College Council Minutes 10/4/00

[Introduction]

Ami Parekh (Co-President) announced that the senior staff voted on Monday to give council an extra $29,000 (the difference between FinCom’s estimated group need and how much CC actually had to give) to help with our current budget crisis. This relief is due in a large part to the efforts of Ryan Mayhew (Treasurer), Ami, and Todd, who met with Cappy Hill (Provost), Rick Meyers (Associate Provost), Nancy Roseman (Dean of Students), and President Shapiro. If you see any of these administrators around campus, please thank them for helping us adequately fund student groups. The money is given as a one-time subsidy, and CC will be responsible for any deficit spending it does in the future. However, we will be exploring the option of raising the student activities' tax if we feel it is necessary to support student initiative on campus. (More on how we’re going to dole out this money later).

[Awards Ceremony]

In the spring of this year, the College Council Appointments Committee solicited nominations from the student body at large for the best administrator, staff member, and faculty member of the 1999-2000 academic year. After reviewing the nominations, the committee decided on the following awards:

Ami presented Professor Wendy Raymond with her award as Faculty of the Year, quoting some of the nominations we received: "Professor Raymond is the most accessible and approachable professor I have encountered at Williams," and "Raymond has a gift of presenting lectures in a clear, concise manner, and I felt like I learned something in each and every lecture."

Dean Wanda Lee (no longer working at Williams) is the Administrator of the Year for her dedication to student life and tireless work in the past years.

Fletcher Brooks was named Staff Member of the Year as students Melissa Purdy and Kristen Sullivan described his work in helping all members of the community, from sports teams to individuals to faculty and staff members. Fletcher gives advice on nutrition, lifting, and general fitness, and has been incredibly open to suggestions about the weight room. As he left, Fletcher thanked council for its work in helping to improve the equipment in the weight room.

[Recognition]

Lowell Jacobson appeared before CC to ask for recognition of Objectivists at Williams. According to the mission statement, the objective of the Objectivists is to promote the philosophy of Ayn Rand, laissez-faire capitalism, and rational self-interest (this is not exactly a direct quote, but it’s pretty close). Email 03ldj if you want more info on the club. Council voted to recognize: 23-0-5.

[funding]

Ryan Mayhew (Treasurer) gave his weekly update on the budget: on $16,000 allocated for this semester’s general fund, we’ve spent $1300 (but another sizable chunk coming below).

Ellen Bognar, Bekka Carr, and Jen Dolloff came from the real deal asking for $1970 ($1465 printing costs for five issues, $250 office supplies, $100 pr supplies, $125 photo supplies, and $30 tape recorder). Mayo Shattuck (Class of 2003) asked if the real deal saw itself as a self-sufficient publication sometime in the near future, as a non-college-funded organization would probably have more editorial freedom. Jen responded that she doesn’t see that happening any time soon because it simply isn’t well established yet. Nishant Nayyar (At-Large) made an amendment to cut the office supplies figure to $100, but after comments from Mayo and Matt Wessler (Off-Campus) deriding the nit-picking of council and the supporting the importance of the real deal, CC voted the amendment down, 6-20-2. After that, the full $1970 passed 23-2-3.

Heather Brutz, from Students for Social Justice, requested $295 from CC ($100 posters, $100 speaker, $95 voter registration supplies). Heather mentioned that Students for Social Justice now runs the defunct Voter Registration club, and that SFSJ will supporting many more speakers and events on campus, but does not expect to ask CC for funding for those functions. Council voted to give SFSJ $295 26-0-1.

Finally, Marsha Lynch from the Williams Steel Orchestra, presented CC with a budget request of $1275 (13 pans tuned @ $50/pan = $650, $550 drum set, $75 for cleaning supplies). Immediately she offered to remove the cleaning supplies from the budget. Tim Karpoff (Co-Op) was slightly amazed at the cost of tuning the steel pans, and asked about the possibility of the group itself tuning the pans. Marsha explained (forgive me if I get any details wrong here) that the pans are made out of oil drums, and are played by banging the drum with a rubber-tipped hammer. Naturally, all this force knocks the instrument out of tune, and the only way to get it back to a tuned condition is to beat it out with a hammer again. This is loud, and thus most pan-tuners are near deaf. To add to the cost, there aren’t any pan-tuners closer than New York or Boston, so to get them out here is pretty expensive. Wessler wondered if the Orchestra would play in the fall if CC didn’t fund the tuning; Marsha replied that they would still have a concert, but it wouldn’t sound as good. She further elaborated by telling council, "I am from the land of the steel pan. We want to bring good music to this campus, and this is how we’re going to do it." Undeterred, Mayo made a motion to amend the proposal to $550, just to fund the drum set and shipping. After several members of council, including Rob Sica (At-Large) and Princess Alegre (MinCo), questioned the wisdom of forcing a musical group to perform with untuned instruments, CC voted down the amendment 8-16-1, and voted to fund the group $1200 17-8-1.

