SGA Meeting 1/29
7:10 YJ calls the meeting to order
Absent: Gabby Marangell, Melanie Rowe, Kyle Aguilar, Kelly Wilkinson, Kendra Kelly, Dede Buckman, Kate Ciarlante, Christine Calderon.
Who do you want to win the super bowl?
The better one, football sucks, the lakers… or whatever, the horned toads…?, Julia Stuart, Julia Stuart, Big Blue, G-MEN!, X-MEN!, angry 49ers fan, Giants?, football. what?, rugby is better, Hufflepuff, Patriots, both teams suck watch soccer instead, the commercials, watch soccer!!!, ???, umm… who’s playing again?, whatever Blair says, Patriots, Yankees, Red Sox!, Steelers, GIANTS BABY, Patriots (she’s lying she’s cheering for the G Men), beer and wings team, Patriots, Patriots J, abstain, EAGLES!, PATS, packers should’ve won…, I watch hockey….
Announcements
Elizabeth Held ’12: Tabling sing ups are going around. Tabling matters. There will be a raffle.
Sarah Moser ’12: Safe word had an event last semester with Sinclair Sexsmith. There were 25 attendees. We had pizza and sat around and talked. It was great. He wants to come back so we’re working to construct another workshop for the spring.
Blair Smith ’12 and Lee McClenon ‘14: The administration has found that people are burning incense and candles. This is against the rules and is a big fire hazard. If you smell it, are doing it, or your friends are doing it, please stop or report it to public safety. We’d also like to note that there should no rice cookers or similar appliances in dorm rooms.
YJ ’12: The weekly address has returned! It’s only three minutes and reviews everything that we did this past semester. Definitely watch it. There will be a 2nd Miss Representation screening next Thursday night in the CC at 7:30 pm. The movie is really great. Definitely try to be there. A lot of people stayed for the discussion at the first screening. Plenary resolution writing workshops – there’s one on Monday night at 8pm and one on Wednesday night at 9pm. There will be two more next week.
Your Two Cents
Julia Fahl ’12: I’m here representing the Extreme Keys. As one of the many a cappella groups on campus, we wanted to hear SGA’s feelings on asking bmc for an a cappella sound system. The mics don’t catch a lot of noise and sound quality really sucks. Since we have so many a capella groups we thought would be beneficial for large population of the student body to have a better sound system. I would like to do a straw poll so we can work towards getting it. It would be less than 500 dollars.
Devanshi Vaid ‘13: Are the night owls willing to share.
Julia Fahl ‘12: No a cappella group as area mics. If we got some, it would be a shared thing.
Nora Chong ’12: Did you put it in your budget?
Julia Fahl ’12: It would come out of the deans’ budget.
Rebecca Sanders ’12: So the money for this would be coming directly from the college?
Julia Fahl ’12: Yes.
Emily Kirchner ‘12: Do people have trouble hearing a cappella groups?
Julia Fahl ’12: Yes. We’ve had complaints from both students and parents.
Straw poll: people think it’s worthwhile
BMCS Update
Kate Grant and Lauren Bochicchio ‘12
Kate Grant ’12: We wanted to talk about the survey we did last semester about the genre and number of shows people would like to see. The results line up with what we’ve been getting in terms of genre.
Lauren Bochicchio ’12: People wanted larger shows, so we’ve decided to do three shows a semester. We’re going to have two larger shows and one smaller show in February.
Kate Grant ‘12: We asked about specific artists. The two top artists are Chairlift and The Givers. We’re going to start off with Chairlift. They were featured on an iPod commercial and were the free iTunes song of the week last week. They were nominated for an MTV music video award. For April 6th the opener is You Won’t. Next we’re going to have The Givers. They were on a Gossip Girl soundtrack. The artist we’re looking at for February is a female hip hop artist. We’re waiting to know who will headline. We want to bring Lyrc to campus. This concert would be February 24th.
Saba Qadir ’13: How many people answered the survey?
Kate Grant ‘12: 150. A lot of people took it. We were happy with that.
