September 16, 2012 Minutes – Self-Government Association

SGA Meeting 09/16/12

Vrinda calls the meeting to order at 7:10pm

Absent: Nikki Ditto

Announcements

Syona Arora ‘15: Plenary Workshops are coming up later this week and Nora will tell you when.

Nora Scheland ‘15: they are Monday the 17^th at 8pm in Thomas 110, Thursday the 20^th at 7pm in the Taylor Seminar Room, and Saturday the 22^nd at 7pm also in the Taylor Seminar Room.

This is the last week to write a resolution because they are due on September 23^rd to sga@brynmawr.edu. If you have an idea, a draft, please come because we want to work them out with you. You are also required to come if you submit a resolution!

Ali Raeber ‘13: the nominations for this round of elections are open. Please nominate people you think are qualified for the positions that are open. The positions are:

Members at large (6)
Faculty Representative
Pensby Center Representative
Off Campus Representative
Committee on Public Safety Representative
Curriculum Committee Head(s)
2013 Honor Board
2014 Honor Board just for this semester

If you have a position right now, please talk to people who might come up to you and ask you about it. Tell them what it’s like. Thank you.

Karina Siu ‘14: this weekend we have a lot of home games for athletics. Volleyball, Field Hockey, and Soccer will be playing McDaniel. For Saturday at Field Hockey we are having special events at half time. We will be giving away t-shirts and playing games. Field Hockey is at 3pm on Saturday.

Soccer is also selling candles, and by candles, I mean things you can put in your dorm room without a flame. So if you want your dorm room to smell nice, contact a soccer player.

Sowmya Srinivasan ‘13: Just a quick reminder that budgeting interviews are this Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. They will be in Dolton 212 e.

Tyler Garber ‘14: The Appointments Committee has decided to extend the deadline for applications to Wednesday at 5:00pm. Apply!

Kendra Kelly ‘13: what are the positions open?

Tyler Garber ‘14: There are:

Access Services Representative
Board of Trustees Representative
Film Series Committee
Go-Board Moderator
Grad School Representative
Campus Greening Representative
Computer Access Coordinator
Conflict Management Committee
Orientation Reorganization Committee
Outreach and Communications Committee
Seven Sisters Council Representative
Social Committee
Student Finance Committee
Sustainable Food Committee
Hell Week Committee

Natalie Zamora ‘14: when are they due?

Tyler Garber ‘14: 5pm on Wednesday

Irene Shin ‘13: we rescheduled the Mean Girls to September 27^th at 9:30pm. It is on Thursday, so you do not have to wear pink if you don’t want to.

Vrinda Varia ‘13: Dorm Presidents, please email us the results of your dorm elections from the dorm first meeting. Send them to sga@brynmawr.edu so we can document the information and have a list for ourselves. We have these nifty “SGA Slang Sheets” that have the different motions that you might want to use during a meeting. We will keep bringing them to meetings till the end of September, please learn them and use them.

Your Two Cents

Natalie Zamora ‘14: I am doing a plenary resolution for the posting policy to revamp it and edit it and make it better. People who have computers, can you search posting policy for me please? I want to get your input on what should be changed/stay the same.

Nora Scheland ‘15: I vaguely remember that you can only post on cork boards in the hall way, maybe we can change that to posting in the bathroom.

Natalie Zamora ‘14: I talked to Mary Beth about it, and she said that people just do that but it’s not in the posting policy and that is something that I want to cover with this resolution.

Sarah Henkind ‘13: what do you have in mind so far?

Natalie Zamora ‘14: there is a size thing, and I don’t think that that is an issue because have banners that probably would not go on posting policy. So I will probably get rid of the sizes. We wanted to think about something dividing the posting policy between what is acceptable in dorms vs. academic spaces. So, for example, don’t post stuff in the stalls of the Campus Center, where as you could in the dorms. That is something we were looking at. The Campus Center is also the only space that we have to get approval to post with the stamp. And we were wondering is that what we want to do in other places? Like for Erdman Posting?

Syona Arora ‘15: is chalking part of that too?

Natalie Zamora ‘14: it is on the outside spaces section of the posting policy. It doesn’t specify if you will be cleaning off the chalk or do we just wait till the rain comes.

Syona Arora ’15: Yeah, because some people put chalk on the walls of Erdman and it does not wash off. So maybe we could have something about not writing on the walls.

Natalie Zamora ’14: Yeah, exactly.

