SGA Meeting 10/29
Absent: Devanshi Vaid, Julia Stuart, Gabby Marangell, Nora Chong, Kyle Aguilar, Irene Shin, Lindsey Crowe, Saba Quadir, Eva Sharma, Carolyn Jacoby, Lili Elsesser, Izzie Armentrout, Jessie Abreu, Kate Ciarlante, Daniele Arad-Neeman, Lynne Ammar.
Who is your favorite Exec Board member? (a question Yong Jung didn’t think I should ask but I did anyway (I LOVE YOU YONG JUNG)):
Yong Jung <3, Carmen San Diego, Laurel Lemon – she just sent me cookies, uh…?, : /, How do I choose a star among the heavens?, Barney (And Tina for helping with our Plenary resolution), Everyone!, Nkechi in 3 years, me in 3 years : ), n/a, I don’t have a favorite but I’m in awe of each members fashions sense : ), Rebecca : ), all of you, DON’T MAKE ME CHOOSE, PRIYA!!!!!, I don’t play favorites : ), All <3
Announcements
Rebecca Sanders ’12: So Yong Jung is not able to be here today. She’s trapped in Boston, so I’m going to be in charge. I’d like to institute some new policies. You may only call me Madame Présidente. Also instead of SGA, we’re going to be playing a game of never-have-I-ever. No. Not really. We’re going to keep this old school.
Lydia Bello ’12: I’m the student Landscape Rep. The tree tour we held two weeks ago was successful. There are brochures in Ward and Benham Gateway. Grounds is holding a charette to get stud input on design for front of cc. push forward this winter
Adelyn Kishbaugh ’12: Thank you for coming to Halloween and helping. It was successful and people had fun.
Amada Beardall ‘12: Brecon haunted house was successful. 132 people came even with the snow. Thanks to everyone who came and helped out.
Rebecca ’12: I have a couple of announcements. We are inviting Jane McAuliffe, Michele Rasmussen, Jenny Rickard, John Griffith, Jerry Berenson, Stephanie Wujcik, Ed Harman, and Bernie Chung to the Big Cheese Forum. We received a lot of applications for the Seven Sister’s Conference. We’ll be announcing who has been selected to go on the trip on Monday. On November 17th at 7 o’ clock screening Miss Representation. This is the second event in series of events celebrating 120th anniversary of SGA. Congratulates to Irene Shin who is the SGA member of the month. To the class of 2015 – happy lantern night!
Your Two Cents
Blair Smith ’12: I wanted to get a quick opinion about people using Lusty during week nights to do public events. I don’t think it’s a good idea. There was an a cappella event on Thursday night. I love a cappella but not in library on Thursday.
Rebecca ’12: What do people think?
Blair Smith ’12: Do people like it?
Elizabeth Held ’12: I don’t consider Lusty a library. You expect that it’s going to be social and that there will be noise because it’s a café.
Kendra Kelly ’13: This ties into using the Campus Center as a party space. Outside of the Campus Center and Lusty Bryn Mawr doesn’t have many event spaces. If the Campus Center is used as party space, that will affect people who study there.
Blair Smith ‘12: For me, it was a problem that night because every other space was used.
Adelyn Kishbaugh ’12: If the library is open I think it’s ok but if it’s closed we should restrict the times that Lusty can be used as an event space.
Nora Chong ’12: I think we have three libraries that have pretty good hours. If one study space isn’t available we can rearrange ourselves and study somewhere else. We should consider our options.
Emma Rosenblum ’14: I think Lusty should be used as an event space in moderation. It’s attached to library so it is a study space in many ways. Once it a while it’s wonderful to have something going on there as a study break, but if having events there is something that’s going to impede student’s ability to study regular we should talk about it.
Blair Smith ’12: I’m only talking about weeknights.
Julie Gorham ’12: Different people have different study habits. Some people study well with white noise or with a bunch of people around like in Lusty or Uncommon. If spaces like that are occupied at same time in two separate locations it excludes a specific type of studiers.
Adelyn Kishbaugh ’12: Is it the weekends or weeknights that you’re concerned about?
Blair Smith ’12: I’m only talking about weekdays.
Courtney Pinkerton ’12: Was the library closed?
Blair Smith ‘12: No.
Courtney Pinkerton ’12: So you preferred going downstairs?
Blair Smith ’12: Technically speaking I was thesising and I wanted a break from being in the library.
Priya Saxena ‘12: Was the event advertised?
Elizabeth Held ’12: There were activities emails.
Rebecca Sanders ’12: We will think about this and if anyone has any more thoughts we can talk about it more at the next meeting.
