At the January Student Senate meeting last night, a proposed bill was passed to eliminate the Senior Year Experience (SYE) requirement for some students.
Its passing allows students who have already earned a bachelor's degree and are seeking another at Otterbein to forgo an SYE.
The SYE requirements exist to help students decide how they plan to use their degrees.
Senate agreed that students compelled to return for a second degree have already had enough reflection and life experience in deciding their career paths.
Promptly following was a presentation of the Strategic Plan Sustainability Sub-Committee by Dr. Heidi R. Ballard and Dr. Kevin Svitana.
"Sustainability is living so that you don't consume anything that cannot be salvaged. As humans, we can't do that. Our goal is to use more renewable resources here on campus," said Dr. Svitana.
Student research completed by the committee revealed that 87 percent of faculty and 80 percent of students desire an environmentally friendly campus.
Sixty-nine percent of those students are willing to change in order to make Otterbein a more sustainable place.
Otterbein's efforts to go green include the formation of student organization Plan-it Earth, the Otterbein Lake Project, and the planned introduction of an Earth Resources course in the freshman Integrative Studies program next year.
They plan on promoting the installation of Energy Star appliances (appliances that use less energy compared to competing brands), glazed windows, longer life materials and motion-censored fluorescent lighting in all of the new building projects around campus.
