SGA Meeting
7:10 YJ ’12 calls the meeting to order.
Announcements
Colleen Haley ‘11: The Post-secret is on happening on Thursday, March 31st.
Liz Ritchie ‘11: The pianos in certain halls are in disrepair, so we are consolidating the pianos into the following dorms next year: Brecon, Rhoads, Rock, West, Haffner, and Merion. This week they are aerating the lawn, so try not to walk on the grass so that it will grow for commencement.
Elizabeth Held ‘12: Elections start tomorrow. Voting closes at 7pm is on blackboard. Let me know if you have problems. We have “I Voted” stickersfor people who vote at the tables in Erdman.Talk to me if you want to sign up for a time to table.
Lindsey Turr and Sam Salazar ‘11: The last senior cocktails will be on Friday, April 1st. It is masquerade themed. Don’t forget about senior dues.
Akshyeta Suryanarayan and Kyle Aguilar ‘13: We have class tee-shirts for sophomores in the campus center from 9-10 today, Monday, and Tuesday for ten dollars.
Saba Quadir ‘13: Monday from 6-8 in health center is the stress buster event. There will be pizza, a limited number of massage chairs, baked goods, goodie bags, and more.
Jen Savage and Blair Smith ‘12: Please email traditions within the next week if yourperformance group wants to perform on May Day.
SAMPLE PERFORMANCE BY PULSO LATINO! They will be performing Saturday, April 2nd in Marshall auditorium at Haverford.
Rebecca Sanders ’12: We’re starting the April appointments round tomorrow at 9am and lasts for the next two weeks. Positions on the following committees and boards are up for appointment: BMCS Co-heads and Officers, Landscaping Representatives, Film Series Heads and Committee, Student Finance Committee, Financial Aid Advisory Board, Health Center Advisory Board, Elections Board, Recycling Committee Co-heads, Plenary Committee, SGA Webmistress, Student Curriculum Committee.
Board of Trustees Meeting
YJ ’12: Dean Rasmussen usually thinks of a topic for the Board of Trustees and students to talk about. She was hoping that the topics could come from students in the future, so we were wondering if you had any ideas for things for them to talk about at the Board of Trustees Meeting. Last fall they talked about student-faculty interactions.
Adelyn Kishbaugh ‘12: Last February we talked about the honor code.
Blair Smith ‘12: It would be interesting to talk about what campus vibrancy means to students.
Sam Salazar ‘11: It would be helpful if we could talk about relations between students and the administration because we often misunderstand each other.
Sharan’12: Curriculum.
Liz Ritchie: We could talk about the development and history of traditions.
YJ ’12: You can email us with more ideas at sga@brynmawr.edu.
Honor Board
Priya Saxena ‘12: There has been some discussion about the social honor code and it’s erosion. I just wanted to get some ideas from you guys about what you want to see changed and implemented in the future.
Blair Smith ‘12: We need to talk about how we as a community hold each other accountable.
Heather Taddonio ‘12: We should address the false sense of security at Bryn Mawr and the fact that people think they can leave stuff out and have it not be stolen
Adelyn Kishbaugh ‘12: We should have a discussion about what confrontation means, because people seem to have difficulty execution it.We could have more guidance on what the process of confrontation is.
Blair Smith ‘12: It would be good to address what confrontation is early on.Could it be a part of customs week or wellness?
Priya Saxena ‘12: We’re going to try to present it in customs week next year in a fun way so freshmen are not so intimidated by it.
Adelyn Kishbaugh ‘12: It would be good for more than just freshman to know about confrontation.
Priya Saxena ‘12: How would you like to see changes implemented? Plenary?
Liz Ritchie ‘11: Could we create a Cliff Notes version of the social honor code?
Priya Saxena ‘12: I was talking to RazzMaTazz and we were saying that the honor code often seems like a lofty unreal thing, so it would be great to make it more tangible.In terms of accountability on campus – do you mean if you see an infraction you have to report it (that’s the way it is at Haverford, I’m uncomfortable with that)? Or do you mean just making people more comfortable with confrontation?
