March 20, 2016
Present: Nikki Shakamuri, Lillian Oyen-Ustad, Sam Heyrich, Emily Gifford-Smith, Maria Minaya, Diamond Ray, Olivia Hollinger, Jasmine Rangel, Celeste Ledesma, Coco Wang, Chanel Williams, Alexis Wiltshire, Ann Tran, Hannah Chinn, Nora Dell, Jess Shill, Alice, Kyra Sagal, Danielle Cadet, Lindsey Foster, Ana Llamas, Modupe Olufemi, Dijia Chen, Eve Cantler, Charlette Williams, Casi Omick, Stephanie Montalvan, Bridget Murray, Sarah Andrew, Emily Siegel, Tyler Brown-Cross, Mari Garcia, Veda Nambi
Absent: Miranda Smith, Mara Dominguez, Oona Ryle, Nolan Julien, Melanie Bahti, Erin Saladin, Rina Patel, Sneha Soni, Elizabeth Lorenzana, Connie Lam, Radhika Singh, Tosin Ajiboye, Khadijah Seay, Rachel Ofili, Genesis Perez-Melara
Summary:
This week’s meeting began at 7:10 with Role Call and was followed by Announcements. There were two announcements. The first was made by Sam Heyrich ’17 (Head of Social Committee and BSLOW), saying that Spring Fling will take place next Saturday, March 26th from 10:00 PM to 1:00 AM (this year’s is Masquerade). The second announcement was made by Elections Co-Head Mari Garcia ’19 regarding the upcoming elections round. This comes after a mis-election was called for the previous elections period. The positions up for election are Curriculum Head (can be co-held), Member-at-Large (up to two positions), and SGA Archivist. Curriculum Head and Member-at-Large will go until the end of this semester while SGA Archivist will be in office until next year’s February Elections. The nominations period ends Tuesday, March 22nd at noon (you can nominate yourself or someone else for a position by emailing elections@brynmawr.edu). Mandatory information sessions for candidates will take place Tuesday and Wednesday in Taylor C at 8:00, 8:15, 8:30, and 8:45 (you only need to attend one, if you cannot make one please contact the Elections Heads at elections@brynmawr.edu as soon as possible). Candidates’ Forum will take place Thursday, March 24th at 7:00 PM in the Campus Center. A Facebook event for Candidates’ Forum will be created soon.
Members-at-Large Hannah Chinn and Nora Dell presented several topics during Your Two Cents to gage community interest in different publicity initiatives, including the new SGA Snapchat account. It was found that most people do not watch the weekly SGA YouTube updates created by the Members-at-Large, but many were in favor of live updates during SGA meetings through Twitter, Snapchat, or even a live-stream of meetings so that people who aren’t able to attend meetings can still be easily informed. Another idea of a “Thanks, SGA!” campaign was also well received. This would involve taking funny pictures of students using different resources made possible by SGA (e.g. 24-Hour Canaday), with the tagline “Thanks, SGA!” Secretary Rachel Bruce ’18 also gaged interest during Your Two Cents in the addition of summaries of SGA meetings to the weekly minutes sent out to the community. This initiative was also well received.
Next the Assembly discussed the Big Cheese Forum Invitation poll results. President Rhea Manglani gave an overview of the poll and who was officially invited to the event based on its results (both pre-selected and written-in). The guests include: Pelema Morrice (Chief Enrollment Officer), Stephanie Nixon (Assistant Dean of the College for Diversity/Social Justice/Title IX), Mary Osirim (Provost of the College), Kari Fazio (Chief Financial Officer), Ethel Desmarais (Director of Financial Aid), Glenn Smith (Director of Facilities), and Judy Balthazar (Associate Dean of the College). President Cassidy is automatically invited to the event. Signups for moderators and note-takers for Big Cheese Forum will be sent out once the attendance list for Cheeses is finalized. Big Cheese Forum will take place Sunday, April 17th at 7:00 PM in the Campus Center.
During Old Business, Nora Dell ’19 discussed recent findings from previous years on reaching quorum at Plenary, and how this might help SGA reach quorum more quickly in the future. There was no New Business and the meeting was adjourned at 7:26 PM.
Role Call:
Rhea Manglani ’17: Okay, it’s 7:10 so we are going to start the meeting with Role Call.
Rachel Bruce ’18: I am required by the State of Pennsylvania to tell you that everything said tonight will be recorded.
