Cheaters at UMass Beware! Starting this spring of 2007, UMB faculty will be conducting a trial run of the computer program known as Turnitin.com. The program compares papers submitted by student to proprietary and subscription databases, the Internet, a database of student papers submitted from other schools subscribing to Turnitin, and a database of papers previously submitted at UMass Boston. An “originality report” is sent to the instructor once the paper is submitted and the program has run. Turnitin does not determine if the submitted paper is plagiarized or not, but it gives an official report to help the instructor make that distinction. * * * Student Senate Elections will be held on Wednesday, February 21. Self-nomination forms for the election must be submitted by Wednesday, February 14, and can be found on the Student Senate website, at www.sga.umb.edu. Elections are being held after five senators resigned from their positions. The resigning senators are Shawn Engel, Taylor Fife, Misha Sidorsky, Spencer Lewis, and Stacey Schwartz. * * * Vice Chancellor Patrick Day urged the Undergraduate Student Senate to re-organize their funding process at last week’s senate meeting held on Feb 7. The senate currently appropriates money on a case-by-case basis after hearing requests from student organizations and individuals. Vice Chancellor Day suggested moving from a “transactional model” to a model in which budgets are approved based on comprehensive annual club proposals. Hopefully this will provide a long-term view of intelligent budget allocation and facilitate the budget process allowing for more student activities of a higher quality. * * * DCAM is currently on campus gleaning student opinion regarding the Campus Center. They will have information about their polling activities as well as an online survey shortly. Students are encouraged to participate and give feedback on how they feel about the Campus Center. The Division of Capital Asset Management (DCAM) is the state organization that deals with the planning, construction, management and maintenance of public buildings in the Commonwealth.