SGA Meeting 11/10/13
Natalie calls the meeting to order at 7:10 PM.
Absent: Colin Baumann, Karina Siu, Sara Kim, Lindsey Crowe, Angela Blatz, Lucy Gleysteen, Jessica Arbon, Jenna Myers, Emma Burke
Announcements:
Emma Rosenblum ’14: We have an announcement from Res-Co. At a past Plenary we were allotted a Res-Co fund and we have to report when we use it. We have $901 for the year and this past week Res-Co voted to give $163 to Pem West, $150 to Pem East, and $130 to Radnor for various events.
Anna Kalinsky ‘15: Questions? Contact us or your respective dorm reps.
Coco and Nicole Soohoo:
Coco Wang ‘16: Asian American Heritage Week starts tomorrow followed by the annual ASA Culture Show. Tell your friends to come during the week!
Nicole Soohoo ‘16: Tomorrow is Lisa Lee who is the diversity program manager of Facebook and founder of thickdumplingskin.com. This event was funded by Special Events Funding so we hope everyone can come out.
Daniele Arad-Neeman ‘14: We were invited to attend a special meeting of faculty on Wednesday about the honor code. It’s an important time to be talking about it because finals are coming up. We are working with Amani to get information across. If anyone has any other information or questions they want to get across to the faculty let us know.
Erin Saladin ‘16: We were only there for the first part of meeting. We can tell you about what we were part of if you want.
Elizabeth Vandenberg: I’m on the constitutional review committee. We are revising constitution including portions on your positions. Please get back to one of us. You can email me at evandenber@bmc. If you hold the position you can change how the position is represented in the constitution!
Rebecca Cook ’15: Appointed positions are still open: Access services representative, Customs Committee, Customs Committee Co-Heads, Plenary Committee, Orientation and Reorganization Committee, Hell Week Committee and the Constitutional Review Committee. Some of these need more members. If you know anyone who is interested encourage them to apply! The applications are on the SGA Moodle page.
Amani Chowdhury ’14: This Tuesday is the onor code inside and outside the Bryn Mawr bubble event! It would be great if you could come. Please RSVP to the event. You can use the space to suggest what you want to hit with the alums.
Natalie Kato ’14: Please continue to encourage your constituents to fill out the Plenary survey. We have about 140 responses and would like more. The link can be found here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1IDBWSm7Z7ShK2zdiXN_RvwI5KqokjkSXGzOyBrLJV7k/viewform. It’s on the Facebook page, our Twitter page, and the SGA website.
Your 2 Cents:
Natalie Kato ’14: At the Seven Sisters conference there was a policy that other institutions have with regard to posting and we want to see if Bryn Mawr wants to incorporate it into the posting policy. For events, for advertisements for events they recommended that students include a clause about “if you need accommodations, contact Access Services”. We wanted to hold a straw poll to see the interest to put it into the posting policy. Does anybody have any questions?
Seeing a sort of clause in the posting policy regarding access services: many
Not in favor: none
Abstain: some
We will present a potential clause to put in and bring it back to a meeting.
College Budgeting Meeting Report:
Amy Chen ’14: Recently the Board of Trustees and faculty, staff, and other representatives came together for the college budget committee. What was discussed was the overall financial situation. This is the fourth consecutive year that has not increased net tuition revenue – it stayed flat. There was a 13.5% increase in financial aid which is concerning for the college because revenue is 50% of the operating budget.
Tuition per student declined again. It is $2200 less than in 2009.
Bryn Mawr fund has decreased.
The operating budget lost 1.4 million dollars because of the costs of campaigns and academic innovations and one-time costs. They do not see that this will happen again because there will be an increase in tuition.
By the way, everything is from 2013.
We used 15% of the average endowment value, which is our market value from our investments.
Our biggest investment assets – real estate, oil and gas 17%; internationa equity 23%; private and venture capitalism 18%.
The undergraduate discount rate 15% – how much you’re not paying from the full Bryn Mawr price tag.
Gifts are not on point since the economic downturn but gifts in endowment have never been bigger.
Over the past 10 years increase faculty salaries and facility renovations. This is on part with Haverford and Swarthmore.
Our student population is the second smallest undergraduate in our peer group. We are 60% below average. We are smaller than Swarthmore and larger than Haverford. The sudent-faculty ratio is 8:2 which is in the middle. It’s the same as Haverford and Swarthmore.
There was a 6.1% increase in the Graduate School of Social Work. The net tuition is over 1 million dollars under budget because of the unexpected increase in discount rates from last year. The post-bac program made 200 million dollars in tuition revenue. We will continue to invest in this plan.
The bookstore outsourced and is now managed by Follett Higher Education Group. This gave $52,000 to college revenue. Other positives are the Thorne School and conferences and events over the summer and through the year.
Elizabeth Vandenberg ‘16: Will we and our constituents be able to see a copy of this report?
Amy Chen ‘14: We can attach it to the email.
Natalie Kato ‘14: If anybody has any questions they think of, contact us or John Griffith directly with concerns or questions.
Preparation for Big Cheese:
Natalie Kato ‘14: These are the questions that I sent to Emily Espenshade who was going to review and then see who would be the best to review:
- Housing: timeline for Haffner, Perry house incorporation, are we going to use Overbrook, Mermont, and Haverford, issues regarding housing for students.
- Student employment: policies changed from last year in regards to work-study, changes influencing students next year, policies remaining in place or are they temporary.
- Divestment: is there anything happening with regards to divestment at Bryn Mawr, Board of Trustees on-campus discussion about sustainability coordinator, is that something in which they are looking to invest.
