SGA Minutes
1:10 – Sophie Papavizas ’11 calls the meeting to order
Roll Call
Assembly Members Present: Katie Dahl ’11, Liz Ritchie ’11, Miranda Hansen-Hunt ’11, Aki Snyder ’11, Sara Jane Rodgers ’13, Jennifer Savage ’12, Blair Smith ’12, Sarah Kelley ’11, Duong Nguyen ’13, Adelyn Kishbaugh ’12, Courtney Pinkerton ’12, Ellen Halbach ’11, Irene Shin ’13, Sam Salazar ’11, Lindsey Turr ’11, Heather Taddonio ’12, Kyle Aguilar ’13, Akshyeta Suryanarayan ’13, Krista Imre ’13, Elizabeth Olecki ’12, Olivia Xia ’14, Keshia Koech ’13, Ali Raeber ’13, Joo Park ’11, Kate Gould ’11, Mary Margaret Peebles ’13, Jordan Cottrell ’13, Sarah Schnellbacher ’13, Tanvi Surti ’12, Emily Tafaro ’12, Kathryn Gary ’11, Emily Zhao ’11, Vrinda Varia ’13, Naznen Rahmen ’13, Sarah Capasso ’11, Priya Saxena ’12, Katharine Woolls ’12, Tiffany Olszuk ’12, Callie Jensen ’11, Sumehda Niranjan ’11, Kerlyne Jean ‘11
Assembly Members Absent: Isidora Armentrout ’13, Gabby Marangell ’12, Mae Carlson ’12, Giang Tran ’11, Malina Toza ’13, Priya Gupta ’13, Sarah Aubrey ’13, Julie Gorham ’12, Hannah Smith ’14, Pragya Krishna ’13, Maya Sachdeva ’14, Daisy Sheng ’14, Hope Wayman ’13, Sarah Henkind ‘13
Community Members Present: Julie Mazziotta ’13, Jessica Watkins ’13, Madiha Irfan ’14, Emma Rosenblum ’14, Amanda Beardall ’14, Aya Martin Seaver ’13, Katherine Bakke ’11, Elizabeth Held ’12, Jesse Solomon ’11, Laura Feibush, Mine Serigawa, Zandra Martinez ’11, Sarah Theobald ’12, Lena Barnard ’12, Lydia Bello ’12, Cameron Scherer, Kate Grant ’12, Emma Wisniewski-Barker ’11, Meghna Singh, Rachel Tillison, Maggie Zelonis, Yulia Belyakova, Maddy Court, Kersti Francis, Erika Nunez ’13, Zoe Coleman ’14, Paige DeRosa ’14, Antonia Kerle ’11
Announcements
Lindsey Turr ’11, Sam Salazar ‘11: The first Senior cocktails of the semester is coming up on February 24th, and it will be Western themed. Also, Senior Gift is at 22% participation. The goal for this month is to reach 30% so we need 30 more donors. Gifts of any amount count towards our participation goal! Those that give $20.11 or more will receive a 2011 tote bag.Also, Give a Hoot Day is happening on Friday, February 11th. It’s a day to celebrate all the generous alums, parents, and friends that make our Bryn Mawr experience possible each year. Students are invited to stop by the Campus Center between 10am and 3pm on Friday and sign thank-you cards to donors. There will be cookies and hot chocolate for all who sign cards!
Susie Kim ’11: This Thursday is our Honor Code appreciation day. We’ll have all the submissions displayed for a week in the Campus Center so I hope everyone will come out and see them.
Yong Jung Cho ’12: Sarah Theobald was appointed to the Curriculum Committee, and Mae Carlson was appointed to the Computer Access Committee.
Your Two Cents
Thanh-Trang Hoang-Le ’13: Good afternoon, everyone. I’m speaking on behalf of the staff of the Bi-College News on the subject of our funding for the Spring 2011 semester. I thank [SGA/SC] for giving us the opportunity to speak openly today about our experience in this semester’s budgeting process. Given the budget we’ve been currently provided from Haverford’s Students’ Council, we are unable to print issues of the newspaper for the rest of the semester.
