Student Senate Agenda
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009
1:30 Approval of Minutes (2 minutes)
Vera: Motion to approve last week’s minutes
1:32 Chair’s Report (3 minutes)
Michelle: I don’t have anything to say except for we are having elections for the new student at large and parliamentarian. I’ll send out an email. Let’s encourage people to vote.
1:38 Roll Call (2 minutes)
Completed by Maddie
1:40 Committee Reports (20 minutes)
SSSF
Aiden: continuing to work at Mayfair. We figured out what booths are going to be there and we sent out an email to get volunteers
General
Cat: I couldn’t go last week and Brian isn’t here.
Admissions
Angelina: The phone a thon continues. We’re finding out more info on admitted students day soon
Student Work
Jay: We heard two appeals for reinstatement
Curriculum:
Hayleigh: We want to get a better sense of the concerns of the writing community
Student Life
Bobby: THe bulk of the conversation was about donning and the emotional quality of life here.
Spring Formal
Amanda: We’ve got a theme. It’s Central Park in the spring. We’re working on the flik menu, we’re thinking lots of desserts.
Taskforce for Student Union
Committee for Socially Responsible Investing
Neil: We met yesterday morning. We’re getting a list of common funds and other institutions who use common funds to manage their money. Next week we’re going to send an email to the community calling for the creation of a committee.
Club Liaison Updates
Emily: QVC is planning a sleaze week. Bollywood is having a showing of slumdog millionare in the PAC on Thursday at 9 pm
Class President Updates
Nadia: There’s a field day for the sophomores. We want to do a BBQ. We’re not sure about the date yet.
NEW BUSINESS
2:00 Discussion and Presentation: Sarah Lawrence Student Union (35 minutes)
presentation by the Taskforce for the Student Union
Vera: You guys didn’t get anything in your email boxes to review. But we’ve been working really hard and does someone want to share where we are?
Easton: We’ve been working really hard. We’ve gotten pages of a new document. We’ve revised bylaws and standing rules. We came to a point the other day where we realized that this task was very large and we don’t think it would be right to try to implement this document for next year. It’s not as finished as we want it to be and it would be a mistake to run into this. We have a time-constraint. We had a meeting about this last night with 4 people so I can only speak for them when we made this decision. Our goal is to have a finished document by the end of summer to try to implement for spring 2010 of fall 2011.
Lily: When this was originally conceived, it was about the functionality of it. Now that we have a document which has our ideas, it’s now more about how we’re going to run it. We need to really focus on the document. We’re switching gears a little bit.
Vera: There was a substantial amount of work that was done after the retreat. There’s been great fundamental restructuring ideas and the scope of the work we have to do is continuing to write and also to really work on the difference between the bylaws and the standing rules.
Easton: We’d also like more voices.
Tyler: We’re really focused on maintaining our momentum
Pam: I came in to the process late. It was difficult because a lot of the work had been done. I think the whole idea of it is that it is born again, everybody has a different philosophy in how we’d like to see governance work. The main theme is anti-oppression which was one that was also adopted through the retreat. I think it’s important for more people to get involved.
Michelle: Where we stand now is the difficulty that the currently bylaws dictate that the spring elections have to happen before the second week in April, which is next meeting. Where do we want to go from here. We need to decide this before next meeting or suspend the bylaws
Myles: This might be premature of me, but since the task force doesn’t have a proposal to bring forth. I motion to go on to the next item on the agenda. Not seconded.
Easton: i don’t think you guys need to hold off on spring elections but i am interested in seeing what you think about implementing in the fall or spring for next year
Bobby:The main reason i didn’t get involved with this task force was because of the timeline. I didn’t think there was enough time to get at the heart of the issues here. I would encourage the task force to hold off until the 2011 school year.
Pam: I don’t think that any of us should assume that we should have control over what students present. I want this completed by fall semester and in the meantime, whoever wants to get involved can.
Bobby: The current senate will not be here next year.
Pam: I’m going to stay involved and I’m graduating
Neil: In trying to think what is practical to get done by the end of next fall. If we want to, we can give summer senate the authority to approve this task force. That’s a possibility. I think three months is plenty of time. This is going to drag out and people will forget about it. We should carry out with elections as our current senate.
Maddie: What if we created student union representatives on senate to make sure their voice is institutionalized.
Angelina: I echo Maddie. And I’d like to point out that a student referendum is needed to implement a new government, is this correct?
Vera: Senate could either vote on it via a 2/3 vote or vote to send it to an all-campus referendum
Lily: Neil’s idea is really good. My only hesitancy about waiting until next year is that we have momentum now. 30 people signed up for the retreat, that’s huge. I think a lot of people understand the need for a new student government on this campus right now.
Lenna: i don’t want this to die. It’s going to have kinks no matter how long we spend working on it. I suggest we try this to be implemented sometime in the fall. Maybe we could have a position student union clause for these upcoming elections.
Amanda: It’s important for senate and the task force working together to present what happens here to the student body.
Lily: We have something called an Accountability Committee. It’s rotating, but members have the same administrative and moderation duties as the chair and the vice chair. SSSF chair and treasurer are institutionally he same positions
Angelina: I’d like to take a poll of people who feel comfortable putting student union positions into the spring packet
Maddie: One of my fears is that this could be implemented so quickly and historical senate would not be there to balance this new project. Maybe we could have a combination of new and old things for the spring. I support the spirit of the student union but it might be a problem for us to assume that this document will be accepted. We haven’t seen the final document.
