General Assembly

Minutes from September 20, 2007

Topics: Senate & Honor Board

Associated Students of Occidental College

General Assembly Minutes

September 20, 2007

12:00-1:30, Green Family Dining Room

Minutes by Chelsey Brack

Guests Present: Rory Harrington, Brian Damron, Mimi Liao, John Eaton, Philip Arsenis, Jackie Keeley, Selbie Salonga, G. Max Rowles, Wook Jhang, Nick Lee, Ben Dalgetty, Kendra Dority, Victoria Rutledge, Kelly Nuiki, Brendan Ralph, Chelsey Brack, Rozell Hodges (17).

Senate Members Present: Ryan Bowen, Nonda Hanneman, Alison Dempsey, Mike Myers, Andre DeBlock, Denise Loera, Santiago Mendez, Tilak Gupta, Xochiltl Ramos, Patrick McCredie, Robert Calderon, Ken Smutny, Dominique Kirkwood

Laura Knuttenen and Jessica Simes opened the meeting at 12:06 PM and welcomed everyone to the GA (the official student forum) and to the school year 2007-2008. The General Assembly is a place for students to bring up issues and policy change. The General Assembly recognizes that the student body is one of many forums that form the community, and it is a forum for students to work with other students and administrators.

The GA co-chairs briefly introduced the members of the ASOC Senate, to be more formally introduced later in the meeting (Andrew DeBlock, Nonda Hanneman, Denise Loera, Santiago Mendez, Tilak Gupta, Patrick McCredie, Mike Myers, Xochiltl Ramos, Robert Calderon, Dominique Kirkwood, and Ken Smutny).

1. Andrew DeBlock – Senate PowerPoint

Andrew DeBlock presented at PowerPoint about what the Senate would like to do this year.

[ ASOC Senate -
Last Year’s Accomplishments

Inform. Involve. Empower.

Cooler Renovation

Extended hours. Now open until 2am every night.

Hiring Additional Night Manager

Two (2) flat screen televisions. One large television affixed to the upper right corner of the lounge area and the other situated in a smaller dining booth.

Two (2) computers have been installed and linked to the Oxy network so students can browse the internet or check e-mail at their leisure.

STUDENT SPACE ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Committee will work to further Cooler renovations next year as well as preliminary designs on a new student union complex.

Continue to emphasize to the administration the great importance student space in the College’s master plan as a top priority.

Extended Library Hours

Under the revised policy, library hours would follow a “24/5” operating schedule where the building would be open 24 hours a day five days a week.

PATTERSON FIELD LIGHTS

Patterson Field lights now remain open during the same hours as the entire athletic complex.

DOCSAC: Dean of the College Student Advisory Committee

These meetings are intended to allow Dean Frank (Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College) the opportunity to hear the scholastic needs of students representing six (6) major academic disciplines offered on campus.

ASOC ACCESS FUND

The ASOC Access Fund ensures that any student is able to participate in ASOC student government.

The fund provides monetary support (up to $500 per semester depending upon the budget) for students who demonstrate financial need.

Community Service Day (Project Orange)

A Community Service Day project which occurred on Saturday, March 3rd, 2007 from 10:00 am – 2:00 pm

The aim of the project was to serve in the local Eagle Rock community while fulfilling a central tenet of the college’s Mission Statement; namely Service.

Many on campus groups contributed their time to service endeavors.

RESOURCE BOOK

The book highlighted the distinct opportunities and resources available to students on campus.

The book was distributed to all First year students as a reference guide for on-campus activities, faculty, and unique off-campus excursions.

ASOC CLUB MIXER

The purpose of this project was to bridge the communication divide existing between student government and clubs/organizations.

ASOC Senators representing their committees presented new proposals concerning such issues as funding, publicity, and services available to clubs and organizations.

NEW FUNDING PROCESS

A funding algorithm was written and used to determine funding allocations with the goal of ensuring equitable distribution of funds.

