Rob Bernardi, who became athletic director in January, addressed the Student Government Association Senate on his vision for the athletic department.”I just want to come and visit with you, [and] tell you about some of the things I’m trying to do in athletics,” Bernardi said.

“I’ve had the opportunity to visit 50 to 100 campuses,” he said.

Bernardi said he has visited about 50 to 100 colleges and universities and observes several things on these visits.

“One of the first things I always look for is a sense of pride in the campus itself. One of the ways to tell, I think, is to look at some of the garments people wear. Are they wearing the institutional logo wear? I don’t see that here,” he said.

Bernardi said the level of pride on campus needs to increase and that members of the Nicholls community should be proud of its academic programs.

He said the sense of pride needs to start with the students.

“To me, you’re the most important thing the University has,” Bernardi said.

He said he has set aside areas in the sports arenas at Nicholls just for students and faculty.

“These are little things we can do to build pride in this university, and I’ve got a ton of other things. We need that passion,” he said.

Bernardi said he is willing to do anything to get student organizations to attend functions.

“I don’t want to be distant from the students,” he said.

Bernardi said he has visited plenty of the faculty as part of his plan to meet everyone on campus, and apologized to the Senate that it took him so long to visit them.

“I’m sorry it has taken me a month to get here,” he told the Senate.

In other business, the Campus Improvements committee discussed its proposal to significantly augment Instructional Technology.

“We have looked into the cost to rewire the dorms for the cables. We feel it would be more cost effective to purchase higher speed and higher capacity servers rather than worrying about the construction and maintenance cost of a cable system,” the written proposal said.

The proposal also mentioned providing students with access to fax machines and scanners.

Dr. Eugene Dial, Dean of Student Life, told committee chairman Alcie Maxwell, arts and sciences senator, to gaze farther into the future.

“You may want to talk about wireless access, because by the time we would get everything wired, the next generation of computers will come,” Dial said.

Three new senators were appointed.

Stacie Gravois, business administration junior from Vacherie, was appointed as a business senator.

Natalie Norris, mass communication sophomore from Thibodaux, was appointed as a senator at large.

Benjamin T. Collier, V, was appointed as a freshman senator.

Deanna Duet, arts and sciences senator, moved for Collier’s appointment.

“Benjamin’s had a lot of experience working with people. He used to own his own business,” Duet said.