The History of College Council, starting from this April
This year your Spring Break may have involved sunning yourself with geezersedateness upon a beach in some magic and tropical place where the local tongue involves words with no less than five syllables. While others may have migrated to geezerdom, Florida that is, to absorb dangerous rays for extended periods of the long and lazy day. And far-off, as you lie on your stomach with the warm sand molded around you , the sound of cleaning can be heard inside the confines of the S.S.Baxter. This, my friends, was the sweet sounds of College Council, preparing for the what has been hailed as "the year of the student." Up until then, the story goes that College Council had an office somewhere. Many maps falsely claim that they were working out of the basement of Lehman (as it turns out, that was a splinter Dungeon and
Dragons® group). The fully stocked office that is both cleaner and nicer than most bathrooms on campus and an open and inviting window that now lets in artificial light from the Rathskeller signifies a readiness to grab the Bell by the horns. Five meetings, thirty members, and thousands of things done. We been doing the nitty: less noise from ATM, food machine in Baxter, menus on-line, getting Mr.Bell housing pick #6; and the gritty: choosing between phenomenal students for student-faculty committees, getting an outdoor basketball court in the works and removing the Weekly Calendars from our SU boxes and into readily available stacks for voluntary pick-up to start. Befitting for this novel student enterprise is our location: the SpiffGriff. People have come to meeting to simply soak up some of the technology that exudes from every corner of the room (for example, the Agenda is piped in from an undisclosed location in my room); it would make any Deathstar feel inadequate. The only downside to the place is we strictly forbid food on the premise, but considering we meet right after dinner, no one could even imagine trying to eat much more than a small gummy worm, let alone a pizza like we had done before in Greylock when we met later in the evening. Enough reminiscing about the triumphs this year and onto Wednesday's
College Council Meeting, May 14th, 1997.
Begun by Katie Hansen who recognizes that Robert's Rules of Order can be confusing and often band-wagonish when people get lulled into yaying or naying without thinking a great deal. So she did a little "flo-jo" chart which will be know as the Rob-Hansen's Rules of Order and Etiquette, hoping to both make the process less nebulous and keep the elbows off the table. Due to the large numbers in attendance, save Skip Campbell, Monisha Agrawal, Heather Genovesi, Shayla Harris, Leigh Keyser, and Sally Umlaut, we had quorum early on and voted (19-0-0) to recognize the EMS student group which will cut out that five minutes of lag time that Village Ambulance currently has, teach classes in various EMT realms, and stand by at big sporting events and the 100 days party. Later Day Saints Student Association (yes, the very same as those TV ads which used to give me nightmares) was recognized (18-1-0) and will be gathering next fall so if you'd like to join, contact Rebecca French (00rjf) Next came Kenric Taylor, for the Independent Music Project, a great-sounding petition to bring about student compositions in classical music and collaborate with the visual art and theater for a Media-Award-winning package. 99kot if you want to hear more. From there we acknowledged (18-0-2) Dan Posen with the Investment Club who, reluctantly, offered to take those tobacco stocks off the college's hands. Joel Tolman sought CC opinion on the subject of those very tobacco stocks (and seeking it still 98jpt_2) and after a good appraisal of the obvious reasons to not back tobacco with Joel's template for "ethical" stocks, the economics of the move and the precedent this will set. We voted (16-6-0) to endorse this decision to deinvest in tobacco. I motioned to reinvest in the lucrative $1 massage mutual funds, but the motion failed. Andrew "Shine" Schein gave us a real quality status of affairs with the former Academic Computer Cte (now the Committee on Information Tech.) and, perhaps unknowingly, unofficially began the process of these Cte's reporting to the CC regularly. Along those computer lines, Anh Nguyen tells us next fall WSO will make it possible to buy and sell books on-line. Bert Leatherman followed that bit of good news with news that Dining Services will put menus on-line next year. Apparently, if anyone has an something which could work for an icon for Voodoo Chicken they are encouraged to throw whatever it is away. Outdoor basketball, perhaps even at night, could be coming to Williams. Kate Hansen and Medha Kirtane have good old Tom McEvoy looking into figures for the gamut of options (from a bucket on the end of a pole to a court with full-blown lights and some of the finest asphalt this side of the Hoosac.) Mac Harman reports that plans for Goodrich Student Center are on-line and will be in the Baxter display next week so use those Post-it notes (I wish I have invented those bad-boys). Budgets included passing the WSO (19-0-0) much-needed request for a monitor and SCSI (now) and a computer (pending on the CC budget). WCFM, (15-6-0) will be allotted $1000 (down from $1500 requested) for the daily maintenance man who will maintain shop and continue CD/company contacts. Lastly, the Leadership Training Workshop was Oll Korect by a vote of (17-1-1) making it necessary for student leaders to put their heads together. That closed the evening.
I appreciate those who have read this fa, a feat in itself. I look forward to jotting these for you next fall. Always welcome spelling or grammatical corrections (98csb), if you are also willing to do write this 10-page Geo paper I have to finish for Friday.