Council approves to allocate funds for renovations and new IT Software
The Concordia Student Union (CSU) held a special council meeting on April 5 to discuss a motion regarding renovations to the seventh floor of the Hall building and a motion to approve the financing of an IT transition from the software company VMWare IT to Google Apps.
Aloyse Muller, the CSU’s external affairs and mobilization coordinator, motioned to have the CSU council approve an expense of $25,300 for the Student Space, Accessible Education and Legal Contingency fund (SSAELC) to renovate the CSU’s legal information clinic and the seventh-floor lounge.
Muller presented a powerpoint, which included graphics to give an idea of what the final product would be following the renovations. According to him, the entrance of the legal information clinic will have a window added on the side, which will make the clinic more welcoming. As for the CSU student lounge, the space will be rewired to become a multimedia-friendly space that students can use for student-run events and presentations.
CSU finance coordinator Thomas David-Bashore motioned to have the council approve the allocation of $32,848.70 to transition their IT structure from VMWare to Google Apps. In his motion, it was also specified that the hardware costs, which are estimated at $27,557.09, would be spent over a period of five years.
According to David-Bashore, the current CSU IT infrastructure, which hosts their website and CSU e-mails, isn’t user-friendly and comes with technological glitches which compromise the CSU’s capacity to operate efficiently. According to David-Bashore, it is a good investment, since the hardware would last many years.
