AAS Senate Meeting Minutes. Ali Rohde asked if it would be possible to make the survey available in Val for people to take when people are tabling.

Transcription

1 AAS Senate Meeting Minutes Date: 12/1/2014 Meeting begins: 8:33 p.m. I. Attendance II. Public Comment None. III. Sexual Respect Climate Survey Amanda Vann Amanda Vann, the Amherst College Sexual Respect Educator, talked to senate about the survey on sexual respect and sexual misconduct that was recently released to the student body. The survey was drafted throughout this semester by students and administrators in collaboration to discover what student s actual experiences at Amherst College are regarding sexual respect. She explained that climate surveys on sexual assault have gotten a lot of media attention over the past years but they wanted to make one to include broader situations as well. The surveys looks at a variety of scenarios including stalking, street harassment, assault, and violent relationships. Amanda was hoping that senate would be supportive of their peers taking the survey. She stated that he comment boxes on will not be open to the public, but they will have forums to discuss results and make the executive summary available online. She explained that most people are taking minutes to complete the survey. Only 1/3 of the respondents are male and even class distribution. They are hoping for at least a 50% response rate, but are hoping for closer to a 75% response rate. The Peer Advocates are working to encourage people to respond and will be tabling in Val this week. Ali Rohde asked if it would be possible to make the survey available in Val for people to take when people are tabling. Amanda said they had original planned on it be informational as student need their individual link to complete the survey, but said she would look into this possibility. Sam Keaser asked who worked on creating the survey. Amanda stated that she has been working on it with the Title IX committee, Sexual Respect Task Force, Peer Advocates, and institutional research staff. She is hoping that the survey will provide good results because they worked hard on it. Johnathan Appel asked what schools have done climate surveys and if they have been successful.

2 Amanda explained that Assumption College and MIT have done the survey. She stated that there are not a lot of schools that have done surveys and then made the necessary changes yet. They are interested in looking for locations on campus where a lot of things are happen. They are also looking at the attitude on campus towards the sexual assault hearing process. Will Jackson wondered what response rate at other schools has been for these types of surveys. Amanda stated that a 75% response rate is a high hope. RJ Kermes asked how long leaving it up for students to respond to. Amanda stated that it will be up until December 13th because they got advice from students to leave it up during reading period as a way to procrastinate. She also stated that they have received a commitment from the college to donate to two sexual assault services in the area based on many people respond to the survey. The donation will double after 50% of the student body respond, and double again after 75%. They just secured the donation last week. She said that its a good chance for our school to give back to the community. Juan Gabriel Delgado Montes asked how to best publicize the survey. Amanda explained that everyone has their own individualized link sent to their . They are advertising by telling students to check their . Juan Gabriel suggested having a small web page with information and a link to the webmail service. Will Herman asked how much the donation is for. Amanda said she was asked not to share the donation amount, but it is substantial. Amherst College as a general rule does not make donations because people donate to us. However, they have made an exception because Amherst does not pay for the support our students get at these services. Will Herman asked if their are institutions at other colleges that run a hotline and if Amherst could do this. Amanda explained that the hotline runs out of UMASS and there are student volunteers. This is normally done at schools with more frequent calls. At these institutions, it takes a lot of practice make students comfortable with providing this kind of service as it is a very difficult thing to do. The UMASS program also gets some state funding to support it. Students go through hours of training and then additional training yearly. They provide a 24 hour hotline, free counselling, workshops, and consult with friends and family members. She stated that the Amherst student body isn t large enough to support this kind of service.

3 Juan Gabriel suggested the senators post a link to the Amherst webmail on their Facebooks. Ali pointed out that the PAs have made a video which we could also post to spread the word. IV. Communications Director - Appointments Board Christina Won said the Appointments Board received four applicants for the Powerhouse Committee and seven for the position of the Communications Director. A motion was made to confirm the nomination for Powerhouse Committee. Vote to confirm the nomination for Powerhouse Committee. Christina explained that the Communications Director is a new paid position through the AAS to handle the publicity of the AAS and its projects. Addie Curran asked why the Appointments Board was used for this rather than how the other clerks are hired. Christina explained that this position would be more prevalent to the student body that the clerks who serve internally in the senate. The appointments board wanted to open up the selection to a wider body of applicants and have the input of more people to select a candidate. Will Herman asked who is in charge of Communications Director. Tomi Williams answered that the senate will be in charge of keeping them in check. Will Herman stated that large bodies are sociologically bad at holding a person accountable, he suggested having one person be in charge of the Communications Director and suggested either Tomi or Juan Gabriel. Siraj Sindhu moved to confirm the nomination of the Communications Director. Vote to confirm the nomination of the Communications Director. V. Amherst Women in Finance, Economics & STEM - Ali Ali requested money for her senate project that she has been working on with three other people. The event will be in the Powerhouse on December 11th. Currently there is no community for women pursuing career male dominated fields. She has been speaking to a lot of interested

