Wesleyan Student Assembly — Wesleyan University

Minutes: February 19, 2006, No. 12

WSA Officers

President: Jesse Watson

Vice President: Monica Arduini

Coordinator: Emily Malkin

Treasurer: Matt Ball

Meeting Agenda and Business

1) Open Form for Student Concerns

2) Approval of Minutes and appointments

3) Discussion with Dave Meyer, interim director of Public Safety

4) Update from EPC

5) Committee Reports

6) Internal election of EAC member

7) New Business and Announcements

Attached Documents

Opening of Meeting: 7:05 pm

Open Forum for Student Concerns

Approval of Minutes

Minutes approved unanimously

Approval of new members

Toni Martello, assistant coordinator

EAC: Rob Weinstock, Brittany Mitchell

Members approved unanimously

Discussion with Dave Meyer

• Updates from P-Safe: Maryann Wiggin left, looking for new director. Interviews will begin next week: 3 wsa members will be there: Jason Harris, Nora Connor, Max Ornstein

• Candidates will be on campus—a couple of finalists, new director will be here by June 1^st (hopefully).

• Training for officers: one full day devoted to racial profiling. What is it, how to identify it, how to keep from doing it, or falling into the racial-profiling trap, etc… When a call comes, ask right questions, determine if person is really suspicious … Meyer has been identified as a suspicious person himself.

• Working with P-SAC, lighting tour corrected lots of lights and is getting new lighting. Major Hi-Rise, CFA lighting changes.

• Will be reevaluating blue-light phones (phones will be reassigned, after houses with them are sold). Will put one on LoRise C.

• Cross-Walk safety… repainted, road markings (Church st) saying "crosswalk ahead", more "stop for pedestrian" signs, Church st., Science center, Freeman Athletic center. Big green, heavy, hope they will last.

• Long range plan include raise crosswalks, realigning them, moving them, cobblestones, traffic measures, lighting improvement.

• Major Maintenance: card access will be installed on Foss Hill, and some other dorms. Sprinkler systems will be reworked.

Stack:

• Benedict Bernstein says that student racial profiling has been discussed before, P-SAFE emails need to be evaluated: voracity and truthfulness, and the use of "African-American" as the only descriptive term. Meyer says that the alerts are put up immediately after they get a call… usually not much information. At that point, it was the only description he had. Will be reviewing this issue, quick reaction vs. accuracy. Will try to work more closely with ResLife, to target certain locations on campus.

• Kate Fletcher is concerned with the word "assault," even though she was there, and questions that description. The second email with the incident didn't have any more information. Why the second email? Meyer says that he's required to give updates even if they don't have more information. Kate stresses that it was a fight with no clear victim, which "assault" overlooks.

• Dave Wiener says that it would be convenient if the card-access dorms were accessible to all students, for most of the day. Rafael Medrano says that these buildings will be available to all students during the day.

• Benedict asks how budget changes will affect P-Safe. Meyer isn't sure. Thinks administration has been supportive.

• Jesse Watson asks about the timeline/progress for the new crosswalk plan. Meyer says that working with outside agencies takes time… Hopes it will happen by next summer.

• Emily Malkin noticed that there is an increase of graffiti lately. Is this under P-Safe? Meyer agrees on the increase of graffiti: more paint. Says Graffiti has always been here. Notices trends, like the little gun with hearts. Doesn't think it's excessively more.

Update from EPC

Sam Ruth just sent out an email about the final draft for the new peer advising program. The faculty EPC voted on three resolutions:

1) Cut off a day from next year's exam week: lots of travel complications. Just a trial run for next year. Passed unanimously by faculty.

2) An instructor must know how a student has performed in the class to give an A-F grade. Grading solely on attendance is discouraged, bad pedagogy. Lots of discussion. Some faculty thought it's a professor prerogative to decide what determines grading. Passed. Effects will not be apparent immediately—now up to deans and individual departments to clean house. No longer an EPC issue.

3) Courses repeated for credit can only be taken twice for a letter grade. Some "easy" courses are repeated up to 8 times… Not good distribution. Didn't think it was consistent with liberal arts philosophy. Voted down, expect EPC to come back with a new version: take a course only twice for credit, not just letter grade.

Stack:

• Alex Halpern-Levy asks how the data is gathered, and what courses they are (pertaining to 3). Sam can't pick at a particular department or course.

