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Minutes

October 2, 2011 Minutes

SGA Meeting 10/2

Absent: Sharan Mehta, Sara Jane Rodgers, Gabby Marangell, Malina Toza, Melanie Rowe, Nora Chong, Krista Imre, Daisy Sheng, Lynne Ammar

If you were a kitchen appliance what would you be?

Responses:  toaster, mincer, mini-fridge, toaster oven, microwave, blender, waffle-maker, coffee machine, rice cooker, bottle opener, spork, cook, whisk, kitchen-aid mixer, my cupcake maker, oven, emulsion blender, chocolate fondue maker, lobster cracker, easy-bake oven, spatula, salad tongs, slap-chop, egg beater, cooker.

Announcements

Elizabeth Held ’12: I’m writing for USA today this semester and I’m looking for anyone who went to the Occupy Wall Street rally.  If you went or know someone who went, talk to me.  Elections are over. It was very successful. Very exciting.  The winners are:

Amanda Beardall and Carolyn Jacoby ’14: Brecon haunted house is mostly going to be Saturday October 29th from 8pm-10pm.

Blair Smith ‘12 and Lee McClenon ‘14: There will be no open wet party for Halloween this year on campus. If there was a wet party and if you are under 21, you would not be served anyway. Saturday the 29th there will be a dry party in the Campus Center. Get excited for it.

Julia Stuart ’13: We have the cloisters for lantern night!

Mae Carlson ’12: I had a list of club leaders and their email addresses up on the blog, but I took it down because I realized that anybody who has access to the internet has access to the blog so I didn’t want everyone’s email address to be available to the world.  If you want to contact a club leader and don’t know their name or email address, email sga@brynmawr.edu and we can send you the list or their email. Also, I made some sample Mawrk Notes for Plenary.  I’m thinking that once a month members-at-large will create a one-page leaflet debriefing what’s happened in SGA that month and we’ll photocopy it and bring the Mawrk Notes to SGA. Whoever wants to, a member of the assembly or a community member, can take some at the meeting and post them up wherever posting is allowed on campus.  They’ll also always be posted on the SGA board in the campus center in a folder along with old Mawrk Notes. We’ll see how it works this time and I want to have a meeting with the members-at-large soon to see how we want to go about doing this.

Priya Saxena ’12: Someone lost their laptop at Plenary. It’s a 13 inch mac book pro in a black case with a purple thing attached to it. If you know anything about it email me or spatel@brynmawr.edu.  The first honor board open community meeting is tomorrow (10/3) at 7:30pm in Merion Common room.  I’m ordering pizza and we’ll have drinks and stuff like that.  The topic is alcohol and the honor code. I thought that would be interesting given the talk we’re having campus wide about social life.

Rebecca Sanders ’12: The September round of appointments is over.

The new head of the Sustainable Food Committee is Daniele Arad-Neeman. The new committee members are Avery Martin, Nora Schmidt, Jasmine Arnold, Johanna Cordon-Hill, Karen Leitner, and Libby Huhall.  Also we appointed three new members to the student curriculum committee and they are Judy Chen, Carmen Lai, and Maggie Rosen.  We did not get to appoint anyone as GoBoard moderator, Recycling Committee Co-head, or Independent Major Rep, so we will be redoing that after fall break so tell all your friends to apply.

YJ ’12: Assembly members are allowed two unexcused and two excused absences. Plenary counts as two absences. Thank you to all those who came and those who volunteered at Plenary. Thanks to Elizabeth and elections board for elections.  And Rebecca and the appointments committee. Monthly reports for the month of September are due.  Today is the last SGA meeting for several assembly members. Thank you to Malina, Courtney, Krista, Irene Courtney, Kimbery, and Daisy.   Congratulations to all of our newly elected assembly members who will be at the next meeting on October 23rd.

