SGA Meeting 10/28/12
Vrinda starts the meeting at 1:10pm
Absent: Alice Fischer, Kayla Bondi, Sarah Bristow, Molly Kaufman, Jenn Burns, Lija Geller, Maddy Court, Kersti Francis, Kelly Wilkinson, Xavia Miles, Alexandra Kirsch, Raminta Holden, Nikki Ditto, Neha Kamran, Devanshi Vaid.
Vrinda Varia ‘13: first of all, happy Lantern Night. As you all know we moved the meeting up because it is Lantern Night. Before we move onto announcements, we just wanted to make a couple notes. We are so excited to have a full assembly. New assembly members, please familiarize yourself with the meeting procedures and other SGA policies. They can be found on the SGA blog. If you read through the minutes it will probably be very helpful to you because you can find out what we have been up to since the beginning of the year. As a reminder, all of these positions are elected and they are elected because you guys stood on a platform and said you would correlate with whomever your constituent base is. So please make sure you are taking a hold on your initiatives. That is this whole idea of self-governance; you guys are pursuing your own initiatives and we are here to help you support that.
Announcements:
Karina Siu ‘14: cross country had they championships this Saturday, and Christina was 6th out of 112 racers with a time of around 21 something in the 5k, about 3.2 miles. Claudia came in 15th, so I think they are both going on to regionals cross country meet. Crew was at seven sister’s crew regatta and got 5th. We have officially, besides cross country, closed the fall season of sports, and the winter season, including swimming, basketball, and indoor track will start soon.
Muna Aghaalnemer ‘13: a reminder, Assembly members, please send the Members-at-Large, your pictures and spirit animals. We have a few responses now, and we want to get the board put together.
Tyler Garber ‘14: appointments applications are being accepted from Tuesday until November 11th, which is a Sunday. Be on a look out for the application on Moodle. The appointed positions include:
- Access Services Representative
- Computer Access Coordinator
- Customs Committee
- Financial Aid Advisory Board
- Independent Major Representative
- Orientation Reorganization Committee
Diana Tive ‘15: if you want to stay after the SGA meeting today and have us take a picture for you, we can do that and get your spirit animal. Just let us know.
Sowmya Srinivasan ‘13: grievances for clubs are due tomorrow October 29th at 8:00am. So if you have not seen the link, see me after wards and I will send it to you. Maximum for $750 for all grievances so keep that in mind when you are requesting.
Vrinda Varia ‘13: Pets on the Green is on the 30th from 3-5pm. This would be in the case that there is no hurricane. So if there is one, we will post an email about it. As of right now it is still being held. Bryn Mawr is also installing solar panels by Cambrian row. So yay Bryn Mawr! The Albert and Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women’s Education is sponsoring an essay competition, and you can come and see the flyer afterwards if you are interested. It is an essay competition for the question: how has the Bryn Mawr college experience made you the person you are today? There is a cash prize of $500. It is due November 30th. Also Quita Woodward was recently renovated, so check it out. It is a nice space.
Board of Trustees Report
Vrinda Varia ’13: Yichun Fu, Alexis De La Rosa, and myself attended the Board of Trustees meeting on October 6th. Yichin is going to come and tell us some of the things that went down.
Yichun Fu ’13: I am one of the Board of Trustees Representatives, and during the Board of Trustees meeting, the Board of Trustees reported that our finance of the college is generally healthy. That the fiscal year 2012 audit was completed with no problems and the process was smooth. They have 1.7million surplus from last year because of the very good strategic plan from the Finance Committee. Our investment for the full year was very diversified. For the annual fund, we had 100% trustee participation goal reached again, which is very good. They are also looking for potential donors which will start in November to meet people. For building and grounds committee, they reported the completion of Merion Green, except for the parking lot, and also landscape and structural repairs. They are also going to discuss the plan for next summer in later meetings, they are also going to discuss in February, renovating Park Science. For the digital task force and SEEDS, they visited other liberal arts colleges to see how all of this technology will benefit the college, and to understand how to shift our academic experience. They are also continuing their conversation with Haverford to build our identity in a global community. This will be our first step to have a more globalized approach for the college. The Board of Trustees this week was also very focused on getting feedback from students about our research experience on campus. They had a dinner and hosted a desert to discuss students’ research experience and how we find research opportunities, what kind of support we got from the college in that process, and how to get funding. They are also very interested in investing more resources to help us, especially students who have interest in pre-professional careers that require more pre-professional preparation, such as business, consulting, and finance should reach their career interests. So they think it is a good plan to have these small workshops during fall break and winter break and will expand these types of programs. We are going to report as student representatives during the February meeting. So the student reps will be me, Vrinda, Alexis, one from graduate school of arts and sciences, and one from social works. If you have any questions about the meeting in October or in February, please contact one of us.