• Zelda Ferguson asks if there is already a policy like this: Sam says most departments have this rule, but not all. Sam says that private lessons

• Xiaoxi Tu says that classes like private lessons aren't necessarily easy—the music gets progressively harder. Dave Weiner says that they want to discourage grading for private lessons because faculty are under pressure to give good grades to keep that employment.

• Max Rose asks why EPC is against taking a class twice period: Sam says that it would hurt specific departments, and would also like to keep an open curriculum.

• Zach Blau asks if there is any way to make exceptions for certain courses. Sam says that exceptions are complicated, subjective.

• Napat Phichaphop asks if it applies to TA-ing. No.

Committee Reports

FINANCE AND FACILITIES COMMITTEE

Financial Aid/ Work Study Meeting (Feb 15 06)

-Katie met with Jennifer Lawton and Sean Martin from Financial Aid. –Our goal is to improve the work study system, especially for incoming freshmen

-Gabe proposed earlier a change of system like the Vassar way of assigning work study based on 3 preferences, after research Jennifer concluded that this was not a possible solution for Wesleyan. Good news! The work study website has been updated since the start of the semester by Sean and is much easier to navigate! -Now only available jobs can be posted -jobs are sorted by category -New Job postings from the last week have a special box on the homepage, so people checking back can save time and only look at the recently added ones

-Coming Soon is an employers section where they can fill out the job posting form online, instead of asking for it to be emailed to them -In about 2 weeks a Summer Employment section will be added to the website

-Since an estimated 150-300 students completed no part of their work study last year (not including those who didn't earn enough), we're hoping that this website will help ease the trouble of finding a job.

-A new Working Group will be started to brainstorm and problem solve other work study issues, including Financial Aid, Business owners and students

-We are looking for 1 or 2 students interested in solving work study problems to join this group.

Eric Rosenblum met with the Code Compliance board last week:

In attendance: Wendy Rayack, Alan Yaspan, Eric Rosenblum, Acacia Stevens.

At this meeting we discussed plans to move forward with a new website; Manolis Kaparakis has agreed to help. We came up with a basic layout for the web page, which will be enhanced. Eric will be responsible for webpage-related things. Alan has been researching living wage-related things and will continue to do so. I (Acacia) was made responsible for the announcement posters—updating them and getting translations. I was also made responsible for talking to Human Resources and/or Physical Plant to get information about the wage and compensation standards. We agreed to meet again on 2/24 at noon; this meeting is now tentatively rescheduled for 3/3.

Gabe met with the prototype housing group to discuss improvements for the next set of prototypes. Construction will begin on 3 5-person units next month. The new prototypes will be on Fountain, across the street from the current set. Some improvements:

- 2 stools for the kitchen

- Closet hanging space increased by either 6" or 12"

- Additional wall layer to reduce noise between housing units

- Double sink in the kitchen

- Stronger fans and better shower ventilation to air them out and reduce mildew.

Otherwise, most aspects will be the same.

The URLC is sending out the woodframe survey to non-seniors. Please fill it out, your input is very important.

The dining committee will be visiting Boston University and Emmanuel College this week to see their new dining facilities. Eric Rosenblum will be the WSA representative, and Tressa Eaton from EON will also be in attendance.

The Project $AVE website is going online soon. If you have suggestions to reduce costs for the university, please post them for consideration. There may be prizes/awards for the best suggestions. Eric and Benz will be the FiFac representatives.

Zelda will be taking over Eric's position on the campus center advisory committee.

EDUCATIONAL POLICY COMMITTEE

It's been a significant week for EPC, with several of our motions going before a faculty vote, a slew of meetings and Judith Brown's announcement that she is stepping down.

Here are the specifics:

1. Faculty Meeting

The Faculty met on Tuesday and voted on three motions put forward by EPC. These motions and their ramifications will be fully outlined in a separate agenda item during Sunday's WSA meeting.

2. Library Committee

The elusive Library Committee had its first meeting this past Thursday (the 16th), and managed to accomplish quite a lot within a short hour. We discussed: a possible shift of Olin hours (taking away unused hours from 8:30-9:00 every morning, and 8-10 pm on weekends), ways to centralize more of the campus' resources within Olin, using large signs to inform students about some of the resources on the Library website (there are a lot), ways to improve the informations commons, Library heating, the fact that quite a few of Wes' journals are stored in an old NORAD bunker, how to clear seniors out of their carrels quickly when they drop a thesis and finally, how to propagate the use of E-Reserve and phase out expensive course packets. Now we get to attempt to follow up on all that.

