Multicultural Affairs Committee
OMA Classroom, OMA
September 13, 2016; 6:32 PM
I. Pass 08/30/17 Meeting Minutes
· Minutes pass without opposition
II. Officer Reports
A. Zoya Khan, Chair
· Student Legislative Awareness Board is meeting this Tuesday in the Divine 9 room. They advocate for certain legislative agendas and then they go lobby at Topeka for a day.
· The application for freshman internships closes September 16th and they are online.
· Two week ago, I had a meeting with Dr. Hammer and it was exciting. She’s excited to work with us and part of our goal is to build community in MA, but we also want to build community and relationships outside of this space.
· If you have any ideas, please let me know.
· During our discussion period, we’re going to be writing letters to the Kansas senators and our attorney General, specifically about DACA. I will be mailing those out later.
B. Daniel Lee, Vice Chair
· Not present.
C. Jessica Guardiola, Secretary
· I will be emailing a list of events that are happening on campus for the next couple of weeks after this meeting. If you have anything you want me to include, please let me know and I’d be happy to send it out.
D. Rusha Bajpai, Director of Diversity and Inclusion
· Multicultural Board of Advisor met on Monday and one of the things people wanted to have us do is email events out to the community.
· Empower Self Defense workshop is happing on Sept 16th and SURGE our having a comprehensive sex education on October 22nd. Student interfaith alliance reached out to me and meet in the OMA classroom Wednesday form 5-6
· Black student Union is having their event on grape juice and painting at the HERE pool, Tuesday the 18th. Latin American Student Union Loteria sept 15 and there is a silent protest on October 5th on Wescoe for DACA and Latinx identities.
E. Chiquita Jackson, Multicultural Student Government Senator
· Currently working on Straight Talk events about the university’s retention rates. Working to have Dr. Hammer talk, as well as another faculty or staff.
· Working towards creating a podcast for marginalized students to focus on events or something relate, like DACA. We want an authentic vibe.
F. Saida Bonifield, Advisor
1. Not present
III. Elections
A. Associate Senator (1)
1. Camilla Ortiz
a) Camilla is acclimated as associated senator without opposition.
IV. Regular Agenda
A. BILL 2018-030: A BILL TO AMEND STUDENT SENATE RULES AND REGULATIONS ARTICLE II SECTION II AND ARTICLE VI SECTION III SUBSECTION XIV
· HALO recently changed its name to the Latin American Student Union. We didn’t want to include just Hispanics, so we are trying to open it up more to Brazilian students. As far as that concerns SSRR, HALO has an associate senator so we want to make sure that LASU has those opportunities too.
§ Bill passes without opposition.
B. BILL 2018-032: A BILL TO FUND GRADUATE STUDENT PRINTING IN WATSON LIBRARY
· In previous years, we have funded graduate printing in Watson, but they University stopped funding free printing for grad students and Senate is looking to bridge that gap.
· The least that we can do for grad students is fund printing. Because we were unable to fund the graduate travel fund, that means that more graduate students need to publish this year so they can travel next year.
· Amend line 27, 28 and 24, striking $5,000 of each and changing it to $3,308 because that is what finance amended it down to.
§ Bill passes as amended without opposition.
V. Discussion
A. Guest Speaker - Multicultural Student Government (MSG)
· I encourage all of you to be a part of MSG if you want to see what marginalized students are going through. We are trying to be that organization for marginalized students. Our event is on October 5th from 4 -6. I want to work with you as far as the podcast because we need your guy’s feedback. We want to build that relationship with senate.
· This is the first official year of MSG. You guys must attend one full meeting to have full voting rights. If you miss three meetings, then you lose your voting rights. We have open seats available for peer educators, treasurer, so if you know anyone let me know.
· MEF is the Multicultural Educational Fund and I encourage you all to apply. We can fund travel. MEF is for multicultural students and we’re trying to bring a lot of awareness to groups that don’t have a lot of membership, but there is a lot of their ethnicity on campus.
· We need to work better on our retention rate as senators, that is our job. I want more organizations to take advantage of this because this is not something that we should take lightly. We help with study abroad, unpaid internships. Our goal is to help promote leadership with marginalized students.
