SGA Senate 2/23/09
I. Call to Order: 6:50pm
II. Roll Call: All members present except for Whitney
III. Approval of Minutes: approved
IV. Open Discussion
A. Review of past week
Gabe: steering committee met Friday, chartwells came. Did a nice presentation. I asked him how business was with student orgs, he lied about it. They talked about layoffs. Also talked about some state bills regarding the collective bargaining agreements. There concerned about the new textbook policies. Professors will have to research different additions and options for students. They were mad because that would force them do work.
Amber: I have a question about layoffs. How do they determine who gets put off?
Gabe: they left it up to the VP.
Toby: something about a meeting
Michael: SGA website. Get exact projects we are working on up there. Name of project, point person, email, description. People will see that the SGA is doing stuff.
V: New Business:
A. Conformation of election board members: Amond Perkins, Meron Tesfaye, Sean Maykrantz, and Stephanie Mavronis.
Katie: three of them are here except for Sean. They each have brought great ideas to the table. Stephanie has a lot of experience with multimedia and she wants to help inform students about what SGA does. Amond is very passionate about getting out there and talking to students. He is very knowledgeable and has a great presence that will make students feel comfortable around him. Meron has already been talking to a lot of you about bringing SGA to students and finding out what it is you do. Working a lot on getting publications out. We have a lot of plans for the future. The Student vote website is up and we have a new facebook group.
Amber: what are some of the unique skills that you bring to the election board.
Amond: I bring enthusiasm. I like talking to people.
Stephanie: I want to think of new and creative ways to get students involved.
Meron: I think a lot of people don’t know about SGA. Knowing about it has made a lot of difference for me. Many students think that you have to fit a certain mold to join SGA and I don’t want them to think that.
Amber: One of my major concerns is targeting people who haven’t voted before, how will you do this?
Stephanie: some people might think SGA has a really specific job but you guys control a lot of aspects on campus. Even if it’s something as simple as dining or transportation, through SGA these issues can be resolved.
Amond: just talking about what SGA does can help a lot
Meron: We are constantly discussing how to make the SGA more personal. If your friend is a senator, you might be more likely to vote.
Aditi: motion to confirm legislation
Second Brian
Gabe: objection. The bottom needs to be changed. We need to add a section for the Finance board. And are you guys comfortable with approving Sean at the same times (name on legislation)
Katie: Sean is our graphics person. He works in common vision and he has a lot of experience in graphic arts. He has lots of good ideas.
David: these people need to be not only competent, but also able to work without favoring a candidate.
Brian: I agree with what David said. Can we amend this to have Sean on a separate piece of legislation because I don’t think its good precedent to confirm people who we don’t meet in person?
Gabe withdraws objection.
Election board members leave
Naina: Do they have specific rolls assigned to them?
Katie: Sean is the graphics; Amond and Stephanie are making the videos and interviewing students. Stephanie is in charge of facebook. Meron is bringing SGA to students and talking to student orgs. Trying to get out two new publications every week. We are getting a slower start then we wanted. In the next two weeks hoping to get this off the ground
James: role violations?
Katie: for me this is a group decision-making process. That will become a little clearer later. When disputes come up I feel like we will all talk about them. I would like to have everyone’s consensus because I feel like everyone has a view to bring.
Jen: Were there other people who applied?
Katie: yes, we really only had one serous other person, who applied and then there was another person who didn’t respond.
Naina: move to approve, Jen second.
Members For: 9, Opposed: 0, Abstaining: 1, Absent: 1
B. Objections to SR07-0809
Gabe: Two main reasons I vetoed the legislation we passed last week: 1) Poorly worded and vague. Any legislation that is vague like that should never be passed. Fo has let me know that it has become an unnecessary piece of legislation. Last week everyone was operation under the assumption that he was meeting with Katie Boon last week – he is actually meeting with her this week. 2) His plans have changed as well. Looks like it could cost up to $6000 for this. He is not seeking the senate’s approval as of now. Wants to hold a meeting with her and have a letter from me in support of it and later if it works out, he will come back to senate with better-worded legislation.
Toby: $6000 for each student?
Gabe: for the total of the project. Seems a little high.
Naina: I don’t think that’s high at all.
Gabe: she's willing to work with us.
Brian: Issue here is whether to over ride veto or not. I also talked to Phil and he said the same thing. I think we should let the veto stand.
Aditi: can we just move on then if we let it stand?
Veto stands.
IV. Project updates
A. Increased library hours
Naina: 10 year master plan, but every 5 years they update this. Usually don’t pay that much attention to it but this time they are because they want to focus on sustainability as well as space management. Committee created to figure out what library’s needs are for the next five years.
Simi: we were also thinking of getting some grants. Problem is that Hrabowski says grants are for private institutions and that money will be hard to get. We will look into that. Might be hard.
Amber: what is your status with looking into Res halls
Dropped it because we saw something going with the library
B. Reaching out to International Students
Had meeting with event planning Thurs. Right now we have Marked 27th and 28th for programs. Thinking should move the event to the fall semester because we will have collaboration with orgs. April will be a time for elections; March might not be able to draw as large a crowd. Wondering about your opinions. Thinking about Streamlining events to smaller scale.
Jen: I think that leaving it for the fall is not a good idea. It’s pretty risky. Good chance that nothing will be done. I would try to do something this semester. May not be to the scale you were hoping. Could you do something that wasn’t an event? That might be cheaper and easer given the time you have.
