~ welcome to another year of college council! ~

college council minutes

september 19, 2001

~ opening ~

joe masters and sarah barger (co-presidents) began this meeting by welcoming everyone, and congratulating the newly elected house representatives to college council. we went around and did quick introductions, after which our two presidents explained a few structural changes we will be implementing in meetings this fall and reviewed the expectations of CC house representatives. one of those duties is to represent you, the williams student body, so USE YOUR REPRESENTATIVES to voice your opinion!

joe and sarah continued by bringing us up to speed on current or upcoming campus events. in response to the tragic events of september 11^th, there will be a peace rally tomorrow at noon in the chapin steps/baxter lawn greater region. additionally, several students have come together to throw a benefit concert to be held on friday at 8 pm in goodrich. if nothing else, it promises to be a good show for a worthy cause…

another important issue is that of date-rape drugs on campus. every williams student should know that this past saturday, a first-year woman was given a drink that contained a date-rape drug. this was determined by north adams regional hospital after running tests that returned positive traces of sedatives in the woman’s system. this case is the first CONFIRMED case of date-rape drugs at williams college, and it merely proves what has been suspected for a long time. PLEASE BE CAREFUL. GO OUT WITH YOUR FRIENDS, AND WATCH WHAT YOU DRINK!

one additional point is that all CC members this year have nametags to place in front of them at meetings. on the reverse of each of these nametags is a voting record, where CC members must record their votes on issues that come before council. in order to increase accountability of CC representatives to their constituents, these voting records will be saved, and can be accessed at a later date.

most of this section of the meeting was, frankly, boring, and only of relevance to CC members who will have to follow these policies in meetings. joe, however, also described a change in the meeting structure that is designed to increase CC’s efficiency. instead of merely allowing open discussion on all topics, CC will entertain opinions and points of interest from members of the student body at-large during the first "opening" section of meetings. however, issues will be brought before council in the form of motions, and only elected representatives are empowered to propose and vote on motions. in addition, visiting students will be asked to state their opinion on the matter at the beginning of the discussion, after which point elected CC members and ONLY elected CC members will hash out these issues in discussion.

a few CC members resisted on the grounds that there was no need for this type of organization, and that a tragedy of such a great magnitude necessarily mobilizes people toward a common cause. in the end, though, nick kerr (minco) moved to recognize this group, SCAMT, and the motion carried by a vote of 19-4-1 (2). to subscribe to their listserver, send an e-mail to scamt-on@wso.williams.edu.

~ technicalities ~

jp (treasurer) explained some things about how funding procedure for CC works before we continued. two years from the time of their recognition, student groups are eligible for placement in one of the eight subgroups (activism, arts, athletics & tournaments 1, athletics & tournaments 2, campus services, music, publications, and spiritualism). each of these subgroups receives a lump sum of money from CC. student groups then go and meet with the rest of their subgroup to determine exactly how much of that lump sum each group will get. section V. B. of the funding bylaw states that groups must be placed in their respective subgroups by the end of the previous year. however, there are a few groups who have inadvertently been left out, and jp moved to "override the time-specific requirements in the group movement into sub-committees and; to move the real deal to publications, cambo-lay into music; and fencing club into athletics and tournaments 2".

steve floyd (all-campus) argued that the reason the bylaw specifies the end of the year is because the newly elected CC reps have no idea as to our relationship with these student groups; this information is crucial to deciding whether groups can be approved for sub-groups. in reply, jp gave a brief history of these three groups.

CC then voted to override the bylaw and place these three student groups in their respective subgroups by a vote of 22-1-1 (3).

regarding the funding procedure, jp also brought up another discrepancy that needed to be addressed. budgets were due by 5 pm on tuesday, september 11^th. however, due to the tragedies that we are all so familiar with, many groups were not able to submit their budgets on time. jp moved to override the bylaw regarding punctual budget submittal, and to allow these late budgets, in the light of what transpired last tuesday.

caroline messmer (class of ’02), pointed out that many of these groups, upon realizing that they were late, may not have known the proper avenues for rectification, and therefore their budgets became even later. CC voted to allow these late budgets by a vote of 21-1-2 (4).

~ unfinished business ~

all the familiar faces were back for this discussion the second time around. josh ain started things of by simply stating that the decision made by CC last spring does have large implications on this campus. additionally, it could be seen as a violation of college policy, which affords free expression.

rory kramer simply posed the following question: "how do we ensure that this doesn’t happen again?" khurram ahmed asked why the mad cow can’t just come back as another group? joe explained that then they would have to go through the two-year period of not being in a subgroup like all other new groups.

chris zerwas also warned that in the future, CC MUST work out specific steps that would lead to derecognition. joe also presented CC with the question of "is CC the right forum for this? if a group does something that is particularly threatening to the safety of other members of the williams community, might CC not want to consider focusing on the advocacy role, calling upon the administration to handle situations like this where students felt threatened by other students? caroline messmer supported this view, stating that the key reasons for de-recognizing the mad cow in the first place do not fall under the jurisdiction of CC. these are safety issues and discrimination issues, and we have a grievance committee as well as other more appropriate channels for these issues to be addressed.

