General Assembly Meeting Memorial Center Davidson Room Sunday, October 28, 2018 6:00 PM I. The meeting was called to order at 6:02 PM. II. Quorum was reached. III. Additions or Corrections to Agenda A. Article C of New business was changed to include the Freshmen appointment, and we moved it to the beginning of New Business. IV. Reading and Approval of Minutes- October 14, 2018 A. The minutes were approved. V. Dean s Report A. On Wednesday of this week, there will be a follow up to the diversity forum last month. It is at 11 AM on Wednesday in Hansen. B. Dean Karla invited Senators to participate in the Safety Walk, taking place Nov 14th at 6:00 PM. 1. She invited Senators to suggest places to look. a) Chief of Staff Kayley suggested the alleyway between Ferguson and Pfeiffer. b) Senator Freya Jennison said the alleyways between McPhearson. c) Senator Ian O Toole suggested the alleyway between Buck and the Art building. d) Melissa Holzer suggested the street between CNS, Sigma Chi, and Harriet. e) Senator Crystal Valadez said the Gulick parking lot. C. Mike Welsh, the director of food services will be retiring in November. VI. Constituent Concerns A. Senator Tera Wilson said that there was a concern about having to call into CCS to make an appointment can prevent people from making appointments if they are anxious about calling. An online appointment system would be helpful. 1. Senator Ian O Toole clarified that this has been brought up multiple times. This could help enforce anonymity. President Bob Ladd said that this could be part of the discussion. VII. Executive Officer Reports A. Treasurer s Report 1. There was a question about the $12,000 for speaker, as that is over the cap. Senator Dave Werner clarified that it was actually $1200, and there was a typo. 2. Senator Ely Kleinsmith raised concerns about over programming.
VIII. IX. a) President Bob Ladd said that the GA could determine the merits of speakers. If the discussion is broad, we can do a different discussion later. 3. We motioned to approve the Consent Agenda as a slate. 4. The slate was approved. B. Chief of Staff s Report 1. Chief of Staff Kayley Rettberg announced that the election process begins tomorrow. An email will go out as early as possible tomorrow morning and petitions will be available, and you can start campaigning. Bob is going to be running the presidential election because Kayley is running and it would be unethical for her to count the votes. If you want to submit campaign materials, IA is accepting them. Allow 48 hours for a response. If you don t hear from them after 48 hours, you can start posting, but no sooner without response. If you spend money on anything, you must submit the receipts. Any questions, send them to the COS email. 2. Kayley went over the timeline: Petitions go out tomorrow. November 10th voting begins, November 13th, voting closes. Positions will be announced on November 19th. 3. Bob asked Kayley to go over the appointment of other exec positions. She explained that the president and vice president appoint all the other executive officers. C. President s Report 1. See Attached Document Unfinished Business A. There was no unfinished business. New Business A. Nomination of Freshmen and Junior Senator to Fill Vacancy 1. Melissa Holzer and Kelly Kitahata were confirmed to Senate. B. Formation of Ad Hoc Committees 1. We formed an Ad Committee. President Bob Ladd appointed Vice President Gus Castro as the chair. a) Senators Michelle Rekowski, Wah Chook, Crystal Valadez, Juntian Wei, Freya Jennison, Daniel Maisch, Jared Schneider, Ian O Toole and Rachel Mavros expressed interest. 2. We formed the Rollover Committee. President Bob Ladd appointed himself as the chair. #nepotism! a) Senators David Stanton, Melissa Holzer, Alex Palacios, Que Jackson, Kelly Kitahata, Juntian Wei, Tera Wilson, Jordan Baker,
Ely Kleinsmith, Jared Schneider, Ian O Toole, Dave Werner, and Rachel Mavros were interested. C. Refer Amendments to Internal Affairs 1. President Bob Ladd explained the amendment. a) Senator Jordan Baker asked if a grace period would be available. b) Senator Juntian Wei asked if they could submit them electronically. Comptroller Ann Crumbaugh said that this would be fine. c) Senator Tera Wilson suggested that we write in a provision for it to be 30 school days. d) VP Gus Castro clarified that receipts are turned into the comptroller. e) Senator Juntian Wei said that electronic submission prevents the need for it to be school days, not calendar days. f) President Bob Ladd said that the concern would be for summer, and that we would clarify that. 2. The Amendment to the Code of the Finances was referred to the Internal Affairs Committee. 3. President Bob Ladd explained the amendment and opened the discussion. He clarified that this would take effect in Fall of 2019. a) Senator Freya Jennison asked if we had calculated an hourly wage. It is far from the minimum wage. b) Senator Tom Hillebrand asked if the graphic designer and photographer should get a raise. IA will discuss this. c) Senator Dave Werner asked how President Ladd determined the raise. President Ladd clarified that part of the way that it came up was how CAB is paid, and proposed changes. Senator Dave Werner asked that we look at inflation rates or if he thought that it should be more. President Ladd said that we would discuss this, and we are not aware of there ever being a raise. d) Senator Ian O Toole asked why the CAB director s salary stayed the same. President Ladd said that her salary was determined by CAB and she is only paid through Senate. e) Senator Rachel Mavros asked about how many hours we put in weekly. President Ladd clarified that the work varies by position and that s how the numbers were determined. f) President Ladd clarified is that the way to hold people accountable to doing their work is through impeachment.
g) Senator Dave Werner asked if they could suggest changes. President Ladd said yes. h) Chief of Staff Kayley Rettberg collected the secret ballots and began counting them. i) The amendment was referred to IA with 23 Yes votes and 1 no vote. 4. The last proposed amendment addresses the issue of senator attendance. If a senator misses three meetings, unexcused, the process of removal would be made quicker. a) It was approved and will be referred to IA. X. Announcements A. The Senator of the Week is Que Jackson! XI. Other XII. The meeting was adjourned at 7:00 PM.
President s Report We are starting prep for the next election but will try to finish some amendment, app and roll over things before our transition. We realize that we won t finish all these and hope to leave things in a way that the incoming exec board can pick up the amendments and app where we left off. It s also noteworthy that the new gen ed plan will come to a faculty vote wednesday, November 7th. This process was started because of requests from student senate three years ago. As an exec board, we have engaged in a lot of conversation with those creating this plan and those who oppose it for various reasons, and we believe that the proposed plan would be beneficial for our students and I believe that s our place to say so. I ve contacted the head of the task force about the best way to go about showing our support. If you re a senator who knows the general idea of the changes and want to add your voice let me know. If you d like to know what this is, feel free to talk to me after or in office hours. If you know the general idea of the changes and do no support it, come share your thoughts too, because it is never my intention to ignore the voices of students when using the platform I have. We spoke as an exec board about ideas for academic dishonesty training and the summation of our ideas is this. If a student comes to Illinois wesleyan not knowing what plagiarism is, they should be informed of that. There should be something that is clear about the definition, likely during orientation. It might be an unfair assumption that everyone knows what plagiarism is coming in, and ignorance is not an excuse, but we should be doing what we can to present the information so that if ignorance does exist, it is at least because the student didn t pay attention, not because they had never been told. The second concern we raised was for students actually facing this disciplinary action. We think the student body should know their rights in these kinds of cases. We ll have discussion next week, but come with ideas about how to disseminate the information for these two concerns. Also, we spoke as an exec board about the constituent concern with class registration. I think this is an important topic to discuss as senate, however, we do not feel that we will have time in our term to do it justice. So this, along with some other issues will be referred to the next exec board, and it may be beneficial for you as senators to bring it up again in the spring when we can have conversations about it.