Elizabeth Held ‘12: There’s a stigma surrounding the social honor code cases and confrontations.
Heather Taddonio ‘12: Confrontation doesn’t have to be a big thing.
Jordan Cottrell ’13: A lot of social honor code infractions have been about things going missing. I wonder if the lack of social honor board cases has to do with people not feeling comfortable confronting people.
YJ ‘12: What are you going to do with these suggestions?
Priya Saxena ‘12: I’ll bring this list to the new honor board. I want to have monthly meetings with honor board for post bacs students, the first one this month will be about confrontation. As a board, we’re goint o t talk about t he social honor code and review it. I’ll be coming back to you guys with reports. If you have any suggestions you can email me at psaxena@brynmawr.edu
Discussion about accountability in SGA
YJ’12: I wanted to continue our conversation about accountability in SGA because I realized I didn’t respond to comments and thoughts that were being presented. By us sitting here and not responding, it seemed like we were not listening, which we don’t want people to think was the case. In the future, I hope to provide a summary at the end of each discussion so that we can reach a general consensus and people can add things and correct me. For the discussion last week, there were a lot of good comments, which we as a board really appreciate. We didn’t come up with a list of alternative ways to keep SGA accountable. It seems that it was the general consensus that we need to be more accountable, but we didn’t think of ways to do it. I was hoping we could do that now.The floor is open.
Blair Smith ‘12: The appointments committee should check in with the appointed person to make sure the committees don’t fall apart.
Rebecca Sanders ‘12: We have an end of term report, so we’re trying to institute more accountability.
YJ ’12: We also have mid semester reports.
Blair ’12: It would be good to have people come to SGA to report what they’re doing.
Liz Ritchie ’11: Since there are so many people, it would be good to have two people come up and say what they’re doing.
Mae Carlson ’12: The E. Board has talked about blocking out a time in SGA meetings for people to do presentations on topics of their choosing – both community members and members of the assembly.Maybe this would be a good time for people in SGA to report on projects that they’re working on, as well as encourage people outside the assembly to feel involved in SGA.
Adelyn Kishbaugh ’12: I think the idea of a monthly report is good.
Liz Ritchie ’11: It would be cool to get a kind of SGA Cliff Notes into the newspaper so everyone could see what SGA is doing.
Blair Smith ’12: We should encourage people to use the SGA survey monkey .
Liz Ritchie ’11: What are your ideas to increase accountability as an Executive Board?
Priya Saxena ’12: I like the idea of the SGA blog. We should put the link in with the minutes every week.
YJ ’12: We’re also planning to make an actual website and appoint someone to maintain it. The monthly reports by assembly members was another idea we had to try to increase accountability.
Sam Salazar ’11: With the website. People will think that it’s smaller if there are more members. Something that reaches out to people in other ways. Instead of activities emails, it’s a post on the website.
Blair ’12: Does SGA have a twitter? Also, people tell me that they don’t understand what happens at SGA because they don’t understand the lingo. Maybe your next video could be an explanation of SGA jargon.
Someone: We could change the seating arrangement, so it’s not you (the E.Board) vs. us (the assembly). We sit in a circle in res-co.
Blair Smith ’12: We’ve discussed changing the sitting arrangement before and decided it was awkward to have a circle because some people would end up in the inner circle and some people would end up in the outer circle. We settled on the sort of half circle that it is now.
Heather Taddonio: When people say that SGA meetings aren’t accessible because of jargon, it’s often because they go to the plenary meetings. Maybe we could encourage people to come to a normal SGA meeting.Or we could change the dialogue of plenary so that it’s more understandable to people who don’t regularly go to SGA meetings.
Liana Donohue ’12: They used to have SGA meetings in dorms in the past. Maybe we could try having SGA in a common room.