Morgan Turner ‘13: the posting policy states that you are only allowed to chalk on sidewalks.

Natalie Zamora ‘14: there is just a lack of people knowing what the posting policy is.

Vrinda Varia ‘13: some people that would be important to get in touch with are Conferences and Events aside from Mary Beth. I think especially talking about the banners that go in front of the arches.

Natalie Zamora ‘14: anything else?

Karina Siu ‘14: if you want updating, it says hall vice presidents are supposed to talk things down.

Natalie Zamora ‘14: exactly we don’t have hall vice presidents; I was co-president of east last year and I just did it as president of the dorm.

Karina Siu ‘14: can you put on there to not thumb tack things onto the wall? Because I know in Rhoads people would thumb tack things to the walls and now there are holes.

Natalie Zamora ‘14: ok. So I also talked to Mary Beth and she also said that people don’t post things over other peoples things because that’s mean. Maybe I will put that in there too.

Lee McClenon ‘14: I think one of the biggest things has to have some sort of education with it because what is the point if we redo it if no one follows it. So I think thinking of a way to best talk to club leaders. Especially discussing the bigger infractions like posting on dorm doors. Those sorts of things that people take advantage of. So more than just redoing it; in order to take it seriously, we need to take it seriously.

Natalie Zamora ‘14: thank you. If anyone has any other suggests, email me at nzamora@brynmawr.edu

Voting on Plenary Invitations

Vrinda Varia ‘13: Plenary is on October 7^th and every semester we vote on whether to invite the President and the Deans. This vote will be a little complicated. The options are to invite:

Only President
Only Deans
Both President and Deans
No one
Abstain

You can vote for one thing and it is an assembly vote only.

Ali Raeber ‘13: will we vote on if they can speak?

Vrinda Varia ‘13: yes, after we vote on whether or not they are invited.

Michaela Olson ‘15: what has the decision been in the past few semesters?

Vrinda Varia ‘13: last semester they were invited, last fall they were not. Sometimes they don’t even take up the invitation. This is just us offering. We are also going to vote on whether or not they can speak. So even if they come, they might not be given the allowance to speak to the Association.

Lindsey Crowe ‘14: can we have time to talk?

Vrinda Varia ‘13: yes. Two minutes. Also just a note, if we do choose to invite everyone, we are only going to have the option that everyone gets to talk or no one gets to talk. I don’t think it is appropriate that certain deans should be able to speak and others cannot. Are we ready to move to a vote?

Plenary Invitations Vote:

In favor of only president (0): none
In favor of only deans (0): none
In favor of both (21): Vicki Sear, Nitya Hajela, Julia Stuart, Kersti Francis, Anna Kalinsky, Karina Siu, Raminta Holden, Kendra Kelly, Hannah Lehman, Ali Raeber, Molly Kaufman, Taj Meyer, Lindsey Crowe, Marian Slocum, Kaeun Bae, Neha Kamran, Vanessa Sanchez, Hannah Smith, Stephanie Clarke, Kellie Meyer, Cesiah Ordonez
Neither deans or president (0): none
Abstain (1): Kayla Bondi

We will be inviting the President and Deans to Plenary on October 7^th. Now we are going to vote on whether we give them permission to speak. This has been mixed in the past as well. The options for voting are:

Yes, they do have permission to speak
No, they don’t have permission to speak
Abstain

Vote on Permission to Speak:

Yes they do have permission to speak (13): Kendra Kelly, Karina Siu, Anna Kalinsky, Nitya Hajela, Cesiah Ordonez, Hannah Smith, Vanessa Sanchez, Molly Kaufman, Taj Meyer, Lindsey Crowe, Raminta Holden, Vicki Sear, Stephanie Clarke
No they do not have permission to speak (8): Julia Stuart, Kersti Francis, Kayla Bondi, Marian Slocum, Ali Raeber, Kellie Meyer, Hannah Lehman, Neha Kamran
Abstain (1): Keaun Bae

The President and Deans will be allowed to speak at plenary.

SGA Goals

Vrinda Varia ‘13: can we have one representative from each group come up to the microphone?

Kendra Kelly ‘13: we discussed figuring out the feasibility of having one card readers on the back of Rhoads, Rock, and Pem West. We also discussed the possibility of having an SGA list-serve. So that SGA emails don’t get lost in the activities emails. The Res-Co heads are going to bring it to Tuesday Group and figure out whether it is even possible and the facilities to accomplish this. We will get that information and let you know.

