SGA Meeting 09/15/13
Natalie calls the meeting to order at 7:10 PM.
Absent: Lucy Gleysteen, Jennifer Mendez Alba, Namita Dwarnakanth
Announcements:
Karina Siu ’14: On Saturday 21st, volleyball and soccer teams are playing McDaniel, volleyball at 12 PM and soccer at 1 PM. One’s in the gym, one’s on the field. Volleyball is also playing Gwen Mercy at 4 PM. Also, you can keep up to date with SAAC through the blog brynmawrowls.blogs.brynmawr.edu. Something ew for athletics is that we just started livestreaming on the field as well. We have a SAAC meeting on Wednesday September 18th at 8:30 in Dalton 119. It’s open to the public, not just athletes.
Anna Kalinsky ‘15: The Rhoads South dorm presidents had to step down because of scheduling conflicts so we held an emergency election and the new dorm presidents are Jennifer Mendez Alba and Namita Dwarnakanth.
Emma Rosenblum ‘14: Pass this on to your constituents: people are still going to Ward for OneCard issues, but the office has moved to Cartref. Pass it on!
Colin Baumann ’14: I’m starting to plan Halloween which will be on October 26th, because the next weekend is parent’s weekend. I’m filling out a funding application for special events. If you have questions, let me know, and if you have opinions, email me at cbaumann@brynmawr.edu.
Elizabeth Vandenberg ’16: Nominations for SGA positions end at 9 PM tonight. Positions up for election are faculty rep, COPS head, Pensby center rep, 2017 class president, members-at-large, Haverford rep, off campus rep, and 2014 honor board rep. Email me at elections@brynmawr.edu to nominate and to accept/decline nominations. Also, if you did accept, you have to go to an information which will be on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday this week. More information will be in an email. Candidate’s forum is on Thursday at 7 PM in the Campus Center.
Natalie Zamora ’14: Our last plenary resolution writing workshop is Monday at 8 PM in Taylor Seminar. If you are writing a plenary resolution you must come to one workshop.
Rebecca Cook ‘15: Get excited for appointments! They open tomorrow. The application is on SGA Moodle page. Tell your friends. Sign up for an interview and fill out the application. Positions up for reappointment are Grad School rep, Orientation Reorganization committee, Social committee, Hell Week committee, Elections board, Constitution Review Committee, Financial Aid advisory board, Student Finance committee, Seven Sisters representative, and Sustainable Food committee. Position descriptions are on the appointments blog.
Your 2 Cents:
Betsy Helm ‘16: The Environmental Justice League has a campaign for fossil fuel divestment. Here’s a quick update: recently had a conference call with board and suggested that they recommend divestment to board of trustees. We were given a no. We are writing a plenary resolution related to fossil fuel divestment and elevating student power.
Lee McClenon ‘14: In our plenary resolution, we will really be emphasizing the idea that student input on campus matters. The letter is online if you want to read it. It is also on our Facebook page. The point is that we are still pushing for it and we are in negotiations. At plenary we are going to ask students to back up their support by taking action. Right now we want to come to y’all to ask a question. Can I get a show of hands – who has heard about the campaign? Who saw about the first action that happened? Who has heard their friends talking about it? Is anybody willing to share something that they have heard, either positive or negative? Did anybody hear about the letter that the board sent us? Read the letter! We’ll post it again. We are crafting a response to that letter which should come out. Please come to plenary. We want plenary to show what students can do. We love plenary but we want a concrete resolution that shows what student support and power looks like. When we hear a no, students will not back down because this is something that we care about and is important for our future and Bryn Mawr.
Betsy Helm ‘16: We want to set a precedent. When we support something we will follow through.
Anna Kalinsky ‘15: Is this plenary resolution about getting the administration pay attention, or divestment, or a combination?
Lee McClenon ‘14: We haven’t written it yet. If anybody wants to help we’d love it! We want to address how students interact with board and their response, and there will also be a specific call for divestment at the same time.
Maxine Wicks ‘17: What percent of Bryn Mawr’s budget is funded by fossil fuel?
Lee McClenon ‘14: have not been given that number. Of our 700 million dollar endowment, which somewhat funds operating, 2 million are invested in 2 fossil fuel companies that we want to move our money out of.
Emma Rosenblum ‘14: Do you have any ideas about actions?
Lee McClenon ‘14: Yes. You can contact any member of the group: divestbrynmawr@gmail.com.
Betsy Helm ‘16: You can find information and updates on the Facebook page.