Lindsey Crowe ’14: Should one of these headliners fall through, would you go back to the list of who was most popular?
Lauren Bochicchio ‘12: We have back up.
Lee McClenon ‘14: You should advertise concerts on Planga.
Kate Grant ‘12: We already signed up. We thought about putting our weekly meetings on it, but we weren’t sure if that would be too much.
YJ ’12: Do it.
Lauren Bochicchio ’12: We were confused about the difference between fans and for members.
YJ ’12: I will explain more about Planga at the end of this discussion.
Irene Shin ’13: Who is this female hip hop artist?
Kate Grant ‘12: We want to bring Lyrc and Lola Monroe.
Lauren Bochicchio ’12: Lola Monroe does a good cover of Beyonce’s “Who Run The World.”
YJ ’12: Great! Thank you so much. Just to respond to the Planga question – please encourage people to sing up, and most or almost all of the clubs are already on plnag, all the SGA stuff is on it, we’ll be putting the agenda up every week. The difference between a fan or member is you can become a fan of anything, it’s kind of like following someone on twitter, a member becomes a part of a list serve that you can use to invite all your members and modulate in different ways.
Elections Discussion
Elizabeth Held ’12: A few general reminders – you have until 5pm on Tuesday to accept your nomination. We have someone who is running for everything. Sign up and come to an info session if you’re on the edge about running. Candidates’ forum is Wednesday at 8pm. Tabling matters. We’re sending around a sheet so you can sign up to table in Erdman and the CC. Voting is on Moodle. There are options to have ballots be submitted anonymously or with names. In the fall, I kept it so that I could see the names of the voters. I accidentally declared the wrong person the winner of the OIA rep race and I only caught that because it was not anonymous. We’re going to keep things non-anonymous through this semester just to get a sense of what Moodle can and cannot do. What this means is that I can see a list of people who submitted ballots. The only reason I would go and look at one of these ballots is if people voted twice or in the wrong ballot. Sometimes I get emails from people saying that they weren’t sure about their ballot. Moodle can see allows me to see if they submitted it correctly and it makes me feel more conf about the information I have. Only the honor board, the elections board, and I will have this information. This differs from BlackBoard because on BlackBoard we had a list of people who tried to vote. They would email me if they weren’t sure their vote went through, and I would ask them to email me, so sometimes votes were probably counted twice. Moodle corrects that problem because we know who voted twice. Everything is confidential. I promise I will not abuse this privilege. Remember to vote!
Rebecca Sanders ‘12: If you’re interested in an E Board position or a position on the appointments committee, the E Board will be in CC at 9pm on Monday.
YJ ’12: Go to candidates’ forum with questions. We want people to ask questions and the only way that will happen is if people go there and we push them. It’s the community’s responsibility to go to candidates’ forum and make sure candidates say what you want them to say and follow through with their promises.
Yearbook Discussion
YJ ’12: Last year there was a committee of students that presented a plan to create a yearbook. Several student graduated, and it was hard to recruit people. The students who were in charge interpreted that as a lack of student interest. Mary Beth Horvath emailed us and asked us to bring it to the assembly. We have three options 1.) We would have no yearbook and there would be no cost. We can still have senior portraits and anyone who wants one can have one 2.) We find a student who wants to lead and help create it. 3.) Phil, the yearbook rep, offered to make the book himself ,which would mean students uploading photos and seniors submitted portraits. It would be 13,00 dollars.
Adelyn Kishbaugh ’12: This keeps coming up in SGA. It seems as if there’s no student interest.
YJ ‘12: Option 1 check.
Julia Fahl ’12: Can we do a quick straw poll?
Lee McClenon ‘14: Is this for this year?
YJ ‘12: Yes.
Emma Condy: How much would a yearbook cost?
YJ ’12: 13000 dollars.
Adelyn Kishbaugh ‘12: It would be 25 dollars per person. Aside from if we would be willing to buy it, would we have anyone who’s willing to work on it? Even if we buy it, it needs to get made.
YJ ’12: Everyone who’s interested in buying a yearbook please raise your hand.
(Most people are, but a lot abstain.)