Rachel Heiser

Rachel Heiser: My name is Rachel Heiser. I’m the new Academic Support and Learning Resources specialist. I asked to come to SGA today to say hello let you know let you know what I do.  I’m in the deans office and I’m here to oversee tutors and peer mentors.  We can meet one on one or we can meet in a small group or with a class. College can be a difficult time it can be fun but you can also struggle a little bit sometimes.  We can talk about study skills, how to collect good groups, and how balance your work load.  My office hours are Monday 3pm-4pm and Tuesday through Friday 3:30-4:30. I’ve also done counseling work, so I’m here if you just need somebody to talk to and you’re not sure what it’s like to talk to someone.  I can also speak about a somewhat atypical path of studying psychology to becoming a learning specialist in a college dean’s office.  Feel free to email me at rheiser@brynmawr.edu.  You can also call the same number that you would call to make an appointment with your dean.

Landscaping presentation

Lydia Bello and Stephanie Kim ’12: We’ve been the student representatives to grounds and landscaping for 2 years now. We’re the liaisons between students and grounds and landscaping committee for the Board of Trustees. We talk to Ed Harman in order to provide information to students and collect information from students to bring to Ed. There’s always a dialogue between us. We go to the landscape subcommittee meeting to provide student perspectives to the committee members.

Stephanie Kim ‘12: We wanted to update you about what’s been going on on campus in terms of landscaping.  The fields have been renovated. There’s now a turf field.  We only lost one tree to Hurricane Irene which just goes to show that grounds has been taking care of them well and planting strong trees.

Lydia Bello ‘12: We haven’t ordered any furniture. Half of the furniture that we ordered last year disappeared during the summer. We’re looking for new style of furniture that’s unique but fits with style of Bryn Mawr’s campus.  It takes away from scale of campus if there is visual clutter. All comments and suggestions are welcome on this topic. We want to find a compromise between what students want and what works with the campus. We want to find furniture that doesn’t look like any other school so it doesn’t look like we’re copying anyone.

We’re now involved with Tree Campus USA, which recognizes how well grounds treats the trees and how much care and effort goes into it. We’re not arboretum status but being a part of Tree Campus USA is a step between having a lot of trees and being declared arboretum. One of the elements of this project is student involvement. We’re starting the Tree Tour project which focuses on class trees, heritage trees, and state championship trees.  It takes the idea of the tree tour to 21st century. We have a web component that directs you to grounds website and link to a PDF. We’re inviting any student or community member to adopt tree – which means that you would do research and post a history of the tree online.  Our goal is to have this up by parents weekend so that parents can see the trees and work that students have put in. Tell your friends. We’re asking people to submit a short bio 3-7 sent which would be due October 12.

Julia Fahl ’12: Can it be a fictional history?

Lydia Bello ‘12: No.  But we’re hoping to expand and maybe later it can be fictional.

Stephanie Kim ’12: You can still send and we’ll put it up.

The cloisters are open and there are plans to renovate Taft garden

Saba Quadir ’13: Is there anything we can do about the tiles in Taft garden?

Stephanie Kim ‘12: There’s no plan yet but if you want to send that in we’ll submit to grounds.

Some long-term landscaping goals are to somehow fix the cow path leading to the campus center and to build a plaza outside of Erdman so people can sit and eat outside.

Lydia Bello ‘12: If students want to see changes quickly let us know. It would speed up process to have evidence of student support when advocating for funds.

Julia Fahl ’12: What’s the problem with the cow path?

Lydia Bellow ’12: It’s gets worn down.

Blair Smith ’12: But what’s the problem with that?

Lydia Bello ’12: We’ve received student complaints about it. Someone lost a shoe once. It has been a problem since 1985 when was the building was converted from the gym to the campus center.

Stephanie Kim ‘12: We may have to take a tree out of senior row and plant it at other end because people have been stepping on roots on their way down the cow path.

Lydia Bello ‘12: For Tree Tour – you can sign up for tree you’d like to write about on the list or just let us know.  We have a blog where we post up information and we always welcome emails and comments if you have any ideas for projects.

Stephanie Kim ’12: Are there any comments or questions?

Blair Smith ’12: Adirondack chairs would be great outdoor furniture on camp that people would use.