Mary: It is great that senate has been so cooperative with the task force. Right now, this is the student government. Any number of students could come forward with a proposal to change student government. It’s possible students won’t agree with this task force. We need to think about what will be in place to support student government until a group comes forward with their proposal.
Easton: I think it would be problematic to put alternate roles on the spring election. I never thought about the idea of implementing this in phases. I’m in the boat of not trying to do this in the fall.
Neil: There’s no question about what to do with the upcoming elections. We should go on as normally. I think the best decision to spend fall semester with Senate and spend that time getting people interested in the student union changes. It’s a lot easier to do a transition during the year than it is during the summer.
Vera: I think people have been saying great things. I don’t think our relationship really has to change. I was sorry to hear that people have an antagonistic view of Senate and the Union. In some ways, i think senate will struggle with a lot of things we did next year. Mary brings up a good point. I think the Union should continue to meet outside of senate.
Durga: I’m wondering if we could choose as a senate to fund some kind of summer retreat to continue the momentum of the student union.
Lily: I think that’s a good idea. We’ve been talking about how to keep this up over the summer. The only think i worry about is the logistics of getting people all over the country together. In terms of what Vera brought up about continuing problems in senate, it’s something we should think about.
Angelina: I think the easiest way to deal with this idea is the student union task force presenting themselves as a club and then present their budget to summer senate to get funding. Or does this year’s senate have precedent for funding something over the summer?
Hayleigh: NO
Angelina: I think there’s a way to do it but that it be a separate conversation concerning bylaws.
Myles: We’re talking about this as if we want it implemented and we don’t even have a proposal. I feel uncomfortable discussing this.
2:35 Discussion Continued: Grants for Student Activism (35 minutes)
Nellen:I want to clarify what we were talking about next time. We were discussing Pam’s proposal for making student internships. I’m confused because where we were at last time was that we don’t have the power to fund this out of our student activities fees.
Pam: That was the directive that Mary gave the group, which was incorrect.
Mary: As a college representative I will say that the college entrusts the senate to control the student activities fee. If you want to change how the students use their money, you must get permission from the college because the money for the student activities fee is the college’s money just like your tuition is the college’s money
Myles: I don’t think we can look at Pam’s proposal until we’ve isolated the issue of whether we can fund any proposal. We need to talk about who we bring this issue to.
Neil: I wanted to read the bylaws that would be applicable. ::reads:: (page 47). We need to determine whether or not we support this.
Lily: Was there a consensus made on this topic at all last week?
Michelle: No
Lily: When Neil says that the only bylaw he read was about fairness. We also need to think about how we can’t decide next year’s student activities fee. I don’t want to do anything which spends other peoples money.
Bobby: Is it in our best interests to consider this? I don’t think that is.
Vera: What Neil said was relevant. 1 we could make a new line item. We could create a new budget line if we wanted to and next year’s senate can go through the process if they want to. I think there are large issued at hand about what funding politics means here at Sarah Lawrence. Funding things of this nature are inherently partisan in some sense. If we allow this, then it opens the window for proposals to come forward to anything and everything which may not be in the bests interests of all of the students.
Lenna: We need to think about what we’re funding right now. There are 5 weeks of school left. We need to think about our time frame and what’s going to work right now.
Madde: I really support this proposal which has been brought forward. I would like to talk about right now. A student has brought forward a proposal which is compelling and we need to decide as a body if we want to support this. Voting in of itself is not partisan and in my opinion, this issue is not a partisan one. Throwing out constraints now are irrelevant if we don’t support this.
Pam: I think this dialogue is important. We’re talking about what the founder intended. This project is about democracy and it’s not about me.
Neil: As a whole, for senate to support political activities is just the same as supporting bands in the blue room. I don’t think it’s any more or less discriminating.
Angelina: I don’t think that anyone in this room doesn’t support student activism. What the question is to me is the idea of funding wages. The idea of students paying other students. There something about wages that for me is fundamentally issue for student grants. It’s the crux for me on this conversation
Durga: We do this in SAS. We fund activists all the time. I’m all about funding student activism. I’d much rather fund that than student dances. We fund publications which fund student activists already. What is the difference between grant applications and SAS
Mary: The issue raised is not if we should support student activism, it’s Angelina’s point. It’s an individual student wanting to be paid to do something off campus. That’s not why the college collects the activities fee.
Lily: I agree with what Durga said. My issue is with exclusivity. The college does not have this kind of money or even a fraction of it. Bands and things we fund on SAS are inclusive to every single person on this campus. When we do fund political groups to go to conferences, they’re still open to every single person. It’s very different than paying people’s wages. I don’t know how to put parameters in place to deal with this.
Myles: Lily brought up some great points. I think there’s confusion between grants and wages. It’s not that you’re paying someone a wage when you fund a grant. There’s a fundamental difference. My main point is to urge individuals who are interested in pursuing this grant process to write very specific proposals addressing some of these issues.
Vera: When we talked about this last semester was to fund grants out of the quality of life fund, not to fund 10 people to do the same thing but 20 people to do completely different things and bring it back to campus. I also mentioned other avenues to get funding last week.
Maddie: I agree with Vera about how this needs to be an open process, but I think we’re wrong to assume that people have equal opportunity to participate. Some people need to have access to money to subsidize their interests.
3:10 Announcements (5 minutes)
3:15 Adjourn
Vera: Motion to adjourn