Associated Students' Senate to Consider Campus Blood Drives

Hello my fellow students.

Last week the Associated Students' Senate hosted a discussion regarding a resolution Dr. Luttmann proposed to the Academic Senate which "strongly urges the campus Administration to rescind immediately the authorization of Blood Banks to operate on this campus, due to their discriminatory policy against gay men". Present in the discussion were Dr. Rick Luttmann, Dr. Georgia Schwartz (Director of SSU's Student Health Center), Cathy Bryan (President and CEO of the Blood Bank of the Redwoods), and Dianna Nation (Chair of JUMP, the student organization that hosts the blood drives).

Dr. Luttmann posits that the era when it made sense to disallow men who have had sex with men to donate blood due an increased risk of transmitting HIV into the blood supply has passed. He claims that in the last 30 years, screening has become more accurate and that it is unnecessary to bar gay men from donating blood.

Dr. Georgia Schwartz helped to clarify the FDA's policy explaining some of the logic behind multiple measures to reduce the risk of transmitting disease into the blood supply. Screening is a very effective measure to ensure the safety of the supply, but no test is 100% reliable. Nor is any blood collection site, nor any blood storage facility, nor any lab technician. There is always room for error. The policy to deffer patients at higher risk of infection of certain diseases, then, provides protection at the front end of the blood supply. By having safety measures on both ends, the supply is safer.

This is, however, an extremely complicated issue. Statistics show that gay men are still at a much higher risk for infection, but that other groups such as certain racial minorities as well as heterosexual women have new infection rates higher than that of gay men. Should they, too, be prohibited from donating blood?

The discussion at the senate table was not intended to answer or bring resolution to the many questions these issues raise. We will, however, consider a resolution sponsored by one of the student senators at our meeting March 5th. This resolution opposes the interruption of blood donation services at Sonoma State.

Berkeley has a very interesting program to address the issue. This February, Berkeley held its first ever "Sponsor Blood Drive" where those who could not donate for one of the 50 reasons you can be turned away from donating blood were encouraged to go out and find someone to donate blood in their name. The idea is to raise awareness about the policy.

So I ask you, my fellow students, what do you think? Is the FDA policy barring gay men from donating blood unnecessarily restrictive? Is it discriminatory? Is it homophobic? Should Sonoma State continue to host blood drives despite the policy? Leave your comments here or send me an email. We welcome all input as we evaluate the issue of blood drives and the FDA policy.

Jonathan T. White
Associated Students
Speaker of the Senate
speakera@sonoma.edu

WASC Team Seeking Student Input

The WASC team which will visit SSU in March to perform the first of two assessments to maintain accreditation is seeking input from students. If you are not able to attend the meeting (information in the blog below), you can contact them through their email account.

The emails are sent directly to the chair of the visiting team and are not seen by any representative of SSU. This is your chance to tell the team what the student experience is like at Sonoma State.

Susan Kashack sent out an email informing all members of the campus community about this opportunity. To students, the visiting team says,

"Students who wish to send a message to the team are encouraged to comment on issues of academic rigor and consistency, availability of student support services, and other matters related to the quality of the educational experience. The team is particularly interested in hearing from students enrolled at off-campus sites because these students are not usually able to attend open meetings at the campus."

Send your comments to the WASC visiting team at SSUwasc@yahoo.com.

Jonathan T. White
whitejon@sonoma.edu

WASC Campus Open Forum Feb. 28

ARSC has announced that it will be holding an open forum to discuss the WASC visit we will receive in March. All are invited to attend and student input is always encouraged.

Location: SCHULZ 3001
When: Thursday, February 28
noon - 1:00pm

Jonathan T. White
whitejon@sonoma.edu

WASC Open Forum 12/4/07

Hello All!

For those who are already familiar with WASC accreditation, please skip to paragraph 2. For those who are unfamiliar, begin reading here. WASC stands for Western Association of Schools and Colleges. It is the organization which accredits Sonoma State University. SSU has been WASC accredited since 1969. In order to maintain WASC accreditation, schools are normally reviewed every 5 or 10 years. Sonoma State is currently undergoing such a review.

SSU has created an Accreditation Review Steering Committee (ARSC) composed of faculty and staff with President Whitney Diver as the student representative. In order to fully involve the campus community ARSC has decided to hold WASC Open Forums to keep us informed of the process as well as to give us the opportunity to offer feedback on the materials prepared by Sonoma State for the WASC team to review. Following are my notes on the first WASC open meeting from December 4, 2007.

To see Sonoma State's Portfolio including the reflective essays, please go to:

http://www.sonoma.edu/aa/portfolio/

The visiting team has been announced and it will be headed by Paul Gaston of Kent State University. He is considered an expert in GE reform. The visiting team will be here March 12-14, 2008 and they have a carte blanche to review anything on campus. They may speak to anyone while they are here, including you.

A couple of people in the audience asked whether or not Sonoma State had satisfied concerns raised at previous WASC visits including GE reform and diversity. The current reflective essays report on what we will do to address the concerns, but do not report what has been done to address these concerns. Provost Ochoa responded by saying that this is an on-going process and that we need only demonstrate progress in these areas.

The review is broken into two parts, two different ways of looking at the same things: Capacity and Preparatory Review and Educational Effectiveness. The first review answers the question, "What is the evidence that we have the capacity to teach effectively? Do we have enough resources?" and the second review answers the question, "What is the evidence that we are educationally effective?"

President Arminana told us that he has been on the WASC commission for 8 years now and that the two-step review is a new process. He said that no school has been fully reviewed under this new format, and that there are lots of questions coming in from institutions who have completed the capacity review, but not yet done the educational effectiveness review.

Sonoma State has completed its Capacity and Preparatory review portfolio for the team visit this March. SSU is scheduled for the Educational Effective Review visit in the Fall of 2009.

The ARSC team has announced that they will be holding three more WASC open forums at the beginning of the spring semester. I will keep you updated when those dates and times become available.

Jonathan T. White
whitejon@sonoma.edu

Jonathan T. White's Blog on Blogging

My name is Jonathan T. White and before I venture for the first time into putting my thoughts in print for the whole world to see, I should make a few disclaimers.

I am not a journalist. I have no training in journalism and have only a moderate appreciation for facts.

I may switch from factual reporting to uninhibited editorializing at any moment, with or without a transitional clause.

I have an obsessive enthusiasm for punctuation, and realizing its ability to nuance language, invite any feedback my readers may have regarding its use thereof. Special note: I never use the Oxford comma.

My blogs are not intended to be exhaustive accounts, complete or continuous coverage or very detailed. I therefore encourage my readers to send their questions to:

whitejon@sonoma.edu

I will be very glad to clear up any errors, discrepancies or missing information.

I wish you all happing reading.

Very truly yours,

Jonathan T. White
Associated Students
Senator, School of Business and Economics

Title of committee

Report: committees are fun