Student Senate Agenda
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
1:30 Approval of Minutes (2 minutes)
Vera: Motion to approve the minutes
Michelle: Any objections? Passes by silent consent
1:32 Chair’s Report (3 minutes)
Michelle: We still need a candidate for vice-chair
1:35 Treasurer’s Report (3 minutes)
1:38 Roll Call (2 minutes)
Michelle, Eliot, Vera, Hayley, Aiden, Durga, Lindsey, Bobby, Amelia, Maddie, Nadia, Nate, Lenna, Myles, Rebecca, Brian, Cat, Lucy, Jay
1:40 Committee Reports (20 minutes)
SSSF
Aiden: Planning for Mayfair. We’re sending out posters to local childcare facilities
General
Cat: Last week we talked about how to reduce the pressure on faculty, mostly regarding paper work.
Admissions
Michelle: Nobody, it’s admitted students day
Curriculum
Vera: We’re meeting today
Student Life
Bobby: We got hung up on whether or not one student should be allowed to have a personal fundraising bake sale. It turns out, it was a volunteer trip so it got approved.
Spring Formal
Hayley: Nellen and I met last week. We have to decide if we want to buy chairs. We’re starting to put the orders through.
Taskforce for Student Union
Vera: We met on Sunday. We’re figuring out how we want to finish our work over the summer.
Committee for Socially Responsible Investing
Michelle: Neil’s not here
Club Liaison Updates
Myles: The Italian club had bake sales. There’s a lecture in the pillow room on Thursday at 7
Class President Updates
Durga: We’ve been doing research for senior day and it’s a lot more expensive than we thought. It is going to be impossible to find a rain-day option so let’s hope it’s sunny.
NEW BUSINESS
Proposal For Events With Alcohol:
Booze and Blues
Jen: The budget for the event is $444 and we would like 300 beers, 200 cans of soda, and 25 pizzas. We wanted to get a lot more of everything. It’s Booze and Blues and is a fundraiser for Katrina survivors in the area. We did it last semester, it was really successful.
Myles: I move to approve this event with alcohol. Seconded. NO objections
Michelle: Passes by silent consent
Spring Formal
Michelle: So it has been recommended to us to find $1200 for alcohol and $300 to rent barricades.
Nellen: I motion to approve $1200 for alcohol for the spring formal with the stipulation that any left overs go to Bacchanalia
Durga: I think it’s crazy that we keep renting something that we know we will have to use over and over again.
Cat: If we refuse to fund for the barriers, then we will have to force Student Affairs to fund it, correct?
Michelle: SAS already funded the barriers for this year
Brian: Why?
Durga: They’ve already been ordered
Nadia: Can I just come back next week with an estimate of how much the barriers will cost and we can discuss then?
Sure!
Discussion: Peer Mentoring
Michelle: We first discussed this at a dinner with Karen Lawrence. It’s the idea that seniors could serve as mentors to the first-years and I know a lot of us were really excited about this. Let’s talk about why this could be important and think up different models.
Eliot: A lot of the first-year students didn’t feel their RAs and Dons were doing enough to prepare them for day-to-day life at SLC. People said they would prefer this to be voluntary and not just assigned
Maddie: It may feel safer to a fist year not to have mentors who are not employed by the school
Brian: The idea of having some kind of database with every student’s concentration and extracurricular activities where prospective students or first years could be put in touch with an upperclassmen.
Nadia:It could be the option of the first years to check off if they want this on some kind of form
Cat: I think the peer mentor would still have some kind of responsibility to the school where they can’t take them drinking at a party, so I’m not sure how much it would differ.
Bobby: Maybe this is too idealistic, if this is a voluntary thing, will enough students respond to this option? If there is no monetary incentive, why would people want to do this? To me, the heart of this program is to show that this school is not shitty.
Vera:It should be completely voluntary. I like the database idea, because we dont get to pick our RAs and our dons. Hooking people up with people who have similar interests is so important, anything else would be arbitrary.
Myles: There are great points to be made when we talk about institutionalizing. What if this was a club?
Lenna: A way to open this door would be to improve don and donnee relationships. I was talking to someone about this and we had the idea of having dinner with your don and all of their donnees.
Cat: I like the idea of this being voluntary and an option for the entering first-years. I know MySLC is a really broken site, but maybe we can do this through the internet.
Maddie: Organizationally, I like the idea of it being voluntary but if we make underclassmen choose from people they’ve never met before, it still doesn’t seem like a choice
Bobby: This came up in student life, and it was brought up a a contrast to donning, which was involuntary and institutionalized. There have been some problems with switching dons and that’s really discouraging. We thought of this as a social advisor. Social lives can greatly impact academic lives, we’ve all seen it happen. Al Green was pretty adamant about having a solid plan for this before we leave for the summer.
Nadia: Does anyone know how many students sign up for orientation crew?