4 professors. There already is a professor group for Amherst women in the sciences. The event will be a student meet and greet catered by Val. Ali stated that thesis writers in the subjects and professors received a special invitation. She will be meeting with the Provost and requesting money later this week. She requested $1,000 dollars but may come back next week if funding from Provost, WGC, and departments doesn t work out. The event will be first come first serve for 64 people. She is currently waiting for a complete breakdown from catering but has received an estimate. Tierney Werner moved to fund $1,000 dollars from the senate fund. Vote to fund $1,000 dollars from the senate fund. VI. Budgetary Requests KC Fussell explained that this semester he s been organizing a singing supper for the singing center. Route 9 will be performing. He requested $300 dollars for food, $100 dollars for drinks, and $100 dollars for the Route 9 performance, a total of $500 dollars. Tierney said that we don t typically pay for students to perform, so paying Route 9 might be a problem. Sam asked why KC isn t doing this from the senate fund. KC last year did it through discretionary and its not technically his senate project. Hao Liu suggested requesting through the senate fund. Blaine Werner moved to fund $500 dollars from the senate fund. Chico Kosber felt uncomfortable that we wouldn t fund a similar event for glee club, but now we are using the senate fund it. Peter Crane said that we just funded Ali s project, when a typical club would not get $1,000 dollars for an introductory meeting. If we ve funded this event before it should be okay. Vote to fund $500 dollars from the senate fund. There was a request from Amherst Film Society for $21 dollars to pay for additional shipping costs. A motion was made to emergency fund $21 dollars for the Amherst Film Society.

5 Vote to emergency fund $21 dollars for the Amherst Film Society. VII. Plastic Water Bottle Resolution RJ stated that Monday before Thanksgiving senate sent a poll to students asking if they wanted the senate to pass the resolution to become a water bottle free campus sponsored by GAP. They approved the language as a survey, now we must approve language for the official resolution. Will Jackson asked what take all steps necessary means. RJ explained that its supposed to be a little ambiguous and demonstrate that the students are behind this motion. Will Herman asked for a little more information on the next steps. RJ said we have two tracks we can take. One is a letter that sam will explain, the other track is something he is not involved with. He explained that he is bringing this up to facilitate the efforts of the GAP. He said that we don t need to know what the next steps are, we should trust that there is a dedicated group of students behind the effort. Olivia Pinney explained that the biggest problem the GAP has is that they are told they have good ideas by the administration but its not a priority and this proves that there is interest and support for their endeavors. A motion was made to adopt the resolution. Will Herman objected. Will Herman said that he thinks its awesome that we sent this survey and this clearly matters. However, the principle of endorsing an idea that is open to infinite interpretations like all means necessary is a bad idea. Senate should not endorse ideas that have no definition. It is the responsibility of the person asking us to endorse their idea to be clear. He said a very bad idea could be orchestrated to eliminate plastic water bottles, and the AAS should not be behind this. He stated that before the AAS supports an idea, we need a more specific idea of what ideas they are supporting. Scott Nelson disagreed with Will. He said to have a clear outline for a specific set of steps is not the most appropriate way to go about this. He argued that if they were to commit to water fountains specifically and something went wrong, it would thwart the entire effort.

6 Olivia said that this just expresses that we hope this change happens. We trust the group to get rid of water bottles in the best way possible. It is an endorsement of a movement and at anytime if we disagree with the actions they are taking, we can revoke our support. KC moved to move discussion. Roll call vote to move discussion. Roll call vote to adopt the resolution. VIII.Filling Station in Triangle + Hill Sam Sam presented a letter to senate that he wishes to send to the administration requesting for the installation of water fountains, this was his senate project and it ended up aligning well with the GAP project. Will Herman supported this letter and suggested a clarifying edit. Sophie Delfeus said that Drew House should be included with the other mentioned dorm areas because they also do not have water. Johnathan said he lived in the room above sam last year and he was the RC. He asked why the sinks aren t good enough because he used the sink all last year. He stated that they need a rational argument to explain the need for the water fountains. Sam said that water from the tap requires a cup or bottle which visitors don t typically have. Its a safety concern that drunk people have access to water. RJ moved to approve the letter. Ali asked why not ask for filling stations in all dorms. Sam said that these six locations would be reasonable for now to be done for the next year. He wanted something that can happen soon and the administration will agree to. Ali said that it would be more reasonable Olivia said that her water bottle doesn t fit in the sink in marsh so it can only get it filled part ways. She testified that the vending machine is much easier to get to than the sink.

