STUDENT SENATE Meeting of October 7, 1998 Unofficial Meeting was called to order at 7:10 PM. Roll was taken at 7:05 PM. Senators Present: Anthe (CIT) - 0, Chang (MCS) - 0, Devine (HSS) - 0, Die (CFA) - 1, Ditterline (CIT) - 1, Ferrick (HSS) - 0, Gross (CIT) - 1, Guerra (CIT) - 1.5, Guzy (HSS) - 0, , Hutsko (MCS) - 0, Jones (CFA) - 0, Kalafchi (SIA) - 0.5, , Markle (CIT) - 0, Mccartin (CIT) - 1, Meier (CIT) - 1, Merry (HSS) - 0, Monroe (CIT) - 0, Moskowitz (HSS) - 0, Ng (CIT) - 0.5, Stovall (MCS) - 0, Strauss (SCS) - 0, Tassone (SCS) - 0, Tham (SIA) - 0.5, Wei (HSS) - 1 Senators Absent: Chan-Mendez (SIA) - 2, Hardjanto (SCS) - 1, Joshi (MCS)- 2, Koch (CIT) - 3, Mekala (CIT) - 1, Phelps (SCS) - 1, Silverman (MCS) - 1, You (SIA) - 1.5 Approval of Minutes: Minutes for September 23 were amended and approved. Ex-Officio Reports: Activities Board (Shubo Mookerjee): Not present Graduate Student Assembly (Grant Bromhal): Not present Greek Council (Cyndi Vuong): We would like to report on the successful trun out for Greek letterday on Octobe r9, 1998. We had 178 Greeks signed up during a Friday prior to mid-semester break. Congratulations to Zeta Psi Sigma Epsilon for second and Aloha Epsilon Pi for third. Greek Council will be hosting the first annual Hounted Quad this October 31. If anybody would like to assist this fun-filled afternoon fetivities, please contact Lou Cohen. His email address is kingpin@cmu.edu. We are still looking for people to assist guiding the children around the quad as they trick-or-trick or setting up a game booth for the children on the quad field. The Greek Peer Advisors was hosting their Risk Management and Public Relation session at 9 in Doherty 2210 on October 21. Base on mock party setting, this informative session will address safety issues concerning college parties today. They will also be hosting a reception for all Greek prents this Saturday ay in Skibo from 5 to 6PM. They welcome all Greek Parents to stop by. Congratulations to Zeta Psi Sigma for another successful Cansome Ranso m last week. They were able to collect 850 cans to be donated to the Greater Pittsburgh Food Bank. Sigma Phi Epsilon continues their active involvement within the commun ity by weekly tutoring Grover Cleveland Elementary School on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the local Presbyterian Church. Last but not least, Kappa Alpha Theta would like to invite all of you to Mr.Fraternity-their annual philantrophy for the Central Ohio Lung Association, directed towards the Karin Johnson Memorial Asthma Research Fund. Mr. Fraternity will be held on Friday, November 6 starting at 7:30PM in the Rangos Ballroom. Tickets will be on sale beginning October 26 in the UC. The prices are $7 presale and $8 at the door. They look forward to seeing you there. Division of Student Affairs (Denise Fazio): Not present Student Dormitory Council (Earl Crane): - Clippership did well with 325people attending. - SDC is holding a blood drive on October 27. - SDC sent out Newsletter to all campus residents at the beginning of the month. - A meal plan committee has been formed as a subcommittee of the food committee. Student Body President (Sarah Gross): In the last couple of weeks, I attended various meetings such as: The Martin Luther King Jr. Day Program Planning Committee meeting. We are currently looking for graduate and undergraduate speaker--please let me know if you (or anyone you know) are interested. The Morewood basement is coming along. Dean Murphy and I had a walk-through with a potential vendor recently and hopefully soon, the committee will anounce who the vendor will be. Also, if you have ideas for decorating or furnishing the area, please contact me. UCAB--we discussed issues such as how to stop people from chalking on the university center, how to get people to wear their wristbands while working out. Also, Dr. Elliot announced that soon, he and four others will be collecting ideas for potential uses of the UC basement. We will hopefully be running a phone call survey to find out what students have to say about the issue of smoking in the Morewood basement. If anyone wants to help please let me know. I also want to invite everyone to tomorrow's (Thursday, Oct. 22) FIRST/CMU/PITT Generation X Speaks Out" Conference at 5:30 in the Member's Lounge at the University of PIttsburgh. Student Body Treasurer (Keith Rothschild): Not present I have named Susan Leu as an Assistant pending your approval later at this meeting. I am still looking for other people. There is plenty of work to be done and the more people who I can get the more I can get done. I have worked with a number of organizations to try to help them. I od ered an audit on the Tartan to help them more realistically budget their money in hopes to help them recover past deficits. I have also dealt with similar tasks in other organizations including rectifying mismanagement of money