It will be a great day when college council has all the money it wants,

And the administration has to hold a bake sale to increase the endowment.

Ami Parekh ‘01 and Todd Rogers ’01 came hustling in to their first meeting as co-presidents to the Rocky soundtrack’s "Gonna Fly Now." After seeing the slightly confused faces of council members, Todd remarked, "That did not have the intended effect."

Ami and Todd’s goals for the immediate future: political and social awareness, social coordination between Goodrich and the Log in the form of a committee culled from all campus, and a more available college council. This Sunday, the officers and at-large reps will be holding open hours at 9pm in Baxter Lounge, and will be discussing projects for the coming year.

The other newly elected officers and at-large reps introduced themselves: Chris Koegel ’01 (Campus At-Large Rep) hopes to continue the weight room crusade and improve financial aid situations for all students. Laddie Peterson ’02 (Class of 2002 Rep) will also be working on the weight room. Nishant Nayyar ’02 (Campus At-Large Rep) wishes to have students on the Board of Trustees. Rob Sica ’03 (Campus At-Large Rep) wants council to become more than just a funding body, and to be accessible to all students’ needs. Mayo Shattuck ’03 (Class of 2003 Rep) has many great ideas for the future. Shenil Saya ’02 (Campus At-Large Rep) sees the need for more control by the students over the administration. Princess Alegere ’03 (MinCo Rep) wants better communication between MinCo and College Council. Gideon Lee ’03 (MinCo Rep) will work on making CC issues more relevant and accessible to minority students. James Moorhead ’01 (Class of 2001) will continue trying to make the Log and Goodrich work together as campus social spaces. Joe Masters ’02 (Secretary) is still working on the new CC website and the online faculty facebook. Ryan Mayhew ’01 (Treasurer) has common-sense ideas for saving money for council, which is good, because…

Ryan revealed to council that it has only $4,481.74 for funding for the rest of the year. Reasons? Neither the DA nor the CC Shuttle Service (the one that goes to Wal-Mart and Stop and Shop) were funded at the beginning of the year, and the Election Supervisory Committee spent $2,174.64 for copying the election packets (41 pages x 2040 students). In addition, the Garfield Republicans will come knocking for the $3500 they were promised by council last year. Benjamin Finholt ‘00 (Off-Campus Rep) proposed a bake sale to raise money for council. Enigmatically, he proclaimed that we should "get some sponges and make some cookies."

In the future, Ryan will be changing many funding policies to keep council in the black. He has already identified some things to change for the next budget cycle like putting the Election Supervisory Committee on a budget, and subdividing the general fund (i.e. setting aside funds to send teams to nationals at the beginning of the year).

Brad Nichol ‘02 came to ask for CC’s support in his quest to keep the sailing team afloat for the next year. Although the team has a fleet of 6 sailboats and 40 current members, it was told that as of the end of the spring, they will be disbanded. The administration has three basic concerns about the team that lead it to this decision. They do not want the sailing team to be funded from athletic department or alumni, they are concerned about safety, and they don’t want this issue to be dropped in the new Athletic Director’s lap on the first day of the job. The team would like the college to accept some of the donations that have come in (from $150 to $150,000). The Provost (Cappy Hill) says that the college rejected the donors because conditions stipulated by the donors (the college doesn’t want to set a policy based on demands), and they have serious safety concerns. Despite this fact, Brad says that there have been many other donation attempts without strings attached that the college has rejected.

Ami proposed that council and the sailing team come up with a way to keep the team afloat for another year until the new AD can fully look at safety and club sports. Mayo asked why alums couldn’t mail checks directly to students; apparently the school doesn’t like "earmarked" donations. Joe Masters asked about the example we have for rugby – alumni have paid for fields for students. Finny (00bsf) and Nishant (02nn) will be working on this.

Leah Amakawa ‘01 came from the Lit Society to make an unusual funding request. In a similar situation to WSO and WOC, the Lit Society submitted a voucher last year in May that got processed in July, leaving them with a $1400 debt coming into this year that they only noticed this semester. Terri O’Brien ’02 (Mills/Thompson Rep) asked if CC could somehow get some money from elsewhere. After a brief discussion on refilling the coffers, council voted 26-0-1 to give them $1400.

