SGA Meeting
Absent: Miranda Hansen-Hunt ’11, Giang Tran ’11, Duong Nguyen ’13, Malina Toza ’13, Priya Gupta ’13, Sarah Aubrey ’13, Julie Gorham ’12, Sam Salazar ’11, Heather Taddonio ’12, Kyle Aguilar ’13, Hannah Smith ’14, Pragya Krishna ’13, Daisy Sheng ’14, Keshia Koech ’13, Hope Wayman ’13, Raella Rothman ’13, Sarah Henkind ’13, Kerlyne Jean ‘11
7:10 Yong Jung Cho ‘12 calls the meeting to order.
Announcements
Liz Ritche and Katie Dahl ‘11: We’re the res-co heads. Summer storage will not be offered this year because it’s a fire hazard to store things in Radnor basement. International and West Coast students have already been notified.We’re looking for suggestions about how to alleviate the problems that this will cause: i.e off campus storage, vans to get stuff to storage.Please send Angie Sheets (asheets@brynmawr.edu) ideas.
Adrienne Webb 2011: Art Club is having a student art exhibit on the second floor of Canaday at 4:30 on Thursday.
Aki Synder ‘11: On March 11th there was an earthquake with an 8.9 magnitude that hit Japan and a huge tsunami.Bryn Mawr students got together to have a fundraiser. We wanted to thank everyone for participating.We raised $1,450. We will be fundraising at Haverford throughout next week.
Elizabeth Held ‘12: Nominations end tomorrow at 10pm. Please nominate more people, and accept/reject your nomination if you’ve already been nominated. There are info sessions tonight and tomorrow at 9 and tomorrow at 10.The candidate’s forum will be held in Dalton 300 at 9 this Wednesday the 23rd.
Krista Imre ‘13: Buzzing 4 change will be Wednesday April 6th in the campus center. We want to make sure everyone signs up online prior to the event. For more information look for flyers around campus. Go to buzzing4change.org/brynmawr to sign up.
Naznen Rahmen ‘13: This year there is Relay for Change at Haverford.My team is raffling off #13 room draw number. We’ll be selling raffle tickets for $3 Monday and Tuesday in Ermdan.
YJ ‘12: Assembly members please fill and exit questionnaire and email it to me today or tomorrow at the latest.
Your Two Cents
Adelyn Kishabaugh ‘12: In light of discussion of accountability, I have been thinking about how the position of Board of Trustees rep relates to the assembly.What would people think if it were changed from an elected position to an appointed one?
Liz Ritchie ‘11: Why would that be better?
A: It doesn’t need a vote in SGA.I don’t feel that I have been able to give back to SGA much, because it’s hard to have a huge impact with a student’s limited knowledge of finance and lack of business experience.
Blair: Is it even necessary as an appointed position since SGA president already attends, or res-co heads could attend?
Adelyn Kishbaugh ‘12: SGA president has other responsibilities, and the board enjoys interacting with students.As Board of Trustees rep, you are representation of what students on campus are like. It’s an important position, but you’re representing students in different way than most assembly members.
Jordan Cottrell ‘13:I have two questions. First, you have to come to Sunday meetings, do you think that people would still report back to SGA if it were an appointed position?
Adelyn Kishbaugh ’12: One of the goals of the new E. Board is to have the positions more clearly defined.If it were made clear that reporting back to SGA was one of their responsibilities then people would do it.
Jordan Cottrell ’13:My second question is do you have some kind of vote on the board?
Adelyn Kishbaugh ‘12: No, you give a presentation in February, but mostly the purpose of the position is just to help them find out what the students are up to.
Big Cheese Forum
YJ ‘12: The president is a busy woman.We may have to move the Big Cheese forum earlier. Can we do a straw vote to see if we want the president to come?
(People want the president to come.)
YJ ‘12: Can we move it to April 10th at 6:00pm?
No: Sarah Jane Rodgers ‘13
Abstain:
Kate Gould ‘11
Callie Jensen ‘11
Courtney Pinkerton ‘12
Aki Snyder ‘11
Katie Dahl ‘11
Ali Raeber ‘13
Meeting will be moved.
