Student Senate Agenda
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
1:30 Approval of Minutes (2 minutes)
Hayley: Motion to approve last week’s minutes
1:32 Chair’s Report (3 minutes)
Michelle: We have someone who is interested in the parliamentarian position so that’s really exciting.
1:35 Treasurer’s Report (3 minutes)
Hayleigh: We funded budgets for the Sexual Violence Committee, Hillel for passover, Unidad is sponsoring a worker’s appreciation dinner, an Easter event for the Christian Union, the Frisbee team, and PETA. Tonight we are doing a publications meeting
1:38 Roll Call (2 minutes)
1:40 Committee Reports (20 minutes)
SSSF,
Aiden: We’re in the middle of planning Mayfair. The theme is “Walk With the Wild Things”
General:
Cat: We talked a lot about the calendar. There are some changes due to spring registration being moved to the beginning of the spring semester.
Admissions:
Angelina: The admissions letters were sent out over break. We’re doing a phone-a-thon. I think things are progressing nicely for admitted students day
Student Work:
Lucy: We changed the wording on the incomplete request form. We got approval to sent an email out to faculty announcing this change. We also talked about accepting credits for online courses
Curriculum:
Vera: We went over a lot of things. We approved a tenure faculty moving their group. The different disciplines in departments are in different groups and they meet together. We also discussed the ambiguity with the term “guest professor”.
Publicity
Jay: We haven’t met yet
Spring Formal
Amanda: We have an entertainment group called Groove Boston who’s doing the lighting and music. We’re throwing around some themes and we have a meeting tomorrow with Josh at 1.
Taskforce for Student Union
Vera: We’re working hard. We’re going to have a fun event this Friday to publicize this. We’re going to get a lot of people pumped up and we’ll answer questions.
Committee for Socially Responsible Investing
Neil: We got a proposal together and gave it to the board the Thursday before break. They were very receptive and open to our requests to form a committee with faculty, students, and staff. We got a trustee to join the committee.
Class President Updates
Neil: The commencement speaker, which I think you all know by now.
2:00 Club Recognitions (5 minutes)
Crafting for a Cause
presented by Hannah Greene (hgreene@gm.slc.edu)
Ultimate Frisbee Club
presented by Ari (eglover@gm.slc.edu)
Ari: We’ve gotten funding from SAS and we have a faculty member and Matt at the gym. We already have people from every year playing Frisbee. We’re going to attend a tournament at Bard on April 18th. We practice regularly outside of the gym.
Bobby: How stiff does the competition look?
Ari: I think we have a shot. We have a lot of athletic people, some with a lot of experience.
Angelina: Motion to recognize the Ultimate Frisbee Club. no objection. Passes by silent consent
NEW BUSINESS
2:05 Discussion: Grants for Student Activism (30 minutes)
Angelina: If Hayleigh has any useful economic information, I think it would be really useful to frame this discussion
Lucy: I am interested in what kind of grants we’re talking about. It could be to fund an event or an ongoing grants and the mechanisms which senate has in place to be able to do these things.
Mary: I want to give you the prospective of the college. We currently cannot give grants from the college. We have a student activity fee and that only goes to student activities. This would need to be proposed to the president.
Vera: I think we can frame this echoing the conversation we had about funding club off-campus activities. I think a lot of the questions we had in that conversation may be relevant here.
Neil: I think one possibility would be to have some kind of summer grant that could be used somewhere local and would bring students in the Fall with whatever it was we funded.
Vera: One thing a lot of people don’t know about is asking for funding from the Dean’s office. Maybe it’s not as accessible or as well publicized as it should be but that’s an option.
Jay: My only hesitation is about the nature of the different kinds of proposals that would come. Student Activism is great, but if we decide we want to do this, we need to build in security mechanisms.
Jasmine: We had a conversation about funding space managers. I feel that student activists should get paid for their work but I don’t like the idea of students paying for stuents.
Aiden: Even though the money we pay is going to student workers, we’re also creating a space for students. This is different from the activism grants that we’re talking about
Brian: Getting back to what Mary was saying, if we do decide to have a conversation with Karen about this, we should explore the alumni grants.