James Moorhead came to ask for money for outdoor furniture at the Log so people could sit outside on the porch. He wanted three of them at $60 each. Council voted to fund $180: 17-6-2.

A student who regularly works out in the weight room feels that personal tapes in the gym are annoying, and would prefer to listen to the radio.

A suggestion that library hours should correspond with dorm hours was forwarded to John Alwais (01jda) on the library committee.

A suggestion that we should have green tea in dining halls was forwarded to Terri O’Brien (02tco).

Max Weinstein ’00 came to speak to council on the issue of class size and what the school is doing to deal with it. He pointed out that until we are the size of Bennington College, we will always have large classes at Williams. However, despite the inevitability of some larger classes, there is some room for improvement.

One common suggestion is to hire more professors. Unsurprisingly, this has been discussed quite frequently, and there are two major reasons why this is not one of the top solutions to the problem. First, new faculty tends to attract new students; that is, when a department brings in a hot new prof, more students are attracted to the department. There does not appear to be a direct correlation between new professors and class size. Second, faculty hiring works on a two-year cycle, and two years from now, the department that has a major size problem might not still be in the same situation.

However, according to Max, there is one solution that doesn’t cost anything and wouldn’t be too difficult to implement. If professors capped seminars at 20-30 students and took the cap off classes of 50 or more students, then students would no longer find themselves in a class which was supposed to have discussions, but instead overwhelms a professor who can’t teach in that situation. Max believes that once 50 students are in a class, 30 more wouldn’t matter, whereas enlarging a small seminar to 40-50 students would ruin the atmosphere.

This year, the CEP took some action toward this goal – they asked departments to make choices about classes that they offer. If a class is supposed to be a seminar, then call it a seminar in the course catalog and cap it. Otherwise, let students know that it will be a lecture class and don’t cap it at all.

Department reactions to these requests of the CEP varied. Although individual department reactions were not discussed at the faculty meeting, Max thinks it is the student body’s right to know what departments are doing to solve the problem and which are blocking these classifications.

One department that’s been making a good faith effort is Psychology. The Psych department is being conscientious in adding caps and specifying class formats in the upcoming course catalog. However, Political Science, an oft-mentioned department in the class size discussion, has not followed through with CEP’s recommendations. In the 1999-2000 course catalog, there are roughly 75 normal Political Science classes (not including independent studies), roughly 46 classes offered this year, and only 9 with caps on size. The department formally told CEP that they did not want to give numbers for all or most of their classes, and responded to CEP’s requests by marking all their classes in the upcoming course catalog with "Lecture Discussion" instead. Max does not find this designation useful.

The CEP cannot or is not willing to police other departments’ curriculum. So they won’t go into a department and tell it what the problems are, and how to fix them. The faculty sees each department as a whole as a well-guarded kingdom. Max encourages students to ask any department that does not follow these recommendations why they control enrollments the way they do. Why aren’t we allowed to make an informed choice? Max believes that through selective lobbying, students can change the way classes are marked in the catalog.

Ashford Bradley ‘03 (Sage) made the point that grading 80 papers is much work than 50, and that professors should be allowed to cap classes at 50 because of workload.

Allessandra Stewart ‘02 (Dodd Quad) asked about decreasing school size to solve the problem of class size. Max said that he had spoken to a senior member of the administration who said that reducing the school size by 100-150 students would solve a laundry list of problems, but that the school wasn’t planning on changing the size, and he didn’t know why.

Max concluded by asking council to study the class size report it created last year, and to apply pressure to specific departments if members of council feel they’re not managing their enrollments correctly. If you have any questions or comments, email 00mmw.

[StudFac]

Terri told us that Dining Services is looking into nachos, Dr. Pepper/Mr. Pibb, and other suggestions make lately.

