If you have benefitted from Center for Democracy and Civic Life programs or just believe in what we are doing, please consider making a donation in any amount this Thursday, February 27th, which is UMBC’s Giving Day. Please also consider asking friends and family to support the Center for Democracy and Civic Life.

 The Center for Democracy and Civic Life’s work and programs are possible in part because of generous donations from members of the UMBC community. Giving Day is when students, faculty, staff, alumni, parents, and friends of UMBC pull together to support the programs that are helping them to thrive. Tax-deductible donations are especially impactful on this day, thanks to community members who are matching donations. 

 Here’s where to make your gift: https://gritstarter.umbc.edu/p/civiclife/

 To learn more about the Center for Democracy and Civic Life’s work, read our 2018-2019 annual report. Our Gritstarter page also includes information about STRiVE, Alternative Spring Break, and other Center for Democracy and Civic Life programs.

 Thank you for your consideration!

President Frances Watson

Frances Watson, a junior computer science major, took on the position of Student Government Association president for the Spring 2020 semester after her predecessor, Vrinda Deshpande, resigned. Watson had previously served as executive vice president since the beginning of last fall semester, and had been a senator prior to that.

Though there has not been a midyear change in the presidency in recent years, Assistant Director of Leadership and Governance for Campus Life and SGA Advisor Candace Martinez-Doane explained that the transition was not difficult; because presidents and executive vice presidents run on a ticket together, they usually share similar goals and ideas for their time in SGA. “I would categorize the transition as pretty seamless,” she said.

For Watson, the transition involved learning what her duties were in her new position, both in terms of “what people need from the president” as well as what her day-to-day responsibilities would be. Additionally, because she was moved into the office of president, one of her first tasks was to find someone to fill the role of executive vice president.

Along with participating in SGA, Watson is also a Center for Women in Technology scholar, and her studies within the field of computer science are more related to her work as president than you might expect. She cites her scrum master certification, which verifies that she is qualified to lead a team in agile environments for software developers, as requiring leadership and management skills similar to the ones required by her position within SGA. 

“I think with that certification, I’ve been really able to spot the times in a meeting where I realize we need to take a pause,” she said. The certification, she added, has shown her the importance of “understanding the people in the room, understanding how to give them the room that they need to be productive and giving them the room they need to do that.”

Watson, who has not yet decided if she will be running as the incumbent in the upcoming SGA election, shared that her goal for this semester is to stifle the spread of misinformation on campus and to promote better communication of information to the student body. “There’s a disconnect between the narrative on campus and what is actually happening,” she said, citing discourse surrounding broken elevators on campus and how few people are aware of the fact that there is a plan in place to fix them.

The first step in addressing misinformation on campus, Watson said, is making sure she herself is well-informed: “Understanding everything that the school is doing on those issues is first and foremost. If I don’t have that information, I can’t distribute it.” She then plans to distribute information in concise, digestible formats, acknowledging that few students would be willing to read multi-page documents. 

Martinez-Doane is confident in Watson’s ability to lead the SGA in the coming semester. “Frances, having come into senate midyear, really was able to navigate a group that had already been formed and find her place and space in that group, and then become known as someone who people could rely on,” she said. “She operates within a major and a field [where] there’s not a lot of people who look like Frances; there’s not a lot of black women within comp-sci. So, she’s had to develop a certain set of skills to be heard and to be treated as an equal, because she is. … I think that makes her a woman to be reckoned with.”

Executive Vice President Patrick Reid

Patrick Reid, a political science and global studies double major, was appointed to the role of executive vice president of the Student Government Association after the shift in the Executive Board left an opening during winter break. Reid was elected as an SGA senator in 2018 after being voted in by the student body.

At the time, Reid ran his senatorial campaign on an “active and engaged” student body, with a focus on police accountability. “That’s one of the most important things I was working on. It’s something that I would like to continue working on as Executive Vice President,” Reid said. “One of the things I’ve talked about a lot this week during my confirmation hearings was [that] we need to make sure we’re executing what’s already on the table. I think that there have been a lot of events planned and I want to make sure we can pull them off as successfully as possible.”

Reid was abroad in Dublin in the fall of 2019, where he attended University College Dublin, which meant that he could not participate in SGA last semester. “In both confirmation hearings, I spoke on [how] I recognize that I’m entering a space where I have to relearn things as well as stay on top of the game. What’s nice is that I’ve spent a lot of time over the past week meeting with people in the organization. I’ve had, probably like five meetings just this week, just to catch up.”

He stated that he feels that he is at a “significant disadvantage” due to the time he missed out on involvement in campus politics, but he feels that he is capable of taking on the challenges.

Because he was appointed to the Executive Vice President position, due to a vacancy during the middle of an academic year, Reid was not voted in by students this semester.

Instead, he was appointed by Frances Watson, who took over as the SGA President, and confirmed through hearings, but he says he has plans to work with the Senate to communicate with his constituency. “I have been elected before [as an SGA Senator], but one of the things that they’re working on in the Senate is revamping how they connect with the student body through office hours and through other means of outreach,” Reid said. “I really want to work with the Senate on [these issues]. They push us to make sure we’re representing the students, and we always encourage them.”

Reid believes the two most important issues affecting students on campus are improving accessibility and encouraging students to care about the census, which is coming up on April 1, 2020.