Recap of Plenary
Vrinda Varia ‘13: all of you should know that Plenary was on October 7th. Four resolutions were presented, and all four resolutions were passed. We wanted to open it out to get feedback about plenary. Anything you heard from your constituents or noticed yourself that could help Plenary run more smoothly in the future. So are there any comments or questions?
Emily Tong ‘13: I was reading the Bi-Co News afterwards, and Haverford reported that it took them about 30 minutes to get quorum. Have we thought about the time we have had plenary at during the day? I think they have it at night and it seems like it has worked really well for them. Will we take into consideration about the time?
Vrinda Varia ‘13: as some of you may know, Plenary moved its time about 2 hours later last spring. That proved to be really effective. We were having a lot of competition with events that were having this fall. It can be a conversation that we move it to the night time, but I personally don’t make it comfortable in making that juristic of a change unless we are certain that it will get people there. We can send out surveys again if you think it will be a positive change. Another concern is that if we invite staff and administration, their availability at night is different. That is something to keep in mind, but we can definitely send out surveys again.
Karina Siu ‘14: I think Haverford goes faster because they turn off the Wi-Fi. So you can only get it where Plenary is and you cannot get it till Plenary is over. And that was something we were not willing to do because we discussed this last year.
Lindsey Crowe ‘14: there was a vote where someone did say that Haverford does shut off the Wi-Fi and does put it where Plenary is, and we asked if we should do that, but people said no because people would protest not coming to plenary out of spite.
Syona Arora ‘15: it was against the spirit of Plenary because we want more people to come.
Emily Tong ‘13: have we talked to Haverford about their practices? I am not saying that what they do is considered perfect, but it would be worthwhile to hear what they do and the decisions they have made and the committee has agreed to turn off the Wi-Fi.
Vrinda Varia ‘13: so Haverford does not really have an Assembly, there are 15 people who are on their Student-Council and make the decisions. We can definitely reach out to them and hear feedback from that core group of people.
Vicki Sear ‘13: I think it’s a good idea to send out a survey to talk about times. I know a lot of people, myself included could not come because it’s in the middle of the day.
Vrinda Varia ‘13: the only thing I have to respond to that is that Plenary is planned before we leave school in the spring. That is, all of the bookings are done before we leave school so a lot of those decisions are made before people know their schedules because we want to beat out the performing arts series and that kind of thing because Goodhart is a hot commodity. We can negotiate the time within that frame, but I do not know. You know?
Vicki Sear ‘13: yea
Vrinda Varia ‘13: But that is definitely something we can look into doing.
Topics for Big Cheese
Vrinda Varia ‘13: Big Cheese is going to be on November 11th. We usually provide the Big Cheeses and a list of topics that we want to hear about so they can come prepared with responses and information/data for us. There are two things I want to say, we will break into small groups to talk about different issues you want to hear administrative input on. I also want to hear what you think about changing the format of Big Cheese to something more structured. Let me tell you what I am thinking, usually what happens is that we open the mic up to questions, and the topics we discuss now are not necessarily brought up. So what I am think I am going to present to the administration is that the topics we think are most important, they will present on and then we will ask follow-up questions to that presentation for about 5 minutes after. If we feel like the conversation needs to go on you can motion to extend time after. After we have covered all of the topics we wish to discuss, then we will open up to other questions. So if people want to talk about buildings, then we will talk about that for 5 minutes. So if that conversation is past, then it’s past. Does that sound okay? Yeah? Okay so I am going to let the administration that the format has changed. So let’s now break up into small groups. We are going to bring it back to the assembly. Can I have one person from each group come up and discuss the topics they discussed?
Muna Aghaalnemer ‘13: we talked about finances and see how the Grand May Day three years ago affected the budget cuts this year. We just wanted clarifications about that. We also talked about the resolution regarding Perry House and if they have a plan towards that and how feasible it is to make it available for 2015, before they graduate. We also mentioned retention rate and see the situation of that is. Also we wanted more clarification on merit scholarships vs. need base because there was an article about some changes of Bryn Mawr admissions. Last thing is talk to grounds about the friendship poles and have a list of traditions places on campus to make the staff and faculty more aware of traditions and how important they are because apparently they had no idea what they were to us. The general sense of the students is that the students are not happy with where the friendship poles are right now.
