Meeting Minutes October 2, 2016
Summary:
- Meeting called to order at 1:10 PM. The time was changed in order to accommodate students observing Rosh Hashanah during the usual meeting time.
- This was the final meeting before October Break. The next meeting will be held Sunday, October 23rd at 7:00 PM in the Campus Center.
- Announcements:
- The newly elected representatives introduced themselves to the Assembly. They are Abby Chernila and Dilesha Tanna (2020 Co-Presidents); Leticia Robledo, Lea Williams, Maragret Gorman, Manal Hussein, and May Zhu (Members-at-Large); Hayley Johnson (2018 Honor Board Representative); and Precious Robinson (Pensby Center Representative). Elizabeth Hilton (not present) will also serve as the Civic Engagement Representative for this year.
- SGA President Rhea Manglani made an announcement on behalf of the E-Board about leaving SGA meetings early, particularly right after Hot Topics, which occurs in the middle of the meeting. These Hot Topics often involve a lot of planning on behalf of students, and if this continues to be an issue the E-Board will initiate having roll call at the conclusion of meetings as well to ensure members of the RepCo remain for the whole meeting, unless there is a pre-existing conflict the E-Board is told about beforehand.
- Your Two Cents:
- Claire Gaposchkin raised the question of whether or not prospective students are allowed to attend SGA meetings. Those present at the meeting majorly agreed that this was okay, and some even claimed that it has helped in students choosing to come to Bryn Mawr.
- Plenary Recap:
- Those present discussed the results of the Plenary Feedback Survey for this past Plenary first in small groups and then in larger groups. Comments, questions, and concerns raised can be found in the according section in the transcript.
- New Business:
- There was no New Business.
- Old Business:
- There was no Old Business.
- The meeting was adjourned at 1:41 PM.
——–Transcript——-
Roll Call:
Rhea Manglani ’17: Okay, it’s 1:00 so we’re going to start the meeting with Roll Call.
Rachel Bruce ’18: Hi everyone! By the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania I am required to tell you that everything here will be recorded today.
Present: Ananya Kumar, Abbie Sullivan, Camilla Duluc, Tyler Brown-Cross, Precious Robinson, Mariana Garcia, Genesis Perez-Melara, Nora Dell, Nikki Shakamuri, Abby Chernilla, Dilesha Tanna, Margaret Gorman, Lea Williams, Manal Hussein, May Zhu, Leticia Robledo, Veda Nambi, Emma Porter, Nichol Westerduin, Evelyn Aviles, Jasmine Rangel, Emma Levin, Claire Gaposhkin, Sarah Awad, Celeste Ledesma
Absent: Elizabeth Hilton, Bridget Murray, Kyra Sagal, Sam Heyrich, Catherine Bunza, Sohini Maniar, Priyanka Dutta, Hannah Henderson-Charnow, Connie Lam, Lillian Oyen-Ustad, Adriana Gay, Juhi Aggarwal, Jessica Breet, Makeda Warde, Farida Ilboudo, Phoebe Dopulos, Madison Brown, Emily Drummond, Emma Lasky, Claire Romaine
Announcements:
Rhea Manglani ‘17: Before we start can everyone who was recently elected please stand up? Let’s go around and you can all introduce yourselves.
Abby Chernilla ‘20: Hi, I’m Abby Chernilla (she/her) and I’m Class of 2020 Co-President.
Leticia Robledo ’20: Hi, I’m Leticia Robledo (she/her) and I’m a Member-at-Large.
Lea Williams ’20: Hi, I’m Lea Williams (she/her) and I’m a Member-at-Large.
Margaret Gorman ’19: Hi, I’m Margaret Gorman (she/her) and I’m a Member-at-Large.
Manal Hussein ’20: Hi, I’m Manal Hussein (she/her) and I’m a Member-at-Large.
May Zhu ’20: Hi, I’m May Zhu (she/her) and I’m a Member-at-Large.
Hayley Johnson ’18: Hi, I’m Hayley Johnson (she/her), 2018 Honor Board Rep.
Precious Robinson ’19: Hi, I’m Precious Robinson (she/her), Pensby Center Representative.
Rhea Manglani ‘17: Alright so Announcements is a time when anyone in the Bryn Mawr community can make an announcement. We have allowed ten minutes for this agenda item.
Genesis Perez-Melara ‘19: Hi, I just wanted to let everyone know that we used Google Forms for this elections cycle and it worked very, very well, so we are going to move forward with that and change it in the by-laws.
Rhea Manglani ‘17: This is on behalf of the E-Board, but during meetings we noticed people have been leaving halfway though. The maximum we keep you is an hour and a half, so until 8:30, and we try very hard not to keep you that long, but when we try to talk about something important, we want everyone to stay for the entire time. We wanted to give a warning and see what happens. If this continues to be a problem, we’re going to do end roll call. When people present Hot Topics, there is a lot of work that goes into them and they deserve the respect of people remaining for the entire time.
Your Two Cents:
Rhea Manglani ‘17: Your Two Cents is a time when any member of the Bryn Mawr community can host a straw poll or pose a question for discussion. We have allowed ten minutes for this agenda item.
Claire Gaposhkin ’17: There’s been discussion about non-Bryn Mawr students attending SGA meetings and Plenary. When there are prospective students visiting campus, are they allowed to attend meetings?
Emma Porter ‘17: I work for the Admissions Office. We have often encouraged hosts to come to SGA meetings and we’ve had SGA meetings definitely contribute to students wanting to come here. I’m not speaking to the comfort of everyone, but that’s what’s happened in the past.
