DECEMBER 3 2013
7:00
Attendance: Kilduff, Cicero, Sim, Rode, Weinreich, Zawatsky, Sit, Stuart, Solomon
Rode: we have 65% in favor of arming campus police. 72% at least felt comfortable arming campus police. We had about an equal amount of on and off campus. You all have the bill. I’m open to changes. I wrote this bill in favor of arming campus police but when we’re voting this should be a factor but not the primary reason. I think the important part is the last resolved. We had 2330 respondents
Cicero: Everything is pretty straight forward on this
Kilduff: Let’s talk on terms of position
Weinreich: From when I was working on the survey, everyone I talked to said they didn’t know much about it and still stated their position. I don’t think it’s the best decision and I’ve looked at a lot of stuff and the cost association with it is not as high as it needs to be
Zawatsky: This isn’t necessarily what we’re voting on
Kilduff: The decision we vote on right now will most likely be the opinion of the senate
Rode: If we put a bill on the floor that says yes, people are most likely to say yes
Zawatsky: Well we have to do one or the other
Weinreich: I think this will be one of the very few issues in senate that people won’t care what exec says
Kilduff: I would like to have the discussion now so we can minimize tomorrow
Zawatsky: I’m for it but I’m not happy about it
Rode: I think there will be uproar once a gun is pulled on a student
Kempler: I’m very for this bill for the safety of our first responders
Rode: I think people are having so many thoughts about incidents when we really need to think about day to day things
Sit: The points that I pose are that having campus police armed is not to just protect students but also the police officers. The one interesting thing is that having the police be armed isn’t something that is detrimental to the student body unless you don’t have trust in your police officers. There was a lack of trust. Another issue is an allocation of resources. Apparently it’s only 150,000 dollars the first time around and 25,000 yearly after that. If those are the two biggest issues, the benefits are that they can immediately respond to threats and they can protect themselves.
Kilduff: I would say money isn’t something we have to worry about. Efficient allocation of resources isn’t the issue; the issue of arming was an issue before the Chaffee Incident. Even though we are in the middle nowhere, we have people traffic our campus all the time and can come on campus with weapons.
Cicero: We need to decide on how we’re going to conduct the discussion tomorrow
Rode: I think it’s really important that we get together tomorrow before the meeting to make sure exec is all on the same page so we’re not arguing on the floor
Zawatsky: We need to stick to inductive reasoning or some sort of line or reasoning.
Kilduff: Calling germanity on the floor is one of the biggest issues that we’ll see tomorrow. In terms of moderation we need to stop redundancy. If something becomes redundant we need to stop them. People get angry when we’re redundant. Practically the answer is going to be yes or no without any little details.
Rode: The police officers all need to go through training again. It’s not a URI official, but it’s the state of Rhode Island. It includes safety hazards and so forth and psychological evaluation and diversity training. There are certain state laws that they have to pass without training.
Kilduff: This would be us creating a real Kingston Police Department on campus
Cicero: We need to set the tone as to it being yes and no
Rode: We shouldn’t promote abstaining
VOTING ON THE BILL FOR ARMING CAMPUS POLICE SS-13-14-XX
7-3-0
Sit: We have a few immediate considerations tomorrow. We have SAWA applying for their hair show of 14,000. We have ski and snowboard team of 2750 as a housing deposit. Also, the budget for them is also going on the floor tomorrow. It will be immediate consideration as well. That bill is for about 21,000. That’ll come out of general.
Weinreich: I get really concerned when we’re giving brand new organization tens and thousands of dollars.
Sit: There are more people now and they used to get a lot more money. They were previously funded by CSIK and now they’re not funded at all so they need to be recognized by us for a year. The next thing is we’re changing the policies for retreats and we’ll fund any small retreats, and anything overnight or bigger, SOLC will fund half of it and the other half will have to be funded by the people going. This was something that SAWA already did. SEC, though, was told by SOLC, so when SEC had an event, only exec members went. Since it was so early in the year and it was a changed policy that wasn’t expected, SOLC will fund almost all of it and will require ten dollars each by the people who went. Another thing is we talked to CSIK about the helmets, and the president of CSKIC seemed fine with ski and snowboard using the helmets. We’re talking about some changes in punishment policies. For accounting purposes, we see every line on CSIK as a different organization. This brought up an interesting situation so we’re thinking of making this a bit more reasonable, and making every group be recognized.
Weinreich: My concern is that they don’t have to have elected officers on a team.
Kilduff: Captains get voted
Weinreich: We ran into this with crew
Sit: all they need is two signatures and need to sign signatures. This is to get paperwork going more smoothly. Also the hair show will cost about 2000 more than last year because it will be bigger than last year. A few groups are in some trouble with finance paperwork. One of our biggest problems is with FMS and they never signed anything and they had a service done by ATR Treehouse and our options are to pay it or not.
Kilduff: We can pay it and punish them somehow or we punish them by not paying it.
Weinreich: ATR Treehouse is not in a position to negotiate
Sit: It’s a very confusing situation and it’s in the world of legal jargon.
Weinreich: This removes any responsibility and we need to hold them legally responsible.
Kilduff: This is a situation of people misusing our money. It’s $3000.
Cicero: Let’s let finance look at it.
Kilduff: We didn’t do anything so there’s nothing to actually discuss
Sit: We talked about donations that won’t go out to be paid to anyone without an EIN or SSN. Right now we have a few checks in limbo because of that but that’ll be a reason for them to become affiliates.
Sim: We have two bills on the floor tomorrow that are vote next meeting but we need to work on our bylaws because we don’t have an at-large date for voting.
Sit: Also for finance, there are groups that are fundraising money online using kickstart or go fund me. Since the senate doesn’t do much for that, right now groups are doing that on their own and we don’t really like it. There’s difficulty moving it to a pay pal account. This is something I want to ask if it’s something we want to help with or should we not deal with it? Every transaction needs to be reconciled. Should we provide an avenue like pay pal?
Weinreich: I want to support all of our groups in fundraising. We need access to credit cards.
Sit: Also we need to talk about getting a Restaurant Depot card, which I think is fine
Kilduff: Yes, if you want to
Solomon: Tomorrow is the last day for spirit of giving. Ace of cakes yesterday was a success. We need to work on making it bigger and better. We also raised $142 dollars for Rhody Outpost and we have gifts left over that were donated. They’re going to be left untouched so if people need gift cards then let me know.
Rode: Campus clean up went well. We collected a lot of trash.
Kempler: I’m doing the letter on Friday so if anyone has anything for me please email it to me. Kathleen had a good idea to spotlight student orgs. Chris and I also had a meeting today about formal which will hopefully be the 28th of February. We’ll probably have an on campus or off campus bus. Tomorrow during the meeting I’ll send around lists.
Cicero: I’ll start collecting money when we get back from break
Weinreich: BOND and PINK both are moving forward to becoming affiliates by voting to approve it. I’m planning on meeting with PINK’s exec to go forward with that.
8:20