Minutes for ASHMC Meeting
Sunday, 4:00PM, September 30, 2012
Riggs Room, Linde Activities Center
ABSENT:
Status Updates
President – We are one of the Finalists in the Taylor Swift competition, we will find out tomorrow if we won. It’s extremely likely that we won. The tickets can be distributed as Mudd sees fit. The hypothetical distribution is 1100 tickets to Mudd, the other 1100 go to the other schools distributed evenly. It would cost 10000 for security, clean up, etc. Business Affairs would like for us to cover part of the bill through social, cap, or ASHMC. They want us to pay no more than half and I said 2500 or less. We are advised against asking for money from other colleges because it could be perceived as a ticket sale. Nothing of huge importance from the Trustees, if you have questions as to what we talk about ask me.
VP – We have a proposed by-law revision. We have to run an election for frosh president in the next week. Everyone got money from the election, no surprise. I will be setting up junior class and frosh class elections.
Haak – The election is filtered and secure now.
CAP – No updates, met with Justin from Business Affairs and he went through risks associated with certain events.
South – Good.
Honor Board – Fine, looking forward to elections.
North – Good.
Case – Good.
Juniors – Pretty good.
East – good.
Atwood – We blue tagged all bikes and F&M and DOS will clear out unclaimed ones on Friday.
West – Excellent, trustees didn’t see broken glass.
Seniors – Awesome.
Social – We are reading quotes from foam article in student life. Roughly 1200 people swiped in, 340 Mudders + 80 from north, 315 from pitzer, 115 scripps, Pomona and cmc are smaller because they tend to come later.
Athletics – Good.
Linde – Solid.
Sophomores – Good.
Sontag – I’m copresident of sontag with kate, everything is good.
DAC – 1 or 2 more things to work out with housing agreement, getting off-campus swipe.
Treasurer – Good, talked to Justin in Business Affairs. He was into the idea of us holding financial orientation with clubs to go over financial responsibility stuff. I’m trying to get accounts under control with some sort of list. I will get all committees who get lump sum payments their checks by tonight. I underpaid dorms, I’ll fix that. We need to figure out if Board of Trustees are giving us money.
---
El Greco Budget Request
We have 70 people interest level, 30 active members. We’re asking for 10 dollars per interest member, 22 dollars per active member. We are asking for general supplies and we looked through the LAC supplies to make sure we don’t overlap with what they already have.
Have you talked to MUCC?
We emailed her and haven’t heard back.
I see you have 40 plain white t-shirts?
Those are going to members once we tie-dye, we could ask them to bring their own if we need to.
How many meetings do you plan on having a semester?
One every other weekend.
We are going to have our meetings mostly outside.
Whats currently in the LAC?
They have a lot of random, emptyish paint. Lots of markers, crayons. Gloves and some dye for tye-dying. They have modeling clay and some crusty paintbrushes. They have long rolls of normal paper.
---
Sophomores – How much money do we have left?
Treasurer – We have 18000 per semester.
West – They did a good inventory and I am comfortable giving them all this money and more later if they want.
Motion to approve budget ($680)
Seconded
(17, 0, 1)
Motion Passes
---
IEEE
Student extension of a professional group, 13 students have paid dues and we are looking to start a student branch. My budget will follow shortly. Emphasis will be on networking and bringing in guest speakers.
Are talks going to be open to whole student body?
Yes.
Motion to approve charter
Seconded
(16, 0, 2)
Motion Passes
---
IEEE budget request
We are asking for money to get a few events planned and have members of the branch participate in these activities. We want $800. We want to volunteer to pay half off of new member dues, we are worried about recruitment and keeping up membership. We also want journal subscriptions to 4 or 5 journals.
Why doesn’t the engineering department fund this?
They are more likely to fund events where students are directly interacting with engineering faculty. Prof Duron was a student at Mudd and he says that ASHMC used to fund things like this.
Would career services help with any of the networking?
I didn’t speak to them about funding.
What journals are you getting?
We sent out a poll of
what would be most popular.
Motion to approve budget ($800)
Seconded
(15, 0, 3)
Motion passes
---
Bylaw addition
VP – We agreed last week that we didn’t like funding things retroactively, so we proposed adding a strict rule to the bylaws so that we don’t allow retroactive funding. We could suspend by ¾ vote if it was an extenuating circumstance.
Juniors – What is process of bylaw revision?
VP – ¾ council vote.
Social – Should social and CAP adopt the same policy?
Atwood – It doesn’t make sense that we have a rule that we intend to have exceptions on. I think the rule needs to have more flexibility.
