The regular weekly meeting of Student Senate took place on Tuesday, February 17 2009 at 8 pm. Rebecca was present and taking minutes.
Chair’s Report
a. Michelle: I’d like to introduce our parliamentarian Robert. So let’s all welcome him. I also want to say that it’s really important to come to these meetings.
Roll Call
a. Maddie, Michelle, Hayleigh, Lily, Lenna, Nadia, Lucy, Jay, Vera, Hayley, Emily, Angelina, Aiden, Robert, Durga, Neil, Amanda
Committee Reports
SSSF
a. Aiden: As you all know, the auction is this Friday at 8. Come! Bid!
b. Durga: What are some of the big things being auctioned?
c. Angelina: There is a quarter of gym credit up for auction. There will be a brand new notebook computer and a camera. There are VIP tickets to commencement. There are 2 chances for the top lottery number for housing. 150 cookies from scratch. Myles is cross dressing.
General
a. Michelle: They got kicked out of a meeting last week. It’s on the agenda for their committee next week
Admissions
a. Angelina: We met!
b. Emily: Increases and decreases in applications in the college world. Our applicants dropped by 25%. On the upside, we have more students of color applicants. Our goal is 342 students. April 21-22 is admitted students day. We got student application files to read and we asked to sign a confidentiality agreement. There are also student selection committees which meet over spring break so we’re going to try to get reps there. They were really surprised
by this. We also discussed retention rates.
c. Maddie: So our application rate dropped 25% compared to last year? Is our school an outlier?
d. Angelina: It’s here and there. They couldn’t find a pattern. SLC is also extending the deadline for applications and they’re recruiting and doing follow-up.
e. Michelle: That’s really big news.
Student Work
a. Lucy: We’re re reviewing for the Oxford program. There are 30 spots available and 35 applicants from SLC and about 15 from elsewhere. We just started this process.
b. Michelle: Are you feeling stressed?
c. Lucy: No, though by the end of the meetings there’s the feeling that people want to get out. And also, we don’t make the final decisions and Oxford looks at the applications.
Curriculum
a. Vera: We’ve been talking about consistent problems with teacher evaluations. What we can do to make it easier for faculty (sarcasm). They need to stop being lazy. We have a proposal to restructure spring registration. It will potentially no longer be right before winter break. The proposal is that the first week of spring semester be devoted to registration. This makes it easier for transfer students. Teachers will be in their office. It really seems like there are no negatives for this proposal. That would be a really positive thing from our perspective
We also talked about the number of students who leave year-long classes. It’s huge, it’s about 300 people.
b. Lucy: Daniel doesn’t sit on curriculum regularly?
c. Vera:No, he comes half the time.
d. Neil: By not having class that week, we’re not adding on to the end of the year are we?
e. Vera: No, we won’t lose accreditation. There is talk about taking out a week of spring break since we have two weeks. Our proposal is only for next year. Also, Spring semester is a week longer than Fall anyway.
Publicity
a. Jay: On Sunday we had a focus group about what different ways we could get out the word of senate. The overwhelming majority of them said posters are boring and they don’t like them. Perhaps a Facebook fanpage for senate or also some sort of teach-in on admitted students day. Our meetings are Wednesdays at 6:30
Retreat Taskforce Update
a. Vera: We got Reisinger on Feb 25th from 7-9 for a student referrendum. We’re doing a good division of labor and we made an email that we’re sending out.
b. Neil: Are people writing up actual constitution bylaws?
c. Vera: We decided to use the current bylaws into the skeleton and we divided it up into groups to re write them to correlate with what we want.
Club Liasion
a. Vera: The SLC folk festival is happening.
b. Lindsey: The Christian union is having a pancake party before Lent.
New Business
1. Proposal by Pam Julian: Student Voter Bill
a. Michelle: We have new guest here. Pam Julian is here tonight. She has a presentation for us.
b. Pam: I’m a student as well and I’ve been an activist working on legislative efforts. Last year I met with the senate and Maddie and Tate agreed to form a committee to model the MA student voter registration bill and bring it to NY. The path of least resistance is to keep it as simple as possible. Many students were disenfranchised last election and we want to formalize federal registration. You all have the hand out of the draft. I believe that this legislation will pass. I have connections with senators and we’re coming up with a strategy to work with and communicate with these individuals. All it takes is a collective body of people to create change and that’s it. These bills go to an election committee who decide if it will move up for a vote. What we do is we target the people on this committee to move this up.