Blair Smith ’12: The seniors will probably want it, but other classes won’t.
Adelyn Kishbaugh ’12: How many people purchased one last year?
YJ ’12: How would we get someone to make it/run it?
Emma Condy ’12: What software does this company use? Because I put together my yearbook in high school and it was really easy.
Blair Smith ‘12: It was successful when we paid students to do it.
YJ ’12: The problem still is who would make this book.
Lindsey Crowe ‘14: Is there a specific list of what needs to happen if you’re running it?
YJ ’12: We will come back to it.
Irene Shin ’13: I’m not for it because if we don’t care enough to have it then why should it be a job?
YJ ’12: I’m going to call on our class presidents to make a survey about the yearbook and send it out to their class and give us a general overview of the results at the next meeting.
Saba Qadir ’13: Do you know how many people have bought yearbooks in the past.
YJ ’12: No. We’ll see what class presidents say and ask Mary Beth about the cost and Lindsey’s question.
Adelyn Kishbaugh ’12: Will we have time to finish it?
Blair Smith ‘12: The yearbook isn’t produced by the end of the year anyway because they include photos from May Day etc.
Adelyn Kishbaugh ’12: So were’ still in a place where we could do this?
YJ ’12: If people will buy it, Phil can put it together.
Lily Scott ‘12: Can students help Phil?
Rebecca Sanders ‘12: Students would be sending him pictures.
Lily Scott ’12: If they wanted to help him with the layout?
YJ ‘12: We could find out. Can the class presidents also include a question that asks whether or not the person taking the survey wants to help make the yearbook?
Northwestern Student Protesting Position
YJ ’12: We got an email from the Northwestern student government about the police violence against UC Berkeley and UC Davis and the sit in they did on their campus. We get a lot of emails from outside organizations, and we don’t’ usually get involved with national issues because we’re a non-partisan group, but we wanted to bring it up to the assembly, since it has to do with student rights. Their email asked us to sign an open letter saying we are appalled by force of police against non-violent student protestors, that it violates rights of students and faculty, that there must be space for protest on our campuses. They also ask us to urge our administration to engage in open and honest dialogue with students and faculty about exercising rights. The exec board thought that because this was an open letter having to do with student rights we would bring it up, even though it’s a smidgen irrelevant to our campus because of our great relationship with public safety and I can’t imagine that happening on our campus. We wanted to ask for questions or comments about what this means if we sign on, then depending on what kinds of questions and comments you have we might move on to a vote.
Nora Chong ’12: I think this is unequivocally good and in line with the values of our college. It’s important to show solidarity with other students.
Mary Margaret Peebles ’13: While I agree with showing solidarity, parts of letter are controversial and wrong. We should craft our own letter, not support one that is wrong.
Sophie Balis-Harris ‘12: The letter speaks more to level of brutality, not necessary to what was happening.
Sarah Theobald ’12: Do you know who else has signed on? And how is it being disseminated?
YJ ’12: The groups are at the bottom of the letter. 60 other have been asked.
Adelyn Kishbaugh ’12: I think it’s good to support this, but there should be some caution behind it.
Julia Fahl ’12: Singing it would have it be in the minutes which would go into the campus and would enliven discussion in the community about what a statement like this really means. As SGA we could have this posted in bi co as something that BMC supports it as something we consider to be in line with self-government.
YJ ’12: If the assembly agrees we should also bring it to the administration.
Ali Raeber ’13: Did you just get this email or have you spoken to them?
YJ ’12: We got the email over winter break. We have until February 19th to sign it. I have not spoken to them.
Irene Shin ‘13: Is there any way we could craft amendments to this letter?
YJ ’12: Is there anyone who would like to craft another one?
Julia Fahl ’12: Flies against the face of solidarity among students and emphasizes the spirit of individualism to write our own letter.
Irene Shin ‘13: That’s why I suggested that we craft amendments.
Lindsey Crowe ’14: I agree that there are mistakes that have been made, but idea that colleges are standing together is important.
Sarah Lovegren ’14: Before we commit could we address our concerns with Northwestern?