VP – It’s precisely the intent that we don’t want it to be extremely flexible.
West – I think it makes sense, and I think it is common sense that we are just articulating.
Treasurer – I think adding the exception would be problematic. I don’t see why any ASHMC council in the future would vote to get rid of this rule in the future.
Atwood – I’m just concerned that we are just writing rules that will later be rewritten.
President – Our constitution and bylaws are modeled after constitution and bylaws of the US which are both supposed to be allowed change over time. In that light, the bylaws are meant to be changed and rewritten in order to best serve the needs of the student population. I understand that it is a possibility that this rule will be thrown out, and if it is then ASHMC will probably have a good reason for doing so.
Juniors – In the past 3 years, we have not seen any major changes to bylaws or constitution.
VP – We just redid CAP, long term fund.
Motion to approve bylaw revision
Seconded
(16, 0, 2)
Motion passes
Email will be sent to students-l and website will be updated.
---
MOU Discussion
President – The MOU is not nearly as binding as a contract. It is slightly more than a “gentlemen’s agreement”, it is fairly informal. It is a first resort of interaction rather than a last resort. It is meant to be renewed and reviewed each year. The current MOU isn’t that different from the old MOU.
Treasurer – Business Affairs wants to know if we can do 80% within the first week and 20% of dues by the end of the first month.
Off Campus – I have gripes with the entire section of risk assessment section.
President – That section is mandated by the insurance company. They do that because the MOU states that the school’s insurance will cover student events.
West – If the MOU is as informal as you say it is then they are saying in good faith that they will probably do these things. We have had issues with them not paying.
Treasurer – We need it because of the insurance thing.
West – Clearly there is an important insurance legality. It’s difficult for me to see why this document exists besides legal insurance reasons. The financial office is clearly confused about what document even means to them, there are transparency issues that don’t come up at all in the MOU. DOS especially is not transparent with their budget.
President – It’s also required in the legal sense because the school is a collection agency when they collect student dues, and for that to not be taxed it needs to be included in the MOU. I don’t believe the MOU is a good place for transparency policies. I would enjoy full financial disclosure from the school, and they enjoy it from us, but neither party is mandated to do that.
West – I’m suggesting that we have some sort of non-legally-binding document that says we are willing to be forthcoming with our budget, but at the same time it would be nice if HMC could reciprocate. It seems kind of arrogant for them to be talking to us in a manner where we can’t handle our finances. Are they forcing their advisership upon us?
Treasurer – I go to them when I have questions, they are very respectful.
Case – Under the HMC will section, how is the website run?
Haak – Right now the website lives on a server above my head.
President – CIS is willing to host and maintain an ASHMC server.
Motion to approve MOU with condition that we change the payment clause to 80/20
Seconded
(15, 0, 3)
Motion passes.
---
ASHMC Reporting to Student Body Discussion
We previously had discussions about issues with transparency to student body. We have a Sakai site, I propose updating it and keeping the minutes on there.
West – I think we need to acknowledge that the people who are interested is a small fraction of the student body.
VP – I don’t want to use the Sakai site. I propose we use Haak’s website. The site isn’t currently accessible to outside HMC.
Sophomores – What constitutes as important enough to send to students-l?
Atwood – Can we just motion to send emails to students-l?
President – All of you are welcome to talk to your constituents about what goes on at ASHMC, this would just be a larger scale version of that.
JB Chair – Have you sent out emails introducing the freshmen to ASHMC?
Josiah – I was invited to attend orientation two days before orientation started, so I couldn’t make it.
Treasurer – What about an ASHMC newsletter going to student body a few times a semester? We could pay the publicity director to do this.
Case – Can we standardize the websites so that they are updated? And can we get updated minutes?
Atwood – I think if we reserve emails for times when we make an important decision, people will be more likely to read it.
President – We can talk about this more next week.
Treasurer – ASHMC needs some sort of letterhead. We can hold a contest.
West – I think that within student body and within my own head, there is a lot of confusion about long term fund.
---
Case Dorm LTF Request
Case dorm has swipe locks on every door except one lounge. Everyone wants a swipe lock on that door, they finally gave us a quote for 2000ish + 200ish for a new wireless lock.
VP – They shouldn’t be that expensive.
Athletics – Why is F&M not paying for this?
Case – I will see if I can get more info before the next meeting.
---
Motion to approve minutes from 16th
Seconded
Motion passes
Motion to approve minutes from 23rd
Seconded
Motion passes.
Copyright 2013 Harvey Mudd College