Grievances Update:
Tina Hu ‘12: This past Wednesday we had very successful grievances. My goal is to make how money is spent more transparent. This powerpoint shows how much money each club received.
Jordan Cottrell: Are these the total amounts for clubs are receiving?
Tina Hu ‘12: No, it’s just grievances.
Katharine Wools: Is the extra money that traditions receive going to be spent on May Day?
Blair Smith and Jen Savage ‘12: yes.
Tina Hu ’12: For the next grievances, I would like to ask that people who are requesting money are better prepared.
Appointments Update:
Rebecca Sanders ‘12: We’ve revised the bylaws and added two things 1.) You cannot be a member of the appointments committee and a member of the assembly at the same time, nor can you be on the honor board and a member of the appointments committee at the same time.Part of the reason for this is because those positions occasionally have conflicting obligations.
Irene Shin ‘13: Can you explain those conflicts a little more?
Rebecca Sanders ‘12: It’s in the constitution and we wanted to clarify it.
Priya Saxena ‘12: If someone is running for an appointed position who has previously been brought before the honor board, it would be uncomfortable if the person who was sitting on the appointments committee had also sat on their hearing.
Courtney Pinkerton ‘12: Is this for people on appointments committee or for with an appointed position?
Rebecca Sanders ‘12: Just for appointments committee.
Abstentions:
Aki Synder ‘11
Courtney Pinkerton ‘12
Joo Park ‘11
Landscaping
Lydia Bello and Stephanie Kim ‘12:We’re the landscaping reps. This is a position which was revived in spring 2009. We work with the grounds department at BMC and landscaping advisory subcommittee of Board of Trustees.Our main role is to email and survey students to gather opinions.We’re hoping to establish different forms of communication between us, grounds, and the students – beginning with this presentation.
Grounds takes care of landscaping and maintenance issues on campus like mowing lawns, taking care of trees and gardens, and snow and leaf removal.
Field hockey field received an award and there will be turf on the lower field.
Greens vegetable garden has been successful, and was acknowledged by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society.
Tree Campus USA is a project to maintain the trees on campus.Hopefully, we will make a tree campus student committee and a faculty committee. It’s based off of our preexisting campus tree program, which takes care of our 36000 trees on campus.Recently, they’ve been replacing trees that have been cut down due to disease (Merion tree) and looking to make campus more in line with how it’s been historically, which includes landscaping Taft garden so it’s more like it was in the past.
Bryn Mawr College’s Green Plan: Grounds is being more environmentally friendly. by allowing for More natural wildlife areas where plants native to this area can grow and aren’t mowed.
Outdoor furniture: Students were surveyed in the fall of 2009. People wanted outdoor furniture (survey didn’t convey anything about design).We took wooden chairs and benches out of storage and put them on carp green as a result of survey.Students were surveyed again and said they wanted more outdoor furniture.The Board of Trustees took this information as well as opinions of an anonymous consulting group into account when they made the decisions about the vibrancy chairs.
Long term goals: We’re thinking about the cow path to the campus center. There are questions about impermeable land we can have as a consequence of zoning laws.We’re also working on getting outdoor seating at Erdman and getting rid of muddy areas.This needs a lot of financial support so we’re looking to implement these changes in the next 5-10 years.
General goals: To improve student-ground department relationship by creating an online forum and holding informal meetings. To continue Tree Campus USA and additional projects based on student opinion and effort. Please visit studentlanscape.blogs.brynmawr.edu send questions/comments to lbello@brynmawr.edu and skim07@brynmawr.edu
YJ ‘12: Please make suggestions on the blog.
Katie Dahl ‘11: It’s interesting that we’re trying to go back to historic look of campus, but we got chairs that are modern.Additionally, they’re too lightweight and steal-able. In the future, I hope that we can look for things that go better with the theme of our campus.
Lydia Bello ‘12: No furniture that isn’t bolted into the ground is immoveable
Stephanie Kim ‘12:Part of the point was they wanted students to move them around.
Blair Smith ‘12: Are we allowed to move other outdoor furniture around?
Lydia Bello ‘12: That’s the point of having these chairs.
Recap of E. Board retreat
YJ ‘12: We went to IKEA and bought plates, pots, dishes. Stayed within budget of $365. We went to borders and bought recipe books for the kitchen as well.
