MEETING START TIME:
7:00
ATTENDANCE:
Kilduff, Kempler, Cicero, St. Jean, Rode, Solomon, Sim, Zawatsky, Weinreich, Sit
-FINANCE CHAIR:
Sit: Slam poetry came by and wanted money for a poet for the diversity club and MCC and we said no because $2500 is a lot of money. Their poet wasn’t a big enough name so they’re going to re-write a contingency for a lot less for Writer’s Block or another one. They’ll be back to us. CBSA is having a dance and they want 200 for a DJ and SAWA wants money for security. I think it’d be fine as long as they have all the paperwork filled out
Kilduff: CBSA has been looking for you a few times this week. They’ve come by asking for you
Sit: Because our meeting is Tuesday and their dance is Thursday they should have it all figured out. Also we talked about the Cigar and dressage who is asking for money for a competition but no one was there representing their group. That’s in the books, but I need to meet with whoever is in charge of them. The Cigar had their first paper out and they’re having meetings and I’ll stop by. Their budget is more than all the contingency grant available. Their secretary gets paid more than Kim. Their budget is reduced from last year but we want to make sure they’re on the right track. At some point we might look into getting someone from Brown’s paper to act as a consultant.
Kilduff: Give them a couple weeks to do their own thing and then we can figure it out.
Sit: They’ve been over-printing in the past.
Kempler: The editor-in-chief is working really hard.
Sit: The new people in charge have a lot of drive and are ready to change things. They don’t really have a lot of writers, and their writers do get stipends
-STUDENT ORGANIZATION ADVISORY AND REVIEW COMMITTEE (SOARC) CHAIR
Weinreich: The Presidents meeting was kind of a mess. I will be emailing everyone who went to see what they thought went well and what they thought did not. I have 30 minutes for you to all go over a bylaws bill. I’ll give you an overview of the changes and then I’ll give you time for changes. SOARC categories are a mess so with that in mind we’re trying to simplify it while keeping the integrity. There will be two categories: funded and unfunded. Under funded they will be able to make a recommendation to finance for funding. SOARC will look at what they need and decide from there. They’ll get a recommending for funding and contingency. They are very clear and when SOARC recognizes they will be funded on a programming or contingency basis. It all still falls under article 9—student orgs. If orgs aren’t happy about it, they can go back to SOARC and then they can go to exec if need be. I added a section under criteria which is the health, safety, and welfare section to cover us more as far as liability. I want to put this floor tomorrow and I want it passed before re-rec papers go out. Read this over, there is probably errors, help me find them
Lanoie: I feel as if this is too broad to say that finance will tell you how much you have in a budget
Weinreich: SOARC recommends what they get and then they have to go to finance to actually get it. You’re eligible for things, but if they don’t go to budgeting they won’t get a budget line.
Sit: You won’t give them an exact number will you?
Weinreich: No. What SOARC is going to tell them is what they need based off of programming and events and their mission statement. SOARC is in a good position to understand their needs. The exact numbers goes to Brian
Kilduff: I went to the presidents meeting yesterday and I threw out this idea to groups and I got responses. There wasn’t one person that didn’t like it because they didn’t understand being an M at one point and then they become an R. They found the standard as strange.
Weinreich: The actual way that S was written actually makes no sense. It goes beyond the tangible value and it’s silly. And I put that now as an individual line. This makes it a little bit more personalized which makes it awesome
Kilduff: the number one complaint last year was that groups felt like they were being judged by their category, not their group.
Weinreich: This means the finance handbook will need to be heavily redone. Also, after this I’ll be rewriting the student orgs handbook as well. I didn’t want to make this clear to orgs until it was looked over by exec and general senate. I’m trying not to overwhelm people because I’ll be talking for literally be talking for 45 minutes tomorrow.
Rode: I would also say that it’s important that we show the general senate that we support this.
Weinreich: this year SOARC is all about being more accessible and working better with groups.
Lanoie: I feel like it can be really easy to go into a deficit and have a huge surplus
Weinreich: we’re still taking it line by line. This doesn’t change the way the finance policies change but the flows are going to become a lot more simple.
Kilduff: People like the idea that people are being treated as individuals
Weinreich: I’ll give you re-rec dates: The paperwork will be online the 23 of December. I want a recommendation on the floor tomorrow after you’ve had time to read it.
-ACADEMIC AFFAIRS CHAIR
St. Jean: I work with a woman whose daughter just graduated from URI and she didn’t get her diploma yet. The internship credits never ended up getting transferred until 3 months ago.
Zawatsky: Can you get me her contact information?
