Correction appended.
Editor’s note: The article has been updated to include the results of the voting to pass the resolution regarding the Graduate Student Senate constitution.
Graduate Student Senate passed a bill at Tuesday’s meeting to enforce the Green Dot Bystander Intervention Program, a sexual assault prevention program.
The Green Dot Program is a campus-wide program with the goal of educating students and faculty about sexual assault through strategies, such as awareness, education and skills-practice.
The program also looks to support an intolerance toward any type of assault, especially sexual assault. The program has been used in several other universities, including Kent State University and University of Dayton.
Statistically, the Green Dot Program has had a success rate of 40-50 percent nationwide. This means that every university that has enforced the Green Dot Program has successfully cut the number of sexual assault cases in half.
The bill will be presented to mandate all university faculty to become certified in the Green Dot Program.
The approved bill will be sent to the OU President Duane Nellis, Executive Vice President and Provost Chaden Djalali, Vice President for Student Affairs Jason Pina and Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion Gigi Secuban.
Graduate Student Senate also voted on the amending to the GSS Constitution. The resolution did not pass.
The new amendments to the constitution would change the times of elections to be separate from Student Senate. This is to reduce confusion between the two representative bodies.
The amendments would also change wording to match the new titles of executive officers. The amended Constitution would only include GSS president, vice president and treasurer.
There was also a presentation by Senior Vice President of United Healthcare Student Resources Dale Burns and Student Health Insurance Administrator Anna Casteel.
The presentation gave details on the costs university health insurance. For the upcoming academic year, the university health care will increase from about $2,150 per student to about $2,900 per student.
“Medical costs are constantly increasing and new state regulations, which is the driving force for student cost increase,” Burns said. “We had to raise the cost in order to not remove any amount of coverage for the students.”
There were two new members appointed to GSS. Dareen Tudor was appointed as senator for Center for International Studies, and Benedictus Amudzi was also appointed as senator for Patton College.
Correction: A previous version of this report misstated the increase in cost to university health care. The story has been updated to reflect the most accurate information.