3. Broad Street Books

Sam Ruth met with Manny Cunard to discuss Broad Street Books' policies on price mark-up, "buy back" and returns. This promises to be a time-consuming but rewarding issue to work on, and should stay a focal point for EPC for the rest of the semester.

4. Capabilities: 9 out of the 10 capablities have now been fully defined, with the 10th soon on the way.

5. Alumni Speakers Network: A group will be meeting in the next few weeks to begin the implementation of the Alumni Speakers Network.

STUDENT BUDGET COMMITTEE

The SBC met in a taxing and arduous two and a half hour meeting this Monday. The biggest issue this week was Ujamaa, who finally came in to formally request money after about a month (or two) of miscommunication. They changed their SBC representative, because the old one had been the weak link in the communication line, and we were able to talk over their request. We had previously allocated (or promised, rather) $10,000 to the group, but they felt that this was not enough money because they had planned on spending more. We ended up reaching a compromise - allocating around $13,700 (they needed around 16,700, so we are leaving them with 3,000 to fundraise in some way) to the group. Other than that, this week was good. We were financially conservative other than our Ujamaa allocation to try to "make up" for it. Outside of allocations, the final markups are being made on the SBC website, and we hope that this will make our lives easier in the future.

COORDINATING COMMITTEE

-Constitutional Review met; we're going to start approving amendments in the general assembly NEXT week. More on this at the meeting

-Emily met with Lisa about hiring a temporary webtech to revamp the WSA website. Came up with a clear job description/salary for this position, and we will begin advertising sometime next week.

-E-squid is still up in the air, but it looks like ITS might take over maintanance on the voting website. Yeah!

- WSA alum reunion during reunion/commencement?

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

The executive committee met and set the agenda.

INDEPENDENT PROJECTS COMMITTEE

1. Monica will meet with Michael Roberts this week to discuss the next installation in the Talking Points series.

2. Estrella has drawn up tabling schedules for WSA Midyear Report distribution. Everyone is required to sign up for a time, and the sooner you do it, the more options in times and locations you'll have.

3. Estrella is looking into getting a shuttle to New Haven or Meriden.

4. More to come next week about Emergency Loan Fund and more.

5. IPC is awesome.

COMMUNITY OUTREACH COMMITTEE

Dave Knapp has finished student leadership packet. Will be printed this week.

Jorge Soto is looking into scholarship programs at other schools for students from the town that the school is in.

Naomi Takahashi is working on a move-out day project.

Dave Woo is doing lighting tour this spring.

Jason is working with ResLife, for RA and student events overlap.

Max Rose is organizing sports clinics.

PSAC is meeting on Thursday. Will be interviewing Wednesday: any ideas for questions?

STUDENTS AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

Shout out to my committee Members, I love you guys.

Undergraduate Residential Life Committee--URLC 2/8

Andrew Bleeker presented the program house application for Psi U. The URLC unanimously voted for the recommendation of the Psi U program house. Dean Maria Cruz-Saco, Dean Mike Whaley, and SAC chair, Rafael Medrano, approved the recommendation. Congratulations to Psi U for their new Program House. Note: Psi U did not receive a special fraternity program house status as presented to the URLC last semester. The program house will be evaluated and will have the expectations as any other program house. Psi U will hold program house events and fraternity events. There is a partnership with the Psi U national organization.

Furnishing Survey:

The URLC will write a proposal based on feedback from seniors and underclassmen.

Style of furnishing for bed set will most likely be a twin, extra large mattress. Jeff Miller will look into the option of possibly buying double size beds that meet the fire code standards. There is also the problem that double beds are inaccessible to certain rooms in woodframe houses, because hallway/stair infrastructure or room sizes.

The URLC think that it is important to provide beds, but from the student perspective, beds should be provided only if there is a way for students who do not want institutional beds, to store them somewhere in order to make room for their own furniture. Jeff Miller will inquire pricing info from storage companies in the area. The university cannot store beds for students.

Furniture Items that will be included in wooframes house are: a Kitchen table and four chairs per house, three seat sofa, one seat chair, coffee and end tables, dresser, desk… a complete list TBC (to be completed).

The URLC plans to survey underclassmen about furnishing woodframe houses:

-to ask if students, if given the option, would they pay to remove university beds.

-to provide photos of the furniture that will be purchased.

Ideas to solve the issue of what will happen to the current furniture. The WSA Community Outreach Committee (COCo), will work on this independent project.

-create a program to coordinate sale of current senior furniture

-donations, tag sale, etc.