Nora Chong ’12: The sprit of the letter is pretty clear. It’s understandable if people have reservations about the specifics of it, but since the sprit is pretty obvious it’s more important to express that idea than to concern ourselves with details.
Adelyn Kishbaugh ‘12: While I understand that, I think we should be careful about putting our name to something if it’s not right.
Sophie Balis-Harris ‘12: The main contention is that we believe that the use of violence to counter civil disobedience is wrong. Civil disobedience means that it might be against the law, not they believe that they had the right to protest in the way they did, but they had the right to disobey the law and get arrested, but not get beaten by the police.
ELizabeht Held ’12: Has SGA ever endorsed anything like this before.
YJ ’12: Not in my memory.
Elizabeth Held ’12: We’ve worked very carefully to make this a non-partisan organization. We should consider the precedent that it sets when we start endorsing things like this.
Julia Fahl ’12: Could we print it in the bico saying that we believe it’s in line with what we believe to be the value of self government but not directly endorse it. We could just run it and say that we can see it as being an important statement and in general important to student life in America.
YJ ’12: We have freedom of press, but we can ask the bico to print it.
Elizabeth Held ’12: You can buy an add or write an editorial.
Sarah Theobald ’12: The spirit of the letter is important and great, but if we sign we’re singing to the actual facts of the letter not signing an ideal.
Elizabeth Held ’12: Motion to end at current speaking order.
Motion approved.
Emma Condy ‘12: I love the idea behind it, but I don’t want BMC or BMC SGA to be associated with flawed facts.
Julia Fahl ’12: Can we see a 20 second clip of the protests so we know what we’re talking about?
YJ ’12: We should make a decision about whether or not we agree with the spirit of the letter, then ask an assembly member to be a fact checker. Then we can vote on if we want to sign the letter and if we want this in the bico or not. We’re going to do a straw poll. Raise your hand if you agree with the sprit of this letter.
Adelyn Kishbaugh ’12: Talking about the spirit of the letter gets into a nebulous zone.
YJ ’12: Instead let’s ask, do we want to pursue this discussion?
Most people want to move forward with discussion.
YJ ’12: Now we want an assembly member to volunteer to do fact checking. Thanks, Julia Sophie, Mary Margaret, and Daniele.
New Business Discussion
YJ ’12: Several positions are responsible for going to meetings and reporting back on those meetings, like the faculty reps, civic engagement reps, student curriculum committee, and res co. There are great representatives that are doing amazing work. It’s weird to present this information during the announcement section because it does not allow for conversation. Is it ok to move that to the new business discussion section?
Lee McClenon ’14: Would the announcement we made tonight fall under an announcement or new business?
Sarah Theobald ’12: What about reports that sound like announcements?
YJ ’12: If you go to a meeting and have a do a recap, do it during new business. But if you want to say something about burning incense and candles, that can be an announcement. Use your discretion.
Super bowl
YJ ’12: We’re going to move our time because of the super bowl. Can we get some suggestions of possible times?
YJ ’12: We have 11am, 12pm, 2pm, 4pm, 6pm.
YJ ’12: The meeting has been moved to 2pm.
New Business
Saba Qadir ’13: I’m a member-at-large, and one of our tasks is to create a major rep list. We wanted the faculty to give us the names of the major reps to give to peer mentors and stuff. I’ve been talking to the deans and Rachel Heiser and there is no such coordinated list. Can anyone think of a better solution to creating a major rep list?
YJ ’12: Can you go to one of the faculty meetings and make an announcement at the beginning or send around a piece of paper and ask them to put down the major rep for their department?
Lindsey Crowe ’14: We’re going to have an SGA pride day. We created tee shirts. We like one that we’ve designed, but we need a second one. If anyone else has an idea about how to represent SGA in another tee shirt email lcrowe@bmc.
Blair Smith ’12: Are they free or are people buying them?
Lindsey Crowe ’14: They would be ten dollars. I would like to do a straw poll. Who would buy a shirt.
Straw poll: most people would not.
Meeting adjourned: 8:24pm