Bryn Mawr College SGA Meeting – March 29, 2015
Roll Call
Announcements
Big Cheese Forum Topic Discussion
Old Business
New Business
Roll Call
Present: Anna Kalinsky, Anna Sargeant, Pam Gassman, Dijia Chen, Delaney Williams, Kristian Sumner, Xavia Miles, Makala Forster, Grace Kim, Chanel Williams, Aleja Newman, Odeymarys Garrido, Ann Tran, Connie Lam, Stephanie Montalvan, Shaina Robinson, Lyntana Brougham, Dani Weismann, Angie Koo, Gabrielle Crossnoe, Nkechi Ampah, Carly Breen, Melanie Bahti, Alexis McDonald, Julie Henrikson, Joy Chan, Mikah Farbo, Lindsay Burak, Rachel Feynman, Leigh Peterson, Prerana Vaddi, Leah Kahler, Olivia Hollinger, Elaine Holehan, Sofia Oleas, Natalie DiFrank, Xavia Miles, Marian Slocum, Matison Hearn-Desautels, Shakari Badgett, Jillian Moroney, Sneha Bendapudi, Catherine Wagner.
Absent: Heidi Gay, Pamudu Tennakoon, Swetha Narasimhan, Rhea Manglani, Ava Hawkinson, Brenna Levitin, Miranda Smith, Julia Kim, Jessica Bernal, Modupe Olufemi
Charlie Bruce ‘16 called the meeting to order at 7:10pm
Roll Call
Angela Motte ’17: Just letting everyone know that in accordance with the state of Pennsylvania’s laws I am informing you that I will be recording this meeting.
Present: Anna Kalinsky, Anna Sargeant, Pam Gassman, Dijia Chen, Delaney Williams, Kristian Sumner, Xavia Miles, Makala Forster, Grace Kim, Chanel Williams, Aleja Newman, Odeymarys Garrido, Ann Tran, Connie Lam, Stephanie Montalvan, Shaina Robinson, Lyntana Brougham, Dani Weismann, Angie Koo, Gabrielle Crossnoe, Nkechi Ampah, Carly Breen, Melanie Bahti, Alexis McDonald, Julie Henrikson, Joy Chan, Mikah Farbo, Lindsay Burak, Rachel Feynman, Leigh Peterson, Prerana Vaddi, Leah Kahler, Olivia Hollinger, Elaine Holehan, Sofia Oleas, Natalie DiFrank, Xavia Miles, Marian Slocum, Matison Hearn-Desautels, Shakari Badgett, Jillian Moroney, Sneha Bendapudi, Catherine Wagner.
Absent: Heidi Gay, Pamudu Tennakoon, Swetha Narasimhan, Rhea Manglani, Ava Hawkinson, Brenna Levitin, Miranda Smith, Julia Kim, Jessica Bernal, Modupe Olufemi
Angela Motte ‘17: Thanks you guys!
Charlie Bruce ’16: Next on the agenda is Announcements. During this item, any new items for discussion, questions, or announcements can be made. We have allotted ten minutes for this agenda item.
Announcements
Alexis McDonald ‘17: Hello, I will be reading a statement in the place of Rhea Manglani. Due to recent thefts on campus, please remind students to keep their doors locked and contact public safety immediately for missing items. At the moment, I do not have any additional information to provide. If anyone has feedback, comments, or questions as to how the thefts were handled or about Bryn Mawr’s party policy feel free to contact me in addition to public safety or just me if you want me to bring it up as a general thing with P-safe. My email is: rmanglani@brynmawr.edu. Thank you.
Aleja Newman ‘17: The RnM Spring Show is April 11th at LPAC at Swarthmore College around 8pm. We have a dress rehearsal Friday at 7pm; you can also go see that. You need to contact me to get on that special list however! Show is April 11th at 8pm
Dress rehearsal is April 10th 7:30 pm, but you must be on the list to attend this event.