Printing Discussion with Eric Pumroy
Eric Pumroy: We’re changing the printing charging policy. Over the last two years we charged for printing in public areas of the college. It hasn’t been a popular move. We have changed that policy and not charge for printing anymore. I want to talk about why we made the change, how to make it a successful change, and get your ideas on how can we still manage a reasonably environmentally sound and cost-effective way of handling printing.
I am responsible for libraries and computing, to give you some context.
The reason that we went to charging for printing was that we would charge 5 cents a page after 1200 pages a semester. This was 2 years ago. We had seen this enormous increase in the amount of printing – 20 to 30% a year in terms of the cost of paper and electricity and chemicals involved. There was abuse of of the system – people would print 10,000 pages a semester. We thought that putting a charge might keep that under control. It worked! 2 years ago, we printed 3 million pages a year and we are still printing about 3 million pages a year. That’s a significant improvement because we used to keep going up; now it’s flattened. We’ve been comparing Bryn Mawr and Haverford, where they don’t charge for printing. Their printing has been going down even though they don’t charge. Knowing that it’s not popular (it was costing to track charges) – we recognize it was an unfair burden on some students who had a real academic need – it seemed to make sense to drop it all together. Now there is no charging but we still have a sustainable program that doesn’t pollute the environment. What we are going to be doing is not charging but doing tracking. There are different kinds of screens, one of which is a way of making you aware of what’s going on. This is what you see – even though you log in to a public computer, you log in again to release a print job. We have some new programs. When you’re ready to print, you get a screen – which jobs. If you don’t want them all printed, you can cancel them. Otherwise, you print them. Another thing you can see is the summary. This gives you an idea of how much printing you have done up to that time that year. You can monitor the type of printing you’ve done this semester and the environmental impact over the semester – how many trees you’ve cut down and how much CO2 is in the air. The numbers as of now: there have been 2 weeks of school, and the public printers have had 200 thousand pages of printing, which is 2 trees and half a ton of CO2. The more we can keep that under control, the better we will be as a sustainable way of doing our work. What we’d like to remind you is that because we are not charging you it is possible to be irresponsible but we’d like you to not be! People are printing and just leaving stuff out. Be mindful – there is an environmental cost. This does add up. If this is going to be successful, we need to make sure that printing remains in control. If there are other ideas, I’d be delighted to hear them.
Emma Rosenblum ‘14: I’m wondering, when I log in to printing, the first page that comes up is the one that says ‘print here’. Is it possible to have the one that comes up first be the one that shows the statistics?
Eric Pumroy: I can look into that.
Amy Chen ’14: Is color printing still free?
Eric Pumroy: Yes. We’d like you not to print with it if you don’t need it; it’s more expensive. It’s free.
Natalie Zamora ’14: Do you know exactly how the statistics are created? How big is the tree that I’m killing?
Eric Pumroy: I can’t tell you. This is a very nationally averaged out tree. You can assume that it’s not a redwood. Something like an average sized tree. It’s something the software company does.
Nkechi Ampah ’15: Bryn Mawr isn’t logged into the Mobile Moodle option. When you’re using Moodle on a phone or tablet, when you open a reading, you can’t scroll through the PDFs, but to get the scroll to work, there’s just a box that each professor has to check.
Eric Pumroy: I’ve talked to the person responsible for Moodle. I’ll raise that question.
Nkechi Amaph ‘15: If that was more accessible, fewer people would print out.
Colin Baumann ‘14: How much per year are we paying for printing management software?
Eric Pumroy: We just changed. The new one is 5,000 dollars a year.
Rebecca Cook ’15: People were using the color printer so much that it broke. It’s the only color printer on campus. Keep that in mind.
Natalie Kato ’14: I was wondering do the statistics match how much we were printing last year? Or if we are printing more?
Eric Pumroy: Last year’s numbers were in a server that crashed. It seems fairly typical but I can’t give precise numbers.
Natalie Kato ’14: Thank you so much! Is there contact information?
Eric Pumroy: My email is epumroy@brynmawr.edu and of course you can contact the Help Desk and eventually get through to me.
TurboVote Discussion/Vote
Natalie Kato ’14: We were approached by a Bryn Mawr alum about TurboVote, which is a software that helps student know about, vote in, and register for elections. The cost is $250 a year and then $1.17 for each mailing cost. We sent out a survey and received 50 responses. The survey just asked “Do you want it?” and half of the students said yes, 40% said no, and 10% said that it does not apply to them. Some of the reasons that people said no is because of the cost, and also it is not applicable to all students on campus. However, the cost was different when we announced it over the summer. It was $1,000 then, but it is $250 because of our small campus.
