December 4, 2007 / [Minutes of the Student Assembly General Meeting]
  1. Call to order

Hsien Seow called to order the regular meeting of the Student Assembly General Monthly Meeting at noon on December 4, 2004 in E6519.

  1. Roll call

26 members were present

  1. New business

Honors and Awards:

The auction will be in Feinstone Hall. Mona R requested for CDs needed for music at the event. Equipment has been rented. SA members were requested to volunteer to help at the auction. A signup sheet was passed around. Over a 100 items have been collected for the auction. Hsien asked Mona to send an email again to advertise the event. Screen savers and desktops on the computer lab computers have been set up with the auction flyers. Posters have been ordered for the school entrances (Wolfe Street and Hampton House). Catalogues have been designed. Volunteers are needed for collecting and this role can be assigned a day before the event.

Student Conference Fund is designed for people definitely going and not for people still planning to go. Michal brought up an instance where someone who received before and have received again. Mona looked into the matter and it turned out that the person had refused it in the first round ahead of time.

Social and cultural Committee:

Seema Menon, the VP for the SASOC committee handed in her resignation. Dani Saba will take over as VP of this committee. Dani was voted in by a 2/3 majority- 27 votes out of 34 votes. Spring Tonic is scheduled to be on Feb 29. An email will be sent towards end of December. Erin McDonald baked cupcakes as a farewell gift for Seema and everyone enjoyed the yummy treats!

Quality of Life:

Next town hall meeting is scheduled to be on Feb 20 where the head of UHS, Dr. Marinpolis will give a talk and answer questions on Student Health Insurance. Anne Sawyer, VP, QoL, encouraged people to come for the next Town hall meeting. A follow up to the town hall will be posted on the website and the points will be brought up at DFSN meeting. Josh Garoon pointed out that a mechanism should be started to deal with the issues brought up at the town hall meetings systematically where a written response should be posted on the SA website and we can continue to update the status of the issues. Also, in future we can let students know that we will be addressing the town hall issues again in the DFSN meeting- adding continuity to the Town hall meeting.

SITSCOM

Josh brought to our attention that that this committee was formed some years ago. This committee should have one person from QOL and one person from communications and the people who have been vocal. SITSCOM is an acronym for Student IT Services Committee, started by Devaki Nambiar and Amy Boore- to meet quarterly with the IT support team at school. However as students left for their dissertation work or graduated this committee phased out. Josh announced if anyone is interested, they should let Anne know. Ross McKenzie from IT will be working with SITSCOM. The next step will be to invite the people who have notified us and Josh volunteered to get it going- we can set up some time already after holidays with just students and immediately after that we can contact Ross.

Community Affairs:

There will be a Community Affairs committee meeting this Friday at noon in the conference room. Erin made an announcement about the photo contest and informed that we have all the photos. Erin will be working with Sandy on the photo contest. The Community Service fund will be announced before the end of second term. Alden mentioned that in future there will be joint consideration from Finance and Community Affairs committee. Announcements will be sent in January. There is room for expanding the scope of the Community Service Fund. There were questions about whether we have to amend the bylaws. In the past the CSF was defined very broadly. Are we funding events or activities? This will be discussed in the Community Affairs committee meeting. Erin will send out the agenda for the Friday meeting.

Student Groups

Jessie Myers made announcement about the Deans dinner for student group leaders. Dean Klag will be meeting with the student group leaders in a dinner event on January 31, 2008 to discuss their concerns and to apprise himself about the work done by the student groups. The list of current student groups is being made and the timeline is that it will be ready before the end of this year. Sandy mentioned that there should be a column for email address and list of the studentswho have access to student group email.

Finance:

Voting on line item changes- depleting committee miscellaneous funds to move to the formal- 22 votes in favor-line item change approved

Communications:

Committee meeting at 11A.M. in Daily Grind on Friday. 8/10 executive committees have received their emails. Krit worked on the bulletin board and the photos and names of SA members are on the bulletin board. Currently the committee members are working on the Community Affairs website.

Other announcements:

Hsien mentioned that he would like have to have Leadership Awards for student recognition- and asked interested members to email him.

Lindsey announced the National Public Health Week will be observed in the week of April 7, 2008 and proposed a film festival in school during that week. APHA will provide the films. Lindsey was advised to talk to people at the Center for Livable Future and the Health and Human Rights Student Group. Lindsey requested people interested in helping out to email her.

Josh Garoon volunteered for academic standards committee. He mentioned that a lot of the concerns coming up came up in Dean Klag's State of the School address and that students are not getting enough attention through the Strategic Planning process. He mentioned the need for some continuity and that we need to start thinking how SA can engage with management and administration constructively, for e.g., the MPH class is a great platform as they are a big student body. Hsien and Josh to follow-up.

Surprise!!!!- Meghan announcedthat the fleece sweatshorts had arrived. Hsien thanked everyone.

  1. Adjournment

Hsien adjourned the meeting at 1:15 P.M.

Minutes submitted by: Pritika Chatterjee