The problem the Bi-Co News currently faces is rooted in a long-term point of contention between both colleges’ student governments: how to fund clubs that identify themselves as bi-college clubs, especially the more expensive bi-college clubs. In the early nineties, SGA and SC made an agreement that Bryn Mawr would fund the Bi-Co News and Haverford would fund the radio station, WHRC, and Moviemaking Club. Bryn Mawr has funded the Bi-Co News ever since. While this arrangement has been contested by multiple SGA treasurers since the agreement was made, no efforts on their part to change it have been successful.
That brings us to this semester, and we will share a timeline of what has happened regarding our funding and how we have been notified regarding changes to it. In the fall semester, we applied for funding from Bryn Mawr. We received nearly full funding. In no time during the semester were we given any indication that either student government was considering changes to the way our funding should work or that we should apply to Haverford for funding next semester.
On January 6th, our business manager received an email from SGA Treasurer Laurel Lemon notifying us that SGA had decided to not fund the Bi-Co this semester. She suggested we go to Haverford for funding this semester. We were shocked.
That email said that this decision was not based on any actions of the Bi-Co News, but rather was intended to bring about necessary changes regarding how Haverford and Bryn Mawr share costs for the newspaper. We were worried that with such little notice, Haverford would not be able to provide us what we needed for our basic printing costs. Haverford’s SC Co Treasurers, Julie Seith and Kayla Hoskinson, contacted us after we received the email from Laurel and assured us that they were in touch with SGA about the issue and were seeking to resolve it. We made several attempts to speak to Laurel in order to understand more about the decision and what our options were, but none of those attempts were successful.
Following Laurel’s suggestion, we applied for funding from SC. SC budgeted us $3500 of $13,000 requested. Because $3500 will not nearly cover the paper’s printing costs for this semester, we applied for funding from Bryn Mawr. We had our budgeting meeting on Wednesday night. At first Laurel told us that SGA couldn’t give us any funding because no club may apply for funding from both schools. Later she agreed to arrange a meeting with Haverford’s co-treasurers this coming week in order to discuss the possibility of sharing the costs this semester.
For the sake not only of the Bi-Co News but also of any club whose funding could one day run the risk of being contested between the schools, that meeting must happen, and it must yield a solution to the issue of bi-college club budgeting this semester and in future semesters. As a club who has been gravely affected by poor cooperation and communication between the student governments regarding this issue, we request SC’s Co-Presidents and SGA’s President be present at that meeting in addition to the treasurers in order to ensure that the Exec Boards as a whole are on the same page about the agreement. The treasurers must review which schools fund which clubs and at what cost. They must do so with a commitment total honesty, and they must determine the most equitable means of distributing funding amongst bi-college clubs. We also call for an immediate solution for this semester’s funding for the Bi-Co News.
It is not the responsibility of the Bi-Co News to negotiate the best, fairest plan for the student governments to fund bi-college clubs. But it must be negotiated. Both SGA and SC must be open to compromises, place past vendettas aside, and work out a solution for the benefit of the students who elected them to do precisely this job.
As for how our funding situation has been handled thus far, we are highly frustrated. We are frustrated that SGA notified us only 10 days before the beginning of the semester that we would not receive funding from Bryn Mawr. While we appreciate SGA’s concern about equally dividing the responsibilities for Bi-Co’s funding, the method used to make that happen is by no means ethical. We have been treated a means to an end, and that is infuriating. While it is very important that SC and SGA’s treasurers reach an agreement on how to fund bi-college clubs, it is utterly unacceptable for the Bi-Co News’ funding to be utilized as a political tool to get to that agreement.
The ramifications of this tactic have been extreme and unjust. Due to insufficient funds we will be unable to print news articles about the many Plenary resolutions being presented to SGA and SC in the upcoming month. We cannot send subscriptions to parents and alumnae who pay to receive the newspaper. If in the worst case scenario, SC and SGA do not reach an agreement about our funding this semester, we will not be able to print at all. The Bi-College News plays an integral role on both campuses. It functions to keep student governments and the schools’ administrations transparent, as well as to provide a platform for student journalists, photographers, and designers to express themselves. Denying students access to these services is a major offense to the community.
