SGA Meeting
Absent: Blair Smith, Sarah Theobald, Adelyn Kishbaugh, Devanshi Vaid, Julia Stuart, Gabby Marangell, Sarah Lovegren, Carmen Lai, Melanie Rowe, Pam Lavin, Julia Fahl, Alice Fischer, Irene Shin, Nora Chong, Lindsey Crowe, Amani Chowdhury, Carolyn Jacoby, Kiki Anizoba, Natalie Zamora, Lynne Ammar, Danyelle Phillips, Emma Geering
EVERYONE IN THE SGA ASSEMBLY HAS TO GO TO PLENARY I PHRASED THAT QUESTION WRONG SO THE ANSWERS “NO THANKS” AND “NAH” ARE NOT APPLICABLE. IF THERE ARE OTHER COMMUNITY MEMBERS WHO WOULD LIKE TO VOLUNTEER EMAIL SGA@BRYNMAWR.EDU.
Announcements
Elizabeth Held ’12: Voting will be tomorrow and Tuesday. If there is a run off election, voting will be on Thursday and Friday. Thanks to those who signed up to table. People who vote will get stickers. If you still want to table there are still open slots. Encourage your friends to vote.
YJ ’12: There will be a Plenary resolution writing workshop on Monday at 8pm.
Lee McClenon ’14: East/West was last night. Thank you to dorm presidents and everyone who helped make it happen.
YJ ’12: There is a screening of Miss Representation this Thursday night. There will be snacks and friends. At the end of the meeting, there will be some posters up front for you to take and put up in living spaces and academic spaces that celebrate 120 years of self-governance.
Budget Voting
Tina Hu ’12: This semester SGA dues are divided as following: Traditions will receive $41,456, Class of 2012 will receive $51,000, NY Times will receive $3,750, Residential Life will receive $9,368, Large Bi-Co will receive $14,659, and all other clubs $108,114.
YJ ’12: We’re going to wait to vote on the budget until we get quorum and move on to a discussion of the yearbook.
Yearbook discussion
YJ ’12: We got the results of the survey from all the class surveys except for 2014. Out of the seniors 48 said they’d be interested in buying a yearbook, 11 said they wouldn’t buy a yearbook. Less than 100 students participated in the survey. Last year we ordered 150 yearbooks. Three went to the archives. They sold for 40 dollars each. We spent 200 dollars in mailing costs. The yearbooks are not finished by the end of the semester. We also have to think about the hours that were spent stuffing the envelope some. The total cost of having a yearbook ended up being 15,000 dollars and there were less than 200 books sold. I’m proposing that we don’t move forward with creating a yearbook since less than 200 people and would cost 15,000 dollars we can open it up for questions or comments.
Lily Scott ’12: I talked to a lot of my friends and a lot of people said they would want one. Nora did a good job of advertising the survey, but maybe we send it out again.
Vrinda Varia ’13: For the people that aren’t graduating, can they just pick up their books on campus? Will that cut down on costs for mailing?
YJ: Yes.
Vrinda Varia ’13: Do we know the demographics of the people who purchased yearbooks?
YJ ’12: No. We only know that 150 were made.
Lee McClenon ’14: So there was no sophomore survey?
YJ ’12: No.
Sharan Mehta ’12: Has a contract already been established, or can we have another company create it?
YJ ’12: First we would need a group of students who are interested in having a yearbook and creating it.
Staw poll: Do you agree or disagree about buying a yearbook?
Most people disagree
YJ ’12: Most people don’t want that have a yearbook. We can do it next year for the class of 2013. We will bring this up later when we have quorum.
Computer Related Appointed Positions
Rebecca Sanders ’12: The idea of reworking the computer related appointed positions came up at the end of last semester when we were talking about getting rid of the position as computer access coordinator. What are people interested in seeing in a computer related position? Right now we have an SGA webmistress and a GoBoard moderator. Are there any computing needs you want address? Do you think it would be valuable to have a liaison between students and information services?
Saba Qadir ‘13: I would like to see someone appointed not necessarily to deal with printing and computing problems, but whose positions would more about handling the people who are doing the blog and Planga and managing SGA material. It would be good that be Mawrk Notes and minutes in more places than just on the SGA blog.
