I. Call to Order 5:32PM
II. Roll Call
A. Present
1) Speaker Gabe Rettaliata
2) Assistant Speaker Jen Kent
3) Sunaina Khandelwal
4) Whitney Torchia
5) Neketa Kakar
6) Brian Frazee
7) Amber Spry
8) Tasha Ebhomielen
9) Rahilla Tarfa
10) Chidinma Ukonne
11) FYA Toby Le
12) FYA Matthew McNey
13) FYA Simmi Singh
B. Absent
1) Aditi Srivastav (excused)
III. Approval of Minutes
A. Minutes approved by general consent
IV. Special Discussion
A. Accountability
1) The Senate entered a caucus at 5:35 for this discussion.
B. Mid-semester Review
1) The Senate continued in a caucus for this discussion
V. Open Discussion
A. Senate exited the caucus at 6:15
B. Review of the past week
1) Matthew McNey: Chartwell’s re-started their meal plan since Saturday. Everyone’s lost the meals that you would’ve had over the weekend. They will not refund either.
a) Jen Kent: When did you talk to them?
i. Matthew: I haven’t talked to them directly. I’ve talked to staff though. I’ve talked to them over the weekend.
b) Jen Kent: they’re not swiping anymore.
c) Matthew McNey: I just think the SGA should get to the bottom of it. It’s something that impacts students.
d) Whitney Torchia: emailed people from the committee. I’m waiting for them to get back to me. This morning, they tried to swipe. It’s more of campus cash than with Chartwell’s. Some work, and some don’t.
e) Aditi Srivastav: I just want to eat so I’m going to have a conversation with someone. I’m paying a lot of money for this.
f) Jen Kent: I think this is something that’s time sensitive. I think that e-mailing is not going to be efficient.
i. Steve Gilmore: I’ll try to talk to someone.
g) Chidi Ukonne: how is it going to affect our meal? The people in the commons weren’t even looking at my card.
h) Aditi Srivastav: Technically, you can eat 10 times and keep signing in.
i) Whitney Torchia: I got all these stuff and they just said it was a meal so I got a lot of stuff.
2) Rahilla Tarfa: Brian and I… commons advisory board meeting: Dippin dots machine in the game room. They were talking about moving it to the UC but some people are saying the game room is more central. It depends on future planning. Thinking about having XM Radio in the pub. They use Pandora right now. They’re not sure if broadcasting from Pandora is legal. They’re thinking about having American Pool Players Association come to UMBC. Team of players and pay a fee… go to Nationals. Maybe go to Vegas to play. Very flexible because people that don’t play can join.
a) Gabe Rettaliata: anything else about Social Justice Theatre?
i. Rahilla Tarfa: nothing this week. I’ll update you guys if we talk about this.
3) Sunaina Khandelwal: RSA met. Pumpkin carving. Big thing is a proposal is On the Hills. RSA approved it. Happening November 17th.
a) Jason Brand: we haven’t actually finalized it. It depends on what space we can get.
b) Sunaina Khandelwal: we’re basically still deciding
c) Rahilla Tarfa: I was going to ask where it’s going to be since it’s going to be cold
i. Sunaina Khandelwal: Yea, children center
4) Simmi Singh: I was just saying First Year Council met last week. President Hrabowski came to our meeting. Mentioned transcript fees, library hours, etc. He said we basically just need to have a fee for it. Overall, it was pretty good.
a) Matthew McNey: even though he brought up fee a lot, he brought up good ideas. Ad in the paper which would talk about non essential activities on campus that we could eliminate.
b) Whitney Torchia: Is there any specific feedback that Hrabowski made about transcript fee?
i. Simmi Singh: I’m applying to a lot of internships and he said it was a good thing that it’s not. I told him that our transcript fees are a lot higher… and then he basically said other colleges have a lot more money than they do.
ii. Dave Hoffman: 2 points to take away from what he’s saying: unlike College Park, UMBC gets less money than College Park. Point number 2: lots of UMBC students apply to graduate school. Unlike other institutions, the demand is so heavy here, cost of people implementing that is going to be higher here. He is well versed about it which means that he’s been aware of the conversations going on about it.