Lindsey Crowe ‘14: we discussed about being more transparent and being better accountable towards our constituents. Whether it be having the agenda of the meetings sent to the class presidents and sending them out to the community in case any of the community members want to come. I know we did a lot last year letting everyone know that they are a member of SGA. Maybe having a little bit more information about what is happening in meetings, so people can get their two cents in. No pun intended.

Taj Meyer ‘15: we talked about getting some sort of discount on meal plans for McBrides and commuters to make it more accessible.

Emily Tong ‘13: I looked at the appointments blog and the SGA blog and I think it would be easier to access the information if all of it is more available from the same site. So maybe you are not clicking a bunch of links. So at least having a link to the other blogs on that one SGA blog would be really good.

Molly Kaufman ‘14: we talked about the possibility of having some more communication with administration at SGA meeting. Talked about big cheese forum went really well. I was not a part of the SGA assembly previously and I went to the forum. I know scheduling is an issue, but we talked about how there is this bureaucratic system with having change happen and having them present would cut down on that having administrators present

Michaela Olson ‘15: we also talked about similar issues with outreach and engaging the community. We talked about Planga and getting that to be more widely used. And more puppies and the possibility of an owl menagerie.

Lee McClenon ‘14: things we talked about in my group, I guess for the assembly, our group would like to see the agenda sent out a day or two in advance so elected members can talk to their constituent and get their opinions. There has been a push by Cambrian row to get more people attracted to their side of campus, and we were wondering what SGA can do to get more people to access them and support them. So how to get more people to use the Pensby Center, CEO, and SGA house. Maybe hosting another event or doing something like that. Related to that on the social side of things, I want to know the status about using the campus center as a social space. What is going on with that? I am currently hired by the school as a Green intern, and something that I am working on with some clubs is trying to get the administration to hire a green coordinator, so having some conversations about that and if that is a possibility.

Elizabeth Vandenberg ‘16: my group talked about meal plan restructuring, and how it is sort of an all or nothing deal and how we would want that to change.

Vrinda Varia ‘13: thank you all for these ideas we are going to try and figure out ways to implement them into conversation with faculty, staff, and administration on how to bring them back to SGA meetings. Just as a point of information, SGA agendas are sent out every Thursday on the activities; on Thursdays rather than earlier because things come up during the week and we like having the space so that if anyone wants something on the agenda, we have the space to incorporate them. That being said, we can still play around with that and see if we want to have them done earlier in the week.

Karina Siu ‘14: is there a way that we can send them to all of us separately?

Natalie Kato‘14: I will do it.

Vrinda Varia ‘13: we can send them out to assembly and put them on the blog. We will keep these in mind and bring them back into conversation

Honor board themes

Irene Shin ‘13: we are going to talk about the honor code discussion we had last week. I want to give people more information about this and then we can have a better informed idea about what we want to do about the abstracts. How we want to change them, if we want to change them at all. So we are first going to start with how hearings are done.

Procedures for a Hearing:

Confrontation
Self Report (48 hours)
Formal Statement due in 72 hours
Schedule Hearings
Hearing

A professor or another student will confront someone who they think has broken the honor code and they have 48 hours to report to me [Irene], and if they don’t, then you (the confrontor) can email me and I will directly them. Once they contact me, they will have 72 hours to write a formal statement. A formal statement is essentially their side of the story. I also ask the person who is confronting them to write a statement as well. We schedule a hearing, and then we have the hearing.

Kendra Kelly ‘13: who is involved in the hearing?

Irene Shin ‘13: I am about to say this. Hearings are composed of 3 student honor board members, I want to say about 3 faculty members as well, the undergraduate dean, and Dean Rasmussen. The person who is confronted is also a part of it for the first half of the hearing. What we do is everyone who is confronting them is in the space. The dean acts as a support person, and then the student comes up. The professor then has the ability to ask the student for any questions/points they want to make for clarification. This is also a time for the student who is being confronted to clarify anything that they think the professor is not saying. Afterwards, the professor leaves and then we go onto questioning the student. This is a very conversational setting where we ask for any clarifications at all. We get a sense for how they are feeling at the time. We then ask the support person and the student to leave, then we deliberate. Once we come to a decision, Dean Rasmussen and I go down stairs and we talk about the decision that the honor board has made. Any questions?

