Student Sentate Update 9/22
On September 22, 2025, the Student Senate opened its floor to 12 candidates to declare their intentions of running for 2027 and 2029 class officers and for general senators. Each candidate went in front of the senate general assembly to make a campaign speech followed by answering questions. Later on in the evening, Senate discussed Roger Williams’ ongoing parking outcry and proposed new opportunities to increase engagement on campus through the hawklink points system.
According to the Inter-Class Council’s Hawk Link page, ICC serves to represent the interests of individual classes to the university and Student Senate.
ach “class” has a number of positions that need to be filled such as; president, vice present, secretary, and treasurer. ICC’s role on campus differs from the role of Student Senate, who are the administration’s liaisons to the student body and advocates for the needs of students, the Inter-Class Council works on programing and fundraising for specific classes.
“I noticed that a lot of events aren’t publicized better,” said candidate for the 2027 class president Henry Radzinski. Radzinski and other candidates platformed on the issues that they had seen their individual classes struggle with. In various speeches candidates tackled growing a community within their classes, transparency, and overall marketing. Many candidates covered what they saw as poor marketing on behalf of the school and its various organizations. Voting took place Thursday.
After the declarations senators began their usual committee updates. Within his report, Parking Council Chair Ryan Trabulsi shared “Parking Council is like riding a bike but the bike is on fire and the parking lot is on fire.” This follows weeks of outcry from both commuters and residents appealing parking tickets due to the university’s choice to open lot H (next to the mount hope bridge) to on-campus resident’s cars. Additionally another element of confusion comes from the fact that there is a strip of parking spots in H lot that is designated specifically for faculty to park.
At the tail end of the conversation Academic Affairs Chair Sam Carter proposed a straw poll asking senators if they would be in favor of removing the distinction from commuting and residential parking pass. A straw poll is a non-binding vote that allows a senator to gauge the opinion of all the people in the room, not just senators. This effectively would make 3 categories of parking permits; one group being for students, one group for faculty, and the other would be for graduate students. The results of this poll were 6 (yes) votes for removing the distinction, 0 (no) votes in favor of the current plan, and 4 abstaining votes.
Additionally Adrianne Harris, in her advisor update, informed students of a new component to the engagement platform Hawk Link called Points. Points will reward students for attending various campus activities. Stay tuned to learn more as the capsized tribune will realize a more in depth exploration into the new system in the coming weeks.
The Student Senate continues working on a resolution regarding active shooter drills on campus that will be heard at the Senate meeting Monday, September 29th.
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