“There are tutorial labs available to students who need help in math and English, but students who need help are not attending to get the help they need.”
After Ambrose’s speech, the students were given the floor.
The main concerns students had dealt mainly with problems involving professors attending classes on time and the absence policy.
“The key to academic progress lies in the departmental chair,” said Ambrose
With that in mind Ambrose mentioned that she is working on the idea of creating rotating department chairs in order to keep department chairs better focused on aiding students. Along with dealing with department chairs, students told Ambrose problems they were having with teachers not attending classes. Ambrose assured everyone she would try to make sure teachers attend the classes they teach on a regular basis, but reminded the students to do the same as well.
“If I made sure every teacher came to class on time; it wouldn’t make a difference if the students didn’t come,” added Ambrose.
Not only did students have questions that pertained to academia, but ones that that affected the university such as purchasing a new Lacumba and the habitat the jaguar would live in.
“We have to build a new habitat for Lacumba because we would not be able to keep a jaguar in the current one, but a new habitat for Lacumba would cost approximately 1.5 million dollars and we do not have that amount of money to spend on a new habitat or Lacumba currently,” said Ambrose.
Students also questioned the new apartments that are scheduled to open during the spring semester and head of housing Marylin Hill was on hand to answer those questions.
“The apartments are being built by the Southern University Foundation and not by Southern University, Baton Rouge. So when we get information from the foundation we give it to the students. There are currently only 300 applications and there may not be
a need to open up all of the units next semester,” said Hill
Due to the upcoming holiday, attendance was not as high as the first meeting. However, students were still able to hear and state their concerns to chancellor and Ambrose.
“As a university we don’t want to fail, but we have to help ourselves, but I think that together we can do well,” said Ambrose.