Hearings:

Composed of…
Student Walks in with support person
Professor’s time to speak
Student inquiry
Deliberation
Dean of Undergraduate Students and Honor Board Head deliver decision

Honor Board Themes:

# of cases: Range from 6 – 15 per year (non-academic)
2 Social Honor Board hearings since 2008
Record of 4 hearings involved the Tri-College Consortium since 2006
More common Decisions include:
- Meeting with Deans on regular basis
- Some effect on grade (i.e. Reduction or “0” on an assignment, failure of course, “cap” on course grade)
- Taking advantage of the resources on campus (i.e. Rachel Heiser, The Writing Center)

One thing that should be emphasized is that this is supposed to be a time of reflection, not punitive. I do not have information from last year directly, which makes sense because I am not allowed to use it anyways. In terms of 2006, 2011, 2010 or so, this is what we have. So the range varies how many we have every year. I would say just from looking at it, there has not been a big correlation of increase or decrease. I would say about 10 per year. I mean 2011 and 2012 being two separate years. It is divided in that way because it is easier to track it because honor board heads rotate throughout the year. There have not been many social honor board cases since 2008, mostly because confrontation takes care of a lot of these things. A lot of these things involved elections and policies. The conversations include a meeting with the deans on record, affect grades, failure of class, etc. and we always tend to try and push students to take advantage of resources on campus. For example, using writing center, Rachel Heiser, who is the Academic Support and Learning Resource at Bryn Mawr.

Honor Board Themes:

Causes of infractions
- Mental Health
- Time Management
- Misunderstanding of the severity of plagiarism
- Feelings of being overwhelmed

It is important to mention because we can all relate to these. A lot of causes of infractions are usually related to being under stress and pressure, mental and time management issues. A big one is understanding the disparity of plagiarism, where they don’t realize what it means to plagiarize. I would urge everyone to get educated on that. I think people just don’t realize what they are doing wrong in these situations. There is a thing online under tech support or if you search plagiarism on the Bryn Mawr website, it goes through what it means to plagiarize. This is also something that is never really happen. In the past 2 years that I have been a part of SGA, I have not seen this. So I am going to read this out loud:

Honor Code:

Abstract Release Protocol (II.A.2.f):
- Once a month, at the first meeting of the month of the Assembly of the Self-Government Association, the Head of the Honor Board will make a short, anonymous report of the hearing to the Assembly to be inserted in the minutes. The format should follow as seen below:
  - A student was found (guilty/innocent) of (insert broad description of the infraction, i.e. plagiarism or forgery) this week. The board came to the consensus that (insert summery of the course of action to be taken).
  - A more complete description of the case, in the form of an anonymous abstract will be released at a later date as specified by the Honor Code. After at least two semesters, but within four semesters, an anonymous synopsis of the case is published for the benefit of the community.

So we are talking a lot about how the transparency of the honor board. What I am supposed to be doing is that at the beginning of the month. I am supposed to let everyone know if a hearing took place.

Record of Abstracts (II.A.2.e):
- A hearing is kept completely confidential. However, records of all academic cases are kept. Each record includes all written statements, the minutes and the Honor Board’s final decision in the case. Only the Dean of the Undergraduate College has access to the Honor Board Records. They may be consulted by the student’s dean if the student asks for a letter of recommendation or in periodic reviews of procedure by the current Board.

So you know how I mentioned before about how I don’t have records. The honor board head does write up all abstracts, but I am not required to keep all records that happened in the last 5 years. The dean has all of those. So the reason why I think there are missing pieces in a lot of the records is because I am not actually required to do it necessarily, but that does not mean that I shouldn’t be doing it. In the end, as it was mentioned before, the honor board head is required to release abstracts within 2 semesters to 4 semesters to the student body. And so I think the question is do we want to continue on with this? Do we want to have them released every single month? Do we want them released every 2 semesters? Do we want to change any of this? Do we want to keep any of this the same? I just need to know because then I can change the code if we have to.

Vrinda Varia ‘13: to provide context, this came about because there was confusion with who had tangible documents and where they were going, but also in drawing issues on confidentiality, do we want information to be presented in that way. So that is where this conversation is coming from. We know that this is a lot of information, so what I think I am going to suggest we do is provide us with your feedback today and then talk to your constituents, and talk about the benefits and repercussions of doing this. Then come back and let us know what they thought and we can talk about this again.

Irene Shin ‘13: That being said, I do have some abstracts to release to you right now if you want. I also have broad statements from last semester. Do you want to discuss this right now?

