MEETING START TIME: 5:06

Attendance: Boutmy, Cicero, Garcia, Hetland, Kilduff, Maynard, Patterson, Rode, Sit, Solomon, Weinreich, Uy, Yip, Zawatsky

Special Guest: Bruce Hamilton

Bruce

• Voted on tax portions

• One is complete: climbing wall facility

• Issue with company called Project Venture:

• Background:

• Contract signed back in February 2014 for the Union

• Money set aside for the climbing wall

• $175,000 was set aside and $172,000 was used

• When their workers are interacting with the state search company, issue of prevailing wage came up

• Prevailing wage: if you don’t use union labor you are required to pay an hourly wage

• The guys working for Project Venture found out the state workers were getting paid prevailing wage and contacted Bruce

• State of RI requires prevailing wage

• Project Venture knows Student Senate funds were used for the wall

• They want to send out a change order to us (basically an extra charge).

• Bruce promised to present this to us and is allowing us to make a formal decision.

•Need to make a decision

• In the contract we aren’t required to agree to this

• Are we at fault? No because of the source of the funds

• Incentive to give extra money? None

• State workers admitted that they’ve done work that has not been paid through prevailing wage, but our state requires it

• Executive Decision:

 

Maynard: Motion: Should we pay Project Venture the   $17,000 change order?

No: 0-11-0

• Be prepared to deal with Project Venture regarding our decision

• Important to look into long-term plan: different company? One that’s more expensive but won’t cause these issues

• Second tax portion is for lighting the Tibbetts field (intramural fields)

• $25,000 to upgrade to power so when we bought the system we used four poles to bring the power in.

•Campus had a different design in mind but Bruce and Dougan were able to go with their idea.

 

 

•Bill is still out there to put a lighting system on this field

•Numbers probably won’t change

• Additionally:

•Fake turf for field: plan is to raise money to do this for the varsity football field and then intramural’s can use the other field

•However, there are drainage problems for the football field that need to be addressed before fake turf can happen

• On the 5 year plan

• Informal proposition to consider sharing the practice fields and sharing them: football team would use them for their 3 hour practices.

• Written agreement to share the field with the intramural for the remainder of the time

• So we’ll pay to update the lights, it will be an all purpose field that will get used frequently

• Importantly: our intramural program uses the fields later in the day, which is why the issues of lights were brought up

•If lights were set up, more students would sign up for Intramural’s. Many students cancel their games due to lighting issue

• Work to get something in writing saying that the turf field will be open for Intramural’s except for the daily 3 hour block (about 4 x a week) for varsity football.

• Chunk of time will be needed for this but will benefit athletics greatly

 

President’s Report

• Waiting on quote for folders
• When2Meet was sent out for new exec time next semester
• By-Laws committee:

oWant to meet with them to make suggestions

oIssue: Need more older people on it

 

Vice President Report

• Sent email to Maureen regarding common number of people allowed to go to First Night next semester

oIf we can’t send everyone we’ll have to pick people

oAlternative: they can move in for Freshman move-in: GET PAID! And then you can still show up to First Night

oAlso asked her about other opportunities

• Barbecue is Saturday, May 3rd

 

Treasurer Report

• No report

 

CIO Report

• Working on website for committee pages

oShould be done by end of year and he will meet with each committee chair to discuss it

oHold off on publishing until all the information is there

 

External

• Rachel McAteer for Vice Chair

o12-0-0 Approved

• Switched Ferrara and McAteer with SOARC
• Working on magnets

oCan’t provide costs until we better know how they will turn out

oPavlik and Tang have connections to external community so we are getting a lot of information from them regarding housing policies and police

 

Finance Report

• Last meeting of year

oOn floor will be a not so in depth change of handbook

oOver the summer, if any changes need to be made to the handbook, they can be

oBill is more for reference which is why it’s going on the floor. Goal is to put this on record and to make it good for the summer where finalizations can be made

• The capital improvements is where he wants to go to so we don’t take away from next year’s budgets
• Need finance info regarding folders (Maynard) and magnets (Kilduff)

 

Secretary:

• Electronic voting: waiting on Enrollment Services

 

Cultural Report

• Rhody Paws: April 28th. Sign up to help
• Meeting with Melvin this week
• Working with Fall programming
• Working with the Regional Director for the Hasbro Dance-athon
• Elections:
• Elections bill will be on the floor next week

 

Academic:

 

• No report

 

Campus:

• Safety and Lighting Walk

oNeed more experienced members taking part in it

oOn the 29th

• Meeting with Housing regarding dormitories
• Working with DOM regarding the RIPTA survey
• Want to make a campus comment box online

 

SOARC:

• Bill calling for MUSIC as a Funded Affiliate with Funding by Contingency

• Programming is in their mission; it’s a big part of what they do and how they plan on building connections with other groups

• Goal is to help other groups with their programming

• MUSIC is not happy because they wanted a full budget with stipends

• Currently, they don’t have positions that satisfy a need for stipends

• Be aware a lot is going on behind the scenes

• They will have no authority to recognize groups

• Groups go to them because MUSIC has the same goals, aspirations, as these groups and will help make sure that groups who go to them can implement their programs following those goals

• Want to promote Multicultural Awareness

• Bill has 2 resolves:

• First is to actually recognize them

• Second is to meet again with MUSIC in February 2015 to reevaluate their needs

• This is included because it’s been a very long process and this is something that does not hurt Senate at all

• Zero loss for us; we lose nothing from this and it keeps them happy

• MUSIC will most likely come to us requesting a budget and we will budget based on their actual needs

• Value of MUSIC is that they can do something we cannot.

• Need to resolve conflict of funding/stipends now

• Kilduff: MUSIC should exist but shouldn’t be funded. Unfair to rest of groups on campus. Need to keep things equal. The February meeting with them could turn into MUSIC asking for more. Need to draw the line. Contingency is not needed in my opinion.
• Maynard: We aren’t binding ourselves to give any funds. I do want to see MUSIC exist but I want them to be treated like every other group. I agree that Contingency should not be granted. No group should receive this much. In the

 

 

future, I want to meet with students directly. Might be detrimental to change the Resolved: it just guarantees a meeting with them in the upcoming year.

• Sit: Approval for full budget even though they don’t demonstrate a need. We’ve been interpreting bill as a recommendation but if goes through as that. Basically we recreated RAMS except with budget lines and etc. When MUSIC requests money, they are going to have to come to us every time. Prevents them from getting funds that are not necessary.
• Garcia: There are groups that are part of MUSIC and are funded by the college: like Seeds of Success

• Concern that MUSIC can claim ownership for an event for the purpose of funding and then get additional funding from Seeds

• Main point: we have control over funding for each event they want. In addition, this second meeting will not hurt us and just gives us a chance to make additions and subtractions as needed

 

In the future, we need to create standards. Work with MUSIC and build positive relations

DOC

• Won’t be here next week

• Working on newsletter

• Working with E-services to get newsletter out to students