The following are meeting minutes from the House of Organizations meeting. The House meets every Tuesday at 5:30 PM in Room 318 on the third floor of The Commons. These meetings are open to all students to listen to discussion. If you would like to present an issue, please contact the Speaker of the House, Nayana Davis, in advance so you can be added to the agenda.
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I. Call to Order
5:32
II. Roll Call
Absent
III. Approval of Minutes
IV. New Business
A. Election-
Carrie- We will open up positions for the speaker of the house. We will vote. The floor is open. Speaker of the house presides over the meetings, organizing House functions, legislation is submitted. Assistant speaker will step in until the speaker resigns or is absent, is responsible for budget meetings.
X- I nominate Ross
Alex- Seconds
Christina- I nominates Nayana Davis
X- I second
Nayana nominates Christina, Ross seconds. She declined.
Vote: Nayana wins.
Nominations for speaker. Alex nominates Ross, Nayana seconds. No other nominations. Ross wins.
V. Reports
A. Executive reports: Jordan- wants to submit a standard format form for SGA.
Carrie will try and send them out first thing in the morning. Decisions by Monday.
Jordan- Erin Hundly needs help moving tables at 8:00 am. Things for next week: taking money out of the general ledger for life size chess set. Looking to make spot next to Bio building as a lifetime place for huge chess set ($6000). Alex already has legislation. SEB: they want to show all the movies outside at least once a week ($12000) for outdoor movies through September.
Carrie- some people would like to circulate through Involvement fest. We need people to set up. We need help 11 through 2. Nayana and FYC had a meeting about first year ambassadors. For FYA they will be going through a training program to decide where they want to be. We should think about what to tell them. Library group has split up the offices. (SGA Library- information about UMBC to outreach to new students. All brochures and pamphlets will be there.)
Phil- This Thursday 6 30 to 9 30will be Student orgs training as well as next Tuesday 12 to 2 30and Wednesday 6 30 to 9 30. We will need volunteers- tables for sign in, help hand out materials, keep order in the room. Come early. There are already 2 or 3 additional allocations we need to also set up the budget process.
Jay- Internal website is up and going. Please sign in in the office. External website stuff is set up. I am setting up an anonomous place where students can tell their reslife stories.
Carrie- some of reslifes rules are not conducive to a community. If you want to build a community you can’t have rules that are that strict. One of the things we are going to start doing is collecting these stories to help change the policy.
Jay- All computers redone and new one’s are set up. Don’t install software. All swipe cards work. A meeting for undergraduate progress report. Kiosk site, the website is mostly there. The UBMC site was defaced. We may persue judicial charges. There will definitely be action if it was a student.
David- CONGRATULATIONS!!!! You are unique, if you don’t do anything, you will be harmful. It is a honorable position. I would like to catch up with those who didn’t go to the retreat.
B. Ex- officio Reports
C. Officer Reports
XI. General Discussion
A. Student Orgs- Discussions about budgets, and what types of events they will have, what types of reimbursements. People who want to plan their own event on the spot, we will inform them what to do. They will know to read event holding manual.
David- 90% of your questions will be asked at this meeting. Be comfortable with this stuff.
Nayana- Is it required president and treasurer to attend these meetings?
Phil- One or the other must be there. They are both required to attend the training. I will send the agenda to the listproc.
B. Budget Score sheets- Ross- is this what we want to give students orgs? This will be something they can look help understand why or why not they got this money. We should decide what we value.
Nayana- Not many people were at the meeting.
David- The score sheet is a guide. It will always be up to the members. If you don’t have some way of keeping track what is a priority, you will be burdened by having to talk about it every time.
Christina- This will be great for finance committee. You will be able to keep track or how much each organization takes and spends.
Nayana- You need to use your personal judgement not just you’re the sheet.
David- This is not a legislation. This is just a guideline.
C. Fall Budget Organization Committees
Nayana- There was a finance committee and a student life committee. Finance committee= budgets, hours and hours of works. I believe we should rotate your responsibility within the committees. Everyone will be familiar with both committees and the workload will be split.
Joy- Couldn’t the meetings be done all at the same time?
Nayana- Meetings will be about an hour long, so if we combined it could be up to 3 hours.
David- Why don’t people be members of both committees and then see what happens?
Nayana- No objections.
Ross- Could everybody have their schedule together for a meeting time?
D. Budget Hearings for Fall- 3rd week of October.
Ross- If there are only 6 people in the body, then that will kill us all.
Nayana- It will depend on how much commitment you are willing to make. It will be a lot a work.
Jordan- There are a lot of student organizations. People are going to be unorganized.
Christina- When will we get the first year ambassadors?
Carrie- You were talking 5 weeks, more likely 6. The FYA were kind of forced into a position. They all did really well. But now they will do a 4 week training program. And for an hour every week, they will figure out how to represent first year students. We want to give them a chance to bow out if they don’t like it.
Nayana- They may think they want to be here but then they change their minds.
Carrie- We have an obligation to each other, we have an obligation to students and to new students to develop into student leaders.
David- Is there some other way, we can bring other people from the SGA to the original recommendation process.
Ross- The new members send something to the house, but new members don’t really have a say on what gets sent to the house.
Nayana- We could make finance committee meetings open to new members.
David- How can you set it up so House members time isn’t so devouted to the decisions? The budget committees will ultimately be left up to the older members.
Christina- When we did finance hearings, everybody did it, but deliberations were the budget committee.
Ross- It is the responsibility of senators and representatives. I want to see an active house that is going to be part of organizations. I want to see a finance committee who wants to sit down with organizations.
Carrie- The houses main job is not money. It is student organizations. But that is the way most student organizations have been served. It might be beneficial to spread around the tedious type tasks but there are not enough members. Sometimes the financial processes takes away other assistances the orgs needs. There are physical limits.
Nayana- Attend FYC meetings as often as you can. The ambassador candidates are right there. You will meet them and get to now them.
David- 2 committees have been formed and been assigned. No decision on budgeting. That question is still on the table.
Nayana- Budget hearings need to be put off. Academics need to come first.
David- This year, budgets for 12 months will be done. Pay now or pay later.
Phil- I understand putting off budget hearings but I want you to consider in the budget committee, to present members to the hearings.
Nayana- I can talk to Senate.
Carrie- The executive meeting time Wednesday 7 15.
David- Last year budgeted up to the first 2 months. Doesn’t force organizations to do a lot of planning.
Christina- We did the first few months, then we asked for additional allocations. Most of the time organizations don’t use all of their money. We want organizations to use their money. They can’t use left over money next year.
XII. Announcements
Nayana- Brittany Hoke- Comuniversity Fest- Carnival games, etc. She needs a lot of volunteers BHoke1@umbc.edu. PLEASE HELP!
Joy- Senior Send off?
Jordan- Alex Bardock was talking about senior send off. I can connect you will what alex did.
Carrie- Please attend involvement fest. Wear SGA tee shirt.
Study group program- Organizing study groups for freshmen classes. Sign up on line. The study space at University center. Groups of 3. Blackboard site up.
XIII. Roll Call
Absent: Ozell
XIV. Adjournment
7:06