Correction: The caption for the header photo in the print edition of the article erroneously stated that the photo of Watson and Reid was taken in front of the quad, rather than beside the statue of True Grit.

The Chesapeake Shakespeare Company is accepting resumes for the position of Production Manager. This is a full-time 12 month position. We are looking for a mid-career professional with at least five years experience in the professional theater in production management, stage management or technical direction. Questions or letters of interest/resumes may be sent to jobs@chesapeakeshakespeare.com

Have you ever posted something on the Math/Psychology Building’s ground floor bulletin boards?

Have you ever wondered if you were going against campus policy in doing so?

Phone calls to the math department, psychology department and facilities management determined that none of these departments regulated the bulletin board in the Math/Psychology Building. 

Though students may assume that those bulletin boards are monitored by facilities management or an academic department, they are in fact unregulated, a phenomenon outlined in item four of the current iteration of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s posting policy.

While the university posting policy may seem jargonistic and dull, one man has made it his mission — or, more accurately, his job description — to begin the arduous process of sifting through university policies and updating them as changes on campus occur. 

It is “really a continuous process,” said Joel DeWyer, the associate director for Campus Life Operations and the policy reviewer. UMBC’s posting policy is the last document in a wide list of policies that Student Affairs handles and revises. “With some of the new activism or the rebirth of activism that we’re seeing on a lot of college campuses, we’re looking at policies that we just reviewed and approved a year ago,” DeWyer continued. 

DeWyer works closely with Event and Conference Services and Campus Life Facilities and Operations, which manage The Commons, the third floor of the University Center and the Fine Arts Recital Hall, and provide support to the Pride Center and the Interfaith Center. These departments oversee the three cylindrical kiosks located in The Commons, which are managed daily by the Campus Information Center. The posting boards along Academic Row are maintained by Facilities Management, and Off Campus Student Services manages their own bulletin board at the south entrance to The Commons.

DeWyer does not have an exact number of how many posting boards are scattered across campus, as some are departmentally controlled. There are also no exact numbers for how many unregulated posting boards, like the one in the Math/Psychology Building, exist on campus.  

But print advertising seems to be moving digital, DeWyer said. Student organizations are sharing events on social media or using iNet, a digital signage service offered by Commonvision.

Additionally, “orgs are telling us all the time that word of mouth is by far their most effective form of advertising for the thing that they’re doing,” DeWyer said.

As advertising changes, DeWyer is hoping the new policy fills the gaps to continue to remain relevant and informative. To do so, DeWyer, along with a policy review committee, will look at university best practices for postings, as well as address any posting questions that have been asked at UMBC in recent years, before sending any changes to the Office of the General Counsel. From there, the updated policy can be approved.

Despite the potential updates, DeWyer said that his office is not looking to censor anyone’s posts, although he clarified that priority is given to campus-based events if space is limited.

“If we see something that’s controversial content, that’s not our concern,” DeWyer said. “As long as it has the basic pieces that it should have and it’s not promoting something illegal or threatening someone or some group, then it’s going to get posted, as space is available.”

These “basic pieces,” as DeWyer calls them, require any proposed advertising or posting to include the name and phone number or email of the sponsoring individual or organization as well as the date and time of the meeting or activity.  

Like Campus Life, Residential Life has its own posting policy for any advertisements in the residential halls. This policy is “more specific than general campus policy,” according to Residential Life Director John Fox, which, to him, helps maintain the home-like nature of the residential halls.

“We want to support flyers that students groups send, but we have to have an eye for anything that is not in line with institutional excellence values,” Fox said. “We’re not here to censor images or language, but we also know language can negatively harm students.”

Unlike Campus Life, Residential Life relies on print flyers to get information out to students, according to Ashley Copenhaver, the president of the Resident Student Association. Residential Life recently stopped sending email blasts to the residential student population about upcoming events, something that has prompted the RSA to take a second look at their social media presence and double down on print flyers.

“Sending emails was our main method of getting people to come to our events,” Copenhaver said. “Our numbers and our attendance have dropped a lot. Posting is the only way we can really advertise now.”

The biggest issue Copenhaver faces when it comes to print advertising is the timeliness of posting by residential assistants. 

“It’s a responsibility of the RA [to post flyers on their floor], but sometimes life happens,” Copenhaver said. “It’s an invisible piece for us, whether those flyers are getting hung up or not.”

But how do UMBC’s posting policies stack up nationally?

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a non-profit educational foundation based in Philadelphia that aims to defend individual rights at American colleges and universities, rates those institutions based on their constitutional viability according to a traffic light system. 

Currently, according to an email communication with Laura Beltz, a senior program officer for policy reform at FIRE, UMBC “would earn a ‘yellow light’ rating” for its posting policies due to a “lack of clarity about posting … [that is] pretty common across universities.” Of the four universities from Maryland that have been assessed, only one — the University of Maryland, College Park — holds a green light rating. 

“Of the 471 colleges we include in the Spotlight database,” Beltz wrote, “195 include at least one yellow light rated [posting policy].” 

But maybe none of this matters at all.

“My prediction is, in a few years, those physical postings will disappear because no one will want to use them anymore, but we’ll see,” DeWyer said. “Time will tell.”

Correction: The online and print version of this article incorrectly stated that Campus Life manages the posting boards along Academic Row. Facilities Management maintains those boards.