Student Association Senate unanimously voted Sunday to pass a resolution to urge NIU to end its consideration of a second-year residency requirement.

Second-year residency

Bill Nicklas, vice president of Operations and Community Relations, said former president John Peters brought the second-year residency requirement as a proposition to the Board of Trustees in May 2012.

The Board of Trustees accepted Peters’ proposal, but asked to receive more information on student opinion on the matter, Nicklas said.

Eric Weldy, vice president of Student Affairs and Enrollment Management, polled students in January and February and found freshmen and sophomores appreciated programming in the residence halls and proximity to campus, but would consider a second-year requirement to be a disincentive, Nicklas said.

“The administration and the board, together, are looking for ways to create magnets for people to come and also to stay in our residence halls,” Nicklas said. “In other words, I believe the ‘requirement’ portion may be gone and you may see something like ‘sophomore residency options.’”

Nicklas said 3,900 residence hall beds are occupied and around 2,200 available beds are not being occupied, which brought about the consideration to demolish Douglas Hall.

Other business

A resolution to appoint David White, junior political science major, to senator at large was approved.

White transferred from the University of Mississippi last semester and joined Alpha Phi Omega, a service fraternity, at NIU. He said he was involved in AmeriCorps at the University of Mississippi.

“Some of my ideas as a senator would be this big deal with student retention,” White said. “A big focus should be academics and your academic environment.”

A bill to recognize Technology Engineering Design was postponed to next week’s meeting.

A resolution to approve supplemental funding for the National Association of Black Journalists was postponed to next week’s meeting.

A resolution to approve supplemental funding for Forensics, in the amount of $3,746, was marked read. Forensics is a speech and debate organization that is involved in competitive and non-competitive speech activities.

Speaker, cabinet reports

SA Senate Speaker Dillon Domke said former NIU quarterback Jordan Lynch and head football coach Rod Carey will be the guests in SA Senate’s next meeting Sunday to “honor Jordan Lynch on his successes at Northern and all the other great publicity and national attention that he brought us in his time here.”

Domke announced open positions in SA, in the Senate and executive branches.

Executive applications for directors of the executive cabinet are available until April 11.

Domke will take applications for the executive assistant to the speaker position that will become vacant in the fall. Applications are due by Friday, but that may change to April 11 to match the deadline for the executive applications.

Applications are available on SA’s website, www.niu.edu/sa.

Domke said SA Senate received 420 responses to its online survey on the Late Night Ride Service; the survey closed Friday.

Mike Theodore, SA chief of staff, encouraged senators to attend a Wednesday University Council meeting where a vote will be taken on the proposed student grievance policy.

“We are hoping for the sake of attendance, sake of support of this, that it passes at this meeting,” Theodore said.