Student Assembly

Also available in pdf Δ

Student Assembly Meeting Minutes
August 31, 2006
4:45 — 6:30 p.m.
Memorial Room, WSH

I. Call to Order

The meeting was called to order at 4:48 p.m.

II. Roll Call

For roll call see Attach: 20060831minutes.pdf Δ

III. Induction Ceremony

The SA members for the 2006–2007 academic year took the Oath of Office.

IV. Open Microphone

M. Coombs asked for comments from the audience.

David Shelians said he was the chair of the Collegetown Task Force and that he along with the task force is creating a vision of what they wanted Collegetown to look like in the next five to ten years. He announced that there would be a meeting at St. Luke’s, next to Collegetown Bagels, on September 14 from 4:00pm- 6:00pm. He recommended that everyone come since the main purpose is to get student input.

C. Selth made a note that his initials be changed and that the minutes be looked over for general grammatical errors.

• Approval of the Minutes

There was a motion to approve the minutes. The motion was seconded and the minutes from the past semester were approved.

• Mayor Carolyn Peterson Visit — S. Boxer and C. Slicklen

S. Boxer made an announcement that she had been in touch with Mayor Peterson who is going to address the assembly on October 12th. She is going to be talking about Collegetown and student involvement.

• Voter Registration — M. Coombs

M. Coombs said that over the summer he received an email from Penny Givens asking for help in making sure that as many of students as possible were registered to vote. If anyone was interested in helping, they should see him after the meeting.

• University Assembly Update — K. Duch and A. Gay

A. Gay said that the UA meeting hadn’t taken place yet.

• Ivy Council Announcement — R. Lavin

R. Lavin said that they had the delegation vote for the Ivy Council and that they would have the first meeting on Tuesday, September 12 at 6:00 p.m. in the International Logue in Willard Straight Hall. He announced that the fall conference would be at Princeton from November 10th to November 12tb, the summit would be in February, the spring conference will be from April 7th to April 9th and that more information and clarification would be available at the meeting on Tuesday.

• Fall Election Update — N. Chadda

N. Chadda said that they had over seventy packets of freshmen and transfer election packets signed out. He also said that he had a productive session with Hubble and discussed at length the election process with candidates. He noted that Representative Greenberg, Slicken and Coombs were present at the meeting with Hubble.

C. Selth asked if they were continuing publicity efforts to get more freshmen to sign until the deadline next Tuesday.

N. Chadda replied that the freshmen elections were being advertised in the Cornell Sun that there had been other forms.

C. Slicklen added that they had advertisements rotating in plasmas screens in Robert Purcell Community Center (RPCC) and that email had been sent out to all freshmen and transfer students regard the freshmen and transfer election and that SA representatives had also been present at N. Cha Club Fest to promote elections.

• SA Meeting Cancellation — K. Thomison

K. Thomison announced that the SA meeting next week would be cancelled because of President Skorton’s inauguration.

S. Boxer made a motion to postpone athletics since A. Katz was not yet present.

C. Selth seconded the motion.

There was a vote taken via voice and the motion passed unanimously.

• R. 1 Resolution Regarding SA Voting Eligibility — S. Boxer and M. Ehrlich

S. Boxer started began by saying that if a group felt like the SAFC, one of the groups the SA byline funded, was wrong, the group has a chance to come by and allocate. She said that she had found in the past that it was a problem when the SA didn’t know the rules and that to solve this she wanted everyone to take the president and treasure test. And that no one would be able to vote on appeals unless they had taken the test.

C. Slicken said that he was confused as to why there was a test as opposed to a seminar.

S. Boxer replied that SAFC has strict guidelines and that they had determined an effective way of learning about the SAFC rules and regulations.

C. Slicken asked who designed the test?

S. Boxer replied the SAFC had developed the test.

C. Selth said that he thought that the resolution was a great but asked if the wording in the resolution could be changed to the individual having to correctly answer all questions on each page before they could proceed to the next page.

M. Ehrlich replied that before one could proceed on to the next page of the test they had to pass the current page that they were on.

C. Selth then proposed that all member of the appropriations committee be required to take this test.

S. Boxer said that she agreed and that she plans to relay the message on to the appropriations committed.

C. Selth asked if there was a deadline.

S. Boxer said that ideally it should be taken by the SAFC deadline, which is September 12th.

M. Coombs asked what the votes on the SAFC appeals would affect.

S. Boxer replied that the SA was voting to determine whether or not the SAFC followed their rules.

M. Coombs said that according to Parliamentarian Asgary they the SAFC votes would require a two-thirds vote for appeals and wondered how that would affect the majority vote if only six people took the test.

M. Ehlrich said that the whole test only took about thirty minutes so there shouldn’t be a reason for people to not take the test.

