Graduate Student Senate approved an amendment Tuesday to make COVID-19 an excused absence for students.
Students will be able to communicate with professors if they are told to quarantine or have symptoms without the fear of being counted as unexcused in class.
The Academic Process and Policy Group commented on new policies put in place to help students with mostly remote learning, including the same pass/fail options from Spring Semester and a new definition of an excused absence.
That new definition would include if a student is asked by a health care professional to quarantine or if they test positive for the coronavirus. This new policy now explicitly states that COVID is a legitimate excuse to not attend class.
“This then sort of comes with the expectation that a student will be truthful about all of this and stay in contact with the instructor,” Kaelyn Ferris, GSS president, said.
GSS also approved an amendment to allocate some funds from the discretionary funds to get access and a GSS account on Canva.
Canva is an online software that makes high-quality, professional infographics that can be used to post on social media or posters, Brett Fredericksen, department representative for environment and plant biology, said.
The COVID committee has been using the free version of Canva a lot for their campaign but thinks it would be beneficial for GSS to get an account because of the extra features that are included. The account would be for any GSS member, not just for committee use.
“I decided to bring a resolution … to be able to make some of these really high-quality posts, which I think are going to be needed this year as everything is going to be remote,” Fredericksen said. “Having a better system in place to disseminate information and better software capabilities to do, so I think is in the benefit of graduate students and GSS as a whole.”
The COVID committee is currently using one of the member’s personal accounts to make their graphics for their campaign. It would be helpful for GSS to have their own account so that they would not have to use an individual’s private account, and that way, everyone would have access to this program, Frederickson said.
The Canva account amendment did not come with an official budget request because the rules and procedures limits budget requests to events and physical items. Since the account is neither of those things, it must be paid for by the discretionary funds, Amid Vahedi, GSS treasurer, said.
GSS already has a free account of Canva. If there is the paid version of the software, GSS can link certain projects within the GSS account. The login information could be shared with anyone in GSS, but it would not be shared outside to anyone who was not a part, Frederickson said.