Michelle: Over 100
Lindsey: This organizational process definitely needs to be overseen. I’m wondering if the senate would be interested in that? We should also talk about bad donning and put out 2 cents in
Durga: I like this idea but I don’t see it working. A way around this could be to make the club fair a huge deal. At SLC, I don’t feel like the whole school is at the fair and that’s the best way to connect with people and we should promote what our school offers.
Vera: I think Durga’s idea is great. Donning and peer mentoring are different concepts. I have a fantastic don and I still think I would have liked a peer mentor. When we talk about institutional and non institutional, we’re talking about formal and casual. We really do need to go through some form of administration because we don’t have access to everything.
Brian: A lot of the problems we find have to do with how we approach things. Because we’re an institutional body, we tend to solve these problems formally. The success of things that happen on this campus come about because they’re informal. This could become a resource, it’s something admissions could use and it’s something we could continually advertise. People can access and edit their interests. I think this could mediate the problem of fear of authority and systems.
Myles: Maybe we could create a task force
Cat: I think that if this is going to be more formal, then we are going to have to work very closely with the Dean of studies office. We also combine club fair with an academic fair.
Bobby: I unfortunately disagree with you, Myles. I think a task force is the quickest way to kill this idea. But I think there should be several students who meet with the Dean of studies to get this ball rolling because they do have the resources that this project requires. I am interested so please talk to be after this meeting.
Durga: If people sign up to help out with this process during orientation week, there should be some kind of accountability. Maybe we could incorporate an event where seniors stand up and introduce themselves in some sort of formal way.
Cat: To add on to what Durga said, we could have upperclassmen mingle with the first-years during orientation week as well.
Michelle I’ll email everybody the date we’re meeting with Dean Green
Discussion: Senior Week
Brian: ::Reads proposal from Michael Rengers about implemented changes to Senior Week::
Cat: The points which were valid were the reduction of pressure on the staff. The school does get pretty trashed and the amount of students who actually go to graduation is low considering the fact that it is open to underclassmen.
Bobby: In student life, students were at first adamant about staying and after the administration spoke, they were pretty adamant about leaving.
Maddie: This was passed by the General committee for 2010-2011
Myles: What percentage of the students who stay go to commencement?
Michelle: There’s no way to count that
Vera: This is a pattern of things that the administration has implemented because it’s made a mess. We need to stand our ground and think outside of the box because I think it’s just going to get worse. It has nothing to do with seniors wanting special fun time to themselves.
Lenna: A lot of my friends get to stay during senior week. Maybe we could find a way to limit the amount of students to stay. Also, I’d like to know more about the scale of the damage
Bobby: The only statistic we were given was this: Can you please raise your hand if you’ve ever been to a graduation? In Student Life, hardly anyone raised their hand. That was their case in point…
Durga: I hate when our school compares itself with other schools. I’ve seen so much damage done to this campus and it’s all been done by my senior friends. If move-out day is the day after Bacchanalia, people won’t be able to enjoy it because they’ll be too busy packing.
Lindsey: I agree, there’s no way to tell who is damaging the school. We should not let this pass without our voices being heard.
Lucy: I motion to extend the time by 7 minutes. Seconded. No objections. I’m sure this school is aware that people will find ways to stay on campus. Anyone who has stayed for senior week is aware how much damage is done. We need to keep in mind that SLC is not banning people from graduation. I dont know if SLC owes the underclassmen anything for them to stay around an extra week
Vera: Poll, who would support drafting a letter to the administration to re evaluate for implementation for the 2011-2012 year.
Brian: Would they have to keep track of the damages incurred this year and next year?
Vera: Okay, I motion to draft a letter. Seconded. No objections.
Bobby: I’m hoping we can get some senators to attend the student life meeting Wednesday the 29th from 11-1
Cat: I’m all for the re evaluation of the policy, though I don’t know if 2 years of data will be accurate.
Michelle: Can someone find out if this new policy will mean a reduction in the price of housing?
Discussion: Institutional Memory
Maddie: For Mayfair , we had something called the Mayfair Bible and it had Polaroids and directions and it made it so much easier.
Bobby: So is institutional memory this year’s senate putting together a present for next year’s senate? It would be cool to have something for senate to give back to the whole community. Maybe we just have different ideas.
Maddie: We’re talking about guiding senate for the future to let them know what we did this year. Some sort of concrete file for future generations to look over and learn from.
Aiden: I know we’re talking about this next week as well. I think establishing more continuity is important. For example, the minutes aren’t as accessible as they should be.
Vera: With committees as well, being able to know what happened in past years informed the decisions I made this year.
Aiden: I would also say that one of the administration’s answers is “well, things have always been done this way” and this could be a mechanism for saying, “and we have always been dissatisfied with this”
Myles: I like the ideas of the committees doing an overview of what they did, but I’m also interested in what Bobby was saying.
Brian: I call the orders of the day
3:10 Announcements (5 minutes)
3:15 Adjourn
Vera: Motion to adjourn.