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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Call to Order
5:39
Roll Call
Absent: Ozelle
Approval of Minutes
Approved
New Business
A. HL56-0607- Additional Allocation for Persian Student for Yalda Night (Longest Night of the Year)
Joy- They lowered food and added projector so total is $430. It takes place in skylight lounge.
Nayana- They took out dance floor
VOTE For 5 Opposed 0 Abstaining 1
B. HL57-0607- Additional Allocation for Craft Club “Knitted Preemie/Baby Clothing Donations” Event
Joy- they are making clothes for babies in hospitals. A lot of the stuff is going to be used again.
Ross- is this the craft club for music critics?
Phil- No, I thought the other one was derecognized.
Ross- There isn’t just a craft club.
Danielle- They are an organization.
VOTE For 5 Opposed 0 Abstaining 1
C. HL58-0607- Additional Allocation for WILL
Joy- Asking for money for end of semester meeting. It comes to a total of $40.
VOTE For 5 Opposed 0 Abstaining 1
D. HL59-0607- Acceptance of Paintball Club
Nayana- amended: sports non funded.
Danielle- Paintball club, for people who want to play paintball. They have 5 members.
VOTE For 5 Opposed 0 Abstaining 1
Committee Reports
A. Student Life
Danielle- Today we sent an email to the two groups we have discussed derecognizing. READ EMAIL. We are asking the organizations to come to the next SL meeting. Thursday between 1 and 4, i will have packets ready so we know what is going on. I don’t think they will be coming this Thursday. We discussed preliminary evidence: their mission statements as sororities, but please feel free to ask any questions. The purpose of the meeting is to give them an opportunity to clarify our concerns. If they ask you questions as members of the house, please direct them to me. This is the first time we have had to possibly derecognize a group. Corrin will be there as a representative of student life. Any questions?
Alex- what kind of heat?
Danielle- If we vote to derecognize them, they no longer exist. They have ties as a Greek group and they do have national representation.
Joy- If we derecognize them what happens?
Danielle- they can’t ask for space, they can’t use web space, or UMBC’s name, everything that comes with an org is revoked.
Stan- Can they decide to come back as a real sorority?
Danielle- i can’t answer that and neither can student life. That is an interior discussion within the office of student life. At this point, the committee meeting is just a staff meeting.
Nayana- anyone want to sit on this committee?
Danielle- That is a premature question. As soon as we decide about this committee meeting.
Phil- students are allowed to go.
Danielle- Reagan, Jen Dress, Lee, David and me. I’ll have answers with whether that will be a committee or not. The packets with all the information will be there. If you have any questions for me regarding it, please come to me.
Nayana- can you talk about the billiards club?
Danielle- The billiards club has submitted a change in their constitution, to switch to a sports club to a special interest club. Have we made definitions for the different types of groups. Right now, we don’t have definitions for them. We need to make a decision whether we want to make definitions or leave it up to interpretations.
Ross- I want to leave it up to interpretations. It might be a good idea to write it down someplace.
Danielle- maybe as a transition to the next group of house members. I would agree
Nayana- I like that idea, but I do not want to leave it open to show bias to groups.
Danielle- maybe a better Idea would be for the chair representatives to talk to the groups and see what they feel.
David- whether or not it is defined in policy, there ahs to be a guideline for making decisions. Whatever decisions you make will be a basis for an argument for another group.
Ross- the freedom alliance was a poli active group for a few years and then changed to a cultural organization. They just wanted to change their org placement.
David- There is one difference here, is the difference between funded and non funded.
Danielle- we need to have a more firm policy on sports groups.
Nayana- we need to make it a priority because the billiards club has already come to us.
Jordan- once we let in a group that “should” be a sports club, we open the floodgate.
Ross- It might be worth looking into how we fund groups. sports clubs don’t get funding. I don't know where in the documents it says that. We have funded cricket club in the past. I don’t think that there is anything that says it isn’t funded. We might want to see how the document is worded.
Danielle- So do we have a document to look at?
Nayana- it’s in the office?
Danielle- I don’t understand. Is it feeling that if the members of the groups are competitive, then they are funded.
Alex- the billiards club isn’t not competitive but they are still a sport even though they are not competing.
Joy- is there an actual page about what makes a sport.
Nayana- I think that anything is open to all UMBC students, then we should fund it.
Ross- this is why I like we call it as it goes. I think it works well for interpretations
Danielle- what happens when we can’t point to a policy?
Ross- we sit down and talk about it. We can sit down and interact with people.
Danielle- I am abdicating for one or the other. But we need to have a policy. I think we need to be specific.
Phil- dealing with policy, if an org asks to look at a policy, is there a policy that says they should be funded.
Danielle- does precedent mean policy.
Phil- it doesn’t need policy.
JOY- some groups come in as special interests and then they want to compete, then they should be a sports club.
David- when I came in, there was a thick stack of policy. I think we would be able to sit down and talk to make a decisions. You are expecting athletics to fund sports groups. Athletics is setting guidelines to numbers of groups.
Liz- Maybe you should set a maximum for each group can spend, but I don’t want my money going to other people competing.
Ross- I think we need to set a policy for how much we fund.
Danielle- We need definitions when it comes to outside definitions, for instance to athletics. Then academics is an outside entity as well.
Ross- I am resisting the urge to comment.
B. Finance
Joy- we need to go through and cut down funds we allocated. We funded about $60000 and we should only fund 50000. We should meet on Thursday.
Nayana- we don’t have to cut down as much as Phil says.
Joy- but then we have to worry about additional allocation. I think we may have to cut out things for December of this year.
Danielle- what were the original numbers? You suggested 50000.