We are highly disappointed by what has been extraordinarily insufficient cooperation and communication between both schools’ student governments regarding bi-college club funding, in this, last, and in previous semesters. That lack of communication has affected the wider community far beyond the treasurers and assembly members themselves. We implore SGA and SC to come to a solution regarding this semester’s Bi-Co News funding as soon as possible, as well as to agree on a long-term plan for funding bi-college clubs.
We are open and willing and eager to have conversations with the community and the student governments about what we could be doing better in terms of the content of the Bi-Co News.But to have our funding tossed around solely because of poor cooperation between SGA and SC is grossly unfair. It is unfair to our staff, for whom the paper serves as a essential venue of learning and practicing journalism skills. It is unfair to Bryn Mawr and Haverford’s community, who have had no knowledge about a decision that could mean having a weekly student newspaper or not having one. It’s not fair in any shape or form, we regret that it happened, and hope it will change.
Margaret Ernst ’11: We just wanted to add that we brought copies of email communications and previous bi-co budgeted clubs. We have recent information about Bi-Co News funding if anyone wants to see this data.
Budget Approval
Laurel Lemon ’11: Clubs this semester asked for a lot more than we could give. Sadly, we don’t have $300,000 to spend. We typically cut 30-40% of all budgets. Any clubs that didn’t get funding didn’t follow all the steps for funding. Asterisks signify bi-co clubs that are self-selected, meaning that treasures of clubs decide themselves whether or not they are bi-co or tri-co.
Jessie Solomon’11: I was just wondering what you were planning to do with the Bi-Co News funding? If the Bi-Co News didn’t get any money, were they not supposed to publish?
Laurel Lemon ’11: I think it’s a little unclear. Whatever clubs decide that they’re bi-co could get bi-co get funding.
Malli Gupta ’12: I was just wondering why the meeting with Haverford wasn’t done earlier?
Laurel Lemon ’11: We’ve had several meetings because the premise of this issue has been around awhile. I met with members of SC, but there was never any conclusion. I felt there was action that needed to be taken.
Tanvi Surti ’12: It seems as if there wasn’t enough communication. It seems a little unfair that the Bi-Co doesn’t get to publish because of the lack of communication. Why should the Bi-Co News suffer?
Laurel Lemon ’11: It’s a large financial burden for just Bryn Mawr to have. It costs around $30,000 to $40,000 a year. It wasn’t supposed to punish the Bi-Co News, I hoped Haverford would pick up the slack, but they didn’t.
Tanvi Surti ’12: To follow up, is it possible for further communication to continue so that the Bi-Co News can publish this semester?
Laurel Lemon ’11: We’re going to meet this week. Our goal is to come up with a solution that will last for a long time.
Margaret Ernst ’11: From our perspective, we didn’t get any notice that we should have cut down our budget if it really is a financial burden. While the idea wasn’t to punish us, the effect of the idea is punishing the Bi-Co News, the campus, prospective students, parents who pay for subscriptions. What has happened has been outrageous.
Ryan Fackler,SC Co-President: I just had a question about our communication. We only found out about this issue in a bcc’d email in early January. It seems strange to find out this way.The Bi-Co News shouldn’t have gotten caught in the middle of this, and I think this seems less than ideal. Couldn’t we have worked on this earlier like last semester to work on something for next year?
Laurel Lemon ’11: Most things are less than ideal in the real world. I’ve tried to meet with people and talked to the Haverford treasurers briefly. I take full responsibility for the lateness in communicating this issue.
Sarah Capasso ’11: What about the future of other bi-co clubs? I worry about the future of some clubs that their budget could just get cut for whatever reason. People depend on the Bi-Co News for lots of information. Where do we go from here?