problems. Feed back: The family disclosure rule should be added to the poster po licy in a way that it should be made clearer, as should the difference between a subsidy and a budget, and people should make sure that no organization is keeping petty cash. Petty cash for organization purposes is the same as an outside bank account, which is prohibited in the constitution. I would ask that this be clarified by adding an explicit line in the constitution, forbidding people from holding petty cash. Committee Reports: Academic Affairs (Amy Ng): Volunteer Community Service: The University is looking for ways to broaden the education of students at Carnegie Mellon as stated in the Strategic Plan. One student proposal on the table involves initiating a University supported volunteer community service program modeled after the current undergraduate research initiative (URI) and SURG programs. We are currently seeking feedback from various student service organizations on campus. Please send feedback to amyng@cmu.edu Undergraduate Academic Advising: AA is drafting a report on advising for the UEC on Oct 30, and will be issuing the report to Senate on Nov 11th. Currently there are varying advising models with no specified role between the advisor and the student. Our report will define student expectations of advisors. It will take data from two AA focus groups and the freshmen & sophomore end-of-year surveys from the Office of Planning last spring. Any feedback from the Student Body regarding advising should be emailed to amyng@cmu.edu JobTrak : I met with Dean Paul Fowler from the Career Center to discuss an update on the JobTrak issue. Currently, JobTrak has been focusing its efforts on revamping the site's servers and database structure to provide faster service. Senate is still working with the Career Center to make the issue of security one of top priority. I would like to thank Paul Fowler for his letter addressing the Student Body regarding the update on JobTrak. Student Advisory Committees (SAC): As part of an initiative to encourage senators to be more involved in their home colleges and departments, the Academic Affairs Committee would like to ask all senators to (1) find out if there is a SAC in your department or college (2) contact the student members, inform them on the issues that Senate is working on, and discuss with them the issues the SAC is working on. Please inform the respective committee chairs of issues that Senate may be able to address. Online Course Information: An updated report will be distributed to Senate on Nov 18th. The original report can be accessed on the Senate web page. Campus Affairs (Neil Guzy): I would like to thank everybody for the successful homecoming. And I w ould like to thank the committee for helping with the homecoming. I had a meeting concerning the renovation of the old gymnasium. The committee is looking for new ways to improve communication on campus. We also discussed ways to improve homecoming. At the moment, the committee is working on another survey on housing condition. Funding and Recognition (Sern Tham): F&R will be presenting two special allocations. There are 134 organizations applied for re-recognition and there are a bout 64 organizations have not responded. Therefore, the deadline for re-recognition has been extended for a week. Human Resources (Jamie Chang): First of all, a few new announcements: The PC is completely set-up, except for printing. If you have questions, ideas, or need something done, please talk to Charlie Anthe, the system administrator. There is a new Senator List that Senators need to pick-up. The Senate and Ex-officio dlists have also been updated. HR met both on the 8th and 15th of this month. In the first meeting, the committee had a short discussion on methodology for making ballots. Charlie Anthe will be preparing the ballots for the up-coming elections. The committee also discussed revising the Bylaws, agreeing upon the following goals: 1. Fix problems 2. Improve the structure 3. Make additions and changes to improve the content In further consideration, the committee agreed to separate the Fiscal Policy from the Bylaws and roughly outlined a reorganization of the sections of the Bylaws. At the meeting last Thursday, the committee agreed to the wording of two amendments to the Bylaws. One separates the Fiscal Policy form the Bylaws; the other revises the section concerning the Activities Board. Both amendments will be receiving their first reading today. The committee will continue discussions on revising the Bylaws. At the next several meetings, we plan on completing revision of Article I of the Bylaws. If anyone has ideas, please email them to myself or the Human Resources dlist, +dist+/afs/andrew/org/senate/HR/human.dl. In addition, HR will also be looking into knowledge transfer between sessions of Senate and systems for more efficient use of organizational resources. Direct