YJ ’12: Please send more comments via email.

Honor Board Bylaw

Priya Saxena ’12:  I sent the bylaws to the assembly Wednesday before Plenary, but to go over the basics…. When reporting a possible infraction to the Honor Board the confronting party must email the Honor Hoard head 24 hours in advance to alert them that the confronted party will report themselves within 48 hours. People haven’t been reporting themselves.  We need to make sure we’re upholding the promise of swift trials. I will know who will be reporting themselves and will email them to make sure they report themselves. We’ve changed the procedure for scheduling a hearing after both parties give their statements.  A hearing will be held within two weeks or as soon as possible. Dean Rasmussen and I know a hearing is a stressful process. We don’t want it to drag on if students don’t respond to emails or cooperate with me and Dean Rasmussen to schedule a hearing. If not they’re not cooperating with Dean Rasmussen or I, I reserve the right to confront them or they can be brought to a Dean’s panel based on severity. We’re changing how we disseminating statements we receive to members of the honor board before the hearing begins.  It takes too long to read and evaluate the statements before the hearing.  Students are left waiting for us to finish evaluating statements and Honor Board members feel rushed.  Statements will now be made available 36 hours before the hearing and will be picked up in sealed envelope from Joann Doherty.  She will know who’s coming in to pick them up.  Honor Board members will read and mark up the statements on own time, then they will be shredded, and one is always kept on record.

Julia Fahl 12: Will this apply to hearings from now on?

Priya Saxena ‘12: Yes. If we approve these I will send them to the faculty as well. These by-laws are just to make sure hearings are swift and more confidential than they have been in the past. We want to avoid stress and unneeded conflict.

Yes: Izzie Armentrout and Jessie Abreu, Courtney Pinkerton, Mo Alfonso and Daniele Arad-Neeman, Kimberly DeRosa, Devanshi Vaid and Julia Stuart, Sarah Theobald and Sharan Mehta, Kyle Aguilar and Aksheyta Suryanarayan, Amanda Beardall and Carolyn Jacoby, Elizabeth Olecki, Irene Shin, Kendra Kelly, Danyelle Phillips and Emma Geering, Lee McClenon and Blair Smith, Kelly Wilkinson and Lindsey Crow, Julia Fahl, Sarah Jordan, Elizabeth Held, Debbie Deagan and Emma Condy, Sophie Balis-Harris and Raella Rothman, Karina Siu and Lynne Ammar.

No: No one.

Abstain: Kate Ciarlante

Special Events:

Sarah Moser ’12: Safeword wants to bring sex-blogger/academic/gender-thinker Sinclair Sexsmith to campus.  She has a number of blogs and columns online. Safeword is getting him to come lead a workshop that’s called Radical and Responsible Gender, which is about feminism, misogyny, and masculinity. Gender is something that’s not mainstream at Bryn Mawr, we have a different understanding of it here. We thought it might be something the student body would be interested in, especially in light of Judith butler being here.  It would be November 1st which is a Tuesday around dinnertime.  The workshop is about an hour and a half to three hours depending on what we want and what the group decides.  There will be an optional discussion afterwards and pizza.  The total cost of the event would be $1,050.

Blair Smith ’12: Have you considered looking for a larger space because of the amount of money you’re requesting?

Sarah Moser ‘12: I was thinking about Thomas 110.  What would you suggest?

Elizabeth Held ’12: Have you considered Dalton 300?

Adelyn Kishbaugh: You should ask Lisa Zernicke.

Julia Fahl ’12: Point of information: are you linking with any of the academic departments or is it just from Safeword?

Sarah Moser ’12: It’s a Safeword event.  I haven’t talk to anyone about cosponsoring it.  My reasoning behind that is that we wanted it to be student only event.  We were talking about having it be open to faculty and I can’t see the benefits except having a name on the flyer.  But I honestly didn’t think about it that much.

Julia Fahl ’12: How many people do you expect come?

Sarah Moser ’12: 50 or 60, but realistically 30 or 40.  It’s going to be open to the bi-co.