Present: Nikki Shakamuri, Lillian Oyen-Ustad, Sam Heyrich, Emily Gifford- Smith, Maria Minaya, Diamond Ray, Olivia Hollinger, Jasmine Rangel, Celeste Ledesma, Coco Wang, Chanel Williams, Alexis Wiltshire, Ann Tran, Hannah Chinn, Nora Dell, Jess Shill, Alice, Kyra Sagal, Danielle Cadet, Lindsey Foster, Ana Llamas, Modupe Olufemi, Dijia Chen, Eve Cantler, Charlette Williams, Casi Omick, Stephanie Montalvan, Bridget Murray, Sarah Andrew, Emily Siegel, Tyler Brown-Cross, Mari Garcia, Veda Nambi
Absent: Miranda Smith, Mara Dominguez, Oona Ryle, Nolan Julien, Melanie Bahti, Erin Saladin, Rina Patel, Sneha Soni, Elizabeth Lorenzana, Connie Lam, Radhika Singh, Tosin Ajiboye, Khadijah Seay, Rachel Ofili, Genesis Perez- Melara
Anouncements:
Rhea Manglani ’17:
Sam Heyrich ‘17: Hi, Sam Heyrich, Class of 2017, Head of Social Committee and BSLOW (that always gets a laugh). This Saturday, the 26th, from 10:00 PM to 1:00 AM is Social Committee’s Spring Fling. It was formally Winter Formal but the season has now changed, so has the event. Our theme is Masquerade, so there are going to
be awesome snacks, good music, and maybe a photo booth. So bring are your friends and have some fun. See you there!
Mari Garcia ‘19: Hi, my name is Mariana, Co-Head of Elections, Class of 2019. So Genesis and I, Gen can’t be here today, but we called a mis-election at the past Emergency Election so we’re doing the whole process again. As you all know through Facebook, last week started the nominations period, it ends on Tuesday at 12:00 PM, so you’ll have time to nominate people for Curriculum Head (which is going to be until the end of the year/semester), Member-at-Large (which we have two or three spots available so if you want to nominate or get nominated that is for the rest of the semester as well), and SGA Archivist which will be until February Elections of next year. So the info sessions will be Tuesday and Wednesday at 8:00, 8:15, 8:30, and 8:45 at Taylor C, so you don’t have to come to all of the times just the one that’s more available to you (it’s only fifteen minutes long). Candidates’ Forum is going to be right here at 7:00 PM on Thursday. There will be an event on Facebook that will go live tonight. And that’s it. Thank you!
Your Two Cents:
Rhea Manglani ’17: It’s time for Your Two Cents. This is a time for discussion, questions, or announcements. Today we have ten minutes for this item.
Hannah Chinn ’19: Hey guys, it’s us, your friendly neighborhood Members-at-Large. I’m Hannah Chinn, Class of 2019.
Nora Dell ’19: I’m Nora Dell, Class of 2019. We have a lot of things. The first is that we have been doing some video updates on YouTube that are basically summaries of meetings. We were wondering if you guys thought that was helpful, either to you or the greater community. Do you guys watch them?
Hannah Chinn ’19: Raise your hand if you knew about them.
Nora Dell ’19: Okay, great, well if you go to our YouTube for Bryn Mawr SGA they are there.
Hannah Chinn ’19: Okay, the second question is if you knew about them, are they helpful? They are a lot of work and we are not sure if we are going to be able to do this or not so if no one is watching them we probably are not going to continue doing them. So does anyone think that this is helpful or beneficial in any way?
Nora Dell ’19: Raise your hands for yes, raise your hands for no, raise your hands for abstain. Okay, there are several other ideas we wanted to run by you. So we started a Snapchat account (@bmc_sga), which you should all add and tell your friends about. But we were wondering if we should do more on social media. Like maybe we could make a Twitter and have live-updates of meetings so it would be a live version of the SGA minutes. What are your thoughts on that?
Mari Garcia ‘19: I think the Twitter idea is a good one because people could be scrolling through their phones during meetings and that it might make it easier to access than the minutes.
Nora Dell ‘19: Thank you so much!