Vrinda Varia ’13: you said there was an article; could you send that to me so I can site it?
Muna Aghaalnemer ’13: yeah.
Lindsey Crowe ‘14: we discussed more funding for the Septa tickets into the city, possibly more fan seeing at the turf field, changing and lengthening the time for drop period for classes, the situation about Haffner renovations because there is a rumor going around whether or not Haffner will be closing during the school year next year and opening Rhoads dining hall.
Karina Siu ‘14: Our group also talked about Perry House just to have the talk keep going on because I don’t think it was at the Board of Trustees meeting for campus renovations, bringing up discussion again about 3.5 in our GPA and why we do not have one, is there a possibility of going to one, if not why?
Diana Tive ‘15: we discussed a lot of those things as well. We talked about parking, student parking because it is quite limited and it is stressful for people who pay to have parking on campus and then get tickets because there are no spots that are convenient for them. Brecon is not convenient for a majority of the student population; Brecon is wonderful, but it is just not convenient. We also discussed Perry house and we want to know status updates and that this is a big issue on campus. We talked about knowing about Public Safety on other campuses including Haverford and Swarthmore. There seems to be some disconnect and because there has been violence on other campuses with Bryn Mawr students and that has not been addressed an issue.
Emily Tong ‘13: We also talked about Perry House, some questions about Merion Green and how it has been restructured. I would be interested in hearing from Edd Harmon about what his plan was going into this project and how students will make use of it and how it will prevent water runoff and stuff like that. We had questions about list serves and the creation of the list serves. We were wondering why traditions have just got their own list serve, but seniors were able to create their own.
Vrinda Varia ’13: they just ask for them.
Emily Tong ’13: or maybe why the processes has taken a while. Also we talked about Canaday renovations in the past, where this process is now, and if it is still happening. We had questions about scheduling, so whether Planga has been successful or if we should do something else that the admins recommends. Wi-Fi is slow. At this point we just started complaining. We are wondering whether there is a way to speed up Wi-Fi because it has been particularly slow over the past few days.
Vrinda Varia ‘13: thank you. We have a pretty extensive list. It would be useful if we pick our top five and decide what we really want data and information on. We can ask questions about the other topics, but let’s choose the top 5 we want to hear about. Let’s do a straw vote so by popular demand we will compile a list.
- Finances (i.e. Grand May Day): 17 people
- Resolutions regarding Perry House: 15 people
- Retention rate: 0 people
- Merit vs. need based Scholarships: 12 people
- Grounds (i.e. friendship poles): 12 people
- Septa funding: 13 people
- Lengthening add/drop period: 1 people
- Renovations (i.e. more seating at turf field, Haffner, Canday, Merion Green, student parking): 21 people
- 3.5 in GPA: 16 people
- Public Safety update (i.e. intercollegiate conversation): 10 people
- List serves: 0 people
- Scheduling events (i.e. Planga): 0 people
- Wi-Fi: 0 people
Vrinda Varia ‘13: the top topics we had are renovations, 3.5, Perry House, Septa, merit and need based scholarships, grounds, and finances. There are some of these issues that I think our student reps can look into in our positions. So I will reach out to committees, for example the Public Safety conversation can be talked about by our COPS heads. So we can get responses to those questions and bring them back to the community. I will reach out to the appropriate student body representatives to get responses to those questions. I really really want to reiterate the fact that if I am going to the administration saying that the student body want to hear about these topics, please come with questions about these topics because it kind of makes us look like idiots when we want to hear about these but do not have any questions to ask them about it. So if they are going to spend time and prepare and spend time to find information about these topics, make sure you ask about these topics. Do we stick by these topics? People will come with questions?
Kendra Kelly ‘13: Sarah and I have access to a lot of the information regarding renovations. I am not sure if that is something that we should be presenting on or should present on in the future? Or is there enough questions that the answers should come directly from their mouths?
Vrinda Varia ‘13: I think that renovations, especially since there is a long list for that, perhaps we can talk on some of them and them responding to some of the particular renovations.
Morgan Turner ‘13: can you email those topics out?
Vrinda Varia ‘13: they will be emailed next week with the agenda. We will send you a reminder so you can start compiling questions.