Students’ Council Minutes 10/06/2024

Attendance: Victoria, Yehyun, Emma, Thea, Yasmin, James, Coco, Julie, Kelly, Aaron, Jack, Mena, Grant, Oliver, Bukky, Yuriko, Adam, Claire, Luke, Caroline, Dominique, Tristan, Keyla

Agenda: 
1. Updates/Reminders
2. Facilities Fund
3. Plenary
4. Closing Remarks

Updates / Reminders

Victoria: Thank you all for coming. We haven’t met in a little while because we had the retreat last weekend. We will give a quick overview of the agenda. The Co-secs will talk about the facilities fund, we will talk about plenary and then we have some closing remarks.

Yehyun: It is really exciting, we finally have all of our council positions filled.. 

Victoria: This is the last time I will be saying this, if you have not set up a 1-1 with us, please do so before fall break. The retreat was last weekend, it was very fun and successful. I sent a message in the slack with the itinerary, it has links to slides that go over what we did. Feel free to go over it whenever you have time. 

Next, I know a couple people aren’t here, but we have some committee updates. We have many committees at StuCo, we’ve got the constitution committee, appointments committee, FAPC, Haverfest selection committee and the bulletin board committee. I wanted to go through and ask for updates for each committee.

Grant: The constitution committee met Friday, we started to actually go through and make changes to the constitution, which is our goal until Spring plenary when we present this resolution. We’ve made it through 2 pages in an hour, it is a lot of work. We are making good progress and I like the work we did Friday. We will be meeting weekly until Spring plenary, maybe more frequently.

Victoria: Have you guys been able to meet for the appointments committee again?

Grant: The appointments committee has everyone here on it but the co-positions. We have met once to appoint honor council reps and the junior class rep for StuCo but we have not met yet to make the shared governance committees. Those applications were sent out last week and will be open until this Wednesday. We might have a chance to meet this week, but I doubt it. We are still accepting nominations for appointments. Kabir and I might do some tabling this week.

We also appoint StuCo members for the FAPCxStuCo committee. We have reached out to faculty and everyone who expressed interest in being on that committee. FAPC is essentially the executive board of the faculty senate. Last year Kabir and I worked with them to establish better communication with faculty and StuCo. We met 3 times last spring, this year we are trying to get new people and keep up that relationship. We asked everyone for when they are free to meet. We will be coordinating with FAPC. We had 7 people express interest and that is too many.

Yehyun: The officer of academics is on it though, right?

Grant: Yes.

Victoria: The next thing is for Haverfest.

Kelly: The applications are due tonight, we already have some. I am in contact with Jodi and Ciera to see when they are available for interviews, I will send a message to everyone tomorrow saying the time of the meetings and the applicants to try and do interviews this week. After break, the Haverfest co-heads will be chosen and start working and forming their committee.

Victoria: Who are the StuCo members on the committee?

Kelly: It is the class year reps. 

Victoria: I can give DC bulletin board updates. Today, me, Grant and the class reps and officer of arts met to discuss the bulletin board. We met to discuss how we want to approach the board. We delegated tasks to the class reps. It was a little creative session.

Yehyun: We definitely want to utilize the bulletin board as a physical representation that StuCo is trying to keep students in the loop. With those updates, is there anyone that has any questions.

Facilities Fund 

Emma: We sent a document into the slack that has all the facilities fund form submissions, we got 33 this year, we sorted them into our top ideas, feasible ideas, technically feasible ideas and non feasible ideas. Everyone can take a moment to look through it.

Thea: We will try to meet with facilities this week, we need to bring a couple ideas to them. We want to make sure StuCo can agree on a couple top ideas.

Emma: Does anyone have any questions?

Claire: I like the balcony idea

Thea: Yes, it is the balcony above the coop.

Victoria: I really like the idea of new gym equipment.

Yehyun: Are all of these ideas eligible for the fund?

Thea: We think so, but the final say comes from facilities.

Emma: That is why we bring multiple ideas to them.

Yehyun: I think the gym idea would also benefit athletes.

Thea: Our backup plan is to get more picnic tables and adirondack chairs.

Keyla: For the last option, would it be out of questions to also add hammocks?

Emma: We could, we can’t just do them on trees.