5) Chidi Ukonne: Harbor hall multipurpose room. Staff meeting. The concerns that they had was that Harbor is a residential hall and they need to be swiped in. Right now, I don’t think that might be considered until the swipes are taken care of. Also, we’re trying to get different organizations for requests for movies for diversity. Thinking about sending out an e-mail. I don’t know how effective that’s going to be. We’re just trying to get more diverse movies. I don’t think it’ll be possible to get all the organizations. SGA has allocated money for DVD for the library. We’re trying to reach out to a larger crowd. We don’t want the conventional movies.
a) Jason Brand: my friends and I like the selections that they got but it is lacking.
b) Whitney Torchia: I would say more recent that’s more appealing. Just maybe suggesting new movies as soon as they come out in theatres.
c) Chidi Ukonne: we have to get rights for it so it takes a little bit longer. There’s also a facebook group that have recent movies that they’ve gotten.
d) Aditi Srivastav: we have to get permission to get mass amounts of movies to be rented out?
i. Chidi Ukonne: if it’s a movie that people can be taken out of the library, you have to get a license. Jen Kent: I think the biggest problem is that people don’t know about it. You should definitely get more popular movies and recent ones. You just need to figure out a way to advertise it properly.
e) Jason Brand: has anybody suggested a waiting list/reserved policy? Maximum movies to be taken out, possibly. I know people have taken out 10 movies out at once. Just to keep good movies on the shelf, maybe 5 movies at a time.
f) Yasmin Karimian: maybe a suggestion box? If they don’t have it, you could just drop a suggestion.
g) Chidi Ukonne: you can’t buy everything that everyone wants to see.
h) Rahilla Tarfa: I thought there was a limit. I know that if you want to check something out and someone’s already checked out, you can reserve it and they’ll tell the person to return it sooner.
i. Tasha Ebhomielen: you can keep the DVDs for a week.
ii. Aditi Srivastav: they send out an email saying there’s a waiting list for it.
i) Jen Kent: did you like do one mass order or is it rolling?
i. Chidi Ukonne: it’s rolling.
j) Jen Kent: you can put it in those poll things or something
k) Amber Spry: I think maybe investing in different advertising tactics can help you guys. There are handwritten signs out there. Don’t just advertise in the library. In doing that, you’ll attract more people. Probably people that don’t even use it will make suggestions and will use it more. I would put the money into advertising.
C. Moving SGA Retreat Date- Steve Gilmore
1) Steve Gilmore: Met with Lee last week. One of the things that came up was school calendar next year. Next year, classes will be starting on Monday. New students will be moving in that Thursday, convocation will be that Friday. SGA has to be on a different day anyways. For those that are part of SGA can’t be Woolies for Welcome Week. One of the things I was asked about was possibly moving SGA retreat earlier in the summer. That would mean we’d have our retreat would be Thursday-Saturday, etc. If you did that, people that want to be Woolies could be a part of it. What would be different though is different environment. Different dynamic. Since we’d move it up, members of SGA now will be a part of planning. Would more people be able to come if it’s earlier in the summer? I just wanted to put it out there. Suggestions? Comments?
a) Jen Kent: I think you might lose attendance because of travels, internships. Benefit of doing it that way is that theoretically people can work on their projects earlier on. Conversations earlier which would be beneficial. People that aren’t on campus can’t really do that easily. I just don’t want people to lose motivation. I just think that part of the retreat should encourage people to start working on it now.
b) Gabe Rettaliata: when do they plan on doing Woolie Training?
i. Steve Gilmore: it would probably be that Monday. It was just Lee and I. I’m meeting with a bunch of people to speak about future orientation stuff. Last spring, we thought we had to have it worked out and we’d be a part of Woolie training. Every year, not even Woolies… even RA’s as well. That’s an obstacle coming in.
ii. Aditi Srivastav: have we ever thought about doing it when school already starts? I’ve never been to retreat because I was a Woolie. Would it really be that bad if we do it the weekend after freshmen walk in.
iii. Steve Gilmore: attendance might not be up. People have other commitments and clubs. Usually first few days, nobody has going on.
c) Jason Brand: I just know that there are such things CAB reps. They help RA’s put stuff up.
i. Steve Gilmore: they don’t want people to move in the same time as RAs. They want the RAs to be trained first.
d) Yasmin Karimian: suggestion is to do it right after exams… before summer. Maybe beginning or the end.
e) Brian Frazee: I think that doing it the very end of the school year would be good. I think it’s a good opportunity to get stuff done.
f) Mike: welcome week trickles on for about 2 weeks.
g) Rahilla Tarfa: I don’t feel confident having a retreat after finals. Aren’t we supposed to move out right after finals?
h) Dave Hoffman: I think there would be issues as well. I think it’d be great to do something at the end of the school year. Challenge is that retreat takes a lot of effort to plan.
i) Sunaina Khandelwal: after finals, I’ve lost it. I’m just ready to get out of here. I would not be dedicated enough to go to the SGA retreat.
j) Steve Gilmore: I’ll talk to RSA about it.