Caroline Kenward ’12: Having the computer related positions consolidated would make it easier for the appointments committee because it’s annoying to interview a lot of people.
Lee McClenon ‘14: It would be smart to have a more flexible position that deals with computing related issues. As GoBoard moderator, Planga kind of falls under my jurisdiction but I feel weird about it because it’s not exactly my job, so the question becomes what is my role? It would be good to have a computer somebody managing different systems who is not the webmistress.
Rebecca Sanders ‘12: We will work on consolidating these positions to make them one entity. Are there any other issues you guys can think of? The last computer access coordinator was interested in digital humanities. Is that an area you see as needing to be addressed?
Lee McClenon ’14: That could fall under the jurisdiction of the new consolidated position.
Vrinda Varia ’13: iPads and ereaders are very new things. Perhaps we could address this later as it comes up.
Kendra Kelly ‘13: I was involved in redesigning tripod so if anyone has any questions about that they can contact me at kjkelly@brynmawr.edu.
YJ ‘13: We really need quorum. Please call your friends who are not here.
Northwestern Letter
YJ ’12: Northwestern emailed about 60 colleges asking them to show solidarity and support of student rights in terms of protesting on campus as a response to what happened at UC Davis. Last week we decided to have fact checkers to go over the document and see what we didn’t agree with and see what wasn’t true. After we hear from them we will move forward and possibly vote.
Sophie Balis-Harris ’12: All of the fact checkers didn’t have a chance to meet together, but II discussed this with Julia Fahl and this is what we came up with. The first two paragraphs were the point of contention. This is where the letter talks about what had happened. The legality of the protest was something was brought up last week. At no points does this letter imply that the protest was legal. Non-violent civil disobedience means that the protest was not legal, was a conscious breech of the law, and that protestors are willing to accept legal consequences as it shows fidelity to the rule of law. The second paragraph mentions civil disobedience again in regards to the manner in which the admin tried to quell the protest. The letter refers to Headwater vs. Humboldt, which defines what constitutes the excess use of police force and which was also dealing with illegal actions. We don’t agree with the quote they used, but we agree that civil disobedience is something important to our nation identity, to human rights, and to student rights. The letter doesn’t say the students were right in what they were trying to protest, but a conversation about how police violence is wrong is important as the way our ability to protest is limited affects our democracy as a whole.
Mary Margaret Peebles ’13: Chancellors for UC Davis issued an investigation against this, which offers a day-by-day analysis. UC Davis tried to negotiate with the protestors and did get them to leave. After the protestors failed to follow the orders of police on campus, the police resorted to using pepper stray. I’m not arguing that they should have, but the situation was pushed to a point of last resort. Another article in the Chronicle of Higher Education says that the Supreme Court gives the police the right to limit a protest. This is a very complicated situation and there were attempts to dismiss the protest in non-violent manner, but when that was resisted they did resort to pepper spray. There’s going to be a report issued about what happened on campuses where the protests took place on February 21st.
Angela Allard ‘14: So it was okay for them to use pepper spray?
Mary Margaret Peebles ‘13: The issue is that the letter makes it seem like non-violent attempts were not attempted and they were.
Sophie Balis-Harris ’12: The issue isn’t that there weren’t other methods used before hand. The methods that they used were illegal and against the law of our constitution. could make an impact on the way our democracy functions because it limits protest.
Mary Margaret Peebles ’13: The DA has not pursued charges of students and policy officers. They understand the issue of legality
YJ ’12: I’m going recap what we talked about. Sophie talked about how this was a matter of civil disobedience and Mary Margaret said that attempts to disperse the protest peacefully should be included in the letter. So we can conclude that there nothing incorrect about the letter except that they did not mention the fact that admin did use peaceful attempts first. At the last meeting, everyone agreed this was something that was important that Bryn Mawr should address. We can move forward in a couple of ways. We can sign it, but the email we send to them would include that we are worried about the fact that letter doesn’t include that admin wanted to move forward peacefully. We can not sign it and write an article in the bi co news saying we support the letter, but we can’t sign it because of this one point. Or we can not sign it and not do anything about it. We could write a letter for ourselves, but honestly I don’t think we should do that.
Sarah Jordan ’13: What does UC Davis think about this letter? Why is it coming from Northwestern and not from them? I understand that other schools want to take action but what does UC Davis want from this?