- contact recycling committee and EON

Redistribution of first year student spaces:

Remove from Foss:

New program spaces 19

Foss 9, 3^rd floor 6 (Foss 9 becomes all returning students)

Foss 8, 3^rd floor 8 (Foss 8 becomes all returning students)

All remaining floors with first year students are approximately 50/50

New single sex floor will be Nic 5 and 5.5.

Currently, Butterfield has 185 first year spaces and 208 GRS spaces, or 47% first year students. With the addition of 41 first year spaces, it will become 57.5% first year students. This higher percentage is necessary to offset the more isolated locations of the doubles and the perception of more sophomores because they are in singles, rather than doubles.

The number of spaces for off-campus housing is 35. The number was previously 45. Nathan Ratner is our representative on the committee that approves off-campus status. This committee will meet on February 27.

Over winter break, woodframe houses were inspected. Some rooms were found to be small and will not be counted as bedrooms for next year.

Undergraduate Residential Life Committee----URLC 2/14

Follow up on to Senior Woodframe Survey: Jeff Miller informed the URLC that it will cost approximately $250.00 for students to remove their university provided bed through an outside vendor. Students do no have the option to store institutional beds in woodframe houses and in the long lane storage facility. Mr. Miller is an advocate for students NOT buying their own mattress due to fire safety concerns; Wesleyan University provides beds that meet the fire codes expectations.

***The WSA executive committee takes the position to furnish everything else except beds. The WSA stance is problematic because it does not address socio-economic issues and regional privileges. We need to take into account that: 1) not all students can afford to buy their own beds 2) not all students live in the north-east and can transport their own beds and 3) parents expect the University to provided furniture. Dean Mike suggested that if beds were provided, there would be less of a need to provide our own beds.

The URLC will wait and see what the non-seniors think about the University providing beds V.S. students providing their own bed. WSA position on the bed dilemma may be reconsidered based on the information from the underclass furnishing survey.

In High Rise, seven efficiency rooms will be turned into two-room doubles. We are still waiting for confirmation and wont know until April.

Starting next academic year, all residences with more than 20 students will have card access. This will give all students access to all residential units…Yay, you can visit your friends without waiting outside and freezing to death. Access hours are TBD.

Gabe Tabak reminds the URLC to push for the installation of a laundry facility for the Washington Street houses.

Rafael Medrano and Whitney Matthews met with Dawn Brown and house managers (HM) to discuss writing a proposal to raise the house manager compensation. The proposal is scheduled to be presented for the February 21, URLC meeting. The proposal will be asking for house managers to be paid minimum wage ($7.30) for 20 hours worth of work, which will raise their salary about $500. FYI: The current HM compensation is $1,500 (RA's get paid $5,500).

Policies and Fines: Last academic year the amount attributed to damages in residence units totaled $83,000. The university has changed its fine policies. The cleaning charge is now $100 per hour and students will be charged per items left in the bedrooms and hallways. In addition, there was a change to the pet policy. Students can only have fish in a 10-gallon fish tank. If you want more info regarding the policies and fines change, let me know.

The Queer taskforce met on February 10, 2006

The April Planning committee is finalizing events for the month.

The QTF announced the planning of campus conversations/presentations about civil unions in Connecticut and Queer issues in athletics at Wesleyan.

The Queer Resource Interns are planning to create Gay/Queer Café, a one-time event at Pi café or Red & Black café.

Student Life Committee---SLC 2/17

Diversity and Academic Advancement Advisory Committee: subcommittee met and came up with the following information. The Following information is an update and has not been finalized/approved by the SLC…there's still work in progress:

Charge: The Advisory Committee helps identify and analyze critical diversity issues affecting our campus climate and their impact on our educational mission. It advises the Dean of the College on courses of action to address these issues.

It is the "eyes" and "ears" on what's going on and takes the pulse of the community.

Membership: 15 members, the Advisory Committee is staffed by five students, five faculty members and five staff members. Four students will represent each class respectively and the fifth student will be the President of the WSA or his/her designee (we expect that the designee will be the Student Affairs Student Officer).

Students interested in serving on the AC will self-nominate or be nominated by a peer. They will write letters of interest explaining why they want to serve on the AC and list their extracurricular activities.  Faculty and staff members will be appointed to the AC by invitation. We would like tenure and tenure-track faculty members to serve on the committee.  We recommend that members of the Advisory Committee serve ideally for two years.

