Students will now be able to check the syllabi for their classes before registering for them. Junior Joseph Marcus and senior Jacob Novick created a new website, called Syllabi Central, that provides students with course syllabi before they register. The site went live last Friday, with 159 syllabi posted. Since then, the number of syllabi has grown to 173.

I am a Student Union Senator who voted for the recent resolution against Residential Life’s new room rental fees. I would like to offer my reasoning for the way I voted as well as respond to my fellow senator, Joseph Marcus, who does not support the resolution. He argues that SU should not attack the eight students that work as Event Assistants in exchange for free housing, and that these fees only follow the trend of other departments that have compensated for smaller budgets by passing on some cost to students. He states that unlike printing and transcripts costs, which actually require spending more money, the room rental fees only change how the Student Activities Fee, money we already spend, is allocated.

Students who have “shopped” for classes in the past soon may get help. Junior Joseph Marcus and senior Jake Novick, both Student Union senators, have been working on posting syllabi online during registration so that students can have more information about available courses.

Last year, sophomore Mamatha Challa was a new Student Union senator trying to work out a bike-sharing plan. She had to research what other universities had similar plans and where they succeeded and failed. Contact with other schools was sporadic, and the research took a long time.

Student Union Senators Joseph Marcus and Jake Novick have invented ​SyllabiCentral, a Web site that gathers syllabi from different University courses in one central location in order to give students a better sense of what classes offer.

Two SU Senators, junior Jake Novick and sophomore Joseph Marcus, are currently attempting to gather course syllabi in an online format that would allow Wash. U. students to gain deeper insight into the content and format of potential courses before registration.