7 Virginia Hassell stated that parties occur in the socials and the water should be available there even if they will be torn down in a couple years. Sam said that the Task Force on Alcohol and Other Drugs is already looking at making water available outside the socials. Virginia said she spoke to someone on that task force and they said that they have been very unproductive. She stated that she would like to see more pressure placed on the administration to make this happen. Sam explained that including the socials would make it easier for the administration to say no to everything else. Fawzi Itani asked why not ask for them sooner. Sam said that it will be substantial work and they don t want to interrupt the students even over interterm with this project. Claire Jia wanted to emphasize the water fountains and not water bottle filling stations because no dorms have those currently. Sam stated that the rational behind that was to give weight to the resolution we just passed and to use the resolution to show student support for making water available in more dorms on campus. Phillip Yan said that he is concerned about just installing filling stations in these dorms because then other dorms won t have them. He thought that if we don t express wanting them now, they will reject us in the future when we need them. Sam said that it is a harder argument to make for water bottle filling station in dorms that already have fountains. Obinna Ukogu said that he has no problems with ideas in document but he made suggestions they should discuss. Sam said he d be happy for the two of them to talk afterward. Vote to approve the letter. IX. Reports a. Committee Reports Peter, representing the Transportation Committee, reported that everything went smoothly for Thanksgiving.

8 RJ, representing Dining Services, reported that there is Late Night Val sunday. Virginia, representing the Powerhouse Committee, reported that they outlined a proposal for future of Powerhouse and they will be presenting it to Dean Vasquez. b. General Announcements RJ stated that the BC added an extra discretionary meeting before senate meeting is to save time. If you have a request, you can show up a little early and get it done much more quickly. Fawzi stated that he and Tasha were taking in Val and they want to switch the spoon and fork bins in val to improve traffic flow as their senate project. Will Jackson said that he heard from someone at Val that they take the sorted silverware and dump it into the dishwasher where it all gets mixed up anyway. Fawzi asked if there s a way to increase voter turnout in surveys and elections. Blaine stated that he s forming a surveys committee and hopefully that will help. Olivia said she has spent hours trying to coordinate surveys, but they re often weeks apart and can t wait for an overlap. She suggested adding voting to the Amherst app. Olivia, representing the Elections Committee, stated that they are discussing whether it disincentivizes people from running by listing the number of votes everyone gets. Ali said that including percentages thing is important because people need to have some gage of how many people voted for them. Will Herman said it hurts peoples feelings but it is necessary for the transparency of democracy. Sophie thanked people who came out for the moment of silence today. c. Officer Reports Christina reported that senate should tell her when they re going to be absent. She stated that she received first electronic suggestion box submission. People have been asking her about attendance so she uploaded the document to the Facebook page so they can see. Juan Gabriel reported that he s interested in passing concrete language on attendance before next semester.

9 Tomi Williams reported that he has been working on his P.O.P. sessions initiative. The first one will be in Stirn auditorium on Wednesday at 8:30 PM. It will discuss academic stress and workload. He expressed excitement that the Communications Director was approved. He is currently working on strategic planning for AAS with Sam. He is also working with Peter to revamp intramural sports. He reported that the social club proposal group is expanding from 9 students to 15 students by offering at-large seats. He was wondering if there should be a reserved seat for a senator. Tomi announced that he his working on growing a moustache. X. Approve the minutes Peter moved to approve the minutes from November 17, Vote to approve the minutes from November 17, XI. New Business Will Herman said he sent an about changing the language for the Communiations Director because it is important to hold our paid positions to account. He also thought that its important for the Communications Director to get their initiatives from a specific person because it would be impossible for them to answer to the demands of 32 people. Sam said that putting the position under the purview of the executive branch is still vague, he suggested giving the responsibility to the secretary. Christina said that she would be okay with this but would need direction because she was not involved in the creative envisioning of the position. Obinna asked if we should put this position under Chief of Staff. Tomi explained that the Chief of Staff is in charge of the cabinet, and the Communications Director isn t a cabinet member. Blaine suggested making this the Christian Aviles 2014 Memorial Communications Director position. Sam moved to amend the constitution with the proposed language. Roll call vote to amend the constitution with the proposed language. David Dickinson explained that GAP held a successful series of events and he wanted the senate to reaffirm the resolution encouraging the trustees to divest.

10 Vote to reaffirm resolution to divest. XII. Adjournment 10:33 PM