2. Ryan Bowen, Student Body President of ASOC

Ryan said that one of his first visions as ASOC President is his idea of keeping students informed, and one of his plans is to provide a document/archive of the history of multiculturalism at Oxy. He said he tried to explain to the first years in the welcome speech sort of why Oxy tries to get its name out as an institution that is striving for social justice, etc. Students always ask why are we dealing with these issues? Ryan wants to explain for further understanding and for a better future of the school. He has three main goals: to inform, involve, and empower students. He wants students to become inspired and get involved. He also wants to find ways to facilitate better connections with the faculty, and has been speaking about ways for students to get more involved outside of class. He talked about the high turnover rate of faculty here at Oxy, which is currently averaging a year and a half, while at most institutions about turnover rate averages about five years. He said that the faculty are a key source in understanding who we are as an institution and their longevity is important. He acknowledged that there are also many professors who have been here for more than ten or twenty years. Ryan said he is a big advocate for student concerns, to speak for students, that he sits on the Board of Trustees and the Alumni Board of Government so he wants people to come to him with opinions so he can take them to people with authority and influence.

3. Honor Board - Philip Arsenis, Rory Harrington

(Honor Board members present but not standing: Danielle Siegler, Nick Lee)

(Ben Torgerson, Abe Cohen, Maddie Knaup not present)

Rory said that the Honor Board is trying to serve on the Academic Hearing Panel, which normally has two students on it who are randomly selected. The HB feels like two HB jurors should be the ones doing that job in order for the student body to be able to trust that person to make a sound decision. When rules are broken in the handbook, the offenders are usually sent to the Academic Hearing Panel. Many of the drug policy hearings and judicial cases Honor Board was involved with went to the AHP. The HB also want to be involved with ASOC infractions, for example, people taking down posters during campaigns, etc. HB wants to be involved. Rory said that they have many plans for this school year, and that they now have trained peer mediators to resolve issues that may arise.

Philip said the HB is about discipline, but its not similar to other schools HB's in that they're very intense about the law, but HB here wants to make a big effort to create a community of difference. He said that he created an analogy for the first year class about tennis - people hitting the ball back and forth, the lob: people don’t engage in conversation, talk about the weather, lack of engagement. When the balls being hit back and forth really hard - real engagement. There is a principle of engagement and rules of engagement, which they want to support. The document can be read by anybody, the document itself is declared as being directed towards a community of indignation, targeting to change. The Honor Board’s three main principles are Honesty, Responsibility, and Respect. Honesty: being truthful to your own belief, Responsibility: adhering to the rules of engagement without restricting the other person to respond. Respectful: honest to yourself and the other person. Rory recapped that their goals are to get more involved in the Oxy community, have students sign agreement, and to form more of a community.

4. ASOC - The Senate and the GA

The Senate members and GA co-chairs took questions from the GA.

Brian Damron said that he wanted to get more camping equipment for Outdoor Adventure Club and asked about Capital Improvement Requests asking if he would have to go through a club or could he present as an individual. Mike Myers said that he thought the CIR has to go through student services. Patrick added that if you are requesting personal camping equipment you may, but ASOC can take them back at the end of the year, the equipment would not exclusively owned by your club at the end of the year. Ken said that Brian should meet with Erika Johnson who is the head of it and she could help him plan it out.

Brian asked if the funding was limited, Ken said they were allowed to spend about 10% of savings - Patrick said that was about $200,000. Ryan Bowen added that Erika bought a lot of camping stuff last year for the outdoor adventure club, and Brian said that what she bought was good but that they needed more than that for the club.

Ben Dalgetty asked for Andrew to expand on the Access Fund, and Andrew said its a matter of financial need, its for GA and Senate - $3000-$4000 a year spread between students. Students apply for it and it goes through Financial Aid, Kenna Cottrill, Student Services, etc. Ryan said that there was a survey that 70% of oxy students were on financial aid and that there was a demonstration of high financial aid. Alison said you could receive up to $500 a semester.