YJ ’12:  It’s important that you go talk to your constituents before you vote. So we’re going to do Special Events voting online. We do have quorum so we’re going to vote on the Appointments by-laws.  The Honor Board by-laws did pass.

Appointments by-laws

Rebecca Sanders ’12:  The new Appointments by-laws are to do with budgeting and how committees and boards budget through SGA.  Appointed committees must go through the regular budgeting process and their budget will be determined through regular procedures. Not all appointed committees require funding.  Some only need funding when they’re hosting an event that’s open to the whole campus like film series and BMCS.  We want to have appointed committees request money through the regular budgeting process because there are a couple of committees and boards that may want to host all campus events, like the health center advisory board, who may not have enough money to do so through the department their affiliated with.

Yes: Kimberly DeRosa, Dede Buckman, Daniele Arad-Neeman and Mo Alfonso, Akshyeta Suryanarayan and Kyle Aguilar,  Devanshi Vaid and Julia Stuart, Sarah Theobald, Elizabeth Olecki, Deb Mathus, Emma Condy and Debbie Deegan, Blair Smith and Lee McClenon, Irene Shin, Julia Fahl, Raella Rothman, Sarah Jordan, Lili Elsesser and Kendra Kelly, Elizabeth Held, Emma Geering and Danyelle Phillips, Karina Siu and Lynne Ammar, Lindsey Crow and Kelly Wilkinson.

No: No one.

Abstain: Kate Ciarlante, Courtney Pinkerton.

Plenary Recap

YJ ’12: Are there any comments or suggestions for steps to take moving forward for spring Plenary?

Blair Smith ’12: It would be awesome for the Plenary committee to apply for a budget.  And did fun things at Plenary. That way as people walked in they could get a cookie.

Irene Shin ‘13:  If we moved the time later would you go?

Sophie Balis-Harris ’12: You should move it later in the day.

Adelyn Kishbaugh ’12: It’s hard to ask that questions of the people here because most of us would come any way because we’re here at SGA. I would consider sending out a school wide survey.

Natalie Zamora ‘14: I would go at anytime.

Carolyn Jacoby ’14: I think people would go later people, but people will have conflicts no matter what time Plenary is.  People were wandering in late and other people had to leave early because they had a work shift and other people stay in the library to study even if Plenary is supposed to be a student space.

Priya Saxena ’12: Haverford does shut off the internet on Campus except in Ryan Gym.

Emily Kirchner ’12: What time does Haverford start and do they do anything else special?

YJ ’12: 7 pm.

Elizabeth Held ’12: When do Plenary packets go out?

YJ ‘12: They went out the morning of Plenary.

Elizabeth Held ’12: People didn’t know what resolutions were.

Julia Fahl ’12: Can we have a Plenary committee sponsored resolution that has a lot of conflict built into it?

Sarah Theobald ’12: Closing the library and shutting off wi-fi is against the spirit of Plenary.  People should come not because it’s the only place they can get internet. Forcing people to go to Plenary does not lead to the kind of results we want from it.

Amada Beardall ’14: DLT members need to be more accountable for getting people to go to Plenary.

Emma Condy ‘12: People don’t appreciate that food runs out and feel guilty when they leave because they’re starving.

Saba Quadir ’13: Getting rid of wi-fi is against the sprit of Plenary, but we should have something to make people come on time.

Natalie Zamora ’14: Shutting off wi-fi because it’s the only way we’ll get quorum not means that people are not respecting Plenary the way they should.

Blair Smith ’12: It would be helpful to set a time limit.  It’s abusive of everyone’s time who was staying to the very end.  A time limit would encourage people to go because you know you’d get out in a timely fashion.

Rebecca Sanders ’12: If we don’t get quorum before the time limit is up, what’s your contingency plan?

Elizabeth Held ’12: Haverford had a failed Plenary in 2010.

Julie Mazziota ’13: They voted on the resolutions online and in the dining hall.

