Now that I've had a chance to relax a little over Thanksgiving Break, I thought I'd reflect on some of the stuff that has happened in student government over this past semester. This being my third year on the Student Senate, I've been involved with all sorts of forward-looking projects. But this year I'm happier than ever with what we've delivered thus far and where we're headed.

When we first opened up the new year, we already had a couple things done and in-process. Over the summer, August Fietkau and I prepped this website for the Senate, a new vision of what we had been working on for some months prior. We put up this blog (not sure how many people actually see it, but whatever), built a really robust project management system, and implemented some other tools for the Senate. The Senate's space on the web isn't frequented by too many students, which can be a little discouraging sometimes, but at least we've got a space to tell people about what our organization does. We also launched the Union Pulse, a newsletter focused on Union activities.

Another thing we started to do in the summer is preparation for GoCrossCampus, an online game created and run by fellow nerds at Yale and Columbia. We created an RPI version of a Risk-type game map, named all the territories, and launched a promotional campaign and website to get people started with the game. It launched in October and has, by all accounts, been pretty damn successful. Sure the game has its kinks, but we're happy to see a lot of RPI students keeping up with it every day.

We've launched a free web hosting service that gives tech-savvy students and organizations a lot more power under the hood for experimenting and hosting web sites--much more than what RPI provides. Our membership numbers have been phenomenal so far and we're excited to see what people build using the myRPI-space service.

The "myRPI" moniker points to a much bigger work-in-progress. You might have noticed this site on the web. It's a prototype of a student web portal that we're building--the single, central site for student life at RPI. We're not ready yet to lift the pot cover on what we've got cooking on the stove, but I have a feeling you'll like it. Just give us a little more time!

With Thanksgiving over, I've got one final thing for which I'll give thanks: the ability to work with great people on projects that really spur positive changes at the Institute. Student government doesn't always get it right. But I can tell you that this semester we've started to bring some great stuff to the table, and we've got a hell of a lot more coming.

Filed in The Senate

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