MEETING START TIME: 5:00 pm

ATTENDANCE:

Committee: Wilding, Alquirtas, Sardinha, McWeeney, Blewitt, Morabito, Watka, Alquirtas, King, Cordova

Absent: Kohl

Non-Committee: Howard

COMMITTEE DISCUSSION:

• Academic
  • Morabito: The first thing we have is liaisons.

Watka: Jus to clarify, are these just academic liaisons?

Morabito:

Alquirtas: Do academic liaisons have to be members of senate?

Morabito: No, none of the liaisons do.

Howard: That was my point of clarification as well.

King: I just have a question about one liaison position on here. Tristram and I are already on the Constitute Bylaws ad University manual committee.

Morabito: That is the list they have given me. I will get back to you on that.

King: I just don’t think it is fair to throw new members into this committee.

Howard: I don’t remember what I was going to say.

Morabito: I had a meeting with Kareem, probably my last meeting as library liaison. He wants to comminute with housing to get Alexa in all the dorms. Finally, the library is looking to hire new positions to work with the Harington school of communications. There has not been a laptop theft since February. 

• Campus
  • Watka: No report written but I do have some stuff. I got a complaint that was interesting, and I will deal with it through my term. It is about student wages, and the way we’ve been doing it for many years. I got a complaint that they way the student wages increase every year is not sufficient. That will be exciting. I am meeting with the person who filed the complaint next week to get some more information about the current state of student wages. The survey for perceptions of safety from gun violence is going out this week. Finally, Mark Gall started a public forum for parking because last time it was brought up it was brushed off. I am really excited for this term.

King: What is the survey is about?

Watka: Just about student feeling as to whether they feel like their voices are being heard on the sensitive issue if guns.

King: Just be careful in the future about being targeted by surveys. That happened last week, and it was embarrassing.

Watka: Thank you.

Wilding: Just to let you know, I talked to parking services about the open forum and they said next semester.

Watka: I’m glad that he said yes but it may be because you are the president. IT still was not right for them to silence Gabe.

• Cultural
  • Kohl: Hey guys. We’re just waiting to hear about the logistics for Rhody paws. I also talked to Woodhouse in the women’s center about sexual assault training for the whole senate.

Watka: In our press release, we also talked about mental health training, did you hear anything about that?

Wilding: I have to talk to Jacky Tisdale about that.

Sardinha: Just pertaining to mental health training, I made an announcement last week that alpha phi omega would be doing it. However, that will no longer be happening.

• External
  • Alquirtas: Hey everyone, just a couple of quick questions. We have been encouraged to have as many senators as possible go to the cleanup. I posted about it in gavel gang, unfortunately I cannot go. Rhody Outpost is also on Wednesday, and I realized that many people signed up. I reached out to them all personally to ensure that they still honor their commitment.

King: Is it true also that we only had one person, Brianna Benedict, at welcome day on Saturday?

Alquirtas: Yes.

King: Ok, I ask because we want to make sure that this does not become a recurring issue. Dan Taylor already had a tense relationship at times with Jacky Tisdale due to our senators’ lack of commitment.   

• Finance
  • King: Sheryl is going on vacation starting at the end of April. All financial business must be situated before she leaves because. Sherly is also better resource than Susan, just for reference. I’m sure Austin will talk about SOLC in his report, they are trying to appeal out decision regarding their funding status. I asked some other people to do some research, such as Tristram. We found that you can only appeal the budget result within 48 hours of it being approved, or a senator can ask for it to be reconsidered. However, neither happened and thus it is a done deal. Finally, we had a huge issue in finance where non-one attended the meeting on Wednesday. I don’t know what the delay was and why it wasn’t made known to the senators. People occurred absences that weren’t their fault, and we looked very unprofessional in front of BOND. We owe them an apology.

King: Ryan, when do you want the bills for this week to be sent to you?

McWeeney: By tomorrow at 2 for this week, though in the future I would like for the agenda to be sent out by Monday.