St. Jean: Yes
Zawatsky: I’m still working on contracts. I could use some opinions on stuff. The contract says that the providence Sunday journal gets delivered to hope on Sundays but not any other day of the week. We may want to increase that.
Sit: there is a demand and it doesn’t cost much more for us
Zawatsky: it’d be 35 copies a day
Kilduff: Why don’t we do it on weekdays?
Zawatsky: We’re trying to work out getting deliveries to the union but we’re going need a rack for the newspapers and we’ll need to put it in a place where only students will access it.
Kilduff: let’s put it in the union
Zawatsky: I’m thinking outside the mailroom. And I’m doing other stuff but we’ll talk about that later.
-EXTERNAL AFFAIRS CHAIR
Lanoie: The great news is that the committee loves my carnival ideas and we have the expensive and not so expensive option that we’ll give to finance next week. We have aproblem. The promotional items that we wanted to have at the event (coasters, etc) need to be ordered this week and next week. IT talks a long time for this stuff to be shipped out so what I had a plan for is that we have about 3500 advertising line in our budget.
Kilduff: We can use it for that
Lanoie: Perfect and it will be advertising. I think that will be a good idea
Kilduff: Do it
Lanoie: I think it will be a good idea to have promotional items. If you’d like to see my carnival ideas, it’s on Google docs and I have some printed out copies of it. I’ll talk about it more tomorrow and see how much commuter housing is willing to throw at us
-CULTURAL AFFAIRS CHAIR
Solomon: there is a cultural fair tomorrow for anyone who wants to check it out. I think exec should do Safe-Zone
Kilduff: We will and we’ll talk about that later on. We’ll open it up to the general senate
Solomon: Do you want me to talk to Annie
Cicero: We’ll figure it out later on.
Kilduff: If people are going to go, they’re gonna go no matter what.
Cicero: We can always strongly encourage it this year and see how it goes because I think this is something that I think is very important
Sit: It could be part of the retreat
Kilduff: That is such a good idea
Solomon: This makes people aware that we are a safe-zone environment
Cicero: it just means that we’ll be extending the retreat
Rode: We just have to factor in time for food.
Kilduff: we’ll talk about that more later
Solomon: I have a room set for ace of cakes which is December 2 and I need a liaison for MCC.
Kilduff: your choice
Cicero: and when we talk to Melvin we’ll get a list of events
-CAMPUS AFFAIRS CHAIR
Rode: I’ve been working with Sheri a lot and the GPS is up however has a 10 minutes day so it is either 10 minutes behind or ahead. They’re still working on it. Also I’ve been talking to Sheri about a 5k mapped out on campus because a lot of people would benefit from it. I’ve been working on that and the idea is similar to the Boston freedom trail where it would be mapped out. We would need to hire a 5k specialist. It shouldn’t be that expensive and a lot of people seem interested. We’re going to get an estimate from Sheri.
Weinreich: Have you thought of getting student volunteers to do it?
Rode: I don’t know because sometimes there are big trucks that lay them down. I think Sheri has more of an idea of how this happens. We might be asking for money for that soon.
Kilduff: Any luck with Major Baker for that committee?
Rode: I’m going to talk to my committee about that
Sim: Are you familiar with those locks? Basically housing has a uniform lock system so basically to have wi-fi locks.
Rode: I am and I’ve been looking into that
-EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE:
a. Chief Information Officer
St. Jean: I heard what Jenna said. If you want to have people go to meetings and report I can add a folder on Google drives. I will try to keep everything organized. That’s about it
b. Director of Communications
Kempler: we’re going to do the boards and we need pictures of all of you. We’ll be doing that on Friday. We’ll use the bios from the website or have a question that you guys will answer. If anyone wants to help with that we’ll be here on Friday.
Cicero: When is the first newsletter coming out?
Kempler: At the end of the month
Cicero: I have to do scholarship committee mid-October, so I want to advertise that
c. Director of Marketing & Recruitment
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d. Secretary
Stuart: No report
e. Treasurer
Pitu: I’m not sure if Matt needs to take the finance quiz
Sit: it’d be better if he did
f. Vice President
Cicero: Great job at the retreat and the next one is October 6. It’s a Sunday at 9 AM. I’ll figure out stuff as far as the safe-zone training is concerned. Office hours start this week so make sure you’re doing that. Make sure vice chairs are sending me your minutes. A few new things we’ll be doing is a mentor program and we’ll open up anyone that might be interested on the floor. If you have any ideas, let me know.
g. President
Kilduff: Zawatsky, can you tell the colleges that we have liaison spots open. That’s it for me—Pharmacy, Arts and sciences, etc.
MEETING ADJOURNMENT TIME: 8:00