Sofia Oleas ‘15 and Anna Kalinsky ‘15: As Residence Council Heads we would like to announce that Mock Room Draw will take place this Thursday in Dalton 300 starting at 830pm. Any questions should be directed to resco@brynmawr.edu
Gabrielle Smith ‘17: Applying for an appointed position through SGA is a great way to get involved and make change in the Bryn Mawr community! Applications for the April Appointments Round will be accepted until April 8 at 11:59 pm! Make sure to sign up for an interview after submitting your application
Application: https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://goo.gl/forms/PvswVrjYQl&k=Zn6W9g0QMlyJSNRckEnWug%3D%3D%0A&r=sChfAqRXzPHGUTAqUiwlT97aM3UxH12vmV%2BchAvL89nvBvUYkFWYEJeioUe%2Bk7Xn%0A&m=Ol0DxojQ4Qe469eYj5cQxXaD%2FZJBazEpMeDxdq7m5II%3D%0A&s=43c0df8f6c97db356b8a33687722cb915ef1f03d57a87ffd372f8f2b1f1ba082
Interview: https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=https://doodle.com/nxczh2x9es3w8m2r&k=Zn6W9g0QMlyJSNRckEnWug%3D%3D%0A&r=sChfAqRXzPHGUTAqUiwlT97aM3UxH12vmV%2BchAvL89nvBvUYkFWYEJeioUe%2Bk7Xn%0A&m=Ol0DxojQ4Qe469eYj5cQxXaD%2FZJBazEpMeDxdq7m5II%3D%0A&s=d03a6b5cb276644c77dfe0ed324f20f7b0ed362dc3a3963a66bc17a36b2915b4
Positions up for reappointment are:
Board of Trustees Rep
Bryn Mawr Concert Series Heads
Bryn Mawr Concert Series Officers
Conflict Resolution Committee
Student Curriculum Committee
Film Series Committee Head
Film Series Committee
Seven Sisters Representative
SGA Web Mistress/Master/Mistex
Green Ambassador Co-heads
S.TEAM
Student Finance Committee
Health Center Advisory Board
Plenary Committee
Campus Greening Representative
Outreach and Communications Committee
Sustainable Food Committee
If you have any questions please email gbsmith@brynmawr.edu
Charlie Bruce ’16: Any additional announcements? Nope, ok lets move on to the Big Cheese Forum!
Big Cheese Forum Topic Discussion
Charlie Bruce ’16: The Big Cheese Forum is a chance for students to talk to administrators about campus issues. All Bryn Mawr undergraduates are welcome to propose topics to discuss and administrators to invite for the Big Cheese Forum. Past forum topics have included renovations, admissions, hiring procedures, and financial aid. The forum is also open to admitted students, since it’s the same weekend as admitted students weekend. The forum is emblematic of the unique ability of Bryn Mawr’s system of Self-Governance to facilitate a dialogue between students and senior administrators. Instead of the panel format of past years, the structure this year will be an open discussion between students and facilitators relating to topics of past years. We will prepare this Sunday a set of questions to be sent to the administrators in advance. If you can’t make it to the meeting, and have topics you’d like to see raised, please contact the SGA Eboard at sga@brynmawr.edu. Now, we’re going to have a break out session where we make lists of administrators and topics we’d like to discuss. Please break off into seven groups. Please make sure someone is taking notes. We’re going to save those notes, and use them. I will invite the administrators, and we’ll inform you of who accepts. We have allotted 15 minutes for this session.
Sofia Oleas ‘15: Does anyone have a charger so Molly’s computer doesn’t die?
Chanel Williams ‘16: I do!
Molly MacDougall ‘16: Thank you!
Charlie Bruce ’16: Thank you! Ok, so we’re going to start counting off.
Students break off into groups to discuss the presented topic.
Charlie Bruce ’16: Our time has ended, does anyone want to extend time?
Anna Kalinsky ’15: I motion to extend time 5 minutes.
Kristian Sumner ‘17: I second.
Students continue to discuss the presented topic until time is called.
Charlie Bruce ‘16: Ok! Can all of the note takers please come up here? Thank you!
Note takers please read out what your group has talked about. I will write down the topics and the administrators. I’m going to read out what the common topics and administrators are at the end. If anyone has any strong opinions we can talk about it then.
