Hello Spartans! I hope everyone is doing well. Spooky season is over and turkey season is upon us!

In the last few weeks, our SGA boards have been working tirelessly and have made big strides in giving some new and exciting gifts to our campus. But I will tell you about those in the next edition.

Before I continue, if you have not already, I would urge everyone to fill out the survey I sent out last Wednesday. This is a Castleton led survey. We are trying to get an overall understanding of how educated students are about the merger and how they’re feeling about it.

For this week, I wanted to take it back a few weeks. Right after the October break, we had the special honor of having Chancellor Sophie Zdatny and student representative on the Board of Trustees Ryan Cooney come and talk to our board.

The main intention was to open it up to us to ask questions, which we all no doubt had. I have pulled some of the questions and answers I felt were most important for all you viewers to see.

Also, please keep in mind that these came from our minutes and we had about 15 questions asked with extensive answers in only an hour, so our secretary wrote to gist of what they were saying.

Q. Will Castleton University remain VSC @ Castleton or will the name change be a totally different branding?

A. We are still working on answers. One of the possibilities is we may have branding that relates to location. We are aware that the acronym VSUC sounds bad. We will let the branding team know that “@ Castleton” is important to everyone here. We are still working on a mascot and there are not any concrete answers yet. But good news is that the NCAA does not care about mascots so campuses could potentially get to keep their mascots.

Q. Why was the name change chosen so early in the process if you don’t have a university system name yet?

A. We needed a name to get to the administrative team/financial aid so they could get opinions from prospective students and community members. We also are getting ready to launch a search committee for the new university’s president. The administration team needed a name to help recruit prospective presidents.

Q. Are there going to be job layoffs?

A. We do not anticipate a layoff. Actually, quite the opposite. We need people to fill the positions and move people around, unless a program closes, but we do not intend to do that or lay people off.

Q. For students that started their time here when the university was named Castleton but will be graduating when it’s called Vermont State University, which name will be on my diploma?

A. Students should be able to request on their diploma which name they would like to graduate if they started school when it was called Castleton.

Q. Without changing any of the individuality at each of the campuses that draws each student in, in a perfect world in 15 years, what does the VSC look like and what if this whole thing fails?

A. We would want to keep the individuality of each campus. At this time, we are not aware of any conversations dictating what programs would be centered around which particular campus, but we will be going back to the legislature in January to request more funding to ensure it will succeed.

Please keep in mind that in the SGA minutes each question and answer only covered the overall idea, so that is why some of the sentences may not be complete.

I hope this gives you all an understanding and answers some questions that you might have had. If you are curious to see what other questions and answers were asked, the minutes are in SGA and we’d all be happy to talk to you about it.