Roll Call
Excused: Malina Toza ’12, Miranda Hansen Hunt ’12, Meghan Mahoney ’10, Colleen Hayley ‘11
Unexcused: Julia Fahl ’12, Sophia Abboud ’12, Antara Tulsyan ’12, Elisa Hernandez Landeverde, Alice Fischer ’13, Pragya Krishna ’13, Saba Qadir ’13
Community Members: Kathryn Gould ’11, Sarah Theobold ’12, Brittney Thornbury ’11, Yong Jung Cho ’12, Celia Turner ’10, Lydia Bello ’12, Sarah J. Shaw ’12, Laurel James ’10, Lee Wacker ‘12
Announcements
Shannon Ryan ’10 and Simran Singh ’10: Please contribute to Senior Dues so that we can continue to host fabulous Senior Cocktails. We’ve only had about 20 contributors and so if we don’t get any more money we might not be able to host any more cocktails this semester.
Your Two Cents
None
SGA Institutional Memory
Laurel James ’10: Hi I’m Laurel James, and I’m here to introduce the SGA Institutional Memory Project. As many of you know when you come into your SGA position you don’t always know what is expected of you. There is some difficulty getting to know what your job is and what your responsibilities are. There is a current lack of documentation and it’s disorganized. There is also a yearly turnover of SGA, and it adds to this confusion. The solution that Tanya and I came up with was to create binders for each SGA position as a working documentation of SGA history. They provide a resource for incoming/newly elected SGA officials. The contents of binder will include the description/explanation of position duties/responsibilities enumerated in Constitution, as well as a breakdown of what your daily/weekly/monthly tasks are. There would also be miscellaneous relevant information and remarks, as well as plenary resolutions of changes of policies of present/past. So of course the important question here is, how does this affect you? I would like to meet with you at least once, preferably in person, to discuss your responsibilities, and then create these binders. My responsibilities in this project will be to meet with all of you, gather the relevant documentation, and then create these binders. For further discussion I have these questions:
- Whose responsibility will it be to ensure binders are maintained in future?
- Are there any other documents that should be included in binders?
- Should we also be working on another way to preserve institutional memory—special archive of minutes/Mawrk Notes?
Taline Cox ’10: Just as a suggestion, I know Mike Hill would love to meet with you and help out with the resource list.
Laurel James ’11: Great, thanks!
Shannon Ryan ’10: I’ve been class president since the end of my Freshman year, and I know every year we are handed down information from the class above of us, so what would we do?
Laurel James ’11: Sure, so if you have that information then these binders would just organize that information into one place.
Emma W-B ’11: So the exec board also got all this information about how we should be running SGA, but having some sort of binder would ease the process where we transfer all this information
Simran Singh ’10: So for class presidents, each class has different responsibilities, so would binders be passed down for each class?
Laurel James’ 11: Yeah, exactly. Each class has different roles and duties. For example the Senior Class throws Cocktails, and has it’s own challenges in doing so, so the binder would have suggestions, information and resources to tackle the different responsibilities.
Hannah Curry Mc Dougald ’10: I was in a class about the History of Bryn Mawr last year, and I know that Special Collections has copies of minutes, but then is missing a huge chunk. So as/when you collect these, can you give copies of minutes and mawrk notes to Special Collections?
Laurel James ’10: Sure, and that’s good to know. We should also talk about to ensure this position is maintained. I will be graduating in a year and half, and after that we would want this to keep going. So perhaps an appointed position?
Ashton Shaffer ’11: So in terms of the plenary section, would that be what’s changed specific to that position or in general all the changes that have been made?
Laurel James ’10: I envisioned it as it being specific to the position because of the amount of information that would be involved otherwise. If you guys have any other questions or suggestions, email me atljames@brynmawr.edu.