Nora Scheland ‘15: Hello, I was in group 3. We talked about our recent admissions policy change and we really want to invite Pelema Morrice. We discussed Public Safety in regards to theft and party policy, as well as party preparedness. We talked about off campus housing, so we were thinking of inviting Reslife. We also want to invite Student Actives. We want to see more detailed floor plans for Haffner, also, we heard rumor that budget for Haffner is over.
Aleja Newman ‘17: I had group 5. So, we wanted to talk about the new admissions policy, in terms of how our health center can handle it. We also want to know how this will affect athletics. We want to talk about Perry House. We want to have Stephanie Nixon with us because we think she is a good resource. I heard that Brecon has a garden behind it somewhere, and we really want to know more about it. Also, can we invite Ed Harman? I think he’s in charge of building and grounds. Anyway, we want to also know what Haffner will look like. We heard a rumor about a 3-D photo? Also, we want to talk to P-Safe. We also want to talk about accessibility and removable ramps. Oh! And we want to talk about the community day of learning, and invite President Cassidy.
Anna Kalinsky ‘15: Hey guys! I was in group 1. Really quickly, ResCo hat back on, the dorm formally known as Haffner is formally known as Haffner, and doesn’t have an official name yet, but if you know anyone with 10 million dollars, we can name it after them. Ok, so we wanted to invite Provost Osirim to give a follow up for the community day of learning and talk about future plans in regards to this. We wanted to invite Stephanie Nixon, too. We want to talk about Perry House, the Health Center and the pay rates in the dining halls. We want to bring in KCass, Pelema, and someone who can talk about the closing of Sweet Briar, and how that will affect us.
Anna Sargeant ’15 and Nkechi Ampah ‘15: (Anna) Hey guys, we’re group 4. We had a lot of feelings so there are two of us. First of all we want to talk about financial aid. We also want to talk about the health center and counseling services regarding self-care. During the beginning of the year, like Customs Week for example, we really put a lot of pressure on self-care, but it’s like when you actually do self-care, you get emails from your deans and professor. (Nkechi) We also wanted to bring in PSafe to discuss all the thefts and the parties of this year. (Anna) We wanted Angie to come in to talk about the dorm formally know as Haffner. (Nkechi) We wanted someone from outreach to come and talk to us, because we thought it needed to be made more accessible. (Anna) We also wanted Stephanie Nixon to come and talk about the community day of learning because it’s like really important. (Nkechi) We also wanted to talk about student employment. (Anna) Yeah, and off of that we also wanted to talk about how shitty, sorry, how poorly some of the employees are treated. (Nkechi) We also want to talk about the weather with Tom King.
Grace Kim ‘16: Hey everyone! I’m from group 7, and we talked about a lot of the things already mentioned, so I’ll try to keep ours concise and clear. We wanted to talk to the CFO about rising tuition costs, and to someone from admissions about the Sweet Briar transfers. We also wanted someone from Psafe to talk about the thefts. We also want to discuss the problems of the health center in general. We thought it would be important to invite President Cassidy and Richard Clow. We really thought it would be beneficial to have dining services give us an update. We also thought a discussion on the dorm formally known as Haffner would be a good topic to discuss, as well as the rumor of refurbishing the Campus Center.
Elizabeth Vandenberg ‘16: I’m from group 6, and we also talked about the new dorm status where we’d like KCass, Angie Sheets, and the dorm architect to be present. We duplicated the request for Mike Ramsey and Lil Burroughs to talk about the party policy, recent security stuff and the parties on campus in general. We also wanted to talk to Angie Sheets about the bursting pipes.
Anna Kalinsky ’15: You would want to talk to Harold about that.
Elizabeth Vandenberg ‘16: Thanks Anna K! So all the other TriCo schools have 2 bus stops, and we would like another bus stop by Brecon and Batten. That way everything would be more accessible. Anna, please correct me, but that means we would want to invite Steve Green, Head of Transportation?
Anna Kalinsky ’15: Yes!