[Changing the Curriculum]

Justin Crowe visited from the college’s Committee on Education Policy to explain the focus of the committee this year. CEP is currently soliciting ideas for an overhaul of the Williams curriculum. If you’ve read any of the Record articles in the past week about this, you already know that something is brewing; if not, suffice it to say that one of President Shapiro’s visions for the Williams is that it needs to be on the edge of curriculum reform in America. Everything is on the table for dissection or enhancement; no idea is too radical. So get your ideas in to CEP by October 15^th, so that they can start working on these right away. To volunteer an idea, you may email Justin (03jec) or any member of CEP.

[Opinions@wso]

One complaint about Napster being too slow. Joe Masters (Secretary) explained that the reason why Napster and similar programs are still allowed on campus is because they’re low-priority; when they were given full reign, we had serious network problems. Also, we should be getting more bandwidth soon, so our ability to download Metallica drum solos should be enhanced.

One complaint about the library not being open late on Friday night. This will be forwarded to the head librarian.

One opinion from a person upset at Mayo and James Moorhead (Class of 2001) walking out of the last meeting in a failed filibuster attempt. Nishant and Mayo will both answer this.

One congratulations to council on the funding of the athletics and tournaments 1 subgroup.

[Open Time]

Terri O’Brien (Gladden) confronted council with the ugly fact that it is simultaneously in a budget crunch and doling out $3,465 this meeting. This is exactly what happened last year: the inability for council to say no. Laddie Peterson (Class of 2002) is frustrated with the maintenance fees for the Steel Orchestra. After funding them over $2,000 last year to buy the instruments, CC was not informed that they would require a $1300/year upkeep. She also feels that if a group offers to cut something from their budget, then we should cut it (as the real deal offered to trim some of its office supplies). Caleb Fassett (Currier/Fitch) thinks that we have already funded too much out of the general fund, beyond what Ryan had estimated spending for some of these groups. Joe objected to the idea that we need to force groups down to a zero-level of growth. Contrary to Terri’s claim, he believes that the main reason council was irresponsible in funding last year was due to the inaccurate financial reports it received from last year’s treasurer. Not only was there a failure to fund college council’s own services (the DA and the shuttle service, to name two), but at every meeting, regardless of how much money council had given out the previous week, the general fund would always have about $17,000 in it. Thus, CC was unable to make informed decisions about group spending. Joe concluded his diatribe by voicing his belief that CC is financially capable of sufficiently funding student groups at Williams. Justin Reliford (Armstrong) thinks that we have a responsibility to continue funding groups after we seed them, and that this should go for every new group we fund. Shenil Saya (At-Large) would prefer that large amounts of money, like the pan-tuning, not go to single events (the tuning will be done right before their first concert so that the concert will have the best sound possible).

Darah Schofield (Woodbridge/Bryant) volunteered a great idea to give groups more money while saving council some: if a group does a fundraising event, then council could match the money it raises (to a point). Nishant proposed that a special fund could be set aside out of the general fund for this specific purpose.

James is concerned that most student-faculty groups tend to meet from 4:00pm to 5:30pm, which automatically excludes any athletes on campus who have practice at that time. He feels that there is little effort on the part of the committees to reschedule meetings to times when athletes can attend, and believes that without this large segment of our population, the committees cannot be fully representative. Tim agrees wholeheartedly with James, but doesn’t think that professors should be forced to give up time in the evenings with their families just to meet this demand. Nishant mentioned that there is an attempt to create a block during the day when no classes or practices can be scheduled (say, 3pm to 4pm) when these committees could meet, and other student-faculty activities (like lectures) could take place.

Caleb requested that the college council listserver be open to all members of the campus who wish to know what issues are being discussed in the background. Many students are unable to attend meetings but still would like to know the full debates. Gus Howard (Dennett) would also like it open, because he wants people to read his opinions, and apparently the minutes frequently leave out his important points.

A short recap of alcohol issues: Mayo attended the last housing committee meeting, and reiterated that malt liquor in 40oz containers is not illegal, you just can’t register a party with them. However, you can apparently get up to 20 people and 23 bottles together for a small, private party.

James requested that at least half of the $29,000 infusion to CC be kept in the general fund, so that groups can see if they can operate with less money. Erin Troy (Garfield/Agard/Wood) disagreed, saying that the established groups within subgroups should be our first priority, because they have a greater claim on financial support than newer groups, who are still proving themselves. Ryan replied to both of these requests by announcing that a significant part of next week’s meeting will be spent discussing how to adequately appropriate this money, but that the current, prevalent idea is to divide roughly 50% among groups within subgroups (they will submit new budget requests to FinCom, which will make recommendations to council on how the money should be divided), and keep 50% in the general fund. If you have any suggestions on how this should be done, email Ryan at 01rfm.

Finally, Ryan wanted to clarify some of his remarks concerning the Newman Association’s budget. Last week he was quoted in the minutes as saying the main reason for the huge difference between Newman’s request ($11,700) and final budget ($3,700) was inflation. This should not be construed to mean that the association misrepresented their needs; in reality, it was what they felt was necessary for the service they provide to campus, and they may be back to council to ask for more money later this year.

[Notes from the Secretary]

CC Secretary

wso.williams.edu/cc