Aya Martin Seaver ‘13: A large number of institutions that are signing this a private. I would like to see what the response of public institutions is to the protests because they have a different relationship with admin than we do.
Emma Condy ‘12: We shouldn’t be signing for our whole campus.
YJ ’12: We would be signing as SGA.
Emma Condy ‘12: SGA includes the whole student body. I haven’t polled every member of the dorm. I don’t know that all of my constituents would be ok with this.
Sophie Balis-Harris ’12: We’d be signing as the SGA assembly.
Emma Condy ‘12: I don’t feel comfortable signing it unless everyone is okay with it. This is something that should be sent out and have individual’s names on it.
YJ ’12: We’re going to table this discussion and I will contact Northwestern and UC Davis to see what they think. Your job is to represent the student body in every vote and speak to your constituents.
YJ ’12: We have one agenda item left which is voting on whether or not we want the deans and J Mac at plenary.
In regards to moving the meeting time because of the Super Bowl – most times half of the people don’t know who’s playing and half the people don’t come because they have a conflicting schedule. This is the time when we vote on things. There’s only one more real meeting left. We should consider if it make sense for us to move for the Buper Bowl. I would love to watch the Super Bowl but I would definitely miss it.
We’re going to have proxy votes for Adelyn and Gabby.
Budget voting:
I approve: Everyone.
Yearbook
Yes: Lily Scott, Emma Rosenblum, Adelyn Kishbaugh, Courtney Pinkerton.
No: Gabby Marangell, Saba Qadir, Eva Sharma, Kate Ciarlante, Natalie Zamora, Christine Calderon, Kendra Kelly, Lili Elsesser, Syona Arora, Nkechi Ampah, Isidora Armentrout, Jessie Abreu, Angela Allard, Aya Martin Seaver, Alice Fischer, Sarah Jordan, Mary Margaret Peebles, Daniele Arad-Neeman, Mo Alfonso, Lee McClenon, Blair Smith, Kelly Wilkinson, Lindsey Crowe, Elizabeth Held
Abstain: Karina Siu, Lynne Ammar, Sharan Mehta, Sarah Theobald
Plenary:
Just the president should be invited: No one.
Just the deans should be invited: Isidora Armentrout, Jessie Abreu, Angela Allard, Sophie Balis-Harris
The president and the deans should come: Saba Qadir, Amanda Beardall, Carolyn Jacoby, Christine Calderon, Kendra Kelly, Lili Elsesser, Aya Martin Seaver, Alice Fischer, Sarah Jordan, Mary Margaret Peebles, Kelly Wilkinson, Lindsey Crowe, Emma Rosenblum, Mo Alfonso, Daniele Arad-Neeman, Lee McClenon, Blair Smith, Karina Siu, Lynne Ammar, Sharan Mehta, Sarah Theobald, Adelyn Kishbaugh, Elizabeth Held, Emma Condy, Debbie Deegan, Eva Sharma
No one should be invited: Lily Scott, Kate Ciarlante
Abstain: Deb Matus, Kiki Anizoba, Dede Buckman, Syona Arora, Nkechi Ampah
J Mac and the deans should be able to speak
Yes: Courtney Pinkerton, Saba Qadir, Eva Sharma, Christine Calderon, Aya Martin Seaver, Alice Fischer, Emma Rosenblum, Sarah Jordon, Mary Margaret Peebles, Lee McClenon, Mo Alfonso, Daniele Arad-Neeman, Karina Siu, Lynne Ammar, Elizabeth Held, Adelyn Kishabugh, Emma Condy
No: Amanda Beardall, Kendra Kelly, Lili Elsesser, Kate Ciarlante, Natalie Zamora, Syona Arora, Nkechi Ampah, Angela Allard, Kelly Wilkinson, Lindsey Crowe, Elizabeth Held
Abstain: Deb Matus, Kiki Anizoba, Dede Buckman, Lily Scott, Isidora Armentrout, Jessie Abreu
YJ ’12: We are inviting the deans and J Mac to Plenary and they can speak.
Danielle Arad-Neeman ’14: Can we just vote on the Northwestern letter now, since not in our interest to spend so much time on it
YJ ’12: We should give people time to sink about it, and we need to think about how we want to have this conversation next week.