Elizabeth Vandenberg ‘16: Thank you! Also, the status of the Pagoda. It used to be a student space, but now it’s used for payroll, and we want to know if we can have another student space.
Anna Sargeant ’15: So a little fun fact- the Pagoda used to be a woman’s center, to be able to give support to woman who needed it. Maybe we can convert it to fulfill that same purpose, but instead to provide a safe space for students with our new admissions policy?
Angela Motte ’17: Hey everyone! I was taking notes for group 2. We wanted to invite Richard Clow, President Cassidy, Judy Balthazar, Dean Heyduk, Provost Osirim, our new chief financial officer, Stephanie Nixon, Ruth Lindeborg, Pelema Morrice, and Stephanie Nixon. We talked a lot about student pay rates, and park renovations. We also talked about faculty interactions with students, and how to build a more open relationship between the two. We thought it would be really important to be able to have a way to review our deans and faculty advisors, in a similar process that we use to review our professors. Speaking of that, we also thought it would be a good idea to review our professors once midterm, and once at the end of the year, rather than just once at the end of the year. We wanted to bring up adjunct faculty. We thought it would be important for faculty and staff, regardless of how long they would be at Bryn Mawr, to have training on title IX, diversity and inclusion. We also wanted to talk about the community day of learning, and how we can do that again next year. We also wanted to talk about our new admissions decision. Finally, we wanted to talk about Haffner.
Charlie Bruce ’16: Thank you!
Aleja Newman ‘17: Someone brought up dining services multiple times. I wanted to add, that our take out policy currently is that if we get takeout during lunch, we can’t come back into lunch again. We should talk about this, and change this.
Rachel Bruce ‘18: It’s just like when you get out of class at 4, you can’t really get a solid meal time in.
Elizabeth Vandenberg ‘16: Also, in regards to training, I don’t think faculty and staff get diversity training, maybe talking about adding that in.
Natalie DiFrank ‘17: Also about her comment, how to support health issues and individual issues that can arise.
Melanie Bahti ‘16: I think Angela wrote this down, but adjunct faculty. This is a big issue right now. Generally, they get poor benefits, low salary, and rarely do they get job security. I think this a very important issue.
Aleja Newman ‘17: I think we should invite someone from the Provost’s office.
Charlie Bruce ‘16: Mary Osirim was mentioned?
Aleja Newman ‘17: However it works.
Charlie Bruce ‘16: Mary Osirim is our Provost, and she will be invited. Thank you all for your participation!
The big cheese forum is not going to be instead of the SGA meeting- we will start at 7:10, and we will have out SGA meeting afterwards.
Nkechi Ampah ‘15: Are admitted students for sure coming to the big cheese?
Charlie Bruce ‘16: Yes, it will be on the packet they are given. I’m going to read out what you folks have been saying, also if you took notes please send them to Angela.
So Richard Clow, President Cassidy, Judy Balthazar, Dean Heyduk, Provost Osirim, our new chief financial officer, Stephanie Nixon, Ruth Lindeborg, Pelema Morrice, and Stephanie Nixon, Mary Beth Horvath, the folks from dining services, the architect of Haffner.
Anna Kalinsky ‘15: Joseph Marra, the architect.
Charlie Bruce ‘16: Ok, topics- the change of admissions policy, how student will be treated in various ways, the public safety in recent incidents, off campus housing, party policy.
Anna Sargeant ‘15: In order to change party policy, we’d need to do a lot of work.
Anna Kalinsky ’15: Can it just be changed by a plenary resolution?
Anna Sargeant ‘15: I talked to Mary Beth about it earlier, and no, it has to be a bi co thing so we’d need to get a committee, and talk to ResCo, and it’s just a lot. Swat changed their policy last year, but we’re a BiCo, so it’s different.
Charlie Bruce ‘16: Off campus housing- some back story, when old Haffner went online, we have less available options for off campus housing. Dining services, bias response policy, Perry House, Brecon garden, ADA accessibility of campus, Sweet Briar closing, financial aid, health center, employment regarding pay rates, specifically housekeeping, weather policy, pipes, adding a new bus stop, safe spaces in regards to the pagoda which was formally know as the woman’s center, and how our new policy can help change this, park renovations, new dean of the college, deans and faculty mid semester review, take out policy, adjunct faculties.
