Big Ten arrives to share concepts

By HOPE CALDWELL
and AMY OAKES
Collegian Staff Writers

For the first time ever, Penn State sponsored the tri-annual Association of Big Ten Students Conference. Student delegates from nine Big Ten schools gathered at the Penn State Scanticon Conference Center Hotel this weekend to share ideas and discuss university problems.

The three-day conference consisted of speeches, group planning sessions and interactive information sharing. The student leaders came eager to learn new ideas and to share their solutions with other schools. They left with four resolutions and a new constitution. The constitution now includes a rotational basis for conference sites and defines active member qualifications.

Andrew Schor, ABTS director from the University of Michigan, said it was good to have the Big Ten schools come together and ratify resolutions.

"It gives us a much bigger voice," he said, adding that the resolutions passed have the endorsement of all the participating Big Ten schools.

The four resolutions passed dealt with issues such as student safety, academic policy for athletes and student prosecution rights. The delegates will take the resolutions back to their student governments and adjust them to their individual situations before presenting the ideas to the schools' administrations.

One of the resolutions was to support Michigan's efforts to put a student on the Board of Regents, the equivalent of Penn State's Board of Trustees.

"Every Big Ten school has a student representative on trustees but us," Schor said.

Don Lamuth is the student trustee at Penn State.

Melissa Richards, Penn State's ABTS director, said the resolution asked the delegates to write letters to the Board of Regents stating the need to add a student representative.

"We feel students should have voting rights on these committees to be more effective," Richards said.

Before the voting session, the delegates participated in a two-hour information-sharing session in which they traded student government strategies for effectively solving student-related problems. Some of the schools had already sent out a list of student concerns in hopes that other delegates could bring helpful information, while other schools requested more information be sent to them.

Fiona Rose, a student government representative from the University of Michigan, said after Purdue University's request for information concerning Michigan's successful book exchange program, she will go back and gather information to send Purdue.

"This has been a really good opportunity to help the Big Ten," she said.

The next conference will be held this summer at either the University of Iowa or University of Illinois.