VI. Project Update
A. Increased library hours
1) Sunaina Khandelwal: Harbor multipurpose room. What I’ve heard back, they said make a proposal with RSA exec board. Submit to RSA and CAB to see what they say. If it gets approved, you’ll have the multipurpose room. Mentioned swipe access part… you can get around it. That one door can be specifically turned off. If not, you can put a chair there. I feel like we’ve made progress. We’ve gotten through the administration.
a) Rahilla Tarfa: would you be willing to take steps to ensure that if we designate MPR that it will be quiet. Possibility that people could just walk in there to eat and laugh.
i. Sunaina Khandelwal: it would be part of the proposal.
b) Chidi Ukonne: MPR has to be neat and tidy. How are you going to ensure that people won’t leave trash and that people can leave it organized?
i. Jen Kent: We do have housekeeping people. We’re adults… and we know not to. If it’s a problem, there’s still housekeeping people there. I work in Erickson and we let people reserve Shriver center all the time. Outside people have come in and that hasn’t been an issue.
c) Rahilla Tarfa: the way that tables are arranged doesn’t seem very conducive to learning.
d) Sunaina Khandelwal: I think we’re just looking at it as an alternative.
e) Brian Frazee: as long as there’s a trash can in there, trash wouldn’t be an issue. You can say that about the library and the commons as well.
f) Gabe Rettaliata: last week you were a little unsure about finishing before the end of the semester. You feel more sure now?
i. Neketa Kakar: we were supposed to set up an appointment and we felt like we weren’t prepared at first.
ii. Sunaina Khandelwal: I definitely think we made progress.
B. Stress Free Zone Revamp
1) Jen Kent: committee members are working on their specific duties. We have a meeting this upcoming Monday. Again, we need free things. If you have any friends that works at Best Buy, etc. ask them. If you have a personal connection…. We’ll take anything.
a) Chidi Ukonne: the graduate office on the second floor, they usually have the UMBC diary for the semester. They always have it there for free. I don’t know if they’ll give you some.
C. Reaching out to International Students
1) Chidi Ukonne: international students. Met with Roy, one of the education services staff. We went over the program. Concerned over the fact that we don’t want to do something that another group is already planning to doing. Most of the stuff is tied to what we want to do.
a) Amber Spry: the way that they’re doing it is a little different from us. We wanted to do something bright and exciting, theirs is just “oh, international”
b) Chidi Ukonne: agreed that we’d have a big thing next semester. For this semester, one of the days for international week, we’ll have a video montage. We already started shooting the interviews. First person we interviewed was Paula.
c) Amber Spry: If you guys know anyone with unique experiences… especially good talkers. Someone who would hold an audience. If you could e-mail us or let us know… that’d be great.
d) Mike: what’s the time frame on that?
i. Chidi Ukonne: November 17th.
e) Gabe Rettaliata: you’ll have a video showing that?
i. Amber Spry: we’re also going to use for international student week. we’ll use that as advertisement.
f) Gabe Rettaliata: once that gets wrapped up, you’ll be good.
g) Chidi Ukonne: we have a list of the international students on campus. we’ll interview a lot of people.
D. Black and Gold Campus Signage
1) Aditi Srivastav: Whitney and I just talked today… 12-1 on Friday. We’re going to look at the 40th anniversary binder. Layout where everything was when they put up the banners. Jill and I talked about 10 minutes about it. She said we have to be pushy about it because a lot of people in OIA… students aren’t their first priority. It’s getting money from the alumnus. She said it’s not like they won’t help you but you just need to be pushy.
a) Whitney Torchia: look into getting drawings and talking to Adam. We’re going to go from there. Set up a meeting. After Friday, we’ll set it out.
i. Steve Gilmore: if you need persuading power, you can mention that we put up gold signage all over campus during homecoming.
ii. Aditi Srivastav: yea, they definitely noticed.
iii. Rahilla Tarfa: I was just going to ask who did that.
iv. Steve Gilmore: we just found a site that made signs for a dollar.
v. Dave Hoffman: get posting policy changed because things like that shouldn’t be against the rules.
vi. Steve Gilmore: I think it’s good. People took them.
vii. Aditi Srivastav: we can’t put anything on our campus?
viii. Steve Gilmore: we have to get them approved by the sign shop… our facilities.
