SGA Minutes for Meeting on 25 January 2009
Agenda
- Roll Call
- Announcements
- Your Two Cents
- Minutes Approval
- Vote to change meeting time on 1 February (Super Bowl Sunday)
- Changes to Budgeting Grievances process
- Looking towards February 1st discussion of the financial crisis
- Representative Presentations
- Old Business
- ACB Update
- New Business
- Minutes/Mawrk Notes
Meeting called to order at 7:10 pm.
Roll Call
Announcements
Amber Zambelli: On behalf of the Hell Week Committee, I remind you that Hell Week begins 18 February at sundown. We are looking for alternatives for all evenings and activities of Hell Week, and ideas should be forwarded to Amber Zambelli (azambelli).
Amber Zambelli: Nominations for the next round of elections open tomorrow, 26 January at 9:00, and will close Sunday, 1 February at 5 pm. Positions include 2010 President(s), Sophomore 2-year Honor Board (2nd year), Executive Board (President, VP, Treasurer, and Secretary), Board of Trustees Rep (1 position), and Elections (Co)Head(s). Get nominatin’!
Minutes Approval
Kendra Hayde, Secretary: We must approve all of the minutes from last semester, so instead of holding a million votes, we are going to do one vote for all of them. If you have corrections to make to attendance, please email me, but keep in mind that it does not carry forward from semester to semester.
Vote to approve minutes from Plenary (9/28/08), 10/05/08, 10/26/08, 11/02/08, 11/09/08, 11/16/08, and 11/23/08:
30 in favor, 0 against, 0 abstentions.
The minutes are approved.
Vote to change meeting time on 1 February (Super Bowl Sunday)
Aheli Purkayastha, President: Since the Super Bowl traditionally occurs at the same time as SGA, we would like to move our meeting to 1 pm. This requires a 2/3 majority vote of the assembly.
Marisa Franz, Haverford Rep: Can this not count against us for attendance?
Kendra Hayde: Although we did count Lantern Night against you, since this is such short notice, yes. I will still require you to send me an email for it to be “excused”, but it will not count against you in a normal way.
Vote to move meeting:
24 in favor, 0 against, 7 abstentions.
Motion passes. The meeting on Feb 1st will be held at 1 pm.
Changes to Budgeting Grievances process
Klaralee Charlton, Treasurer: If you came to any of the budgeting workshops, you’ll already know this. Instead of holding grievances directly after the interviews, they will be in the middle of the semester. Clubs are trying to throw their budgets together at the beginning of the semester, and aren’t thinking of some things right now, so if we hold grievances later, it will give clubs time to research and plan for later. I just wanted to have a brief discussion right now about whether people have questions or reservations about this change in the process. In addition to adding to budgets for new events, and readjusting if clubs have readjusted their priorities at that time, we will ask clubs who haven’t spent money to come in and readjust, take away some money, if need be. Are there questions – I realize this is new this year, and it’s a little different. If you have suggestions for running it better, please bring those up, as well.
Patricia LeBron, Pem East Dorm Co-President: What if a club has an event very near when they budget?
Klaralee Charlton: We are looking to cut things near the end – cutting more drastically towards the end, and cutting less from the things scheduled for the beginning of the semester. So, if they have leftover money, they would be able to reallocate. If we did cut them too much, they’d be able to come in and talk about it.
Katie Kellom, Honor Board Head: I’ve heard about clubs that don’t spend any of their money. What happens to that money?
Klaralee Charlton: In the fall semester, any unspent money stays in our SGA budget. We don’t normally allow that money to carry over from semester to semester – if something happens, and a club can’t hold an event because of some specific reason, we sometimes let them do that, carry over the money into the next semester. In the spring, the remaining funds that are leftover go to the Special Events Fund. When clubs don’t spend money, our policy is twofold. If they haven’t spent half of their budget when they arrive at their budgeting interview for the next semester, they will only have 25% of their budget left to spend for that semester. This prevents spending sprees. If we see a trend that they are not spending well, we cut them a lot more than those who are spending well. We give people who spend well what they ask for more often that the others.
Looking towards February 1st discussion of the financial crisis
Aheli Purkayastha: The next point on the agenda is to talk about next week’s meeting. We will be talking about the financial crisis as it affects Bryn Mawr. We’ve aksed Jenny Rickard, from Admissions/Financial Aid; John Griffiths, the CFO; and Bernie Chung, the head of Dining Services, to come and talk. We would like to brainstorm if we want someone else to talk, and we want to find out about any other areas you would like covered. We then want to brainstorm questions so they will be prepared.
Christina Wagner, Class of 2011 Co-President: Can we ask for someone from Facilities? I read about how Haverford is cutting back on repairs, so it would be nice to talk to someone from here about that topic, as well.
Emma Wisniewski-Barker, Member-at-Large: Did we check with them about changing the time of the meeting?
Aheli Purkayastha: Yes.
Taline Cox, COPS Co-Head: Can we talk to admissions about getting some statistics to bring to the meeting?
Katie Kellom: I would like to see Kathy Tierney or someone from athletics come.
Marisa Franz: I would like to invite someone from the Haverford financial office, to compare situations.
Aheli Purkayastha: What types of questions do you want us to ask them before they come? Do you want statistics, presentations – things so we have a productive conversation? If you do come up with something, please contact us. We’re sending out invites tomorrow morning around 11 am.