Hannah Chinn ‘19: The other thing is that we were wondering, which a more open- ended question, is what do you think would make SGA more accessible, because clearly video updates are not the smartest thing for us to be spending our time on, but we would like to make SGA easier to get to and more welcoming to members of the greater campus community. So we’re just going to throw this out here. Yes –
Lillian Oyen-Ustad ‘19: I know that we’ve discussed the option of live-streaming Plenary, and I was wondering if that would be an option to start live-streaming SGA events? Because I know that some students—I know they want to be involved and they don’t feel comfortable coming and sitting with the Representative Council or on the meeting because we see each other every week. I also know that some students, for example athletes, would like to attend Sunday meetings but they are off-campus for a game or a meet or something might find that helpful to be actively participating even if their not in attendance but actively participating while not exactly on campus.
Nora Dell ‘19: That sounds really good, thank you.
Hannah Chinn ’19: Thanks! Anything else— comments or critiques? Do you guys have any opinions on SGA.
Nora: Alright, so we had another idea for publicizing things and it’s called “Thanks, SGA!” and basically we would go around and take pictures of people, like 24-Hour Canaday, and take pictures next to someone who was asleep and make the caption “Thanks, SGA!” to let people know about 24-Hour Canaday. Do you think that would be a funny thing that you would like to see around campus? Yes? Okay, we are going to go forward with the “Thanks, SGA!” campaign.
Hannah Chinn ’19: That’s really it. Thanks, friends!
Rhea Manglani ‘17: Do we have any more Your Two Cents?
Rachel Bruce ‘18: I have cents! Rachel Bruce, Class of 2018. I’m not sure if you all saw, but this past week when I sent out the minutes I included a brief but descriptive summary about what went down because I know that sometimes reading the minutes and the transcripts can be kind of intimidating. Did you guys find this helpful, or would you be more inclined to read the minutes because of that?
Lillian Oyen-Ustad ‘19: Yes, it is very helpful. Please keep doing that.
Rachel Bruce ’18: Alright, thank you guys for your feedback!
Big Cheese:
Rhea Manglani ‘17: So we put out a form on Big Cheese Forum, which again is on April 17th. KCass, as usual, is going to be invited. So a lot of you—we based it off the blanket survey results. There were a lot of ties but Pelema, by far, was one of the most popular choices. And so we mostly went by this, but when it came to some of the ties and finalizing the list, we looked at the topics suggestions. A lot of people talked about Financial Aid so Ethel is Director of Financial Aid. She isn’t senior staff but we are bringing her anyway because it’s a big topic. Stephanie Nixon, a lot of votes, is coming. Provost Osirim to talk about a whole multitude of things because a lot of people suggested the diversity requirement, curriculum, etc. and there is a lot she can talk about. Kari Fazio, she’s the CFO [Chief Financial Officer], so she works with finances so she’ll be coming, she’ll be invited. Glenn Smith, Director of Facilities— a number of you asked about renovations to the dorms. Both KCass and Glenn Smith can touch on that. And Dean Balthazar is also going to be invited. So we are going to send out the invitations and next week once we know who is coming we will get more into detail about topics we want to focus on or talk about so that when we’re in our small groups people will have an idea of where they want to go. Let’s say for Glenn Smith from Facilities, [someone] might say, “I want a water thing in Merion, how do I get that done?” so they can come talk to him about it and learn through this. Any questions?
Lillian Oyen-Ustad ‘19: I was wondering when are signups for note taking and moderating going out?
Rhea Manglani ‘17: Once the list is finalized so that people who are interested know what they want to sit in on. Thank you! Any other questions?
Old Business:
Rhea Manglani ‘17: So Old Business. Old Business is a time where any discussion or item can be re-visited. We have ten minutes for this item. Does anyone have anything?
Nora Dell ‘19: I was going through the old plenary minutes from 2008 and I noticed that the issue of getting quorum is a problem, but back then they used to get quorum at 11:00 or 12:00 and I thought how is this possible. So what I noticed is that they ended up starting at like 10:30 so it still took a long time to get quorum but they got it earlier. I thought that might be an idea to change what is happening at Plenary.
New Business:
Rhea Manglani ’17: Okay so New Business. New Business is a time that any questions or items for discussion may be made that pertains to the Representative
Council member’s position. We have allowed ten minutes for this agenda item. Does anyone want to end the meeting?
X: Motion to end meeting.
Rhea Manglani ’17: Second?
X: Second.
Rhea Manglani ’17: The options are yes, no, and abstain. This is a Representative Council vote only. Yes? No? Abstain? See you all next week!
Meeting adjourned at 7:26 PM.