If UPUA President Gavin Keirans is able to stick to his 60-day plan, students can expect to be the beneficiaries of an online book exchange by November, and a tenant-landlord dispute center and legal clinic by next semester.
The document, released at Wednesday's University Park Undergraduate Association (UPUA) meeting, gives Keirans' and Vice President Valarie Russell's day-by-day plans to further the development of those three initiatives and details preliminary procedures to create a sportsmanship council and a recreation/intramural sports commission.
"It's absolutely important that the student government has well-defined goals and are accountable to them for 60 days, and really the first semester," Keirans said. "We definitely set the bar high for ourselves."
It wouldn't be any kind of accomplishment to set easily attainable goals that anyone could reach, Keirans added.
The book exchange, which is the result of a partnership between UPUA and Information Technology Services (ITS), is likely to be the first of the planned programs to make its debut. UPUA's representatives already have access to the trial version for testing and it will be presented to the public for the first time next week at the next UPUA assembly meeting.
Ralph Crivello, chairman of the assembly, spearheaded the project last year as chairman of the academic affairs committee and has continued to be an integral part of its development.
He called the trial form of the book exchange "rather impressive for a first edition."
Current Academic Affairs Committee Chairman Matt Smith described the book exchange as being essentially a message board.
"One student can throw the book up there and another can enter the ISBN to find it," he said.
Smith added the site would not process cash transactions for books online, mostly because of liability issues arising from ITS hosting the site on the Penn State domain.
Instead, the actual transactions will be arranged between the student buying and the student selling the book and will take place offline. Users will be able to provide either their phone number or e-mail address as contact information in the book exchange.
Keirans and Russell's 60-day plan calls for legislation on the makeup and funding of the tenant-landlord center to be voted on Oct. 29 and a draft of the structure of the legal clinic to be released the next day.
The document also plans for UPUA and the Graduate Student Association (GSA) to meet with the University Park Allocation Committee today to discuss increasing funds from the student activity fee to both student government groups.
To that end, UPUA and GSA will be attempting to make "student-centered changes to the [activity fee] handbook and governing of the fee at University Park," according to the plan.
The activity fee handbook governs how the activity fee can be used.
If those changes happen, UPUA and GSA will begin to receive "5 percent of the Undergraduate and Graduate student activity fee respectively beginning next year," according to the plan.