any questions concerning the Human Resources Committee or its issues to me at chang@andrew.cmu.edu or call x2-2695. Public Relations (Joshua Merry): The committee is preparing for the election. We are going to put a full-color page advertisement on the Tartan to publicize the election. However, because Sen. Sern has extended the re-recognition deadline, we have to postpone the plan. For the election day, we also have the idea of chalking on the sidewalks. Senate happy hour is on November 11 from 4-6PM. Chair (Drew Stovall): The Administrations asked the Senate to nominate people for various administrative positions. New Business from Committee: F98-011-Amendment of the Student Senate Bylaws to make Fiscal Policy a separate document Whereas the functions of the Student Senate Bylaws and of the Fiscal policy are separate and different, and Whereas the Fiscal Policy, as a policy, more properly belongs in a different document, and Whereas the Student Senate Bylaws are simplified by this act, and Whereas this act would make Fiscal policy a concise, self-confined document that is practical for the Funding and Recognition Committee and the organizations with which it deals to utilize; Resolved, by the Fall 1998 session of the Student Senate, to adpt a separate Fiscal policy, unamended, and amend the Student Senate Bylaws to strike all of Article III and renumber the articles as necessary. F98-012-Amendment of the Student Senate Bylaws to modify Article IV: Student-Government-Administrated Organizations Whereas the Activities Board has special status as an external committee of Student Senate and therefore requires special rules, and Whereas the changes in Student Givernment have caused modifications in the Senate Bylaws, and Whereas the relationship between Student Senate and the Activities Board requires some clarification, Resolved, by the Fall 1998 session of Student Senate, to strike Article IV of the Student Senate Bylaws and insert the following text: IV. The Activities Board: A. The Activities Board is an external committee of Student Senate which serves to coordinate events to entertain, educatem and enrich the lives of the entire campus community. B. Student Senate recognizes the Constitution of the Activities Board. C. The Activities Board Executive Chair shall be elected by members of Activities Board, with the consent of two-thirds (2/3) of Student Senate. D. The Activities Board Executive Chair, or his appointed representative, shall be an ex-officio member of Student Senate and shall make regular, timely reports to Student Senate on the events and matters being considered by the Activities Board. E. Student Senate may remove the Activities Board Executive Chair according to the rules set down for the removal of elected officials of Student Senate in these Bylaws. F. The activities Board committee shall submit budgeting requests to the Joint Funding Committee. F98-013-Special Allocations to Camarilla Club Camarilla Club is requesting $100 in special allocation for sending 8 representatives to an international "Camarilla' conference in Salt Lake City, UT from Oct 23rd to 25th. This is an annual conference, and will have various leadership sessions, which will offer the representatives a chance to learn more about how to better organize the local chapter here. The total cost of the event will be 42107, but most of the funds has been raised by the members. Motion was accepted by voice vote. F98-014-Special Allocation to Agape Agape christioan ministry is requesting $697.56 in special allocations to cover the costs of sending 55 members to the annual Agape Missions Church Retreat near Greencastle, VA that was held from Oct. 16th to 18th. This retreat was attended by Agape Christian Ministries from various universities in the eastern USA. On an individual basis, each representative has already had to pay $55 to cover the cost of registration. The $697.56 being requested is entirely for transportation: the rental cost of 2 passenger vans (capacity of 15 each) and other related costs (additional mileage cost, insurance, gas, etc). Funding and Recognition Committee recommends $500 in special allocation to Agape. Motion for special allocation to Agape was postponed indefinitely by v oice vote. New Business: - Approval of the new Assistant Treasurer Susan Leu, an Economic major, is accepted as the new Assistant Treasurer by voice vote. - Members of the Election Board has been elected: Robert Daugherty, Hilary Greenbaum, Ronni Fleisher, Rina Mansukhani, Johanna Franklin, Jennifer Zarin, Erika Persson, Emily Crement, Laura Miyakawa, Shafeeq Sinnamohideen, Maria Tovar-Gamero. Points of Discussion: Sen. Ng: Student Advisory Committee could be good resources to find out what happens in college and bring it for discussion to the Student Senate meeting. Meeting adjourned at 8:05PM by voice vote. Respectfully Submitted, Paula Rumli ----------------