Colin Baumann ‘14: If it costs $1.19 per mailing, and 1,000 students use it, and absentee ballots are an additional cost, then it will add up to about $3,500 per year. Where are we getting the money?
Natalie Kato ‘14: We were thinking from SGA dues, or alums.
Amy Chen ‘14: Not 1,000 would be eligible because there are so many international students..
Colin Baumann ‘14: That’s about 1,000 people.
Amy Chen ‘14: Would there be many people absentee voting in for local elections?
Colin Baumann ‘14: The whole point is to get people to vote.
Amy Chen ‘14: There are people who are registered to vote in PA for presidential elections.
Natalie Kato ‘14: On campuses relative to our size, 30% of the campus uses it. This information was emailed to the assembly on Thursday.
Emma Rosenblum ‘14: Of the people who can vote domestically, not all students can use this. Would it be worth it if every person who is domestic uses it? If a small percentage uses it, is it worth it? A lot of districts are saying no to electronics.
Natalie Zamora ‘14: I don’t remember which group does it, but a group on campus asked people to sign up to register. That’s free. I found that helpful. That’s how I registered to vote.
Melanie Bahti ’16: Last year it was BMC Dems that did registrations for the presidential election.
Sarah Gilmour ’14: Dems are Progressives now and will do registration again this year.
Amani Chowdhury ‘14: One of the points was that this was meant to help students who couldn’t vote in their home states. Progressives does registration in PA. This can have them do it in their home state.
Natalie Zamora ‘14: Pre-med students have a voting thing where they can only vote in the state that they have registered in, so the absentee ballot is important.
Colin Baumann ‘14: To get residency in medical school, they must be registered in the home state. It’s not in their best interest to register in PA.
Kayla Bondi ‘14: What does TurboVote do?
Amani Chowdhury ‘14: It helps students keep track of political calendars via emails and texts and manages absentee ballots. We pay the yearly fee as well as $1.17 per ballot.
Natalie Kato ‘14: If it does come from SGA dues, that money will be going towards TurboVote but also being taken away from SGA dues which go to the campus and clubs. This will be funding something that not necessarily everyone will be able to utilize on campus.
Colin Baumann ‘14: For Amy: how are we doing cutting out of treasury when the budget was screwed over?
Amy Chen ‘14: Right now we are doing pretty well. Some clubs have transferred to other sources of funding. We are not in the red and are implanting a new system for SGA dues. We will not increase them every seven years; instead, we will steadily increase SGA dues so that we can keep with increases in club budgets and inflation.
Anna Kalinsky ‘15: Do we think that this is an expense that we want to take in a year that we have grand May Day?
Amy Chen ‘14: No. Grand May Day is $10,000 more than usual. I don’t want to take money out of that. May Day is for the whole campus.
Amani Chowdhury ‘14: We’ve talked about it as a board but didn’t want to make a decision without the group. They are trying to be the Netflix of voter registration. Snoop Dogg tweeted about it.
Colin Baumann ‘14: Does anybody outside of Florida use this?
Amani Chowdhury ‘14: Michigan
Natalie Kato ‘14: One of the Seven Sisters.
Emma Rosenblum ‘14: Remember where the population of students are from. If big states don’t allow you to use this, but there are many students from that state at that school, it’s just something to keep in mind.
Natalie Kato ‘14: This is a representative council vote only.
Yes: 2
Table: 0
No: 17
Abstain: 1
We are not going to purchase TurboVote.
Vote on who to invite to Plenary
Natalie Kato ‘14: Plenary is on September 29th. The theme is Finding Plenary. This is a representative council vote only.
First we will vote on who can attend and then if they have speaking privileges.
Who can attend:
Only President Cassidy: 3
Only Deans: 0
Both: 16
No one: 0
Abstain: 2
We will invite both the president and deans to plenary. Next we will decide on whether they can speak or not.
Yes: 10
No: 8
Abstain: 2
We will give them speaking privileges. We will notify them of when plenary is and when they can speak.
Old Business:
New Business:
Natalie Kato ’14: Is there anything specifically you all want to see in the agenda in the future? Any topics you wish to discuss? Any people you wish to bring?
Natalie Zamora ‘14: Dining hall changes. They’re bringing back stuff – whassap with that?
Anna Kalinsky ’15: I want to hear about the changes in policy regarding student employment.
Natalie Kato ‘14: Email sga@brynmawr.edu. We will look into inviting john Griffith. Big Cheese is coming up. Be excited.