Liz Ritchie ’11: If the exec board could attend dorm meetings, or have people who hold positions attend dorm meetings, it could help to share what SGA does.
YJ ’12: We can send it out in a survey monkey and see what people want to tackle first and how many people want to do which things. Maybe one thing we could also do is have a discussion about what we want the agenda to be for the next meeting.
Priya Saxena ‘12: That’s also a good idea because it connects to presentations. So people can say what they want to talk about and then someone can do a presentation about it.
Copy Center
Tina Hu ’12: I’ve been getting a lot of emails about how to use the copy center website, so I’m going to do a quick tutorial of how to use it. You can get to this website through the Bryn Mawr website. Our login name is sgatreasurer@brynmawr.edu our password is BrynMawr. This is all posted on blackboard. You go to copy and print, upload files. For the description you should write your club name and event. You go to print options.I’ve been getting questions about table tents. To get a table tent, you go to folding.You can have it either half horizontal or half vertical.
Blair ’12: For printing songbooks – how can you make the front cover and the back cover different colors.
Tina Hu ’12:I’m not sure, but if you have any questions you can call the number on the website, or you can email Jerry Berenson. He’s happy to answer questions.Once you order it, Office Depot will send me a receipt, and I’ll deduct it from your club budget. Next year, we’re going to do it online and you’re going to purchase it yourself then print out the receipt and fill out a reimbursement form.
Akshyeta Suryanarayan ‘13: I ordered something last week, they don’t give you the receipt in the order, so you need to save it and print it out.
Tina Hu’12: They don’t give you the receipt because it’s SGA’s account.
Blair Smith ’12: For large things can we come to you as a treasurer and ask you too?
Tina Hu ’12: Yes.
Big Cheese Forum
YJ ’12: On April 10th we’re having the big cheese forum.We invited Bernie Chung – the associate director of dining services, Jenny Rickard – chief admissions officer, Elliott Shore – chief information officer, Jane MacAuliffe, Dean Rasmussen, John Griffith – chief financial officer.Are there any other suggestions for people to invite?
Liz ’11: Can we have someone from facilities/grounds come?
Mary Margaret Peebles ‘13: Someone from Public Safety.
Kesha Koech ‘13: Someone from the OIA or MCC.
YJ ’12: Is there anything they should come with stats about?
Jordan Cottrell ‘13: Maybe the state of the endowment.
YJ ’12: I’ll ask again next week too.
YJ’12: Any ideas for next meetings agenda?
Blair Smith ’12: I would like to talk about the piano’s being removed from certain dorms, because I know that on tours something Bryn Mawr advertises is having pianos in every dorm.
Emma Rosenblum ’14: At other women’s colleges, it’s a tradition that the 7 sisters have piano’s in every dorm. I think there’s a cohesive significance to having pianos in all the dorms.
Jordan Cottrell ‘13: Is the value of the piano more symbolic or functional?
Heather Taddonio ‘12: Do we have working pianos in Goodheart? Because the people who use them in dorms aren’t usually serious about playing.People who want a perfect piano can go to Goodheart.
Liz Ritchie ’11: We discussed how the money for the piano’s comes from bi-co funding for student activities, right now we don’t have the money to get them tuned so they’re in disrepair.If we reduce pianos, but make it so no one has to go that far, it would be the collection of better pianos and we’d be able to have them tuned more frequently.
Blair Smith ’12: Since it’s an issue that affects residents, it would be helpful if DP’s asked people in dorms whether they taught the main value of the pianos was symbolic or not.
YJ ’12: People can send out survey then we can talk about it next week. Any more things for the agenda next week?
Blair ’12: Liz, can you announce HAs who have accepted the position at Room Draw so we know who is an HA in the dorm that we draw into?
Liz ’11: Can I ask your reasoning?
Blair ’12: I care about which HA’s are in dorms.
YJ’12: We bring that up at the next meeting so we can see what’s happened with it.