Victoria: I have already seen people break the hammocks by Leeds.

Yuriko: Can we get some outdoor outlets in front of the benches by the apartments and other outdoor seating ideas.

Victoria: That is a really good idea.

Thea: We proposed an outdoor idea last year as you can only use it for parts of the school year and they didn’t like that.

Oliver: For the low stimulation room, would it necessarily be in the library?

Emma: Not necessarily, this is just the submission we got. How does everyone feel about the balcony above the coop, updating gym equipment, and adding more outdoor seating across campus being our top three?

*unanimous approval*

Emma: We will present these three ideas to facilities then!

Plenary

Victoria: Next is plenary, as per our last meeting, we talked about budgeting and how we want to spend money. We had decided to bring a sanitary station to plenary so that people have masks and other supplies to stay healthy. I went ahead and budgeted for the sanitary station.

Oliver: I was thinking some more masks would be good. We can just double the mask order, or even a little more than that. People don’t usually bring their own masks but a lot of people will wear them if we provide them

Victoria: When we were doing budgeting for it, the link someone put in for good masks, only lets you order one. We can take out a couple of the vitamin c packet things and swap for more masks. It might have to be on multiple amazon accounts because it says 1 mask order per person/order.

Thea: What is the point of the vitamin c packets? I feel like it seems less necessary then getting more masks

Victoria: It can also be more of a prevention. The ordering problem with the masks is why we did not get as many but if we want to lower the quantity of anything on the list to get more masks it would be the vitamin c packets. 

Claire: If we can figure out the ordering of masks, more KN95 might be better.

Oliver: I found white ones where you can only purchase one order, but it’s another 100 masks.

Grant: Speaking as Kabir, why don’t we have snacks?

Victoria: The reason why we don’t have handheld snacks is so it doesn’t get super messy. We also agreed with the director of athletics we would only bring boba into the GIAC.

Yuriko: When I emailed Danielle I did ask if we can get crumb free candy, like hard candies, and I don’t know if that is something we want to take into consideration.

Kelly: If there is anything left after Halloween week from SECS we can provide that.

Victoria: How many KN95 masks should we order? Right now we have budgeted for 200.  

Emma: Are the masks going to be distributed to the satellite rooms as well?

Victoria: Do you know roughly how many go into satellite rooms?

Kelly: The one near the GIAC is roughly 20. The one in Sharpless has more people.

Caroline: Around 100 total.

Oliver: I found a pack of 600 for like $80.

Victoria: Perfect, we can also get rid of the surgical masks.

Emma: If we have extra KN95s we can also use them in the Spring.  

Victoria: We have $30 in our budget left. We can use this for candy.

Yehyun: We will talk about subcommittees. Could food and transportation give an update on where you guys are at.

Yuriko: I reached out to Yi’s to ask how much the boba cost. I am waiting for confirmation on how much we want to order before finalizing that. 

Victoria: For transportation, how much time in advance do you have to ask to use the vans?

Yuriko: I haven’t coordinated it before so I am not sure.

Yehyun: I think only van certified people can make the reservation.

Adam: You can reserve a van on EMS if you are certified if you give 96 hours in advance. 

Oliver: Do we need to pay them?

Adam: $30 for 4 hours, $55 for more than 4 hours.

Victoria: If we need $30, then I guess no candy.

Yehyun: Merch, Julie, can you give an update?

Julie: Another student submitted a design for the stickers. We now have four designs. We will have 800 stickers. The budget for the shirts was confirmed. We have 345 shirts. We got that confirmed, so those can be ordered whenever we are ready. The one thing to note is the XS shirts will only come in white because they don’t have any left of the other colors. 

Yehyun: Physical logistics, Jack.

Jack: I emailed Jodi and a bunch of admin, we have the room booked, and an email to go to facilities and BLAST tomorrow. We got StuCo letterhead for voting again.

Thea: Are you guys able to get us ethernet cables again? That helped a lot with our connection problems last plenary. 

Jack: Yes.

Yehyun: Advertising, Kelly?

Kelly: We have made some posts. I am going to make a plenary poster and start hanging it up after break. 

Victoria: Were we making workshop reminder posts?

Kelly: I think we have one that’s meant to go out today.