Courtney Pinkerton ‘12: There’s a problem with not knowing the resolutions in advance. On my way back form Plenary I ran into freshman who were like was it mandatory to be there?

Julia Stuart ’13: I support setting a time limit for getting quorum, but not for Plenary if it cuts off discussion.

Adelyn Kishbaugh ‘12: It’s everyone’s job to encourage people to come to Plenary not just HAs and customs people. As an HA, I don’t think it’s my job to make people come. It’s on people personally to decide if it’s important to them.

Emma Rosenblum ’14: I completely agree with Adelyn.  I tried to encourage freshman to go but some were not on campus or had other commitments.  There’s only so much you can do to get people to go.

Irene Shin ’13: Getting people to come to Plenary shouldn’t be like baby-sitting.  The advertisement part is also necessary. I would be interested in having a dialogue about this.

Daniele Arad-Neeman ’14: It’s our civic duty as a DLT to encourage people to go.  Freshman didn’t have proper education about Plenary. The channels of education need to be rethunk.

Emily Kirchner ’12: Plenary is the only place you can get brunch so it’s the same thing as shutting off wi-fi.  Turning off internet is the same as turning off eating.

Emma Condy ’12: I did hear from multiple people that they didn’t realize posters were for Plenary. They just saw Beyonce, which isn’t a bad thing to look at, but…

Blair Smith ’12: Customs people and HA have been active in making residents aware of traditions.  Plenary is one of the oldest traditions on campus. Hall advisors and customs people ought to act as communicators. It’s not too much of a responsibility.

Julia Fahl ’12: We could spin this in a more positive way by incentivizing Plenary by dorms. There could be pre Plenary hall teas. There should be a Plenary funded prize for the dorm that gets the most people to come.  They should be recognized as active part of the community. Also, public shaming.

YJ ’12: Or a dorm tea.

Adelyn Kishbaugh ’12: We should have a discussion as a community to figure out what to do. You should go because you feel like you should go.

Emma Rosenblum 14: Our duty as citizens of college to get people to go to Plenary.  Your role in the DLT almost secondary to being a part of this community,

YJ ’12: We all believe in the importance of self-governance since we’re in this room. Let’s not veer off topic and talk about what actions we can take to make Plenary better.

Lindsey Crowe ’14: I agree with incentivizing Plenary because obviously people don’t want to go, even if it goes against the spirit of Plenary.

Nkechi Ampah ’15: I think more fun things should happen at Plenary, Plenary packets should go out sooner because Freshman don’t know what it’s about.  Customs people should make sure freshman are educated.

Rebecca Sanders ‘12: As an exec board we’ve talked about Plenary since the beginning of the year.  For the first time, SGA was involved in customs week. We’ve been here since August 18th.

Priya Saxena ’12: We made a video for first years that had a definition of what Plenary is in it.

Nkechi Ampah ‘15: People didn’t go to the SGA assembly because it was the last one.

YJ ’12:  Everything got moved around because of Hurrican Irene.

Lee McClenon: I will draft survey to send to residents.  If you have specific questions you want on it, you can email them to me.

Kendra Kelly ’13: It’s a part of the DLTs job to talk about Plenary.  You don’t have to lie but attitude has a lot to do with it. Encouraging frosh to go don’t be down on Plenary. Waiting sucks, but voting goes fast and it’s important.

Daniele Arad-Neeman ‘14: A lot of it is about education. Irene’s video last semester was great. If that specific information was distributed in a 2 or 3 minutes chunk to freshman it would be effective.

Sarah Theobald ’12: In the same vein, we need the education to be more about what Plenary is and what it gives us and why is Plenary is important not just Plenary is cool, there’s going to be breakfast there, you should go.

Carmen Lai ’15: International students are here one week before custom so that would be a great time to reach out to international students and educate them about Plenary.

Saba Quadir ’13: I agree with the wi-fi thing.  You can only eat so many muffins but people are addicted to the internet.

Lee McClenon: I agree that Plenary is important, but we should also say this Plenary is important. The resolutions need to be sent out earlier.

