Student Assembly

North Room, Willard Straight Hall

Present

Jonathan Raymond, Yuliya Neverova, Kate Duch, Vincent Andrews, Greg Mezey, Cat Holmes, Joseph Scaffido, Scott Purdy, Emlyn Diakow, Winston Feng, Tony Miller, Ari Epstein

G. Mezey convened the meeting at 4:00pm.

J. Scaffido attended workshop for student activities staff. Obtained report on numbers of student organizations versus enrollment size of university. Average ratio of 1 organization for 37 students. Cornell has 1 for every 17 students. Most universities have some sort of approval process.

At Drexel University, they have to meet with the head of student activities. No complete re-approval process for each organization. Syracuse University has a committee screen groups, and they are subject to a one year probation period. Eastern Michigan University similar to Cornell, but members must go through a mandatory training, including holding events on campus, hazing, risk management, etc. Springfield College has a member of student government association assigned to each organization.

Every school that spoke had some sort of an approval process — meet with individual or committee. Continuity from year to year was an important thread. They talked a lot about finances in comparison to Cornell. All required advisors and advisors were very involved in financial and governance aspects of organizations. It’s not easy to start a new organization at most of these universities and most have been around for years.

Y. Neverova asked if most schools have a paid staff member to handle the finances?

J. Scaffido said most schools have finance arm in same office as student activities. At Cornell we have an unusual arrangement where funding board is in a separate division. Other schools have a dedicated club sports person.

J. Raymond agrees with basic premise that something needs to be done, but would like to have a comprehensive overhaul rather than something incremental.

G. Mezey said let’s talk about the idea of a formal registration board.

Y. Neverova said people say they are concerned about students funding students rather than staff funding students. I don’t know how receptive students would be to other students making the decisions, might be more comfortable with staff member oversight.

T. Miller wants easy access for new organizations to probationary period, and there should never be absolute prevention of groups from forming and registering on campus.

J. Scaffido at other schools might be petitioning or similar requirement for organization to demonstrate demand. We don’t have any sort of membership requirements. The facilitator was asked why a staff member rather than a student oversaw the process. He said important for continuity — he could go back to his own notes and maintain long term consistency.

G. Mezey asked what do you think about a mixture of staff and students for a formal approval process?

V. Andrews said wants to err on the side of allowing groups to form to meet unanticipated needs. What if a topic comes up for which there’s demand for an organization? Guidelines imposed should be confined to carefully defined goals. Administrators should have a role of providing institutional memory, but students should retain a governing, decisionmaking role.

J. Raymond said perhaps there could be multiple levels of registration. Certain rights should be easy to secure like reserving spaces. Others should be more difficult.

Discussion continued.

T. Miller said he wants staff to be on committees to serve ex-officio and offer advice, historical perspective.

R. Lavin said he doesn’t envision this committee saying absolutely no to any group unless its absolutely a duplicate group.

G. Mezey said guidelines for student activities already include prohibition on duplication.

J. Scaffido said that arose from problem of many groups forming around a particular issue. Several groups would form on a particular topic.

J. Scaffido and C. Holmes had to leave for another meeting.

There was agreement to move the meeting date to 4:15pm-5:15pm.

J. Raymond asked if the goal might include a SA committee in the end.

G. Mezey said yes.

T. Miller asked about dormant groups, how will they be affected?

R. Lavin said they would be treated like other groups at the end of the moratorium, could decide later about date by which a group must be active again in order to be considered an old group.

K. Duch said that the SAFC is much more consistent than SA and such a board should resemble the SAFC more than the SA in terms of consistency.

Y. Neverova said work impact

G. Mezey said he disagrees with sentiment that students should not be leading the registration process.

V. Andrews said if the assembly were to form a registration oversight group, it would have to be in a manner that has a clear checklist, not “is it worthwhile versus no worthwhile?”

G. Mezey said it would be good to ask questions like “if you received funds, how would you use them?”

T. Miller said its “our money” so there should be training to make sure its used in a way that is responsible for student funds.

R. Lavin would still say that every group that goes through the board does need to be asked about duplication. Organizations still face a space crunch even if funding is restricted to smaller set. Would like to actually go through groups and categorize them.

T. Miller suggests going to a tier system.

K. Duch said it would be nice if there were advantages for groups to be consolidated into larger groups.

J. Raymond likes the idea of a board having continuity, and a focus on promoting continuity in process.

K. Duch asked what if SAFC had the screening function built in?

G. Mezey asked what if each member e-mails him what they envision the board looking like and doing. He can pull it together and use as basis for next week’s discussion.

W. Feng need to review individual organizations. Could not review all of them each year, but could review some of them each year.

J. Raymond said he likes that idea.

? maybe larger groups or groups with more activities could have higher caps. Encourage groups to set goals and periodically review them.

G. Mezey asked, within SAFC, would set a tier 1 group cap, tier 2 group cap, etc.?

T. Miller likes idea of a group being reviewed particularly if it wants to move up to a higher tier.

J. Raymond said its easy to get a certain amount of funding without any activity, membership, or programming.

V. Andrews asked how groups would petition?

G. Mezey said perhaps could look at self-reported historical numbers.

V. Andrews said could look at self-reported categorizations.

K. Duch said some things might become clearer as groups are examined in detail. Does SAO have a list of organizations by categories? Membership categories?

For Next Meeting

G. Mezey said everyone will bring laptops to the next meeting. Office of the Assemblies will get name of organization, amount allocated, amount spent, up to 8 years. SAO will get registration info, including categories, mission statements, membership stats.

G. Mezey adjourned at 4:56pm.

Respectfully Submitted,

Ari Epstein
Assistant Director, Office of the Assemblies