Chidi: Thinking about doing an intercultural event that would create more awareness about poverty. Doesn’t have a lot of logistics.
Naina: is this just to raise awareness? Is this done by Unisef?
Chidi: No, just got the idea from it. Just to raise awareness.
Naina: is this a performance event? Or just a presentation or just informational event.
You have some people set on the floor, some on table, some have beans some don’t. You ask each group how they feel watching people in other groups.
Reflection about poverty.
Toby: Instead of just doing it yourself, you could ask another org to do it
Jen: what is your goal with that would be? That’s an awesome event, but another org could do that. SGA needs to be taking on things only the SGA can do. Something online with resources. Or talking to admissions.
Naina: last semester I remember talking about emailing and getting in contact with students before they event get on campus.
Chidi: We talk about it in fall semester when students are coming. It might not work for the fall semester.
Naina: Could you set it up or the fall semester?
Chidi: yes
C. Black and gold campus Signage
Aditi: Opening up contest this week. Jen has agreed to work with us to get flyers out via common vision and SGA. David is going to start putting stuff up on the blog and Michael on the SGA website. Toby’s campus card idea is in the works. Have half our budgets confirmed hopefully will have the rest by the end of this week. I’m going to open up a facebook group tonight. March 15 is deadline for submissions.
Jens: have you printed anything with the deadline on it? Common vision might not be able to have stuff out by this week.
Michael: getting a website up by this week might take a while.
Aditi: I can push it back to end of spring break
Jen: quadmaina is 17 April
Jen: could have it during quadmaina. SEB would publicize well.
Black and gold Friday the same day that they will have banners up.
Rahilla: you can get back to us with a date.
D. Fees
Fees didn’t meet
E. Sales of Gum at stores (Yum Shoppe and the Spot) on Campus
Rahilla: Whitney had an update on that. I guess she will just give it to you next week
F. Follow-up on Transit Tracker
Transit tracker: we haven’t meet as a group. Setting up meeting with last admin.
VII. Team building.
Brian: In the interest of time will defer till next week. It’s going to be a really good activity.
VIII. Executive reports.
Gabe: met with PSAC and Freeman today. Just talking about transitioning and where plans are. He really liked the black and gold idea. Good meeting and now he knows who we are. So when I send the letter about the transcript fee he will know who I am. As far as the cabinet meeting. Noting too exciting.
Simi: communications committee has been meeting and talking about having a press release. Update on what senate is doing every week. Want to have retreat like meeting every month for an hour. Just to stay in communication. Planning on getting that starting next month.
Gabe: every one is behind it.
Simi: we expect it to be mandatory.
Gabe: on a Saturday probably around 11
Jen: did you talk about the transcript fee with Freeman?
Gabe: I'm glad it didn’t come up. Would have probably asked a lot of questions I didn’t have all the answers to. Steve doing fee forum. Will be in the student org space week after the elections.
James: busy week. Finance board partially funded Jambo night. Will probably be hearing from us once we find out exactly where we are. Facilities management completely on board with my idea for Erickson Field. Did cost analyses and environmental impact. Student activity fee increase: meet and talked about meeting with Lynn Shafer. Will be on Friday. Amber: what does this clay do?
Helps with drainage. Issues with bonfire. Are going to try and make sure we can keep the bonfire.
$3700 to Jambo night.
April 22. Jambo night is at Morgan state. Couldn’t get a space in the UC ballroom.
Michael: did all SGA positions in webpage. Now accurate. Put new pictures up. Most everyone’s emails is up and election page up.
David: Election board has created facebook group.
David: if James does anything to impair the bonfire he will run 15 times naked around Erickson.
Took a while to figure out when retreat will be done. Someone offered a traditional retreat that will be cheaper.
Michael (RSA): Last week we has guess speakers came to talk about Chorus (music downloading service). Allow you to download music based off of a select number of artists without liability. Get music anyway. Free for students during the beta test. Company wants to see what type of music students downloads. Not monitoring, just survey.
Jen: how many recording artist are on it?
Michael I think it’s a limited selection. Might start with 70 and continue forward.
Katie Boon came to talk about housing price changes. Total cost for traditional was $5500 next year $5670
For Walker: $5700 up to $5870 tried to keep the changes low as possible. Increase in resident fee. Will go up 10 per student. To cover some upgrades. Were some improvements last year, which are now obsolete.
A few price changes for food and a few more options for the flex.
Jen: did you find out about the cable splitter?
Michael (RSA): I can give you a minor update on it later. We are going out to Arizona sending 10 delegates out. Any student can go. Will cost student $30-60.
IX. Announcements:
Toby: big game this Sunday. First year council is doing an event that day. Face painting.
Rahilla: this semester will be continuing with the guests. Katie Boone will be here next Monday. She is the director of RESlife.
Jen: ask her about how they are planning on fitting all freshmen in residence halls this year
Brian: ask her about the master plan. A lot of interesting stuff going on.
Michael: Who do I talk to about the Bendy straws? Commons or Chartwells?
Simi: is everyone ok with the mandatory meeting?
Jen: just make sure enough people can go
Amber: don’t let that discourage you.
X. Roll Call: all members present except for Whitney
Chidi and Aditi left early
XI. Adjournment: 8:00pm
XII. Pass the Gavel