I think students should be compensated to work on these projects. This will be for students who are on financial aid. There’s so much theory but not enough practice. I’ve got $500 to start out with and I’m looking for 2 students who are interested in working on this. It will be $10/hour and I’m guessing it will be $5 a week. It’s going to be real work. It’s going to be exciting because you’ll get to come back to senate and report on what’s going on.
c. Neil: Who is the senator you’re referring to. Klein?
d. Pam: He’s from the Bronx. He’s the only state senator who had done research on voter registration and he published a report about 5 or 6 colleges.
e. Neil: Is he on a committee?
f Pam: No, he’s not. I talked to his chief legislative aid who is very excited. What he would do is file the bill and then it would be sent to committee and at that point we’d find out where those committee members are and talk to them.
g. Vera: What happened when you brought this to senate last year and what the result was? And also if you’ve tried to talk to the student body as well and communicated with non-senate students.
h. Pam: What happened last year is we got together last spring semester and all of these things take time. It takes about 5 years for a state bill to pass and 10 years for federal legislation. It makes sense to come to senate. But what I would like to do in addition to finding 1 or 2 people is to propose to you to form a committee to study this finding mechanism. As I said, all of us are going to be alumni someday.
i. Michelle: how do you see us going from here?
j. Pam: If you can’t do it yourself but you know someone else. I really need to get going on this. It would be awesome if I could have one strong person doing 10 hours a week but 2 people doing 2 hours a week.
k. Neil: We had a lobbying day in Albany who I can talk to and also people who worked on the election so I put my email down.
l. Michelle: I should mention that on March 10th we’re having a conversation about Student Senate funding grants so maybe that would be beneficial as well.
m. Pam: My email is pamelasjulian@gmail.com
2. Discussion: Student Representation on College Committees
a. Michelle: So I wanted to finish the conversation about student representation and our next plan of action. It’s clear students are still getting kicked out of committees and all that. I want to first have a conversation about how we’re going to deal with the issue of student affairs. Neither Mary nor Josh could be here tonight.
b. Durga:I wanted this on the agenda because i felt like the vote was done really fast. I don’t know what this means in the long run. Is there a way to change that vote that we made?
c. Michelle: The vote was just for this meeting. In our bylaws, it says that these meetings are open so that any member who wants to attend can attend. So this would involve a bylaw change. It’s up to you guys to decide. We need to make a move in some way.
d. Vera: We talked months ago about if we want Mary at the table or not. We decided that we valued her presence. The reason i voted no for today was just because we were talking about the retreat and about consistency. If people feel like having a student-only space is important, then we can discuss but we need to own up to that assertion. Mary is important but she doesn’t have any real on-paper power in this room.
e. Maddie: This will be a bylaw change. The only voting members are students and this is an open space and it’s open theoretically to faculty, staff, and administrators. I agree that I would like to make this decision collectively in the future.
f. Lily: I think the point about Mary’s role is very important. She knows things that we just don’t know. Her point of view is really important and to have her there is useful. The dynamic does change, but when we talk about things that affect the staff as well, it’s important.
g. Aiden: There’ s also a section in the bylaws that does specify that an advisor from student affairs be present in our meetings. So that would be something we would have to modify. She knows the Board of Trustees and Faculty bylaws. I’d like students who aren’t comfortable with her in the room to speak to that a little bit.
h. Neil: I’d like us to think about her in reguard to specific conversations rather than if she should be here all the time or not.
Michelle: You’re proposing a case-by-case basis, then?
i. Neil: It depends on the issue. I think we need to talk about what we’re discussing first.
j. Michelle: The topics on the agenda of the next 4 weeks are all government based
k. Jay: Mary is here and she’s a human being and she relates what we talk about to her role and she does have a stake in that and it’s important to remember.
l. Angelina: What’s also important is to define if we’re talking about Mary as a person or her role. Is this about her or about anyone who wants to come who isn’t a student. If we’re going to make this selectivity, where are we going to draw the line?
m. Lenna: Since this is an open meeting, if we were to kick out Mary at any point, do we have the right to kick out anyone who is not on senate? If another professor came in who was curious about senate came in, do we have the power to kick him out? Also, is there a way we can look at the agenda beforehand? And also I really think it would be unfair to not give Mary timely notice about her attendence.
n. Michelle: I want us in this room to be able to think we can make decisions for ourselves. We have a lot of power and we have a lot of power to do what is necessary for this body.
o. Maddie: I’m going to disagree with your non-opinion. Practically, there are confines. We are in existence because the Board of Trustees says we are a senate with an advisor. I think that should deter us, but it may not be a simple process. People are inherently more supportive of things they feel included in and i think we should remember that.
p. Amanda: Just a thing about Mary. We should consider the fact that there are moments where we need to know certain things that she can help us with.
q. Durga: I agree with angelina. Mary represents student affairs. In the beginning of the year, we didn’t fund publications 2 computers and then after that, Student Affairs decided to fund them the 2 computers. They do have more power and more money. I believe that for the next month, we should not have Mary in this room.
