With visions of turkey and sugarplums fading into memory, It’s back to business after the holidays! January 19 was the first meeting of 2009 for AUSU council, and here are some of the highlights.

Several motions were approved, and among them was one affecting The Voice. In keeping with making the magazine autonomous, council has created a new restricted reserve fund to collect unused Voice budget funds at year end. This means greater stability in planning for future years, for everything from special projects to budget shortfalls.

Council also reviewed two current policies (4.04 Professional Development and 4.05 Technology Funding), and agreed that they meet the needs of AUSU. To find out more about these or any other policies, you can find the AUSU Policy Manual here.

In other news, President Karl Low noted that the latest audit is complete, and that auditors found AUSU’s protocols to be quite strong in all areas. The VP External’s report revealed a possible change to the way GPAs are calculated. Currently, decimal places are rounded down (e.g., a GPA of 4.569 is recorded as 4.56), and discussion is underway to look at rounding them up to more accurately reflect student achievement.

The report from Sarah Kertcher, VP Finance, gave an update on another ongoing discussion: the possibility of AU student emails. As discussion at the council meeting showed, there are compelling pros and cons on both sides of this issue, and Sarah will keep everyone up to date on developments.

And finally, if you’ve visited the AUSU home page lately, you’ll know that the 2009 Planners are ready to order! Always a hot item, this year’s planners have already started arriving in undergrad mailboxes. The rulers have been improved and several new pages have been added, and feedback on the latest version is positive.

Council’s next general meeting is scheduled for March 9 at 5:30 MST, and members are always welcome. See you there, From the Gallery.