Lee McClenon ‘14: are there any members of the current honor board here?

Irene Shin ‘13: Eunyong Park, Amani Chowdhury, and Emily Tong. Do you have anything to say about this?

Emily Tong ‘13: can we talk about it in a small group?

Irene Shin ‘13: yeah we have time for that.

Vrinda Varia ‘13: okay so does anyone have any questions or thoughts that came out of this?

Kendra Kelly ‘13: our group wanted to hear one abstract so we know what it is like and then decide if we feel comfortable.

Karina Siu ‘14: in our group, we were saying maybe we stick to semester only instead of monthly because we are a small community and it is sometimes easy to figure out who they are talking about.

Irene Shin ‘13: are we talking about abstracts or broad statements?

Karina Siu ‘14: abstracts.

Vrinda Varia ‘13: just so everyone is on the same page, we are not voting on anything today; we don’t have the jurisdiction to vote on anything today. What we are discussing has to go through a Plenary resolution if we make any changes. This is just to feel out how we can move forward

Nitya Hajela ‘13: we were talking about the broad statements and I kind of disagreed with releasing those because if you said there were x cases of whatever in the past semester, with each case it is different. So I think to mark them all as a plagiarism case, then people would assume they were the highest level of plagiarism. So I think it is sort of misleading to have that.

Irene Shin ‘13: a summary of the results is also included in there, so you can see that there is a variant of them in there.

Kersti Francis ‘13: last week we talked about themes. Are the themes distinct from the broad statements that Nitya was talking about?

Irene Shin ‘13: the themes are there because that is what we voted on last semester. Last semester they felt more comfortable with just the themes at the moment versus abstracts being presented. That was just one time and now we want to see what to do going forward

Molly Kaufman ‘14: quick question, would the themes what you presented be an example of what you would be an example of a broad statement?

Irene Shin ‘13: no, every month there would be a broad statement as mentioned earlier in the exact same format.

Molly Kaufman ‘14: what I noticed was that there were not many academic cases. And I know that there has been a recent uptake of honor board academic cases and so we want to know about those.

Irene Shin ‘13: I guess my answer to that is that there are only 2 reported social cases since 2008 is because I am not sure there have been many hearings at all. Again, looking back on all of the cases in previous years, I would argue against the idea that there are more academic hearings because it really does vary from year to year. One question I want answered, why this was brought up was because some people were uncomfortable with some of the abstracts that were brought up. People knew the people that were involved in the abstract description. And I think one way it could be resolved is possibly by extending the times abstracts are being released. Possibly extending it to more than 4 semesters. What do you think about that?

Lee McClenon ‘14: it is really tricky because on the one had you want to protect these peoples privacy, but if it is about holding the honor board accountable, it becomes less and less relevant the longer you wait because it is a different honor board, it’s a different head. Even the undergraduate dean might change. So how do you hold someone accountable for a decision that was made three years ago? It is just sort of absurd in that sense. There has to be another way around it. I think it does not make sense to wait longer because I wouldn’t even want to hear it later.

Kersti Francis ‘13: do we know the justification for that time span?

Irene Shin ‘13: It really sounds like it was trying to solve the problem is, that is the longer you wait, the less relevant it is, but we also want to protect peoples privacy. So waiting 2 semesters instead of none or 1 and keeping it within 2 years.

Vrinda Varia ‘13: does anyone have any last comments? Like I said, this is just a spring board for this conversation, and we will bring it up at other times and you guys can bring it up if you want to talk about it again during Your Two Cents or Old Business. That being said, do get your constituents to start talking about things like this because they are important and they do affect the greater community. So start conversations about it. The honor board and Irene are really accessibly to talk about it. They are going to start Third Thursday so that would be a good place to get some feedback from them. You should also all know your honor board dorm representatives, wo would be a good connection to talk about this. Email honorboard@brynmawr.du if you have any suggestions or questions and want to follow up the conversation.

Old Business

Karina Siu ‘14: Lee mentioned this earlier. Do we know anything about the stage that was maybe going to be put in the campus center?

Vrinda Varia ‘13: Hannah do you have any information out that. I did talk to Dean Rasmussen about that over the summer. There are some plans being worked up. BMC received a donation to specifically work on the Campus Center to have some sort of a performance space. They are looking into what the design would be and what that would look like. Once the dean’s office starts tapping into that, and we start hearing about it, we will present it to the assembly.