r. Vera: If you don’t think people are administrative watchdogs, then you’re just being naive. It’s human and expected but we need to remember that. I also agree with Durga about the upcoming agenda stuff. It would be so great if we could get the agenda maybe Saturday or Sunday. I’d like to call the order of the day.
s. Michelle: We have to figure out something to do.
t. Vera: but it’s different from what the agenda says
u. Michelle: We have to come to a decision.
v. Amanda: Point of order, if we ask Mary not to come, if the meetings are open could she still sit in on them.
w. Michelle: We could call a student-only meeting
x. Neil: We can either rely on eachother and respect eachother or we can rely on an administrator who won’t say anything unless if interferes with college policy. When I brought Mary the agenda for the presidential search committee, she didn’t want us to talk about that topic. She wanted us to talk about the Spring forum. By having her in the room, we may be deterred from talking about these topics and this year we’re talking about tough things. I motion that if a representative of student affairs is to be at a meeting, they are invited at least a week in advance. Seconded. Objection.
y. Lily: I feel uncomfortable with having this be for all meetings. I agree with up to spring break but I don’t know. I feel uncomfortable.
Maddie: I want to reiterate what I said before. Neil, can you speak to what the presidential search sophomore year? Because you accomplished a lot successfully and Mary was in the room.
z. Neil: In the meeting, it was fine. But afterward, she would go to General and the Faculty meetings which we were kicked out of. We couldn’t present a unified statement and our views were undermined, our fractiousness was being highlighted because we didn’t get to speak for ourselves.. We cannot present a unified front to the administration that way.
aa. Michelle: Objections to the motion.
ab. Aiden: I have an objection, which is related. It’s about the accessibility of our minutes. Anyone can read them. I’d like to call the question
ac. Michelle: We’re going to vote on voting. All those in favor of voting on the issue, raise your hand < 13 yes 2 no> We will vote now on the motion. Which is to have the meetings for the next of the semester closed to non-students and the attendance of faculty or staff will be by invitation only. <7 yes 8 no> motion failed.
ad. Jay: Theoretically, I would be uncomfortable with her being there and she would not come.
ae. Michelle: It is no longer okay for me to make these decisions and I will no longer do that.
af. Vera: I really disagree with that. So now the space is going to be open. Does it need to be on the agenda again? If someone would like to make a different motion then they can do that.
ag. Neil: I don’t really care. I know you’re looking for a definite answer. We can do things for ourselves and we don’t need a nanny. If that arguement is not convincing, then fine but as long as we have a political agenda and know what we want to do, then that’s what is most important.
ah. Lucy: Can i take an informal poll of people who would be in favor of Neil’s motion with the amendment of meetings are closed until spring break.<12 yes 3 no>
I motion that until Spring Break, meetings be open to students-only and if a representative of student affairs is to be at a meeting, they are invited at least a week in advance. Seconded. No objections.
ai. Michelle: We’re going to vote. <11 yes 3 no 1 abstention> Passes. By 2/3 majority.
aj. Durga: Do we need to announce this to anyone?
ak. Michelle: I will be happy to announce this in the monthly update.
Announcements
a. Neil: I proposed that LASSO (Liberal Arts Students for Strategic Organizing) have a conference with other liberal campuses that are sometimes accused of being apathetic. We’re having an event tomorrow in Reisinger from 6-9.
b. Amanda: I feel people stopped reading senate emails a while ago. We’ve spent a lot of hours discussing in Student Life what should be included and we didn’t give them their representation.
c. Neil: I should clarify. LASSO is not a club. Or an organization. It’s event for clubs to get together. It has a name so we can export this idea to other colleges.
d. Michelle: All those in favor of me sending an email for LASSO, raise your hand. I <7 yes 7 no>
e. Neil: I should clarify. LASSO is not a club. Or an organization. It’s event for clubs to get together. It has a name so we can export this idea to other colleges. This is for anyone who is engages in any kind of political activism ever. I’m kind of amused that people who generally voted no on my other motion. Sorry…
f. Lily: For me, I support LASSO. It’s not about what it is but it’s about our power and this is something senate supports but it’s not a committee of senate. Can’t you go to student life to get approval for a global email?
g. Amanda: DId you guys bring this to student life?
h. Neil: The assumption was that this was important to senate. It seemed most appropriate. Senate funded this event.
i. Amanda: Do you want to send this from the senate email address?
j. Neil: It doesn’t have to. Global emails that were sent out before: if we’re having a Flik appreciation dinner. When we changed the sexual assault policy.
k. Michelle: People are tired.
l. Eliot: If this event coordinated with all of the student activist groups, can’t you use their email lists?
m. Neil: We plan on doing that.
n. Amanda: I’m going to change my vote
<9 yes 2 no 3 abstain>
Adjourn
a. Someone: Motion to adjourn.