S. Boxer added that if only six SA members decided to take the test, then the SA shouldn’t be voting on SAFC appeals.

A. Salem asked to add something to the resolution to take into account those who had already taken the test because they are presidents and treasurers of an SAFC organization.

M. Ehrlich said that all treasurers and presidents of SAFC organizations were required to take the test every year, so they would have to take it over again anyway.

V. Business of the Day

A. Katz, the Associate Director of Athletics, said that he was really glad to be at the meeting and that he appreciated everything the SA does. He said that one of the first projects assigned to him by the athletics department was the hockey ticket sales. The athletics department had a meeting and determined that their priorities are safety, fairness, tradition, technology and a desire for avid hockey fans to be in those seats.

He continued by saying that they would have an open registration online for hockey tickets and people will register and then have a window of time to come to the ticket office and receive an inactive line number. These numbers will be in three blocks, two of which will contain seniors. This process will give seniors a greater probability of getting hockey tickets. He added that he had gotten feedback and athletics department was very optimistic about the change.

He went on to say that the athletics department is under tough financial constraints. About one third of the funds came from the university and two thirds of the funds come from alumni and ticket sales. He said that part of his job is to help the department improve their publicity.

He added that hockey ticket sales would continue to be the price that they are because of past research, which has shown that university athletics department gains more money from charging a great amount of money.

He said that another change they are making this year is that there will be Big Red sports pass, which is a semester long athletic, passes. It will cost forty dollars and will be good for any athletics event free but men’s hockey. He said that most of the passes had been sold had been sold to freshmen.

C. Slicklen asked in what other ways the athletics was marketing the semester long athletic pass.

Replied that the athletics website had a link explaining details of the pass.

C. Slicklen asked if any other advertisement methods had been used.

A. Katz said that if a student was interested in athletics event they would find about the pass.

C. Slicklen asked what security measures were in place to prevent people from registering for two numbers for the hockey tickets.

A. Katz said that when someone registered for the hockey they would need to provide their student id number. The ID numbers will be verified at the ticket booth.

V. Hartman wondered if every class had a twenty-five percent chance of being selected to get a number to camp out for hockey tickets.

A. Katz responded that out of the 1200 lucky winners, twenty five percent of them would be seniors.

V. Hartman asked if seniors got priority on registration numbers.

A. Katz responded that the seniors that were in block three had no special priority

V. Hartman asked for —clarification on the higher price of ticket bringing more people.

A. Katz said that when something was higher priced, it was associated with more value and thus it was wanted more.

V. Hartman asked if ticket prices were expected to drop after the byline funding cycle was completed the next year.

A. Katz said that ticket prices might stay the same.

C. Selth said in the past the athletics representative in the past wouldn’t the SA information about how the student activity fee money was being allocated with athletics. He asked how that would be handled this semester.

A. Katz said that he would tell the SA where the money was being allocated.

S. Boxer thanked A. Katz for joining them.

A. Katz mentioned that student athletes did not have to pay the three-dollar fee that other students had to pay to enter sports games and wondered how the SA would feel about regulating on student athletes getting into games for free.

E. Greenberg asked how much additional revenue athletics department would make from tickets that are being sold to students but are outside of the Big Red Sports pass.

A. Katz replied that they couldn’t guess how much they would make.

S. Santana wanted to know if knew seats available took in account both graduate students and undergraduate students and if there was going to be a limit on the number of Big Red Sports passes available.

A. Katz responded that there would be no limit on the Big Red Sport passes. He said that all additional seating would come in way of “boxes” and that student seating was kept at sixteen hundred, which was the same at last year but added that that was issue athletics needed to talk on.

M. Ehrlich said that athletics should consider the consequences of club sports feeling alienated because they don’t receive many of the benefits that varsity sports do.

A. Katz said it was something to think about.

C. Selth made a motion to move Resolution 2 and 4 to Business of the Day. He said that rationale was because of timeliness: orientation had just finished and since the SA meeting was cancelled the following week the passing of the resolution would be a strong sign of support to President Skorton.

C. Selth also moved to suspend the standing rules to allow this to happen.

There was a hand vote taken to suspend the standing rules. Two-thirds were in favor. The motion passed

Then there was voting taken to move Resolution 2 and 4 to Business of the Day via hand vote. The motion passed.

• R. 2 Resolution Regarding the OSC — E. Greenberg and C. Slicklen

C. Slicklen said that they wanted t recognize the Orientation Steering Committee for a successful freshmen orientation week: there was an increase in the number of orientation leaders and there were many successful events.

A. Salem made a motion for unanimous consent. It was seconded. There was no dissent. The resolution passed.

• R. 4 Resolution Regarding Sudan Divestment — E. Greenberg and C. Slicklen

E. Greenberg read the resolution

S. Boxer said that she thought the resolution was very good. She was happy to hear that the GSAFC had passed a similar resolution.