YJ ’12: We don’t put the resolutions on posters because we don’t get the resolutions until after we make the posters.

Blair Smith ’12: We could make a Mawrk Notes summary of the resolutions and post them in the bathrooms before Plenary.

Irene Shin ’13: We’ll have to start working now to plan Plenary for February.

Izzie Armentrout ’13: The idea of better education extends to SGA in general.  People don’t care what SGA does so that’s why they don’t care about Plenary.  We should try to make people care more.  People don’t care about meetings or know when they go on.

YJ ’12: I wrote a piece about Plenary and self- governance for the College News.  Please spread it around.

Recap of Elections

Elizabeth Held ’12: Thanks to everyone who ran, everyone who nominated someone, everyone who voted, and the elections board. We had a really successful round of elections.  There was an incredibly high voter turn out. There’s one piece of bad news.  Moodle makes it easy to see who’s voting on what ballot and there had a lot of people who weren’t voting on their class ballot.  There were 6 people in class of 2013 and 2014 who voted in the wrong class ballot.  I eliminated their votes for that race. Two people voted twice and I threw out those votes as well.  In the 2015 election one senior and two sophomore voted and I eliminated those votes. The OIA rep one by one vote.  I did a hand recount and discovered that there were 5 people who voted multiple times in the 2012 and 2013 ballot and that had given Ariel Zhao an extra 3 votes when those votes were eliminated Carmen Lai had actually won.

Julia Fahl ‘12: Is there a way to lock moodle so you can only vote once?

Elizabeth Held ’12: I’m going to have to talk to someone who knows more about moodle than I do.

Blair Smith ’12: I think it’s great you caught these things, but I’m concerned about the anonymity of elections. For the first time people’s names are with votes. Maybe there’s a way we can delete the names.

Elizabeth Held ’12: I can turn that function off, but I left it on because so that I could see if someone’s vote worked since this is the first time we’re using moodle. As for seeing how someone voted, I’m sorry but I had better things to do. And I trust that Priya and Yong Jung are not going to do that either.

Emily Kirchner ’12: Is there a way to divide it up so that only people in a certain class have access to moodle site? Like 2012 SGA , 2013 SGA, etc.

Elizabeth Held ’12: I’m going to talk to Kate Gould and we’ll try to come up with a better solution.  I wanted to tell you about how everything went first. Moodle makes it so there can be a lot of anonymity. Elections heads deal with a lot of confidential information.  If you would trust me with nominations, you should trust me with the elections results.

Elizabeth Held ‘12: We had 96 nominations and 36 candidates after candidates and candidate’s statements. 45% of the nominations came from the exec. board and the elections board.  I’m happy with 2012 because seniors don’t normally vote and they voted.

Numbers for voting are up this September from last April, which is great because April is usually a really popular round of elections. We have to work on run-off elections.  We tabled during run offs and the number of people in Erdman who said they’d already voted and didn’t have to vote again was astounding.

Lily Scott ‘12: We should set up a quorum for how many people need to vote.

Elizabeth Held ‘12: Would have to be a Plenary resolution.

Elizabeth Held ‘12: Only got positive feedback about moodle. Tabling was effective.

New Business:

Julia Fahl ’12: The Board of Trustees meeting was last weekend. The Board of Ttrsutees come twice a year they talk about an array of topics in sub committees and in one big meeting. They talked about how finances are used in stocks and bonds.  We have recovered from recession and we’re one of the first institution to do so, so we’re throwing around cash, feeling a little loose. A lot of new projects are going on.  Guild will be done this year.  They’re talking about redoing the inside of Thomas.  Erdman done, the field is done, which cost big bucks for improvement of student life.  We should talk about finding a way to thank the board of Trutees and discuss projects you’d like to have heard at the upper echelon. The Exec Board gave a presentation. I just wanted to recognize them for the work they do with upper administration. I will send out campus wide email with more information.

Blair Smith ’12: As a future agenda item can we review, the posting policy in regard to posting on exterior of campus?