Rhea Manglani ’17: In the past three years I’ve been involved in SGA prospective students have been able to attend SGA, but thank you for asking! Does anyone else have anything for Your Two Cents?
Plenary Recap:
Rhea Manglani ‘17: So plenary was this weekend, we had one resolution, a fast quorum, and generally okay discussion. We did a survey about how people felt about Plenary and we have the results here. In total we had 219 responses.
The idea of having a point person was a split to kind of let people know what’s going on during Plenary. I can see how it would be messy. And I asked if people would want a two to three time period before we started questions. I listened and read this. So I just wanted to give us fifteen minutes to discuss this. We can discuss why people didn’t go to plenary and how they felt about plenary. We’ll make five groups actually do ten minutes of small group, then five minutes in the large group
Ten Minute Small Group Discussion
Rhea Manglani ‘17: Alright I’m just going to go group by group.
Mariana Garcia ’19: So we talked about first we went over the survey questions and we talked about how the three minutes was not necessary. People are sitting and we encourage them to read the resolution, gather some idea when you present. At Bryn Mawr, we have this lack of initiative because we only have one resolution. Usually have a lot more resolutions in the spring. Maybe get into the Customs Schedules or in the SGA meeting jot down ideas of things we want to change. Then find friends of the RepCo willing to write the resolutions.
Leticia Robledo ’20: We actually thought that this discussion that the three-minute pause was kind of helpful. It would be good to give people a minute to think instead of just saying just a random really weird question. We thought that was good.
Nikki Shakamuri ’19: We also like how Mari and Gen wrote a plenary resolution that was really easy to read. Something that we could grasp and that there wasn’t a lot left to question. They were like declarations, I could understand.
Celeste Ledesma ‘17: We talked about how we were put off by the crazy line. We were wondering where the disconnect kind of came from. Also some of us a lot of us didn’t get plenary packets, we understand that that was a budgeting issue, but in the future maybe we should try and budget for more plenary packets so those of us wanted to make amendments can. The three minutes also seemed helpful.
Claire Gaposchkin ‘17: We talked about the issue of the line; one of the main issues that people were not able to get in was the tearing of the tickets and how that could be an easily fixed issue. We also discussed in that same vain the potential use of one cards to scan people in for raffle purposes. Additionally we talked about how there was at one point a not according to decorum amendment concerning one of the particular lines and how that became hard to follow. I think the way the amendments were presented why they came across that way. I don’t think they fully followed the amendment policy. It was a bit hard to talk accordingly was my I was thinking. Also, we discussed briefly having a point person at the mic that when people go to address the mics, if they have a question, that it’s addressed in an organized way.
Rhea Manglani ‘17: Okay, I’m going to review all of this. As far as the door, we’ve taken that in and we’re going to have a better system next time. That was a written question (raffles) so we didn’t present it with the charts originally because it was hard to get all of the data in, but I really like the idea about one card swipes. Maybe they pledge to come and find out when they get there. With amendments everything was okay, they just had them categorized as friendly so there was no need to vote.
Nora Dell ‘19: I think it was confusing what a friendly amendment is and it wasn’t clear really that once it became a friendly amendment it just went away.
Rhea Manglani ‘17: So that was my fault, I didn’t have a text one, I had a PDF instead. I will do that next time. It’s also really scary to know. I don’t know if you heard Shaina and me in the livestream but had Shaina, but I was struggling. I think next time it won’t be on my laptop, since I’m supposed to be the person to moderate. Usually if there’s another person asking questions, they have to go back of the line, but since they were the only person at the mic, we couldn’t really do anything about it. This is sort of what happens when there’s only one resolution. They want to feel like there was a contribution. Had there been more resolutions, I would have probably done a harsher way of calling and moderating the mics. Again, thank you all for this feedback. We definitely took it all in. We’re going to try and make line and raffle smoother. As far as amendments, I can’t change the way people ask, but if people find a resolution and the want to keep talking about it I can’t be like “that’s a waste of time.”
Mariana Garcia ‘19: Also one of the things that might have come out as confusing was the fact that the people were not expressing themselves clearly and Gen and I could not understand what they wanted, which made it harder for other people to understand.
Genesis Perez-Melara ‘19: Probably maybe after the conversation, after tying to understand what they’re asking, the presenter can reiterate what that back to the group what just happened.
Nora Dell ‘19: What is there was a computer at one of the mics and the people could understand?
Rhea Manglani ‘17: Oh yeah, some people also asked about that. One thing we forgot to do was to get a teleprompter. So you know how at more college events they’ve been talking about more people having a teleprompter? Type out everything we say so everyone can read it. I just wanted to check any final comments. So thank you we’re taking in all of the feedback.
Old Business:
Rhea Manglani ’17: Okay, Old Business. Old Business is a time when any member of the Representative Council can revisit a topic related to their position. Is there any Old Business?
New Business:
Rhea Manglani ’17: New Business is a time when a member of the Representative Council can propose a new topic for discussion or initiative related to their position. Is there any New Business?
Okay, we need a motion to end the meeting.
Jasmine Rangel ‘17: Motion!
Rhea Maglani ’17: Is there a second?
Evelyn Aviles ’17: Second!
Rhea Manglani ’17: Okay, this is a Representative Council vote only. Your choices are yes, no, and abstain. If you are in a co-held position, please consult your position co-holder. So yes? No? Abstain? Meeting’s over!
The meeting was adjourned at 1:41 PM.