CEO/CPD/Pensby/LILAC: CEO planning to collaborate in future? If so what can we look forward to? How is LILAC being utilized? CEO and CPD together?
Access services: what have they been involved in? Goals and initiatives? Accessibility in the new dorm? Any tangible plans for access in the dorm?
Any additional questions to these? Expanding on some, didn’t encompass anything that people want to get out of the topics.
Marian Slocum ‘15: For Haffner can we add something about the design of the dorm and whether or not we’ll be able to see a more detailed plan?
Natalie Kato ‘14: The people who are coming are tentative: Jerry Berenson, Mary Osirim, Judy Balthazar, and Kim Cassidy. I was told that Jerry would be showing plans.
Emma Rosenblum ‘14: For housing can we ask about the way financial aid works if you choose to live off campus? I think a lot of people brought questions to me as Res-Co head.
Natalie: I think one of the potential topics was financial aid and we didn’t vote to use it. We can ask it during the Q&A portion but we are going to try to get people to talk about financial aid so that we can ask it during that time and if there’s someone who is more qualified to answer it we can have them at a later meeting.
I also really quickly want to review the form for Big Cheese forum. What happens it that the agenda will be roll call then big cheese forum then announcements, your 2 cents, old business, new business. The portion of SGA is going to come after the forum.
Each big cheese in attendance will be given a certain amount of time to speak to the questions we are posing. Once they are over students may ask questions that are pertaining to that topic and only that topic. If we need to extend time the representative council can do so for 1 minute and then we will move on to a new topic. Once the question is answered discussion will move to open Q&A and you can ask any questions.
Review of Student Finance Committee Bylaws Rough Draft:
Natalie Kato ‘14: We are not voting at this meeting. This is just to review content changes. It’s really for the treasurer and the SFC to get feedback about how and what these changes are and how they look and how you guys feel.
Amy Chen ’14: There are a few major changes. The creation ff the annual fund is one. This fund is basically taking over what is covered by average club budgets. When they apply they apply for big events that aren’t special events because they are annual. This came out of the budgeting process at the beginning of the semester when groups were dissatisfied. This way you apply for your event and the representative council approves it and then you get the rest of your club budget which will cover weekly meetings or smaller events that won’t cost 2000 dollars.
We took out the clause about fundraising due to previous year’s issues due to fundraising and responsibility. Some people will fundraise and use SGA money to buy cupcakes but then give them out for free. It’s hard on the SFC to keep track of fundraising events. We decided that we will pay for stuff that can last – like cake pans, not ingredients, so you can keep fundraising with the same events.
We will separate clubs and other groups. Committees don’t need the same thing. They are different funding processes
Gifts are all given $18 per gift. Some groups would spend $40 and some would spend $2. This covers welcome bags because we are changing the timeline of the budgeting process because of the annual fund and other club processes.
Questions? Comments? I can type them up.
Pamudu Tennakoon ’15: Does the annual fund affect traditions, which has to go through SGA funding?
Amy Chen ’14: No, it’s mentioned in the bylaws that this is not applicable to traditions because your entire budget is annual events.
Natalie Kato ‘14: Any other questions? Clarifications? These were emailed out to the representative council and to the club leaders on campus through the SFC Moodle page.
We will look forward to presenting these soon in the near future for the representative council to vote on whether they approve or not. If anyone has any questions that come up or arise just from reviewing the bylaws feel free to get in touch with Amy at ychen01@bmc.
Old Business:
Rebecca Cook ’15: I will be presenting on the online New York Times that was mentioned last meeting.
There’s a post on the IS blog which is.blogs.brynmawr.edu. Pretty much the instructions are: visit nytimes.com/pass, register with your BMC email, and with that you claim a 24 hour pass for online access for the New York Times. Once your pass has expired you can log in as a retuning user to claim a new pass. Access does not include the e-reader or crosswords. That’s it! That’s pretty wonderful.
Sofia Oleas ‘15: Are we going to have the paper versions still?
Natalie Kato ‘14: Yes.
Rebecca Cook ’15: We get so many passes because we have so many paper copies so we’re just letting people access it instead of letting it go to waste.
Natalie Kato ’14: something I talked to Lisa Zernicke about was the food waiver. We requested a list of example items that would require food waivers. Lisa said: everything. Every food you have at a club meeting will require a fodo waiver. Be mindful of that when you have food or beverages at club meetings or events on campus. Questions? Please feel free to get in touch with Lisa or Mary Beth because they want to encourage people to be using food waivers more often.
Jessica Ferriera ‘14: does that include teas?
Natalie Kato ‘14: Yes it includes teas.
Something else I wanted to get –last meeting’s questions regarding the health center. These questions can be forwarded to the health advisory board.
Natalie Zamora ‘14: Recently I was applying for a scholarship, and it requested how much tuition goes to health insurance. It’s not on the websites. I called so many people! They gave me so many numbers. I didn’t get an answer. Is there a way to get that kind of information without calling and going through the website?
Phoebe Jordan ‘15: Is anything being done about the waiting time? Even with an appointment you have to wait so long.
Natalie Kato ’14: They will be in contact with Dr. Kerr.
Emma Rosenblum ‘14: Is there information available about where to get a second opinion or different doctors that might accept different insurance plans? Some people are not always comfortable to talk to Dr. Kerr. Can that be provided to us?
Erin Saladin ‘16: Is there anything they can do to prevent spread of disease through dorms? People get sick and go back in their room and everyone gets sick. There could be some measures taken to help prevent some of that.