Alison Kostelich explained the new Electronic Writing Portfolio requirements at the Student Senate meeting Wednesday.

The purpose of the EWP is to give the university assurance that students are effective writers in their ability to organize material, develop ideas and use correct diction, sentence structure and mechanics.

Kostelich, student vice president for academic affairs, said the submissions can come from any writing-centered or writing-intensive course, or from any course with a written assignment that is appropriate for the portfolio.

“Only one submission is allowed from each course taken and must be submitted during the semester of the course to which it was written,” she said.

Instead of the current process of manually submitting the written works, the new proposal requires portfolios to be sent through an EWP Web site.

This site is yet to be put up, but Kostelich said she assumes it will be on the eiu.edu main menu.

The papers will still be graded on a one-to-four scale, and all written works must be submitted by the time 105 credits are earned.

Transfer students with more than 30 credit hours will be allowed to request additional time to submit their work.

Among other items discussed at the meeting was progress with the Suicide Awareness Initiative Committee.

Since initiating the committee, Jeff Melanson and other committee members have already planned actions to help educate students on the subject of suicide.

A major initiative of the committee is to lobby in Springfield to representatives and senators to help raise awareness of suicide and depression.

“We want to do this not just to make them aware of the issue, because everyone seems to recognize suicide as an important issue, but to also come up with some kind of legislation on suicide and mental health awareness,” Melanson said. “One of the things I would like to see is a mental health patients bill of rights.”

He said it would be ideal for this bill of rights to state that it is unlawful to discriminate from employment because of a person’s mental health.

“I would also like to see health insurance expand to provide mental health insurance as well,” he said. “These are some of the things I am going to be talking to (Rep.) Chapin Rose (R-Mahomet), about.”

The committee, in conjunction with Student Senate and the Counseling Center, will also be holding hot chocolate stands Dec. 3 to help raise awareness.

“There’s going to be a lot of people who are going to be stressed out because they’ll be trying to get all that last-minute stuff finished, like getting ready for finals,” Melanson said.

Members distributing hot chocolate at the stands will also pass out fliers about depression.

Melanson said anyone is welcome to join the Suicide Awareness Initiative Committee or attend the meetings, which take place at 8:15 p.m. every Thursday in the Bridge Lounge of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.