MEETING START TIME: 6:29 PM

 

ATTENDANCE:

Committee: President BUCK, Vice President DONNELLY, Treasurer PERCY, Chief Information Officer TAYLOR, Director of Communications WILDING, Finance Committee Chairwoman KING, SOARC Chairman BACHILAS, Academic Committee Chairman TEMPLE, Campus Affairs Committee Chairwoman TATE, Cultural Affairs Committee Chairwoman ST. AMAND, External Affairs Committee Chairman BERTEL

Absent: None :0)

Non-Committee: Sen. Howard

COMMITTEE DISCUSSION:

• President
  • Welcome!
  • Office of the Ombud Interviews – Led by the Academic Affairs Committee
  • The issue concerning the Women’s Room in the Library is on my radar.
  • Transition Meetings are happening.
  • I would like to plan an Executive Committee retreat; something fun at the end of the semester; sometime before finals.
  • We should work on getting an influence with selecting a new Director of HRL.
  • Dates for the Committee? This semester: Mondays at 6:30 PM in the Senate Office. This may change next semester.
• Vice President
  • Progression Meetings
    • I have met with most of the Executive Board members.
    • You all should expect to meet again next week.
    • The hopes are to get plans from you all as well as your goals and whether you may need any help with the transition process.
    • This is an effective way to inform me as the VP about where you stand in your position.
  • The plans for this October’s Senate retreat is complete.
  • Come talk with me if you need any help.
• Treasurer
  • I have met with Cheryl.
  • This is John Sear’s last week.
• CIO
  • The Agenda for the next General Senate Meeting is compiled.
  • I am attempting to create a Kudos culture within Senate. Any further Kudos should be positive and should neither be rude nor directed toward anyone in a negative matter. The Kudos Jar is not meant to be filled with spam.
  • I have improved on my pace of typing recently.
  • Updated Finance Quiz
    • 1) Create Table of Contents for Finance Handbook
    • 2) Define 25 tentative questions.
    • 3) Share it and improve questions if necessary with Senator Howard
    • 4) Share it and verify questions with Finance Committee Chairwoman.
    • Let the Finance Quiz go through a second round of improvement and approval.
    • Finalize using a google docs thing.
  • Directors of Communications:
    • We will be keeping Senator Sunday! It was a success last semester and hopefully it will be just as good a success for this upcoming term.
    • I will be creating an Exec board that is interactive board – each Exec member should submit a picture + a fun fact about themselves (hopefully this week). This information will be submitted on social media along with Senator Sunday.
    • For sweatshirts, Matt said they would be done before annual. They were not. Then we were told they would be done last week. They were not. If they are not done by this Friday, I will do what I can. They have charged extra but are not delivering on their end of the bargain.
    • The Bulletin Board will be done this week; professional photos may be taken this week but if you do not get a new one then you will not get a new one. The Rhody Paws poster will change. This bulletin board will change occasionally to put the spot-light on some other orgs.
    • Some issues with the Cigar. The title from last week concerning Senate and Greek Week Funding will not change.
    • There will be a Sexual Assault Awareness Photo Campaign this Wednesday starting at 5:30 PM. The Senate Exec. Board should be a part. You should show up in office and I will take you around campus to take pics which will also go up on social media. You have two options: either a picture holding consent tea with a mug or a picture of you holding a blank poster wearing either a tank top or being shirtless.
    • My meeting with IFC, which involved Chairwoman Tate, went extremely well. There will be representatives from IFC for Masculinity Monday.
    • I have had multiple meetings with members of the Women’s Center for this month’s Sexual Assault Awareness events.
    • We should bring back going to Applebee’s and T’s.
  • Finance Committee
    • Ro and I visited Noche de Gala and we provided $200 dollars for their decorating needs.
    • Finance Handbook revisions! We plan to have it on the floor by the last meeting of year (2017). The Finance Handbook should be consistent throughout new year. Not keeping it consistent has historically confused student organization signatories.
    • EMA has been granted $941.
    • The Finance Committee is accepting Summer Budgets from students organizations. Not too many groups do it and we are going to be strict with it. It did not go well last year, so we are going to make sure that signatories are readily available. Doing this makes Cheryl’s job easier because it is inconvenient if they are not readily available.
    • I would like to meet with Cheryl, Susan, and Maureen to cover committee concerns over the Finance Handbook. This meeting has not been scheduled.
    • I will have a meeting with the Presidents of IFC and Panhel to see how things have gone with Greek Week and the stipulation on Friday at 1 PM.
    • Vice-Chair Nomination: Jared Mattern
    • (11-0-0)
    • Dates for the Committee? Fridays at 3:00 PM in Room 314.
  • SOARC
    • The last formal Presidents Meeting of the year happened. It went pretty well.
    • The Committee is making sure that groups are prepared for next year. We are compiling updated contact information. We have also been taking many office space questions and first night questions. They should be getting emails in the next couple of weeks regarding these matters.
    • Everything else is good so far!
    • Who is leading the allocation of office space? Maureen will be, but she is holding orgs to certain standards which include but are not necessarily limited to: Groups need to be around for 2 semesters min.; They need to be using it appropriately. Office allocation will be requested through an online application.