C. Slicklen mentioned that the resolution had a grammatical error.

M. Coombs said that divestment was the most important thing for the SA to look at. He was concerned about how to gauge student report and wondered if there was anyway to prove more solemnly that this resolution would help the people of Darfur.

E. Greenberg said that he had gauged the opinions of some of his constituents in Human Ecology and that this resolution would be sending a message to the government of Sudan to help the people.

M. Coombs said that this kind of resolution that requires a lot thought and that for anything like this in the future there should at least be a week to think about.

C. Selth said the SA representatives decided how to vote on a specific issue and although he considered himself an elected representative of his constitution but also realized that didn’t mean that when he voted everyone in his constitution would not agree with what he had to say. He also said that he didn’t think there wouldn’t be any value gained in waiting two weeks.

M. Ehrlich said that she was very much in support of the resolution. She added that they couldn’t expect solid data to come in about the consequences in the next week.

C. Slicklen wondered if the resolution supported people and the country of Sudan.

E. Greenberg replied that there was no way to concrete information from constituents, in the next 2 weeks.

V. Hartman seconded Coombs comments about knowing about the issue and wanted to get back to his constituents. He added that he didn’t know much about Sudan’s control over the oil and wanted to know more on the issue.

E. Greenberg said that the oil company was private and that oil wells were public.

S. Boxer asked what the vote in the GPSA was on the issue.

M. Walsh, the GPSA representative said that at least one or two had abstained

A. Salem made a motion to table the resolution until the next meeting. It was seconded.

K. Selth made a motion for a hand vote. It was seconded. There was no dissent.

K. Thomison clarified that if a member voted yes that meant the resolution would be tabled and if a member voted no that meant they wanted the discussion to continue.

A. Salem made a motion to table it to the next meeting.

A vote was taken via hand vote to table the discussion to the next meeting. The motion failed.

K. Selth moved to previous question. It was seconded. There was dissent.

K. Selth made a point of order that this was to clarify whether or not to vote on the resolution right since there was dissent.

M. Asgary added that it needed two-thirds to pass

A roll call vote was taken and the motion to call to previous question passed 14–3.

Motion to table discussion C. Bodner Y S. Boxer Y D. Budish Y M. Coombs N S. Deena Y K. Duch Y M. Ehrlich Y A. Gay - R. Gousse Y E. Greenberg Y V. Hartman N R. Lavin Y G. Leonard Y N. Nisargand Y A. Salem N S. Santana Y C. Selth Y CJ Slicklen Y K. Thomison -

K. Thomison said the resolution would be voted on now. A roll call vote was taken and the resolution passed 14–1−2.

Res 4 C. Bodner Y S. Boxer Y D. Budish Y M. Coombs N S. Deena Y K. Duch Y M. Ehrlich Y A. Gay - R. Gousse Y E. Greenberg Y V. Hartman - R. Lavin Y G. Leonard Y N. Nisargand Y A. Salem - S. Santana Y C. Selth Y CJ Slicklen Y K. Thomison -

VI. New Business

• R. 3 Resolution Regarding the SHS Program — E. Greenberg, R. Lavin, G. Leonard and C. Slicklen

R. Lariar explained that the Student Helping Students program is a program that helps students financially.

M. Coombs asked where do people find out about students helping students

R. Lariar said that the associate director of financial aid was exclusively in charge of this fund and that she had office hours in the Takton Center.

C. Slicklen said added they had met with the communications committee to discuss different ways to advertise.

S. Denna said that before the fire in Collegetown part of the funds were used for summer grants for students and wondered if that part of the fund would be reinitiated

R. Lariar replied the summer grant was taken for the SHS fund and that JPOC committee decided what was funded.

• R. 5 Resolution Regarding Dining — M. Asgary and M. Coombs

M. Coombs said that in the past there was a meal equivalency in which if a student didn’t finish their meals at the end of the week it would roll over to Big Red bucks. He, along with M. Asgary, are going to find out why they got rid of the meal equivalency and consult with dining to see if there was a possibility to get it changed back.

C. Selth said he thought it was a great resolution and said that he wanted to work with dining to see if the unused meals could be transfer to Big Red Bucks so that students know they are getting the full value of the meal plan.

V. Hartman agreed it was important and wondered if there was a time table set to enact this stuff

M. Coombs said that he would look into it and report to the assembly by the end of the semester.

M. Asgary said if we they made a change they would want it to go into effect next academic year.

Mike Walsh, Vice-President of GSAFC said that he thought that it was a great idea.

K. Duch said that it was a great and that maybe they should have a box that students could give their extra meals to an organization.

M. Asgary said that dining counts on people not using their meals.

C. Slicklen motioned to adjourn this meeting and vote on Resolution 5 at the next meeting. The motion was seconded. There was no dissent.

VII. Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 6:30 p.m.