college council minutes

april 4, 2001

sarah barger (co-president) started the meeting by greeting everyone to the new college council term. in order to carry on the traditions instituted by our former CC co-presidents, sarah and joe masters (co-president) wanted to share a story with substantial relevance to council. they met with todd and ami (former co-presidents) over lunch recently and were presented with 3 symbols of things they should keep in mind next year. the first was a dollar bill, representative of CC's funding problems. the second was a copy of the new york times, representative of campus advocacy issues. and the grand daddy symbol of them all, a small bottle of jose cuervo reminding sarah and joe of the ever-present problems with social life at williams.

joe also took this time to introduce some technical ways CC meetings will be changed to improve efficiency. one of these changes is that if a group comes to council to talk about something, college council will begin discussion with simpler informational questions, then debate the worthiness of the cause. hopefully this will cut down on grandstanding.

with regards to time limits, when one minute remains, jp (treasurer) will stand up and violently wave the stopwatch in his mouth while juggling three odd-shaped pieces of fruit when one minute remains. you gotta see this.

sarah announced that there will be elections to replace the dodd, ja, bascom/brooks/ chadbourne/perry, and williams hall representatives, as they were either elected to other positions or just don't come anymore. self-nominations are due this friday, april 6, and elections will be from 12:01 am on monday to 11:59 pm on tuesday. the class of 2002 will also elect members to the honorary degrees committee during this time. also, everyone should consider nominating themselves for the student-faculty committees. this is where a lot of the real changes take place on this campus, so get involved!

on a related note, the barger/masters tandem also urged students to vote for the constitutional amendment to put the minco representatives onto the appointments committee as voting members. the appointments committee decides which students will serve on the crucial student-faculty committees, so it is important that minority opinions are represented. sarah reminded council that we need 50% of the campus to vote, and 2/3 of that vote must be affirmative in order for the amendment to pass.

joe said that the housing office asked us to inform students that since they forgot to reserve bronfman auditorium for the housing lottery, it will take place in chemistry 123, wege auditorium. he also added that the OIT director search committee has narrowed their choice down to four candidates who will each give a presentation on what they want to do at williams, and students are urged to attend these presentations and supply some input to this process.

the summary of the CEP proposals has hit campus su boxes and students are urged to read these suggestions and comment on these proposals for huge curricular change.

joe informed council that in the coming months, there will be campus forums to evaluate how we can restructure the student governance system at williams. advocacy of all kinds, social issues, and funding problems will all be closely scrutinized. the first three of these forums will be directed at fielding specific questions and comments regarding each of the aforementioned topics. the fourth and final forum will be dedicated to selecting the best of the suggested proposals. the first forum will be on tuesday, april 17.

the "introduction" appropriately concluded with all CC members introducing themselves to each other and sharing one thing they want to accomplish during their tenure. highlights include a 24-hour diner on campus, a 24-hour library, tim karpoff's (mark hopkins) thesis, and royce smith's (co-op) law school applications. mark rosenthal (class of 2003) also offered to pay joe and sarah for their services because he admires them so much.

professor lee park (chemistry dept.) and krzys piekarski of the discipline committee asked for CC's help in drumming up support for an upcoming gaudino forum. williams has a set of community standards and disciplinary procedures that are laid out in the student handbook. it is clear, however, that many students are not aware of this and do not take responsibility for their own actions.

professor park offered the simple example of a damaged piece of furniture. even if everyone knows who did it, most students won't speak up. this forum is aimed at making students more responsible for upholding the standards of community at williams. the discipline committee would also like to make students more aware of these existing community standards.

lesley reith returned to CC to update us on the latino studies initiative. she thanked everyone for their support and reported that it's been quite successful so far. they have collected over 600 signatures on the petition and have created enough of a stir to persuade the administration to meet with them next week.

lesley also expressed concern, however, that the e-mail petition had not been as successful as they thought it would be. john phillips (prospect) suggested that maybe the e-mail approach is perceived as insensitive. caroline messmer (class of 2002) recommended that they try to camp out in mission and greylock to target different groups of people than the ones that frequent baxter. lesley left council on an encouraged note, saying that alumni have organized a letter-writing campaign to the administration, and the housing committee delivered a raucous applause for the latino studies initiative efforts.

there have been many conversations recently on how funding can be handled differently by CC. jp would like to propose a bylaw that would allow funding throughout the year to be handled by the financial committee (fincom) and CC would only vote to approve or disapprove of fincom's allotment.