Myles: I understand what the student activities fee is allocated for. Could we add an additional fee to go toward grants?
Mary: It is unlikely that the Board of Trustees fee would approve this in light of the economy. For next year, it won’t be possible because the fees have only been set.
Hayleigh: I think we should go to Karen and talk about this. Maybe we could have a situation where a student could get their money back to use for their own off-campus activism.
Durga: I think that could encourage people to constantly claim their money and take away from the pool
Angelina: This year, there have been so many new clubs that have been continually forming. For me the drawback is, we have to many new student groups forming that could potentially ask for money and that’s unnerving for me. I keep thinking about money.
Neil: The reason I was saying it could make sense to have a summer fund is because a project can continue on. We need to think not only about what the fund would do but how it could tie in with the school.
Cat: I think there’s still the question of where the money comes from
Neil: For me, I feel like that’s secondary
Hayleigh: The actuality of the situation is that we have to ask the President for permission.
Myles: How often is the contingency fund used up by the end of the year?
Hayleigh: Normally it’s a roll-over thing. It accumulates. It’s a budget line.
Vera: There are mechanisms for these things already. Our mandate is to to fund activities that everyone can participate in. I do believe that activism is an activity, but it is not the kind that we are mandated to fund but we can help people to make their activism into an activity that we or other people can fund.
Neil: It is true that many people do activism for free. But I do think it is possible to see some proposals in the same framework as other groups on campus that we fund. I really do stand behind my summer fellowship. Maybe we could form a committee to help form a proposal.
On Campus Student Voter Bill: Funding Proposal
Pam: Thanks again for having me and I apologize for last time. Thank you for the letter. This is a great discussion. I have quite a bit of experience of the legalities involved in the bylaws. I respectfully disagree with SLC’s definition of activities. I would really like us to not think about money but about the cause. I think the Community Partnership office is interrelated to this process. What we need to do as a college to uphold what the founder wanted was to fund activist work. He believed in non-partisan politics and the promotion of that and spirituality and the promotion of that. There is an ambiguity in the word “activity” and that’s a good thing. This is not about one person wanting cash to fund their field work, this is about upholding the pedagogy of the college, thanks to Dr. Ray Seidelman. I have a 50-person who have signed a petition who would like to see this project funded. This project is about making it easier for young people to register to vote. We want to formalize a bill which would allow students to register to vote on campus and the administration of that school has to file the documents. This is about enabling fellow students to afford to be able participate in a non-partisan political process. This is all- inclusive. This is another activity which quite frankly should be an activity. I really do believe in the bylaws and in the students ability to participate. I really hope that you look upon this proposal as very unique. I spoke with the Dean and they will fund travel but not conference work, unless I’m misinterpreting what he was saying. If anyone has any questions
Vera: So you would like 10 positions. How would this be coordinated in future times. I know you are graduating. It’s very clear what you are doing. This is exactly relevant to the conversation we were having before this and the concerns we were talking about are not outside that.
Pam: I would like to find the legality of the word “activity”. I would like to ask senate to continue this discussion. I am going to stay involved in this effort all the way through. I am going to be a very active alumni and I’m very excited about that. Jay brought up a very important point. I believe the Community Partnership office should have an operating budget of 1 million dollars a year, but that’s just my opinion. It would be really great to have a group to advocate this.
Bobby: I was concerned with some of the language that was being used where we were told not to think first of money. I think it’s impossible to separate the money from the cause. We talked about legality. Yes, it is legal on a national level, but it is illegal because we are not allowed to fund it. If we chose to change this, then we would have to overturn a bylaw which we cannot do anyway without a parliamentarian and that’s a bummer right there.
Eliot: Were the internship opportunities funded, would there be an application process?
Pam: We would like the senate to weigh in on that. Maybe we could have a lottery or to work with the community partnership office to help us. We’re using their office now. Hayley and Rebecca are going to reach out to the community.
Neil: How many people are going to interview the dean? a few people. I have more questions about the content rather than the procedure. If we support this, we can fund it in some way or another. The question I have is what the overall budget would need to be and how much fund raising is being done outside.
Michelle: We are out of time, and obviously this conversation will continue. I think this conversation can continue on the 14th
3:00 Adjourn