King: People also have to apply for summer budgets before the end of the semester. I am communicating with Zach Taylor about that, as he will be the new finance chair,

Howard: This may be a conversation for finance, but it might be useful to consider changing “funded” and “unfunded” categories for groups to  

• SOARC
  • Cordova: We finalized the discussion about ACLU. Originally, they submitted the model constitution, but then decided that they should use the constitution model provided by the ACLU. However, both the committee and out lawyer found some issues with it so we instructed them to return to the model constitution. AS far as funding status goes, our committee seems pretty much in agreement on a “funded” status. Also, I was hounded a bit about how discussion will go on the floor on Wednesday. We should avoid discussion about hypotheticals, and also make sure that certain members do not make inflammatory comments. College Dems had an issue with their elections. I had the president and senate rep. from sea sec come to talk to me today. Apparently, there is an issue going on between the women’s d1 rowing team and sea sec. Sea sec came to us today saying that they reaffirm their position. We will have an opinion bill on Wednesday.

King: Is the issue that women are allowed on their club rowing team or that they’ve made a separate women’s team?

Cordova: It’s because they allow women on the team D1 team.

King: Is this possibly due to the new coordinator?

Cordova: They say this problem has been happening since first night, but they did not say that.

King: Ok, I think that we should give them a heads up that we are publishing something. If the first thing the group hears about it comes from the minutes there may be issues.

Cordova: Model constitution revisions are being worked on between Lexi and me. If any of you have input, please tell us we would love to hear it. My plan is to have it down by the last week of this term.

Howard: You may want to make that bill so that it occurs through finance and happens once the new term starts.

Cordova: I can see where you are coming from with that. Finally, SOLC appealed the SOARC bill about their funding status. We talked about it in committee, it was just Connor and the new president for next year. I think the committee made it very clear where we stand and, to be honest, they did not do a very good job arguing for their appeal. We voted it down, and that will not be going to the floor.

• New Business

Watka: I just want to bring up an issue that I noticed this morning. Around 10 am when I was walking in from the RIPTA the door to the senate office was open when Yip was out getting a coffee. What are our opinions about this?

Howard: I believe that another student came in after Yip left, as he tends to close the door behind him.

Sardinha: I think that we should make an announcement to the general senate about closing the door behind us.

King: Last year the VP would stay downstairs until the start of the meeting to close the door behind us. I’m not sure if another exec member wants to take on that responsibility this year?

Wilding: Speaking of the mason jars, they were given to us this morning with no explanation as to what they are for.

Blewitt: Also, aren’t there also sunglasses in there?

Wilding: Yes.

Sardinha: Another kind of serious thing that I’ve noticed and talked to Tristram and Zack about: we have had a serious issue about senators not going to Rhody outpost. I think we may want to consider having some type of penalty for missing the time you signed up for. For my sorority, if we do not take our name off the list at least 48 hours before, our total community service hours get increased for the year.

Howard: I am partial to the idea of incurring a half absence and possibly bonus office hours.

Sardinha: The only thing I have to say about extra office hours is I’m not sure that would be the best way to go about this. For office hours you don’t have to technically do senate work when you come in for office hours.

Watka: We’re also going to have to discuss what the cutoff is for an excused absence. I do support half absences.

Cordova: Going back to Sam’s point about punishment. I think that missing an out of senate commitment would fall under the same umbrella of missing an office hour or committee meeting.

King: You can also submit a request for additional excused absences through rules and ethics.

Alquirtas: It’s really up to rules and ethics, though, ultimately.

McWeeney: I would just be careful about handling an absence from an out of senate commitment under the same umbrella of missing office ours because it’s not specifically written into our bylaws that we must attend service hours outside of senate.

King: Rhody Outpost does count for office hours, and it does say in the bylaws that we can rules and ethics a senator for missing an equivalent of office hours.   

Extra

McWeeney: I am thinking about changing the bylaws quiz to a yearly game that will have a winner at the end of the term.

Alquirtas: Please sign up for bigs if you want one.

Wilding: Also, please behave professionally in the office.

 

MEETING ADJOURNMENT TIME: 6:19