Nishant asked why universal computer ownership would be bad. David replied that although maintenance and support would be easy, having computers four years old on campus wouldn’t be fast enough, and that forcing students to own a specific computer would be unreasonable.

The Mascot committee has submitted a draft of its report, and hardly anyone (if anyone at all) was in favor of keeping the contract with Mascot. The ban on Napster is lifted providing that the network doesn’t grind to a screeching halt. [In order to keep the network from clogging, please limit your use of Napster to evenings and weekends, and remember that when you close the window, the program doesn’t close; it just minimizes. So completely close the program, limit your hours, and Napster should remain on campus.]

Ben Angarita ’03 (Frosh Council) asked about financial aid to buy computers. David advised that all questions about financial aid should be directed to the financial aid office.

This summer, Bryant and Mark Hopkins in the Greylock Quad will be renovated, and housing is required to put in a new fire system. The current system is battery-based, and the new one will be centrally located, like the system in mission. The ceilings are so low and systems so sensitive that the buildings are going to be smoke-free. It doesn’t look like there’s any way around this unless we want lots of false alarms because of smoke. The Seton Hall fire deaths were caused by students not leaving because they thought it was another false alarm.

There have been some suggestions to get around this, but none have been feasible so far. The college can’t get rid of the waffle ceilings because they’re integrated into the structure of the building. James Moorhead asked about making an indoor smoking room somewhere in the building, with couches. McEvoy replied that smoking lounges get pretty vile, and also there’s a campus policy against smoking in common areas. So the idea is not being entertained at this time.

Laura Almstead ’01 (Carter) asked how the no-smoking rule would be enforced. McEvoy remarked that the college is not very good at enforcement, and that the only reason for this rule is to tell heavy smokers not to pick into the buildings because of the false alarms.

If you have any other suggestions about how to allow smoking with this new system, email suggestions to housing@williams.edu

Hall O’Donnell (East/Fay) is in the service learning class and they’re doing a sock drive for next winter; kids play in the snow, get their feet wet, and don’t own more than one pair of socks. So there will be big bins in laundry rooms on campus for them. They will take any size, and dry socks that are too big are better than small wet socks.

Kristen Sullivan ’01 (Mark Hopkins) announced that the annual meeting between the NESCAC school presidents would be on April 26^th in Boston. They will be deciding on their NCAA at this meeting, and although President Vogt is on our side, some of the other presidents might not be, and we would like to make our presence known. Williams will be taking a van down there, so if you’re interested or know a student from another NESCAC school who would be interested, please email 01kds.

Gideon Lee declared that it is Asian-Awareness month and there will be activities from speakers to chess tournaments (one grand master versus 40 students at once). Phoebe Eng is speaking Thursday at 4:00pm in Brooks-Rogers, and Yaz Seirawan will be giving a speech at 7:00pm on Friday in Stetson Faculty Lounge and will be playing chess on Saturday in Baxter Lounge from 1pm to 3pm.

Abid Shah ’02 (Pratt) announced that an Indian Dance Performance in Currier Ballroom at 7:30 on Saturday night.

Joe wants to know: if you live in Greylock right now, and know a great nook in Bryant or Mark Hopkins that would work for a public printer, please contact 02jtm.

Nishant reported that the Board of Trustees only meets with select students twice a year, and then only over a dinner. He is continuing his push to get students on the Board.

James Moorhead would like students come down to the log to use the picnic tables.

Brian Kucer is coming.

How should we run the meetings better?

Todd will be proposing a StudFac bylaw that could save 15 minutes a meeting by streamlining the way we do StudFac groups. Allessandra asked that if someone never shows up to council for a committee, can council somehow remove them from their position?

David Thal ’03 (Williams) asked about getting specific information to council members before meetings. Joe is on that.

This is my first minutes, so please bear with me. Because they ended up being longer than expected, I’m using the legal-sized sheets, and playing with the font and margins to make it fit. I also can’t decide about whether to refer to myself in the first or third person. At any rate, if you have any suggestions about what could be improved, or what’s really good, please email me (02jtm).