Yehyun: We will have our second workshop tomorrow 8-9pm in Lutnick 002. We will be talking with people who have submitted first drafts and ask if they have talked to stakeholders. Hopefully that workshop will help them with their drafts. We will also have post fall break, accountability workshops. Day of set-up logistics, Caroline can you update us?

Caroline: We have been having people fill their name in for plenary tasks. Day to day logistics feels more like once we get closer we will figure out more.

Yehyun: Earlier we talked about having mic passers. 

Claire: Yasmin and Adam are signed up to be mic passers. 

Yehyun: Grace is not here, we can check-in with her later.

Victoria: For the hand sanitizer and masks, we should just put that by the merch table. 

Oliver: I will order the masks and stuff soon so we have it well in advance. Is there any preference as to where we store them?

Yehyun: I know student engagement has their storage room, or one of us can just hold onto them. 

Closing remarks

Victoria: Now we can go around and if anyone has any updates please feel free to share.

Dominique: She/her pronouns, I was just elected and am waiting to meet with Danielle to talk about athletics and do some work to make this more of a concrete position.

Oliver: He/him, we finished regular budgeting, rolling budgeting opens tomorrow, we are working on some long term budgeting related things.

Grant: He/him pronouns, co-vice-president, we are working on the appointments process. We have also been working on the constitution committee and the bulletin board.

Caroline: She/they pronouns, honor council co-chair, just helping with the constitution committee, we formed a committee on honor council too.

Mena: She/her pronouns, first year rep. I sent out an email to the first year class week with a survey to see what feelings are on certain issues. The data was kind of all over the place. There was not a collective issue, so I am trying to figure out what to do with that data right now. 

Jack: I’m Jack, he/him, officer of academic, I have been emailing with the OAR.

Aaron: He/him, sophomore class rep. I sent out a survey to the sophomore class. I gave them five ideas I had and had them rank it and offer other ideas if they had them. One popular idea was to create a network between upperclassmen and alumni to talk about internship opportunities. Next was working with the DC, but I don’t think I could do that on my own. Next is working on expanding sophomore declaration day. People seem happy with it as an event so far.

Luke: He/him, I am the other honor council co-chair. We are putting together another clearness committee, which will put out a survey to gauge the environment on campus and people’s perception of the honor code and student governance. This committee will be assigned this week.

Kelly: She/her pronouns, student life officer. The SECS committee has been made, Hav-a-friend was a success. We have planned Halloween events and Family and Friends weekend events. Expect an email from us after break. In general, we know what events we will be doin for the rest of the semester. The other thing is the E. Clyde Lutton fund is up on Engage for student performances that want funding (due by October 25th).

Julie: She/her pronouns, officer of the arts. This week I met with Kelly and James from the Hurford Center, we talked about projects for the year. The main thing we talked about was the fall arts festival. This will be on December 7. The sign up sheet should be going out within the next week. Those are due by the end of November. I have started working on budgeting for that. 

Coco: She/her pronouns, international student rep. I have been working on the issue regarding international student tax for summer funding. I drafted a resolution and talked to affected students as well as reaching out to Wendy and the controller’s office.

James: He/him pronouns, junior rep. I will be sending out an email soon with a survey to the junior class. Also if we do get picnic tables for the facilities fund we probably want to get things that people will not take into common rooms or apartments. 

Claire: She/her pronouns, one of the librarians. If you are new, please send me a picture for the website. If you don’t want your photo or email there please let me know.

Yasmin: She/her pronouns, one of the librarians. No big updates. 

Emma: She/her pronouns, co-secretary. No updates.

Thea: She/her pronouns, co-secretary.

Bukky: She/her pronouns, officer of multiculturalism, I have been meeting with Diamond about renovations to the MCC.

Keyla: She/her pronouns, one of the JSAAPP co-chairs. We met with Scott as an initial meeting. We started hosting our office hours. We will be taking the party host training soon. 

Yuriko: I am the senior board of managers rep, I have been working on organizing celebrasia, and different Tri-Co leaders are coming together. I have also been prepping for the board of managers meeting.

Yehyun: He/him pronouns, co-president. For ExecBoard we talked about how we can introduce a shared governance structure for inviting third party groups to campus. 

Victoria: They/she pronouns, co-president. We can close the meeting, thank you for joining us.