VII. New Business
VIII. Executive/ Ex-officio Reports
A. Jason Brand: we’re pretty much gone through everything
B. Steve Gilmore: homecoming was awesome. Katie did an awesome job. Also, after this meeting, if you want to give me feedback and suggestions. I want to really focus on feedback for next year. Next week is election night extravaganza. We’re getting posters tomorrow. A couple of banners as well. They’re approved by Res Life. I also have full fliers as well. Thursday 3:00, mask making party. Also, I want to do a promotional thing during the Halloween Fest on Friday. I’ll send out more details. Get people motivated. Today, cell phone charging unit, they brought the unit today. Showed a few things. They have a proposal for us. They want to put 6 on campus. It’s a hefty contract. It’s $28,000. If we go with that, they handle all the advertising. We’ll earn our money in less than 2 years. If we get our own advertisers, it will be less than that. If someone takes on the amount, within 2 years, they’ll get money back. We have to talk to more people about that. Random fact: 6 weeks left for the semester. Also, Michael and Amir’s idea last year. Bookswap. Instead of trading a book for cash, it’s trading a book for a book. It’s a program that we’ll be responsible for maintaining. Ideally, instead of selling your book and getting another book, it’ll be an easy way to handle that.
1) Jen Kent: who are the speakers?
a) Steve Gilmore: finalizing details. Greg Simmons, Freeman Hrabowski will be there. We’ll try to get other people… faculty or staff to come by. They will be there at 8:00
2) Jason Brand: Do you have a pdf for the ad?
a) Steve Gilmore: yea. I’ll send them to you.
3) Jen Kent: did you already put these fliers in Res Halls?
a) Steve Gilmore: no, not yet.
4) Jason Brand: maybe I could post a volunteer sheet to RSA
5) Steve Gilmore: 2 inflatable’s, basketball moon bounce, 4 man jousting, etc.
6) Brian Frazee: I e-mailed all the community directors so the res halls will come together. Hopefully we’ll have the residential halls come together all at once.
7) Jennifer Kent: don’t put the big fliers to res halls. Go crazy with the tiny ones, I’ll deal with the big ones.
8) Rahilla Tarfa: For Homecoming, I suggest you put feedback for UMBC Underground for that. I know some people have ideas for Homecoming.
9) Dave Hoffman: suggestion about Homecoming feedback. I think the most important thing you have to do is the projects you’re doing that. I think that writing a resolution for Katie Dix single handedly working on Homecoming.
10) Aditi Srivastav: I feel like people came back and got 2 or 3 burritos. Also, I’ll write the resolution
11) Dave Hoffman: Also, for election night extravaganza, we want to get lots and lots of pizza. It’s going to require a lot of SGA volunteers. One of them is giving out food. It’s going to be an all hands on deck moment for SGA.
C. Yasmin Karimian: I’m starting to do research for long term money issues. Came up with ideas last year. Hired an assistant last week. We’ve spent 70,000 for Finance Board out of 150,000. If we don’t get a student activity fee increase, we’re going to be in trouble. Not yet, but we’ll be setting ourselves up for it. If we get activity fee increase, we won’t get it for another 2 years. Looking into investment for money. James did research on this awhile ago. Also I’m going to research on sports clubs. Does anyone know the issue is about sports clubs? Couple of years ago, worked with athletics saying they’ll take on the funding for sports clubs. They took about 23 organizations. They don’t have an allocation system. Sports clubs can only deal with that amount of money. Sports clubs that need $5,000, they only get $2,000. Some clubs don’t get recognized by the athletics but we can’t fund them because we made an agreement with the athletics already. I’ll be sending an email once we narrow down once we know what to do. What if SGA could sell UMBC gear? What if we funded it and sold it to students? That’s not something that’s coming up yet. These are things we’re coming up with. Sometimes they run the bookstores or the spirit store. It’s a little bit out there but we’re just trying to think of ideas. I think in the long term, it will help us sustain our spending. Just ideas. I’ll send out an e-mail probably by the end of the week.
1) Rahilla Tarfa: SGA making revenue isn’t violating any policy is it?
a) Yasmin Karimian: if we make it appropriately, yes. Just simple things. Maybe just Retriever Fever signs… we could sell that.
b) Rahilla Tarfa: I definitely think it’s a good idea.
c) Yasmin Karimian: the money goes into a big pot, the University Pot. It’s just ideas coming up right now.