Phil- that would leave 30000 for additional allocation. That is for this year only.
Ross- I think that we should cut it and have a look at it.
Nayana- when is everybody available for additional allocation?
David- Friday is a nice day.
Nayana- How about Wednesday.
David- If there is no alternative, I can make it work on Thursday.
Joy- I don’t think it should take too long. After the finance committee meeting then.
Danielle- are we going to be setting guidelines. How are we going to decide what we are cutting? Are we going through all the budgets or only the big budgets?
Joy- I think as we go through them we will see what we over budgeted.
C. O.S.
Nayana- we need to discuss where we are going with it. should it be a different committee?
Ross- We had this momentum going and then we stopped. There is going to be a meeting? We need to discuss how we can use this opportunity that has presented itself.
Danielle- OSL is going to spearhead training for organizations. All organizations will have to be represented. The treasurers will have to be trained and there will be at least 2 other mandatory meetings: Officer transition, recruitment, how to create/use budget, how to use resources. It would be a great partnership for the house to get involved in. I know the SIC is going to go through with the project either way. There is a meeting at 2 30 tomorrow. By the end of this semester, we will have a schedule planned out of when we will have these events.
Nayana- As an OS committee is going to be disbanded and will no longer be an official house committee until it is more organized.
Ross- About the more organizational workshops, where would we help?
Danielle- The planning, assisting, etc. we can be as involved or as not involved as we want. Although the student involvement peers, SGA as a whole has a whole lot to offer as members of the SGA. It would be my hope as house members to run and facilitate this as house members.
David- can you say a little more about mandatory attendance?
Danielle- Erin wants it to be mandatory. I know it has been talked about.
David- there have been conversations about student organization training not being mandatory. The treasurer training would be mandatory.
Phil- I wanted to incorporate the two. The things that are in SOP should be mandatory and the others should be elective.
Ross- I know it sounds tricky that 200 organizations are required go to. Just send anyone to some of the training. If they don’t go to registration, they don’t get money right? But this would be something, that we wouldn’t be enforcing.
Danielle- our job would be to help facilitate these trainings.
Phil- missing the mandatory would be like missing training.
Danielle- there are no consequences that have been decided on.
Ross- have we received a list of groups that haven’t registered? It might end up coming to us.
Danielle- you are talking about violation of SOP. Our chairs are responsible for enforcing this. Who is coming tomorrow?
Nayana raised her hand.
Reports
Phil- only one additional allocations for Thursday.
David- about the dance. I think the plan on the people who are on the part of planning the dance is to bring legislation to the SGA about the dance. I haven’t seen what their price tag is about 10-15 thousands. There are expecting to make a lot fo money back. Are these funding requests to take money out of the pot or are they taking money out of the general ledger.
Joy- We didn’t want to come to the house money to ask for money for the event. I don’t think it would be fair for the SGA to get a huge lump of money out of the pot for organizations. We want these to become an annual event. This is something that is corresponding with the 40 anniversary. Alumni student association is giving us gifts and other organizations as well. We want to get this from the general ledger and maybe next year iti will come from SEB. Or how quadmania works.
Danielle- historically general ledger, what has the general ledger been used for?
David- Here’s the theory, if you correctly forecast to spend all your money, then nothing is added to the general ledger. It’s up to you, but you need to see the whole picture. 5 years ago, it stood at 0 and sga overspent it pot. There was an audit. It was caused by inadequate cause. The focus was to build that safety net. It is a rainy day fund. SGA become much more careful. And all the money that isn’t spent goes back to SGA. The money is over $356,000.
Phil- it has been spent on chess set, movies and new printer.
Ross- it has been used for election night, to furnish student orgs place and things like that.
David- SGA hasn’t defined how much money should stay in there. once the budget had gotten to a point in the general ledger, we should be willing to spend more money. If we allow this money to be spent, then people will be coming to us asking for more and more money out of this pot. Then the amount will decrease. I think it would be responsible to make guidelines for the general ledger.
Danielle- is this normal?
Liz- I don’t think it matters if it is normal or not.
Ross- Every SGA is different. Like tee-shirts. I looked at a lot of SGA’s come from different backgrounds. I don’t think you could really quantify an answer to that.
David- because SGA deprived money from students by tightening their belt, I think we owe them with something to pay them back. My suggestion would be compare the worth of that.
Joy- When I was talking to Jordan, it was suppose to be something to symbolize the school, we didn’t just want to have a dance to have a dance. We wanted it to be important to the school.
David- sometime before this legislation hits the house. Decide what a good balance in the general ledger.
Ross- I don’t completely agree, I fear that placing that kind of number would be an incentive to use the money. I worry about that. There should be a bigger system to get money out of the general ledger. What if we had some sort of process to get money out of the general ledger.
Danielle- Does that solve our problem?
Steve- The process is more of making sure people are doing their research. We need to come up with an agreement between the SGA. Maybe we should come to a point that we aren’t going to come to. When we brought this up last night. In the Senate, we don't’ deal with money that often.
Joy- Are there projects, like the retreat, where do they get money from?
Steve- they don’t request money.
Danielle- If we are going to discuss the general ledger,
David- what if at the time SGA is projecting its budget, what if we take it into account that we have the extra money in general ledger? Should we expand the investment into student org or leadershape? So we have something planned for the money.
Phil- I think a joint meeting between the house and the senate when there is a request for money from the general ledger. I want to schedule a meeting for all of SGA. Friday free hour.
David- In this box, i have these cool study place mugs. Drink in prominent areas. This is out of the marketing for the study place.
Roll Call
Absent Ozelle
Adjournment
6:55
Pass the Gavel