VASSAR STUDENT ASSOCIATION

Senate Agenda for October 29, 2017

Time: 7:00pm

Location: New England 105

  1. Call to Order
  2. Attendance ...Vice President
  3. Consensus Agenda
  4. Appointments:
  5. Senior Gift Co-Chair: Alan Gutierrez
  6. TA Treasurer: Connor Martin
  7. TA Programming Director: Sunny Gaughen
  8. SoCos Programming Director: Alexandria Smalls
  9. Finance allocations:
  10. 1047/1047 to Vassar Bikes (Capital Fund)
  11. 500/3645 to VC Royalty (Annual Budget)
  12. 680/595 to Outing Club Climbing Team (Discretionary)
  13. 250/250 to Act Out (Annual Budget)
  14. 410/410 to Healing to Action (Annual Budget)
  15. 2900/6402 to Student/Labor Dialogue (Speakers)
  16. 1500/1500 to VISA (Collaboration)
  17. 830/1060 to VUE for Annual Budget (Discretionary)
  18. 1000/1000 to Traditions Committee (Collaboration)
  19. 980/1060 to PHOCUS (Conference)
  20. 570/570 to Equestrian team (Discretionary)
  21. 570/570 to Equestrian team (Discretionary)
  22. 100/200 to Vassar Run (Discretionary)
  23. 174.93/174.93 to GAAP (Capital)
  24. 500/500 to Vassar on Tap (Speakers)
  25. 400/400 to Vassar Refugee Solidarity (Discretionary)
  26. Discussion on past week and VSA’s response (30 min)
  27. DACA letter (20 min)
  28. Committee Chair Updates ...Committee Chairs (15 min)
  29. Executive Board Updates …Executive Board (15 min)
  30. Constituent Concerns (5 min)
  31. Open Discussion

Committee Summaries

Bora

-Takunda has a meeting with President Bradley to discuss her perceptions and whether she has change in plans. She seemed receptive at the senate meeting and want to clarify changes in structure.

-"What to do ...if List" is still not finalized for distribution

-Trying to get 1st Aid Kits into all of the houses

-Stalls in the Raymond Bathrooms are starting to be fixed!

Planning

-Have visited several orgs and house study breaks about Student Discourse. Responses have been positive. Thinking through the system for moderation the forum, it seems as though it should be someone not on VSA

-Setting up a meeting with Rachel to discuss Discourse

-Results of Org survey has been reviewed, going to organize a collaboration conference for preorgs in the spring, going to visit orgs that desired having a VSA representative in collaboration with Orgs committee

-Starting a free trial of discourse software today, to see how it runs

Operations

-Operations is trying to have a better idea of the workings of the VSA. If you are a committee chair, a member of Ops will be reaching out to you to ask about your long term goals, committee vibes, and participation status.

-Desire to start emailing meeting notes to whole campus, working out the logistics

-Discussions continue for VSA retreat in January/programming for VSA

Orgs:
-We distributed the orgs to be audited among members of the orgs committee, including the perimeters of the audit. The date by which members of the committee will have reviewed their assigned orgs’ information has been set for Friday, December 1st.
-Reviewed results from the Orgs Survey with Planning Committee. The most popular option was the collaboration conference. There was also some interest in having members of the VSA attend orgs’ meetings. We will be working on reaching out to interested orgs and dividing up the work among members from both the Orgs and Planning committee.
-Aside from the Collaboration Conference to be held for all orgs on campus, we will be in contact with CEI to work on an identity-orgs-specific collaboration dinner/event. Our aim is to promote collaboration between orgs so they can come up with programming that will include intersections of different identities.

Programming Committee:

-Brainstormed ideas for the all-campus event. We discussed the possibility of having a silent party, where people can wear headphones through which the music will be played. A proposed date for the event was December 2nd.

- Discussed the Junior-class event and different ideas for where it might be held.

CEI:

-Talked about the reclassification of the September 25 BIRT report. Is now classified as a bias incident.

-Tamar’s meeting with Ed Pitman was brought up, as they discussed the creation of a student core team that will work with the administration in the event of a bias incident.

-Individual contributions to the discussion brought up by members of the committee include: TBD clothes collection survey, French Department & Gender Resources center working together for an event that reexamines the ways the french language is becoming more inclusive towards gender identities that don’t fit the binary, ASA night market tabling, lack of gender neutral bathrooms in academic buildings, H2A meetings, and MEChA’s Workers appreciation dinner.