Rory Harrington asked the GA co-chairs how they plan on getting people more involved with the GA. Laura said that the month of September is kind of an exception, and that they are looking forward to the rest of the fall and school year. She said it starts with educating the general student body and the campus that this space is available, figuring out which issues resonate with them, what they want to talk about, etc. Next week the GA will be talking about res life and housing services is coming, which should be a popular one. Jessica said that res hall staff will be invited to come and share all of their experiences as well. They said that they are working on changing publicity, changing location because that is an attraction as well. I (Chelsey Brack) added that we will not be changing the time to later in the day/evening because it is difficult for administrators to come to the meetings at night. Laura said that they are presenting questions to faculty/administrators to get them engaged in the GA and to come to meetings. contact asocga@oxy.edu with questions, comments, concerns. Jessica also added that GA is also becoming more solution oriented - not just dialogue, but ACTION as well, which will hopefully attract more students to utilize the forum.

Max Raules asked what the number one priority is for Ryan for improving the college this year, and Ryan said that he ran on the campaign that the school is lacking vision, that there is a high turnover, and overall administrators and students not understanding the history of the college, particularly the aspects of equity and excellence, and particularly over the last few years. He said that probably his number one priority is hard to explain to people, its kind of a collective mixture of many goals, but he added that he knows leadership is needed at the high levels to be able to influence the college's mission and to inform students.

Brian Damron asked about the funding algorithm, saying that he thinks there is an inherent bias in that, asked if there a certain way to figure out how some things will be weighted and if those things are set in stone. Ryan said that it was based on numbers from last year, based on the funding aligned with the college's mission, and was designed by Jimmy Gillian and Matt Kuzio last year. Social, cultural, and educational factors are taken into account – they are the determinates. There are other factors that go into it as well – whether its an on/off campus events, if its engineered to serve the most students as possible. The Senate can’t allocate 100% of funds to every request. The idea is to serve the most amount of students as possible and to have maximum usage of the funding. They are trying to make sure that people who need it get what they need. Mike Myers added that some discretion obviously goes into it – they meet with funding chairs, committees, work on catching exaggerations, figure out estimations of more people, anything that is questionable. Funding allocation is also evaluated after the event - seeing that event has 1/4 or 1/10 of people showed up, they know that too much money was given. Ryan added that that is also part of Honor Board’s responsibility - when students request more money than they need, it would/will be taken up with HB. Ken said that he anticipates a lively debate about funding, and that there are several improvements to be made in the future. There were varying opinions on the senate, which said he felt also keeps the Senate diverse. Rory asked if the Senate meetings are open and Ryan said they were and that they were in the Cushman board room. He said that they’re not that exciting, but are open for people to attend/listen. Jessica thanked the senators for talking.

5. Capital Improvement Request

Jessica briefly explained what a CIR is, how it provides money for purchases that are outside of what clubs/committees can angle.

Kendra Dority, Editor in Chief of Oxy Weekly was requesting funding to have new computers in their offices. Currently they have five Mac computers that are in high use which makes them unavailable to other members of the Weekly staff – when people are busy doing lay-out, etc., others need it for the articles, which is slowing down production. Also Steez and KOXY used the same computers to store music files, files, layouts, etc. which make the computers very slow. Santiago Mendez said that ITS is getting new laptops, possibly the Weekly could borrow as a temporary thing. Patrick McCredie asked what the total amount being requested is, and Kendra said $2800. Ken said that the line-on-line budgets need to be presented as well. Robert Calderon asked what kind of memory is needed, and Kendra said they requested RAM memory. She also added that they were working on this CIR last year, but Earic Peters was the advisor and left - so it has gone untouched for a few months. Rob asked if the computer will come with software that is needed, Kendra said that it does not, so they will be using money from their own budget to purchase software. They have a surplus from last year that was intended to use for these new computers, but it went back into savings and cannot be touched. Jessica thanked Kendra for presenting.

6. Resolutions

Jessica briefly explained what a Resolution in the GA is and said that if students have one to contact the GA co-chairs with them or any questions they may have.

Laura and Jessica thanked everyone for coming to the GA meeting, and implored everyone to come next week for the GA meeting about res life and housing. They also encouraged everyone to email them at asocga@oxy.edu with any questions, comments, or concerns they might have.

Meeting adjourned at 12:53 PM