Students dominated the conversation Thursday afternoon as the UF Board of Trustees’ first day of meetings came to a close.
Several UF students spoke in favor of the committee on educational policy and strategy’s recommendation that the trustees authorize the addition of an African-American Studies degree. Then they sat together in the audience and grinned at each other when the committee passed the item.
The board will vote to finalize the decision today.
Student Body President Tj Villamil took the floor. In his Student Government update, Villamil said he’s proud of how far the 800-member body has come in the past year.
In the external relations committee meeting, University Police Chief Linda Stump addressed the recent incidents at the University of Central Florida, where a man died by a self-inflicted gunshot. He was found with a bag of explosives and plans to attack the campus.
Stump said the situation turned out like it did largely due to emergency responders’ quick thinking.
“It still comes down to humans make the decisions,” she said. “As much as you can support keeping the University of Florida Police Department as a progressive, responsive, manpower-intensive unit, the better off I think you’re going to be.”
UF spokeswoman Janine Sikes said that in an emergency, UF would integrate communicators across campus to get the correct information out as fast as possible.
“We have developed a mass emergency ... plan in the past few years, knowing that anything like what happened at UCF could happen here at any time,” she said.
Contact Julia Glum at jglum@alligator.org.