Laurel Lemon ’11: My main intent was not to solely cut off the Bi-Co News. I had hoped Haverford would help out. I would not worry about the issue of clubs in the future. What we really need to do is create concrete definitions of what a bi-co club really is. We need to come up with a system that is equitable between both schools. Maybe set up a concrete meeting time every semester for both schools treasurers.
Tina Hu ’12: I’m an SFC rep. I just want to ask Haverford why they could only give $3,500 to fund the Bi-Co News?
Kayla Hoskinson: I’m one the of the Haverford co-treasurers. We got hit with the request to fund the newspaper right before our budgeting process began, and we gave them as much as we possibly could without taking too much away from other clubs.
Ryan Fackler: Our budgeting process is a little different from Bryn Mawr’s, and we allow clubs to file grievances. This year we only had $8000 to work with instead of our usual $10,000. It was impossible to fund clubs that have been with us for many years. We have a mid year budgeting process where we reclaim unused money, and reallocate.
Susie Kim ’11: Can you tell the assembly how you define bi-co clubs? How to FUCS and Haverfest factor into this budgeting process?
Ryan Fackler: There are a lot of Bryn Mawr students who attend these clubs or events so we consider them for bi-co funding. The rest of the bi-co clubs seems clearly defined.
Susie Kim ’11: In summary would you say, as long as there are 50% Bryn Mawr students, that would constitute a bi-co club?
Ryan Fackler: I think that would be a good marker, but if there are Bryn Mawr students on the club’s board, than that would be another factor. It’s not a question of control, but usage.
Margaret Ernst ’11: Ryan, is there a constitutional way to determine what is a bi-co club?
Laurel Lemon ’11: The newly passed SFC bylaws have a line about bi-co funding that states you can only get funding from one school per semester.
Margaret Ernst ’11: I think it would be the best interest of the upcoming meeting between the boards would be to determine what is a bi-co club or not. There are a number of bi-co clubs in the SC budget that are different than what Bryn Mawr has in their budget. I want to make sure that you talk about all the other bi-co clubs.
Sophie: We can take 3 more comments, but we do need to start to move on. We are going to vote on budget approval.
Sarah Kelley ’11: How does the Bi-Co News fit into this budget? If we approve the budget, are we not going to give the Bi-Co News any money?
Laurel Lemon ’11: Not necessarily.
Katherine Bakke ’11: If we were to approve the budget, what amount of money would be available to the Bi-Co News if we were to give them money?
Laurel Lemon ’11: It would depend on grievances, but I don’t think we could give them the full amount of what they want. I think we could meet part way.
Tanvi Surti ’12: If this budget is rejected can we reconsider how much the Bi-Co News gets this semester?
Laurel Lemon ’11: If the budget isn’t approved, we would have to reconsider the amount of money every club’s received.
Alex Stratyner ’11: I’ve worked on the Bi-Co News for a long time, I just want to say before you vote, that the paper exists for a large part to let students know what’s happening on campus, especially in SGA. Please think about this when you vote.
Katherine Bakke ’11: If this budget is approved, can Bryn Mawr give them money later since we aren’t allowed to fund clubs at both schools at the same time?
Laurel Lemon ’11: I think it has to be discussed. No matter what, it would have to come back to the assembly for a final decision.
Sophie: It’s written in the bylaws, we could change the bylaws and have those approved by the assembly.
Liz Ritchie ’11: Approving the budget doesn’t mean that the Bi-Co News isn’t going to get any money right? If we don’t approve the whole budget then all clubs will not be able to spend money yet right?
Sarah Kelley ’11: Point of Information – there will be an election next week, so there will be some power changes, it might be a lot of work for the incoming treasurer to deal with, which is also something to consider.
Sam Salazar ’11: How much money does Bryn Mawr usually spend in the spring? What about Haverford?
Laurel Lemon ’11: It really depends, but I would probably say between $170,000 to $200,000 depending on the year.
Sophie: It’s not really comparable because dues change.