Kristian Sumner ‘17: Can we add diversity training for campus safety?
Sofia Oleas ‘15: Also for visiting faculty.
Charlie Bruce ‘16: Yup! Any further comments or questions? Ok, you can always contact the EBoard at sga@bmc.edu. Please also contact us with questions. Our next agenda item is about By Law revisions. To reflect the changes, Gabby has reviewed our bylaws.
Appointments Bylaws Approval
Gabrielle Smith ‘17: The changes aren’t very major- we added that the heads of committees can sit in on interviews, after 3 appointment rounds, if no one has applied to be on the committee or if it’s not necessary. The whole point is to see if it’s really benefiting the community. We want to have a mid-semester review and end of the year exit surveys, because this will help to note what was done in the past and how it can be most effective for the future.
Leah Kahler ‘16: Will heads of committees have say in the selections?
Gabrielle Smith ‘17: They’d give advice for what they were looking for, but the appointments committee would still choose.
Aleja Newman ‘17: When they read interviews, will the applicant’s names be available?
Gabrielle Smith ‘17: We have nothing to make it anonymous. Anything else? Ok!
Charlie Bruce ‘16: We’re going to take a vote. These bylaws were sent out in the SGA minutes last week. This is a representative council vote only; please consult with your co-held position. The choices are “Yes I approve, No I do not approve, or abstain.”
Vote takes place. Not enough votes are recorded to reach quorum.
Charlie Bruce ‘16: We will need to table this vote because we did not get enough votes to reach a quorum.
Anna Kalinsky ‘15: Can we run it again in case someone did not vote?
Charlie Bruce ‘16: Ok, we’re going to take a revote. These bylaws were sent out in the SGA minutes last week. This is a representative council vote only; please consult with your co-held position. The choices are “Yes I approve, No I do not approve, or abstain.”
Vote takes place. Bylaws are passed.
Charlie Bruce ‘16: Ok, so we do have a quorum, these changes pass. If you have any questions please email Gabby Smith.
Gabrielle Smith ‘17: Keep in mind, it’s a working document, it will be reviewed every year. Please feel free to email me about it.
Charlie Bruce ‘15: Ok with that we’re going to move on to Old business. During old business, material that has already been presented may be revisited, questioned, or announced. We have allotted 10 minutes for this agenda item.
Old Business
Charlie Bruce ‘16: No old business? Ok new business! New business is for the Representative Council members only. Any new items for discussion, questions, or announcements can be made that relate to the representative’s position. We have allotted 10 minutes for this agenda item.
New Business
Charlie Bruce ‘16: No New Business? Ok we have reached the end of the agenda!
Anna Kalinsky ’15: I motion to end the meeting.
Anna Sargeant ’15: I second.
Charlie Bruce ‘15: This is a representative council vote only; please consult with your co-held position.
(Voted to adjourn meeting: Anna Kalinsky, Anna Sargeant, Pam Gassman, Dijia Chen, Delaney Williams, Kristian Sumner, Xavia Miles, Makala Forster, Grace Kim, Chanel Williams, Aleja Newman, Odeymarys Garrido, Ann Tran, Connie Lam, Stephanie Montalvan, Shaina Robinson, Lyntana Brougham, Dani Weismann, Angie Koo, Gabrielle Crossnoe, Nkechi Ampah, Carly Breen, Melanie Bahti, Alexis McDonald, Julie Henrikson, Joy Chan, Mikah Farbo, Lindsay Burak, Rachel Feynman, Leigh Peterson, Prerana Vaddi, Leah Kahler, Olivia Hollinger, Elaine Holehan, Sofia Oleas, Natalie DiFrank, Xavia Miles, Marian Slocum, Matison Hearn-Desautels, Shakari Badgett, Jillian Moroney, Sneha Bendapudi, Catherine Wagner.)
Charlie Bruce ’16: Meeting Adjourned! Thank you all!
Meeting Adjourned at 8:23pm