SGA Budget Approval Process
Laurel Lemon ’11: So this is how the budget process works: You’re probably part of a club, and you’ll want money, so you’ll come to get SGA funding. So you have to come to my budget workshop, where we go through everything you want to do and create a budget. There are three additional rules: 1. You have to submit all information electronically through Blackboard 2. You have to sign up for an interview 3. You have to come to the interview. After all the budgets are electronically submitted, I get all the budgets and put it into an excel spreadsheet and add up everything people are requesting to get the total requested amount. That number is usually close to double how much money we actually have to give. So then I see what the difference is, and then go to cut that amount of money from each club. There are certain positions that will not get cut, such as Traditions, the Bi-Co, and the Senior Class. So that’s the budgeting process.
Emma W-B ’11: Okay before we open this up to discussion, we really wanted to put it out there that Laurel, and the members of the SFC work really hard to create these budgets. Remember, that SFC positions are appointed individuals and we have chosen to put them in these roles, and so we need to trust their judgment to a certain extent.
Ashton Shaffer ’11: I understand that there is this budget process, which obviously has a lot of work go into it. I guess I’m wonder, what the assembly members add to the process by approving the budget?
Emma W-B ’11: It’s part of the process that is in place. For example, I was at the Board of Trustees meeting they had to vote on allowing all Seniors who completed their graduation requirements to actually graduate. They obviously wouldn’t have said no, but it’s still part of the process.
Tanya Kaur ’10: Also, the assembly approval acts as a check on the Treasurer and the SFC members. Even though it’s highly improbable that this would ever happen, in the case that some clubs get all the money, and some clubs get no money, the assembly would be able to step in and ask questions and disapprove of the budget. So it’s a check on the power.
Emma W-B ’11: Any other questions? Okay then we’re going to vote on keeping the budget process this way.
Yes-29
No-0
Abstain-0
Guild
Emma W-B ’11: If money wasn’t an issue, and we could do anything what would we want to do with Guild? We don’t want to hear we want it to go back to how it was. We already have that down. We want new and creative ideas.
Taline Cox ’10: Classroom space
Jill Settlemyer ’10: I was under the impression that the Graduate School of Social Work was going to be moving in there. If they aren’t I say, Campus Pub.
Nga Nguyen ’12: Independent Art Space.
Maddy Court ’13: I think Bryn Mawr needs more late night dining options—so an automat. Like a Wa-Wa.
Shannon Ryan ’10: Desert only dining hall experience.
Sarah Shaw ’12: I think we need a Concert/Lounge space where we could hold all those cool events that we get funding for and want to host.
Taline Cox ’10: A Desert-only dining hall that is Haverford –free space. And also an alcohol allowed space.
Blair Smith ’12: More art space—a ceramic studio?
Lee Wackard ’12: Rather than dorm living, turn it into senior apartments, because the courtyard could be fun.
Madeline Velturo ’11: I think we need another pool table, so like a Game room/Pool table in a Lunt-like space.
Sarah Capasso ’11: I think it would cool if you had a place where you can order a beer and do your math homework and shoot some pool.
Ashton Shaffer ’11: If it stays currently a computing space, it would be great if we could actually print. I don’t know anyone who can or does print at Guild.
Madeline Velturo ’11: Everyone complains that the SGA kitchen is too far away. We could possibly make it a kitchen, with a bigger dining area.
Lee Wacker ’12: It could be a nice place for a rare artifacts, and special collections to be kept.
Adelyn Kishabugh ’12: Seconding Ashton’s comment about the use of Guild–why do we have Internet Kiosks? Why not computers you could print from? It’s a study space so printing would be appreciated.
Sarah Shaw ‘12: How much space in Guild is there? I know there are three floors, so what’s on the third floor?
Annalee Garrity ’11: Point of Information: There’s a conference room, bathroom, and it’s actually kind of roomy on the third floor.
Madeline Velturo ’12: I heard there was going to be an extension of Dalton…
Sophie Papavizas ’11: Point of Information: they were going to combine Dalton and Guild, when Guild was a computer space, and there was going to be a student faculty collaboration space, but then they moved Guild to Canaday, so they cancelled that extension plan. You can still view the architectural renderings on the Bryn Mawr website though.
Old Business
None
New Business
None
Meeting ended at 7:52 PM