    • How have SOARC Liaisons been going? They have not been assigned yet. I am looking to see which members of the committee show up regularly. Once I get a good idea of who those members are, I will then assign groups to specific liaisons over the summer. I will be assigning myself to more groups than other members of the committee.
    • Also, we will be holding groups accountable for attendance at check-in meetings.
    • Vice-Chair Nomination: Danny DePetro
    • (11-0-0)
    • Dates for the Committee? Mondays at 3:30 PM in Room 354.
  • Academic Affairs Committee
    • I am creating a College Liaison Presentation. This presentation will feature the duties and responsibilities of liaisons but those excerpts from the bylaws will be digestible so that there is reduced confusion.
    • The faculty are trying to change their bylaws so that students may be members in all Faculty Senate committees.
    • There will be Ombud interviews. The Academic Affairs Committee is requesting help for interviews and questioning. So far, we know we will be interviewing 6 students.
    • The NEASC Accreditation is coming up. Standards 4 and 5 have been sent.
    • There will be a Representative coming in the summer from UMaine. Hopefully, we can elect a student representative to give them a tour do that after graduation.
    • Concerning the Mother’s Room in the library: they may only be moving it to the second floor instead of the third floor. This is better, but we should keep it on first.
    • Vice-Chair Nomination: John Morabito
    • (11-0-0)
    • Dates for the Committee? Wednesdays at 5:30 PM in Room 354.
  • Campus Affairs Committee
    • Sexual Assault Awareness Week
    • I have met with members of the Women’s Center. We have covered what is needed for each day and have discussed the photo promo. We are also going over the logistics of each day. There will be more information available as the events approach.
    • Campus Affairs Committee meetings will be happening on Thursdays at 7 PM.
    • Vice-Chair Nomination: Stephanie St. Louis
    • (11-0-0)
    • Dates for the Committee? Thursdays at 7:00 PM in the Senate Office.
  • Cultural Affairs Committee
    • I have started getting everything ready for the TED Talk.
    • We are planning to put it on in the Fall.
    • We have been thinking of speakers.
    • We have been discussing what the focus of the event should be and there has been considerable interest in focusing on tackling mental health on campuses.
    • The Rhody Paws event has been finalized. The committee has decided that we will host a “Make Your Own Stress Ball” table.
    • There is no rain date for Rhody Paws. If it rains, we will just come into the Memorial Union.
    • This will happen on April 26, 2017 from 11 AM – 6 PM.
    • Diversity week is coming up.
    • The committee is deciding what topics or topic to focus on.
    • The Library Liaison wanted to do hold a de-stress movie night on the 26^th. The movie itself is fairly new, which makes its license expensive (@ $500). She wanted us to pay for the popcorn, etc. and licensing, but the Committee did not want to cosponsor such an event.
    • Vice-Chair Nomination: Evan Cummisky
    • (11-0-0)
    • Dates for the Committee? Wednesdays at 5:30 PM in Room 318.
  • External Affairs Committee
    • As I have been working with VP Donnelly, we have been thinking about our previous Rhody Outpost focus. We no longer believe it is effective or marketable. It is also not as expansive.
    • We would like to shift focus to the Johnnycake Center where there are more resources, employees, and from the perspective of students, it is more effective in terms of outreach. I will be talking with the committee for thoughts.
    • Are there any down-sides to this shift in focus? I am not too familiar with the center enough to know whether there are any significant down-sides, but I can tell you that while they are not very large, they do have a food bank and they are open for operation more often than Rhody Outpost. I do not forecast too many issues with this change. They are big enough such that it is beneficial to students, but not so big that it is detrimental or overwhelming to us.
    • There will be an Off-Campus Clean-Up April 22, headed by the Narragansett 2100.
    • I plan to have a meeting with Sean Corrigan but there is no official meeting time. Sean Corrigan is the chief of Narragansett Police.
    • The 2100 is a collection of Landlords, Leasers, both locally and nationally, which has worked with senate, but their interests are only partly similar. They are relatively new (2014).
    • Zach Yip provided the documents that he and Lawyer Sam worked on. I will run is by the Committee. It should present itself as a side project. It covers what information to look for in a lease and what to include. I was going to introduce it to my committee to see if anyone was interested to take it up as a project. VP: “Phrasing is important.” I will make sure to focus on the phrasing.
    • Vice-Chair Nomination: Wait a week.
    • Dates for the Committee? Thursdays at 4:00 PM in Room 313.
  • New Business
    • Donnelly: “I will send updated Committee Times over the Senate ListServ.”
    • Temple: “We need an updated Contact Sheet for Senate.”
    • Donnelly: “Now that we are exec, we need to pay attention to who is dropping, and set the example, be friendly, ask if they can make meetings, etc.”
    • Donnelly: “I have heard a lot of great things concerning committees.”
    • King: “Can we know who dropped?”
    • Donnelly: “Yes.”
    • King: “This is actually pretty good for Spring Senate. Stay Strong!”
    • Donnelly: “Someone will be going abroad.”
    • Temple: “Can we do something over the summer (prepare a when2meet for exec meetings for next semester)?”
    • Buck: “Yes, and we will share the results over groupme.”
    • Donnelly: “SOARC and Finance Bills?”
    • Baechilas: “Rhody Jams never got back to us. We just passed a bill in committee.”
    • Donnelly: “Special Orders, nominations for Vices, Zach.”
    • Taylor: “Will do.”
    • Donnelly: “Now with the new Senate, make sure new senators (and perhaps old) know not to simply give out phone numbers.”
    • Buck: “Epic job team!” (*Gives a thumbs-up (*with a smile*))

 

MEETING ADJOURNMENT TIME: 7:29 PM