D. David Hoffman: 8:00 tonight… SEB is showing Re-count. I’ll be facilitating afterward. Transit services will provide transportation from Commons Circle to Catonsville from noon to 6 on Election day. As a part of election night extravaganza, commons is providing coffee and hot chocolate.
IX. Announcements
A. Whitney Torchia: We have a new live Chesapeake Retriever now.
1) Aditi Srivastav: one of the PR girls from the athletics department takes care of it.
2) Jason Brand: they are having a naming poll. There’s Champ, Grit, Gritty, Believe. It needs to be True Grit.
B. Rahilla Tarfa: past couple of weeks, we’ve had robbery on campus. I don’t know if anyone saw the one that happened off campus. While we still haven’t had an issue where we had to press blue light… I think we should get together to have a campus safety walk.
C. Amber Spry: we’re having Halloween Fest on Friday. I think Silva still has some more in the office. Word of mouth, advertise it as much as you can. It’s going to be really exciting. We have people making slime. Costume contest. Guess what’s in the box thing. I’m really excited and I don’t even like Halloween.
D. Dave Hoffman: created facebook group for election night extravaganza tonight. Each of you try and invite 100 more people.
E. Yasmin Karimian: I would love to see if we could outbeat SEB in showing up to these events. Especially during Halloweenfest. SGA is doing the candy apple making station. Make sure you are representing us. If you’re available, please be there.
F. Chidi Ukonne: when we talked about Election night extravaganza, some of you signed up to talk about it during your staff meeting. I’m going to send an email to remind people that signed up for it. I already contacted CDs about it.
G. Brian Frazee: make sure you’re educating your friends about the slots.
H. Steve Gilmore: we’re making the news in other schools actually. CP hasn’t talked about it while us and Towson have.
I. Gabe Rettaliata: Jack Seuss from OIT is coming next week. Last week at University Steering Committee we were talking about PeopleSoft and the new Blackboard.
1) Aditi Srivastav: the new webmail is not very good.
2) Sunaina Khandelwal: Blackboard does the whole post direct stuff. It loops back over and over again
a) Mike: that’s a blackboard issue.
3) Rahilla Tarfa: website changed a lot from my freshman year. I just want to know the future direction of where the website is going to go.
a) Gabe Rettaliata: there’s a screenshot on UMBC Underground
4) Aditi Srivastav: is the OIT the one responsible for the links on the website? If they’re in charge of it, they should have a system.
5) Brian Frazee: are they in charge of grades? Putting grades on transcripts?
a) Gabe Rettaliata: I think that’s the registrars.
6) Brian Frazee: I mean putting them on the actual website?
a) Gabe Rettaliata: I’m pretty sure that’s through the registrar’s office.
7) Chidi Ukonne: when I drop a class, I still see myself in the blackboard committee. I still get emails from a class I am no longer taking.
8) Dave Hoffman: it’s fair to talk about suggestions that you don’t like… but also feedback on what you like about it and what you like to see more of.
9) Jason Brand: one of the new things this year, you couldn’t have a router in your room.
10) Mike: that’s only on 3 specific res halls.
11) Jason Brand: I know some people study in the study lounge and press print and it prints to the printer in their room.
12) Mike: I know that they’re taking over the TV. We’re taking off the contract with Comcast. They’re working on the channels that are going to be provided.
a) Rahilla Tarfa: We should find out why we’re doing that.
b) Mike: it’s because the Comcast people are not trained for field calls in a dorm room setting. It also allows OIT to better control what’s happening. Instead of calling Comcast to tell them it’s not working, OIT could fix it.
13) Gabe Rettaliata: I’ll send this out. If you think of anything else, just add it to your repertoire of questions.
X. Roll Call
A. Present
1) Speaker Gabe Rettaliata
2) Assistant Speaker Jen Kent
3) Sunaina Khandelwal
4) Whitney Torchia
5) Neketa Kakar
6) Brian Frazee
7) Amber Spry
8) Tasha Ebhomielen
9) Rahilla Tarfa
10) Chidinma Ukonne
11) Aditi Srivastav
12) FYA Matthew McNey
13) FYA Simmi Singh
B. Absent
1) FYA Toby Le
XI. Adjournment 7:30PM
XII. Pass the Gavel