rebecca fritz also pointed out, however, that CC must work this relationship out with the administration, because when the issue first came out, many of the offended students did voice their concerns to the administration, and the administration referred these students to college council.

nick kerr implored CC to not jump into another rash decision before we knew for sure what we were doing. wanting to see an agreement of sorts between CC and the administration as to the best course of action in similar situations in the future, and also to allow the newly elected house reps to discuss this issue with their constituents, he made a motion to table this discussion indefinitely. after a brief discussion, the motion to table carried, 15-10-0 (5).

here, jp brought forward the subgroup allocation suggestions that the finance committee (fincom) decided to present to CC. after CC approves these allocations, treasurers of the individual groups within each subgroups will meet and determine who gets how much of the subgroup’s money. jp encouraged CC to pick at the subgroup allocations here, and boy did he get what he asked for.

first off, mayo shattuck (gladden) asked why we are letting groups keep their surpluses from the last year? in his opinion, this only encourages groups to spend all their money so that they don’t get punished for underspending the next year by other groups within their subgroup. jp views it differently, hoping that the surplus rollover will encourage groups to budget their money more wisely, since that is money that they can hold on to for the next year if they don’t spend it all. he then moved to approve the subgroup allocation recommendations.

floyd brought up a little history CC has with a student organization called "greensense". greensense is the environmental activism group on campus. last spring, they requested money to bring a speaker to campus (for contextual background, the speaker was already scheduled to come on the following weekend). however, the motion was postponed until the next meeting. by that time, the speaker had already come and greensense was requesting $250 to retroactively fund this event. retroactive funding is against CC’s policy. however, CC voted to fund the event anyway because they didn’t want carlos silva, the leader of greensense, to get stuck with the bill. along with the $250, though, came the stipulation that CC would advise this year’s fincom to dock $250 from greensense’s budget for this year. fincom was not made aware of greensense’s past history, and therefore did not deduct the money from the activism subgroup when considering the allocation proposal.

in order to allay the fears of certain CC members that the entire activism subgroup would be harmed by deducting $250 from them, tom cubeta (carter) moved to dock $250 from activism and to advise fincom to inform the activism subgroup that the reason they received $250 less is to account for greensense’s debts. this amendment to the subgroup allocation proposal passed by a vote of 17-7-0 (6).

mayo proposed to move $1250 from the general fund to the nationals fund. last year, CC had to request some money from the dean’s office to pay for a nationals trip, and it doesn’t make sense to reduce this fund from last year. The amendment to move $1250 into the nationals fund was approved, 14-9-1 (7).

chin ho (all-campus) proposed to move $1000 from the general fund into spiritualism to account for the meditation society’s needs. last year, they meditation society showed virtually zero expenditures, but the actuality is that chin spent a lot of his own money to help maintain the meditation society and their hut. however, most of CC agreed that the meditation society have several opportunities to present its budget, and that they should be required to request their money out of the general fund, defeating the amendment 2-20-2 (8).

returning to the greensense issue, federico sosa (class of ’04) moved to replace the $250 removed from the activism subgroup, citing CC’s own hypocrisy between having a hard and fast interpretation of the bylaws one minute, and then a more flexible one the next. also, he protests that we need more activism on campus, not less. regardless, the motion fails 3-17-2 (9).

federico also moved to create an intergroup fund, since it was fairly successful last year. sarah pointed out, though, that we can create that intergroup fund at any time during the year. it was moved to table this motion indefinitely; this motion passed by a 19-1-2 (10) vote.

finally, CC voted to approve the revised subgroup allocations proposal 20-1-2 (11).

last spring, students voted overwhelmingly for an initiative to ask CC to review the structures for student governance. joe explained that the ASC would be appointed by the appointments committee. however, they must be empowered by a vote of CC before they can solicit proposals for change from the student body and host a constitutional convention on possible changes to CC’s constitution. chin moved to grant the ASC the powers solicit amendment proposals and host a constitutional convention. the motion carried with a 20-1-1 (12) vote.

~ new business ~

jp moved to allow fincom member nishant nayyar to preside over the athletics & tournaments 1 subgroup on sunday, since one of the previously appointed members of fincom, sean lee margolis, bailed. motion passed, 18-1-1 (13).

nick moved that the CC presidents have some kind of conversation with the administration to settle where exactly CC will go from here regarding the mad cow. this should be done by next week, so that CC can vote on the mad cow motion at that time. the motion carried, 20-2-1 (14).

~ closing ~

next week’s CC meeting will be on TUESDAY because of yom kippur. we will assemble in HOPKINS 1964 BASEMENT CLASSROOM. sarah and joe thanked everyone for being such great contributors to this meeting…it went very well, despite its length. with that, the meeting was brought to a close.

respectfully submitted,

craig tamamoto

cc secretary

~secretary’s note ~

just a point of clarification. following each vote tally, there is a number located within parentheses. this is merely part of the attempt to establish voting accountability amongst CC members. it is with these numbers that i can align the motion being voted on and each representative’s individual voting history. as always, if anything is unclear, please let me know via e-mail at 02cat.

mark rosenthal (class of ’03)