Liz Ritchie ‘11: What is being done to assure that they stay there?
YJ ‘12: Lisa Zernicke said theft wasn’t a problem during the year.
Liz: So we will remove them during the summer?
YJ ‘12: Yes.
YJ ’12: We also organized the files in office. Tina alphabetized all the budgets since 2008, so now we have a record of them.We also organized all the minutes from 2002 up to now. We talked about customs week and orientation for first years. We’ll talk more later about new ways we’ve planned to introduce freshman to SGA.We also made new fomat for the minutes/Mawrk Notes.The Mawrk Notes for the first meeting are up on the board in the campus center. We made the blog look better.Now the constitution is a PDF so everyone can read it. We also created a Google website so everyone in the assembly can upload monthly reports.
Blair Smith ‘12: Is the Google website open to the whole internet?
YJ ‘12: Yes, but we can/will make it private.
Liz Ritchie ‘11: Is it just for assembly?
YJ ‘12: Yes.
Continuation of conversation about co-held positions:
Liz Ritchie ‘11:I agree with the purpose of making people more accountable, but I think that getting rid of co-held positions may not be the way to do it. You shouldn’t force people to have a co-held position, but if they want to collaborate with someone else that can be effective and helpful.
Blair Smith ‘12: Dorm presidents are supposed to be held accountable through residential council.Having two people work together forces them to hold each other accountable and therefore makes them more accountable to the community. Dorm president is gateway position to SGA and so we shouldn’t limit involvement.
Adelyn Kishbaugh ‘12: It seems that we like the idea of more accountability, but we’re not sure how to go about increasing accountability. What about elections? Maybe if we made it more of a thing, would that increase the accountability of dorm presidents to their constituents.
Sarah Capasso ‘11: Dorm presidents should be more active and people don’t know where their responsibility lies. People who are older may know more about the position and would be able to help younger co-position holder with things that it’s hard to know on your own, allowing them to grow into the role of dorm president.
Courtney Pinkerton ‘12: Collaboration allows things to get done with ebb and flow of semester so that responsibility doesn’t become overwhelming for one person.
Jen Savage ’12: It’s not fair to combine co-positions into one person, because often times you don’t know a lot and need someone to bounce ideas off of.If you want to run with someone you should have the option.
Liz Ritchie ‘11: We are trying to help dorm presidents feel like they’re more a part of DLT by possibly having them come back early in the fall or get some kind of actual training in the future.
Irene Shin ‘13: Is everyone talking about dorm presidents when they’re talking about co-held positions? Can we talk about it more generally? Because I can see other positions being downsized.
Jordan Cottrell ‘13: With hell week and parties it is important to have two people as dorm president.Even if res-co worked together to plan events, it’s different having someone from outside of the dorm plan something like east vs. west.
Mae Carlson ‘12: The positions without a committee which currently can be co-held are elections head, faculty rep, CEO rep, OIA rep, board of trustees rep, Haverford rep, McBride rep, off campus rep.
YJ ’12: For their first monthly report, if everyone could write a description of their positions, we will then come together and create a comprehensive description of what that position should be.
Irene Shin ‘13: When should the paragraphs be on there?
YJ ‘12: April 3rd
Vrinda Varia ‘13: How many co-held positions are being co-held now?
Mae Carlson ‘12: Only McBride rep and off campus rep.
New Business
Courtney Pinkerton ‘12 and Saba Quadir ‘13: We’re on the health center advisory committee. The health center is holding an open campus stress buster event, just to invite people to health center and to show what’s available.We will have massage chairs which you can sign up for.There will be pizza and desserts because nurses and doctors are excited about baking. We will have goodie bags and a WII. It is next Monday, March 28th.
Mae Carlson ’12: Jen Rajchel and I are organizing a campus wide event on April 1rst in the campus center from 1:30 to 5:00.It’s called Digital Dialogue and aims to generate conversation about how technology and social meeting affects us as members of a liberal arts community.Some of the questions we’re starting with are should teachers and students be friends on facebook? how does college ACB relate to the honor code? should you be able to tweet in class? Hope to see you there! There will be food!
Emily Reuman ‘11: This week is food week. The first event is a food justice panel 7pm on Tuesday.