· How can MA support MSG? I want us to do collaborations and help us with the multicultural retreat. I want you guys to create a logo so we can put it on our flyer so people can be more aware of you guys.
· Also for future collaborations if you don’t have time to go to the events, just being aware of the events and sharing them on your social media. This helps a lot with visibility.
· Initiative for Maximizing Student Development and it’s an organization that helps marginalized students do research and they pay you, even if your mentor doesn’t pay. They also provide funding for research conferences. It is just biomedical research, but the coordinators are very nice and flexible with that.
· What events do we have in mind this semester? How do we engage people in MA while keeping in mind the stigma and formality of student senate?
· There’s a new campus organization that we started called KU students for Refugees and there’s a lot of them being relocated in Kansas City. We’re trying to do fundraising projects to get them settled in. September 28th first event it’s a documentary. We’d be willing to work with MSG for that.
· In the group on campus, Friends of Pakistan our main goal is to get people with different ethnicities and cultures to learn about this country because it has such a bad reputation. I would like to increase member base. Also for our committee we could do an event where it’s just a mingle because a lot of multicultural people can’t attend student senate or feel a part of it.
· Have something for Harvey in Houston and Florida so they know that they are here.
· The Multicultural Retreat is open to all students on campus and if there is a way to reach out to international students somehow that’d be great because I know they don’t always feel welcome. Undergrad and grad students.
· Latin Heritage Month is September 15th through October. Are you thinking about doing anything? We could just show support for the Latin American Student Union to show support. You can come as an ally and show support.
· In MA we can talk about more how we are supporting international students and what are we doing actively to engage them and to support them. For example, we have an International Student Senators so whoever gets assigned to that seat, make sure that they feel that senate is a place where they can come and feel supported. We need to do more outreach to them.
· For international students, student senate is an American thing that we don’t feel related to. Politics from our countries our different, but international senators can be a part of. They feel like it’s country politics and that’s why they don’t feel like they are welcome here.
· The first step is to start breaking down the prejudice that international students have. Coming from the outside, I’ve been in the US for 5 years now. Especially us African students, it’s always easy for them to categorize us as African Americans, but I am not African American. I am African. It’s a psychological barrier for me to come into these spaces. It is not enough to just send emails to students and put posters on the wall. We need to find a way to go beyond that and reach out to people and take the information to them. You need to show them that they can be a part of this.
· We’re past the point of sending out emails and talking about it. We’re here to do the work and it means that you have a personal stake in the work. Let’s build a space to have critical conversations and move past the point of emails.
· Vanessa was an LGBTQ ally and she worked with SILC. She was very active in safe zone training and the faculty advisor for Spectrum. She was moved and a lot of people are contributing that to her words on the conceal and carry panel. People are very upset with Dr. Hammer for the way that this situation happened. Vanessa was not told that she was moving towards the Edwards campus, she had to find out through someone else. This position has been filled by Saida.
· It was very disrespectful. I asked individuals about it and they were saying that she said that it was involuntary. Before this, things were weird. I had conversations where she said she felt weird and didn’t know how to manage in this space. I know her personally and I told her that KU has lost something for so many students.
· I think we should use our position to demand answers for what happened. But how do we do that?
· A lot of people are just thinking that she got removed because of her comments at the conceal and carry panel, but nobody knows for sure.
· I think that we should demand answers because the students deserve an explanation as to why someone who was contributing greatly to something they cared about was moved.
· Vanessa was the director for Sexuality, Gender, and Diversity, though that she worked with lots of organizations and worked closely with Spectrum, which is the LGBTQ organization on campus.
· I would suggest that the first thing to do is reach out to Vanessa and get her opinion. Then present the options of what we want to do and ask her if it would be okay.
· Do we agree that the first step is to reach out to Vanessa? Zoya will take care of that and reach out to Saida and report back.
B. Letter Writing
· This past week, the white house announced that it’s going to be ending DACA. This program supports nearly 800,000 people in America. Here in MA we want to make sure that we’re actively engaging in this work. The best way to engage our elected officials is to write letters and then we’ll mail them.
VI. Announcements
· No announcements
VII. Adjournment