Discussion of campus center being used as a party space
Rebecca Sanders ’12: We’re going to break up into small groups and talk about adding a small stage to the Campus Center which would allow it to be used as more of a study space.
Group 1:
Emma Condy ’12: We didn’t think that redoing the Campus Center was the best option because it’s a public space. I know a big issue with Halloween that we talked about in Res-Co this year was that you can only have wet parties in dorms. That being said we couldn’t have wet parties in here. We thought that instead of doing work here we could do work in a dorm basement.
Priya Saxena ‘12: We’ve considered dorms but it would cost a lot of money to get that kind of space up to code.
Rebecca Sanders ’12: Is it actually true that you can only have wet parties in dorms?
Priya Saxena ’12: Yep.
Adelyn Kishabugh ’12: Do you know how much it cost to put a stage in the Campus Center?
Rebecca Sanders ’12: Dean Rasmussen didn’t say how much it would cost, but it’s feasible.
Lily Scott ’12: We were saying that this Campus Center is a place that needs to look put together during the day time since tours come in here and people come to uncommon. Not to say we need a space we can trash, but there’s a certain amount of care that needs to be taken in this space that might not be conducive to a party space.
Amanda Beardall ’14: It’s already a small space and a stage would make it smaller. It’s not that hard to turn it into a party space already. There are spaces on campus that need to be utilized more – like on Cambrian Row.
Rebecca Sanders ’12: As a point of information, it takes a lot of time and labor to set up any concert that requires lighting.
Nkechi Ampah ’15: Can you have parties on Cambrian row?
Rebecca Sanders ’12: Yes,
Priya Saxena ’12: Not wet parties.
Group 2
Emma Rosenblum ’14: We essentially were not supportive of using the Campus Center as a party space. Our reasons were prospective students come through here and it’s a central location. The question what would be the campus center otherwise if this becomes a party space? If there’s a stage here, it wouldn’t be the same environment. It wouldn’t be as conducive to studying or meeting with a professor.
Syona Arora ’15: Would the stage be permanent?
Priya Saxena ’12: The stage would be permanent. The point is not to make the Campus Center just a party space. It’s to make it more transformative. If we label this as a multiuse space it would be easier for conferences to know when parties need to be set up. The chairs and tables would still be here, it would just be more conducive to parties in terms of the stage and setting up lighting.
Emma Rosenblum ’14: Whether or not the environment would change depends on how frequently an event would happen.
Emma Condy ’12: Have you talked to BMCS?
Rebecca Sanders ‘12: I talked to them a little bit and asked to come to the discussion, but they’re not here. But they’re thinking about it.
Aya Martin Seaver ‘13: The current Uncommon Grounds policy is to close for the night if there’s a party in here if that information affects discussion.
Blair Smith ’12: What is our scale here? Are we talking like a party for 50 people or 25, or 100? Everyone is imagining there ‘s going 300 people here every weekend and I don’t think that’s an accurate perception of what it would be like if there’s a party here. It would be more like having a singer come. If we want a big DJ party it’s not going to be here.
Mae Carlson ’12: This is something we just talked about briefly with Dean Rasmussen. So we’re not sure how much money would be able to be invested in this or what exactly the stage would be like. I’m not even sure it would be permanent.
Priya Saxena ’12: It would be permanent.
Mae Carlson ’12: Oh ok. Maybe we could talk about some kind of removable option. But I think this is just more to get an idea of what kind of party spaces you guys would want to see or how we could transform spaces. This is in the very early stages so there aren’t very many logistics yet.
Adelyn Kishbaugh ‘12: Occupancy limit is 150 with seats and 250 with standing.
Rebecca Sanders ‘12: Lily is going to make survey to send to the class presidents to send to campus so we’ll be getting a lot more feedback about what people would like to see. So we’ll talk about it again.
Group 3
Nkechi Ampah ’15: We discuss the pros and cons of putting a small stage in the Campus Center. The pros were that it’s centrally located and people would want to go to concerts more. The cons were that it might take away from environment of space. We also had a crazy idea to move the bookstore upstairs and move the CDO to Guild so that the basement could be a party space.
Sarah Theobald ‘12: The Residential Life office moving to Guild.
Blair Smith: The idea was that we could move the CDO to guild
Priya Saxena ‘12: There’s no space for CDO in Guild.
Elizabeth Held ’12: I’m not understanding how having a stage here will change vibe of the campus center.
Blair Smith ’12: I think what people are imagining is that if there’s a stage here more events will happen. The stage is a gateway drug.