Representative Presentations
Residence Council Co-Heads: Kendalyn Brown and Sofia Nitchie
Kendalyn Brown: We are Res-Co Heads. We will tell you what our jobs are. The major part of our job is attending meetings. We, of course, attend SGA, and then we also go to Tuesday group – every Tuesday morning, we meet with Facilities, Housekeeping, Public Safety, the Dean’s Office, Residential Life, and Dining Services. They tell us what has happened around campus, and we report to them what we have heard from dorm presidents, residents, and other things at SGA. They want to know what is going on at SGA, and when major events happen around campus, like Halloween this year. We also meet with the Trustees a few times year – Buildings and Grounds, and also the joint meeting with Buildings and Grounds and Finance. We give a little blurb – a brief overview of what is going on. We hear a lot about the big construction projects – this year has been about Goodhart and the Gym. Then we have ResCo with the Dorm Presidents – we oversee that. Other things we do – we have specific people come and talk at our meetings, like having Glenn Smith come talk to the Dorm Presidents.
Sofia Nitchie: We are in charge of Room Draw, which will be earlier this year because of the plenary resolution passed in the fall. The past two years, we have overseen Dorm Olympics. This year, we had Project Dorm Room, which was both fun and functional – a great contest whose winners go on the website for prospective students to see.
Kendalyn Brown: Now we see people’s stuff in the rooms, instead of empty rooms.
Sofia Nitchie: It needed to be updated. We discuss the smoking policy – we want to have an open forum about that.
Student Curriculum Committee Head: Judy Barr
Judy Barr: I’m the Co-head of the Curriculum Committee. Traditionally, we serve as the liaison between the faculty, students, and Faculty Curriculum committee, which is comprised of Deans and Professors from across the college. I organize the weekly Student Curriculum Committee meetings, and forums for the whole campus. I want to have more of those this semester. We organize proctoring – thank you to everyone who helped out. Some of the issues we’ve been talking about are the Credit/No Credit issue; Abu Dhabi; concentrations; the curricular renewal group; split-level language classes; listings for TA sessions, cinema attendance and groups for courses on Virtual Bryn Mawr; integration with the Graduate School of Social Work; having syllabi available for shopping week; and online submission of work after regular class hours. I will be working to rework the Curriculum Committee section of the Constitution – the dorm people don’t work so well – to make it a more sustainable position. If you have thoughts, please email me at jebarr@brynmawr.edu.
Old Business
ACB Update
Aheli Purkayastha: Last November, we had a meeting on the ACB Boards. This issue has not stopped. We have been meeting with the college counsel, head of the computing services, and talking to ACB. At the last meeting, we offered 3 options. Over the last 2 months, we have determined that these options are not feasible. We have no legal jurisdiction, because it is not a college-owned site. Haverford’s login access was taken down, which was why we were able to access it. Because College ACB is a pay-per-click website, they lose money, so the option to login was taken down. We are here to tell you that we have been working – but that this is no longer something that the SGA body can vote on to change. This is a legal matter. We have a lot of resources on campus to deal with these issues. I would encourage everyone to use the OIA, counseling services, the Deans, Customspeople, HAs, and the CDAs – they are all there to address these problems.
Simran Singh, former Class of 2010 Co-President: We still have t-shirts, those that say “Shawty is a 10″, in M, L, and XL sizes. The next presidents will sell them, as well, but we have a lot leftover.
New Business
Minutes/Mawrk Notes Discussion
Kendra Hayde: As you can tell by the fact that there were no more Mawrk Notes after the first 2 meetings last semester, it is difficult to make them. I have been re-evaluating how this process should work, and want to hear feedback from you. I have thought about doing them once every two weeks instead of every week, and posting shorter things on the blog instead, but want to hear what you all think.
Nina Jankowicz, Brecon Dorm Co-President: As Brecon Dorm President, a lot of people have asked why they aren’t in the bathrooms – a lot of people do read them because they are right there with them, and it’s a good way of informing people. I think people enjoy reading material.
Katherine Bakke, ’11: You suggested the blog, but a lot of people don’t know where it is or how to find it. Can you put a link on the main page of the website?
Kendra Hayde: The webmistresses and I have been working on that for the past semester, but because it is a blog, it’s a bit more difficult to do. But we will keep looking into this.
Liz Hood, Erdman Dorm Co-President: I feel like we had a conversation about this already, about having so many Mawrk Notes and the green effect of using all of this paper.
Kendra Hayde: Over the break, in reading through the discussion that the Dorm Presidents had at the SGA Retreat, you did talk about this. Unfortunately, I was not involved in this conversation, and none of the dorm presidents has brought up this fact to me, so I had not heard about this concern until I read through those notes.
Judy Barr: I think the condensed version is a good idea. It is a source of paper use, but it is an important reason.
Kendalyn Brown: I do agree that with a monthly version – it’s too much on one page – so biweekly would be better. I know Erdman has this problem because they have more bathrooms than most other dorms – maybe putting them in a more central location there would work, and keeping it the same in the other places.
Jill Walker, ’09: Can you put it on the door so that you can read it before you go potty?
Marisa Franz: Can you put them in the dining halls as table tents, so people can read them there?
Kendra Hayde: I looked into this earlier last semester, but it is a lot more paper and about three times the cost, so I vetoed this idea.
Katie Kellom: I don’t know how much people use BMC Chatter – maybe if we posted the summary there – it doesn’t take paper. Maybe people will use it more if they are there.
Anne Bugnaski, Traditions Mistress: What if we have a Mawrk Note Committee?
Kendra Hayde: I’ve thought about using the Members-at-Large, so I may consider this more now. Thanks!
Chelsea Dunkel, Merion Dorm President: What if you had an online version, and possibly faze out the Mawrk notes on paper, so at least there is an online option.
Kendra Hayde: I send them out with the minutes and put them on the website when I do them.
Marisa Franz: Motion to end the meeting early.
Amanda Cegielski, Faculty Rep: Motion seconded.
Vote to end the meeting passes.
Meeting adjourned at 7:56 pm.