he explained that under this new scheme, a group requesting funding would go to a fincom meeting - which would become weekly occasions - to request money and fincom would determine how much money the group should get. then, at that week's meeting, CC would vote on fincom's recommendation. there would also be a mechanism for groups to appeal the decision in case they felt slighted. according to jp, this would allow people who have a really good understand of funding to handle it responsibly.

terri o'brien (gladden) asked how many people were on fincom and who gets on it. jp responded that the eight people on fincom are determined by the appointments committee. he added that eventually he would like to see half of the members appointed and half elected, but at the moment, that can't constitutionally take place yet. john phillips thinks that fincom would have to be elected, since this is an issue that tangibly affects students. phillips went on to say that he thinks this is an "extraordinarily bad idea". he forsees that under this new structure, fincom would not be able to fund responsibly due to a conflict of personal interests.

jp concluded by adding that there would be some sort of upper limit (around $2,000) to what fincom would consider for funding. other funding requests would be discussed in regular CC meetings. he will work on these bylaws and discussion will continue next week.

steve floyd (campus at-large) will update CC every week on certain CC-related groups. this week, is dedicated to CEP, dining services committee, the information and technology committee (infotech), and wso.

terri o'brien, who pulls double-duty as a member of CC and dining services committee, reported that dining services hasn't been up to much lately, but that they should be getting back the results of the survey soon.

steve reported that the infotech committee is working on developing online teaching programs for professors to use in addition to deciding whether to participate in the yahoo rankings for "most wired campus". we were no. 1 last year, but don't like their criteria this year.

meanwhile, another computer group on campus, wso, has reported three new servers - spiker, olga, and slasher. steve also relayed that you can check out topher goggin's survivor show at http://survivor.williams.edu

sarah introduced this as a newly designated time built into our weekly CC schedule that is designed to increase accountability for projects that people take on. at this time, reps that take on project(s) will be expected to report on the status of their project(s).

federico sosa (class of 2004) is working on installing semi-permanent laundry baskets on williams hall washing machines. they have been ordered, but haven't arrived yet.

ching ho (campus at-large) hopes to create one centralized social board. he is working on the structure now and will report back at the next meeting.

mark rosenthal wants to address the parking crunch that will take place next year in greylock when a lot of spots are taken by faculty parking. he claims that his constituents refuse to trek 4 miles uphill both ways to the lower mission lot.

in conjunction with a project for his stats class, ching will be analyzing how room draw group sizes affect diversity on campus.

joe brought up that project that never seems to go away, the stutter dial tone. he has a written guarantee that by next fall, the stutter tone voice-mail indication will be in effect. he added that the centralized calendar dream had been achieved and soon there will be a central campus calendar on the wall outside the snack bar.

caroline didn't get any opinions this week. send her you thoughts. she's lonely.

joe began open time by announcing that from now on, open time will begin with people that want to bring something up who are not on CC.

it soon became apparent that no one outside of CC had anything and royce, who apparently can't sign the attendance sheet like a good CC rep, spent a moment to reminisce on the minco/CC joint bowling activity. he suggested that when (if?) the weather warms up, we should have a minco/CC softball game. garry sanders (campus at-large) expressed his desire for a whitie vs. darkie battle to the death, but royce replied that that would be way too confrontational for him.

jp talked a little more extensively about ching's proposal, assuring CC that this proposal for a social board is merely a suggestion that is open to input and improvement. there will be a lot more discussion and a lot of people will be involved in that discussion before anything drastic happens.

yang wang announced that april is asian awareness month and convocation is this thursday at 7 pm in goodrich. also, on friday night at 8 pm, there will be a concert in currier by kevin so. all are welcome.

sarah wrapped up by reminding everyone to encourage your constituents to vote in the minco amendment, to go to the gaudino forum on community standards, and to sign the latino studies petition. she invited anyone who is interested to join the wednesday night club tradition at the log.

craig tamamoto (secretary) got in the last word, warning that from now on, representatives who do not attend the meeting will have their names printed in each minutes so that their constituents can harass them about it. check the minutes to make sure your representative is attending!

hey, i'm craig and i'm looking forward to this year as your secretary. you may have noticed that these minutes pretty much have no capitalization. that's all there is to say about that. they're also a little long, but i hope you enjoyed reading them anyway! also, as mentioned before, i will publish the names of reps who miss meetings at the bottom of the minutes, so make sure your voice is being heard at council. and these are my first minutes, so i apologize in advance if i screwed anything up. email me at 02cat if you have questions/comments/corrections.

craig tamamoto

cc secretary

wso.williams.edu/cc

darah schofield (bryant/woodbridge), catherine denver (mills/thompson), ari kessler (morgan/lehman), tracy borawski (tyler)