Chairperson(s): Whom is the advisory committee advising? The DDAA or the Dean of the College? We discussed the pros and cons about having the Dean of the college or the DDAA chair the AC. At the next SLC meeting we will decided who will chair the committee or if it should be co-chaired.

Number of meetings:

September: Retreat

October, November

February, March

April, Final recap/assessment

Timeframe:

March –April 06: Nominations from students, invitations

May: Constitute AC

Proposed revision of Guest Policy – Dean Butler, with the help of friendly amendments from the SLC, changed some of the language of the Guest policy. He also included advice to parents and students regarding specific time of the year when an underage guest should not be on campus, such as spring fling or senior week activities as to ensure the safety of the campus and the visitors. Parents will decide whether their underage kid will visit campus or not. The revision of the guest policy passed with seven votes, a majority in the SLC. The policy change will be implemented next fall. The university will inform students at the room selection process meetings.

Update on URLC proposal to furnish woodframe houses – Fran & Rafael: Survey is going to be distributed to all undergraduates. We are expecting the Results in 2 weeks.

Update on "Concept of Dining" from the Dining Advisory Committee – Max Ornstein presented the proposal to the SLC. AWESOME JOB MAX!!!

Stack:

• Zach Kolodin asks Gabe: what are the reasons for the new job listing: He's dubious that online improvement will solve that problem. Gabe says that application forms should be online, and more information for frosh. Wants to move to the Vassar system, which is complicated, based on a ranking system.

• Anda Greeny asks if the 150-300 work-study students without jobs are actually looking for jobs. Wants more information for students. Katie Kalafus… Anda also asks about furniture for senior houses. Wants more flexibility in choice. Gabe says that the survey results were overwhelmingly in support for furnishing the houses, most didn't want beds.

• Jesse Watson asks about the Christmas Break incident at the Code Compliance meeting. Janitors weren't allowed to take off Dec. 25- Jan.1. Eric says he'll look into that, bring minutes from those meetings.

• Nora Connor is extremely unhappy about increase in charges for cleaning. Already feels that they are inflating the definition of "damage." Wants to change move-out procedures. Doesn't accommodate students with exams up until 12 hours before housing closes. Raffi will look into that.

• David Wiener talks about converting to the Vassar system: doesn't want to support Wesleyan modeling itself after a safety school.

• Zach Kolodin doesn't think cutting weekend hours in Olin is a good idea. Sam Ruth says that SciLi is open during those hours. Zach also criticizes Jesse Watson's bare EC report. Watson retorts that EC's Monday meetings are before committee meetings. Will try harder in the future.

• Zach Blau says that wireless on third floor is poor, wants Library Committee to bring that up. Also wants update on Key Capabilities. Sam will bring that in soon.

• Estrella Lopez asks about middle-ground for beds: maybe a rent-option? Rafael says that they don't have storage for it. Lopez says that there is a place where old furniture is stored. Gabe says that there is nowhere that can hold all potential beds.

• Zelda Ferguson asks about the cost of the furniture project. Gabe says that it's not going to cost more: the wood-frame housing rate will be higher by 15-20 dollars for the next ten years.

• Benedict Bernstein asks about minuteman press violating copyright laws: was that addressed? Sam Ruth says that course packets will cost twice as much with copyrights. Wants to phase course packets out entirely, and replace with E-Reserve.

• Alex Halpern-Levy says that RAs don't count as work-study. Could change the statistic.

• Matt Ball asks why beds can't be optional again. Gabe Tabak: no storage space.

• Emily Malkin says that the numbers for wanting beds are probably consistent. Can't we just buy the number of beds each year? Gabe says that they can't guarantee that the same rooms assignments would want beds each year. 3 groups: people who want beds, people who don't, people who don't care.

• Katie Kalafus wants anyone interested in the work-study issue should contact her.

Internal Election of EAC member

Closed meeting: Napat Phichaphop is the second WSA member on the EAC.

Rafael Medrano says the election was "sketchy."

New Business and Announcements

• Anda Greeny presses committee chairs to get their reports in on time.

• Nate Ratner was deeply disturbed by the WSA survey results: wants to start a Public Spotlight Committee—first project: suggestion boxes!

• Sam Ruth wants people to volunteer for EPC research.

• Emily Malkin says that the committee is a really good idea: please email Nate.

• Matt Ball says that he doesn't think WSA should be creating new committees.

• Benedict Bernstein says that we should be more respectful during meetings.

• Zach Blau says that the meetings aren't productive enough.

Adjournment: 9:12 pm

Respectfully submitted,

Xiaoxi Tu, WSA Secretary