Elizabeth Held ’12: I don’t think that’s a bad thing
Adelyn Kishbaugh ‘12: I have a point of information that might just be an opinion. We want to have more parties but it ‘s hard to get to change the attitude on campus about parites.
Karina Siu ’14: I think the problem is that when we’re talking about changing spaces we comparing things to Lunt basement. We don’t want that.
Rebecca Sanders ‘12: We definitely don’t want the Campus Center to become like Lunt Basement.
Sarah Lovegren ’14: Some of the concern that I’m hearing is about the lack of study space. If we should just find a space that is hidden like CPGC at Haverford that could be used generally for studying or hanging out.
Kendra Kelly ’13: We already have that space and it is the campus center. By repurposing this space you’re taking away a central space that students already have to go to and turn it into to something else, there isn’t any other place to study.
Lee McClenon ’14: The campus center is the wrong space not because it takes away from student spaces, but because it’s too big. It’s the wrong size. Right now, we have the common rooms and Rhoads Dining Hall now and Rhoads dining hall is too big. And this is just as big as Rhoads Dining Hall. If you think about the party last night, Halloween is one of the largest parties on campus and about 150 people come. If you can only get 75 people to come it’s not going to be enough to have a hopping party.
Blair Smith ’12: I want to get this conversation back to the point of the stage because I think that the grand question is do we want a stage. This is only a weekend space. I think the stage would be helpful for having things, but only in moderation.
Danyelle Philips ’14: I think having a stage would be beneficial. Even if it’s a larger party, it wouldn’t be in Rhoads and it wouldn’t be a in a dorm so maybe more people would come. Who’s going to be here on a Saturday night at 12:30? People could go to the Quita Woodward room or study in their rooms.
Nkechi Ampah ’15: It would be good to have a space to be used multiple things not just parties.
Priay Saxena ’12: In the Haverford dining center they have a stage and it doesn’t affect the environment of the dinging hall.
Elizabeth Held ’12: There is a stage
Priya Saxena ‘12: The stage is not going to take up too much space. They’ll put tables and chairs on it. Because it’s the CC and not the dinging halls the space will be up kept nicely.
Blair Smith ‘12: Having a stage would make setting up easier and cheaper. Events are going to continue happening in the campus center, so having a stage wouldn’t change anything except making setting up easier.
Kendra Kelly ’13: If we have a stage I feel like all the concert series concerts are going be in here.
Priya Saxena ‘12: That’s not an assumption that anyone is qualified to make
Blair Smith ’12: They’re very environmental.
Rebecca Sanders ’12: We can invite them to come talk about it.
Kendra Kelly: If you were going to put up lighting and there’s already a conflict with them using space in Rhoads, I don’t see what problem you’re solving.
Tina Hu ‘12: Point of information: lighting and stage for a concert is 15,000 dollars. If we had a stage and had lighting, that would cut 15,000 of SGA funding.
Julie Gorham ’12: We don’t have a budget?
Rebecca Sanders ’12: No.
Julie Gorham ’12: The discussion is becoming disparate because we don’t have that information. We’re talking about this as a money saving venture. SO that’s one thing to bring up. The second thing is, I’m hearing different definitions of a party space. Some people are thinking about it as an all out disco. Sorry for being British. Some people are thinking about bring a guitar or having someone sing. What kind of parties would be here would need to be clarified before we make assumptions.
Karina Siu ’14: We want a smaller space to put it some concerts. We had Lucas Carpenter in Rhoads Dining Hall but it would work better here. It seems like we’re looking for a smaller space. I don’t know how much it costs for construction but I don’t see the pool room and TV room being used that often.
Mae Carlson ’12: The money that would be spent on the stage would be money from the Dean’s Office. The money that we spend on lighting and the stage for BMCS concerts comes from the SGA budget.
Elizabeth Held ’12: That would be a one-time expense, so ultimately SGA would save money.
Sarah Theobald ’12: We’re talking about the stage is in corner and it’s not going to be too might. Does the cost of building a small stage make sense in terms of the usage that we’re going to get out of it? Have to be careful about saying it’s not going to be that big, when we don’t have specifics.
Melanie Rowe ’13: Only on weekends are we going to get the most bang for our buck if we’re concerned about disrupting people studying. So the stage would only be used Friday and Saturday nights.
Elizabeth Held’12: I’d like to make a motion to table this discussion and talk about this at the Big Cheese Forum.
Motion approved.
Blair Smith ’12: In order if we’re in support of this we should get some sort of gauge on size. I think it should be large enough to fit a cappella group or a band.