Sam Salazar ’11: Why is this always Bryn Mawr’s fault? Why can’t we deal with it, like saying we’re working on in and move on. All the clubs are losing money. Why can’t we just accept the situation and work on it? I know I’m rambling, but just listen to each other. Laurel is looking into ways to keep the paper going. I don’t think we need to stress too much about this.
Margaret Ernst ’11: The reason the Bi-Co News has gone public about this, is because we’re afraid if we don’t these decisions will continue to be made behind closed doors. If SGA decides to pass this budget, how do we hold the treasurers accountable? I want to emphasize that if we don’t fund the Bi-Co News, it’s a statement from SGA saying that’s it’s okay to use a club to gain political equity.
Laurel Lemon ’11: It’s not that I’m out to get the Bi-Co News, but I want to get all bi-co club funding issues clarified. My main goal is to get increased communication between the schools. The Bi-Co News didn’t seem to think that we could handle this if you’re going to the Presidents’ offices of both schools to try and get money some other way.
Katie Dahl ’11: I’d like to motion to vote on the budget.
Sophie: This is an Assembly member vote only. We’re going to move to a vote on the budget as the budget currently stands.
The budget has been approved.
Margaret Ernst ’11: Just on Laurel’s point about going to the President’s office, we went because we were unsure about where we would be getting the money from. It wasn’t supposed to be a move saying we didn’t trust SGA, we just wanted to try and find a way to continue printing.
Thanh-Trang Hoang-Le ’13: With the money we have in our budget cannot sustain another issue. Next Tuesday we won’t have a full issue. We’ll be printing online, but there will be no paper copy.
Liz Ritchie ’11: So you didn’t agree with printing bi-weekly? Haverford said they gave you enough to print every other week, why wasn’t that an option?
Margaret Ernst ’11: Unfortunately it’s not enough. It would have been enough if we didn’t have old invoices from last semester to pay off.
Ruilin Xu ’11: How confident are you that you’re going to get money from mid-semester Haverford budgeting?
Margaret Ernst ’11: It kind of depends how much they have. That process takes place after break.
Irene Shin ’13: People will ask for reprieves, more money, and anything left over will be given to the Bi-Co News?
Laurel Lemon ’11: It depends on how things work out. It depends on how much the News is going to want.
Liz Ritchie ’11: Are you going to consider the Bi-Co News’ needs before giving out grievances?
Laurel Lemon ’11: Yes.
Irene Shin ’13: This might be audacious of me to ask the Assembly, but could we ask clubs to consider asking for less money during grievances? I think the newspaper is really important, and maybe this way they’ll get a bit more money.
Courtney Pinkerton ’12: I was just wondering if there were specific numbers on how much a specific issue of the paper costs?
Blair Smith ’12: I’m a Traditions Mistress, I would appreciate if we could look at how much has been spent on the Bi-Co. If we include how much we spend on May Day and other traditions, we spend a lot of money on bi-co relations. This is Haverford’s opportunity to step up and help out. The Bi-Co News might need to really consider printing less. Laurel went about this in the wrong way, but yelling at her isn’t going to solve the problem.
Margaret Ernst ’11: We cut down $10,000 from our budget when we got the email from Laurel.We do want to increase online readership. As a club we feel like we need to hold SGA and the treasurer accountable, and we’re offended that we weren’t asked how we thought we could cut costs.
Elizabeth Held ’12: I love the Bi-Co News and I’m also Laurel’s garden party girl, so I’m trying to balance two sides. I think this conversation isn’t really helpful anymore. I think we need to see what happens on Tuesday and then come back on Sunday to discuss more.
Fall Plenary Updates
Sophie: The Computer Access people have been appointed and are planning a day of workshops and discussions about media. There’s a resolutions in the works. With the bathrooms changes resolution, they are currently in the implementation process, so signs should be changing soon. Spring Plenary is in two weeks. Next Sunday there will be resolution presentations and there are quite a few resolutions so far. Assembly members and volunteers should be at Goodhart at 9:30 to get job assignments and to help set up.
Old Business
New Business
2:31 – Meeting adjourned.