~ CC tightens purse strings, discusses controversial groups ~

college council minutes

october 10, 2001

~ opening ~

sarah (co-pres) then took over and reminded everyone that the gym hours are extended for the fall semester; every tuesday, thursday, and sunday, the gym is open until 11 pm. please make use of those hours, lest they disappear!

joe then urged CC representatives to bring to the attention of their constituents the recent vote taken by the NESCAC presidents reaffirming their allegiance to each other and to the league’s original mission statement. one of the effects of this recent vote is that, among other things, it takes a step toward drastically changing the athletic recruiting procedures that are allowed at all of the member institutions. if you have a stance on this, please e-mail opinions@wso.williams.edu

joe, as mandated by our bylaws, then proceeded to conduct a 20 minute review of CC’s constitution and bylaws, with sarah performing the all-important role of scrolling through the constitution as we covered it. basically, this session was pretty boring (unless you’re into that sort of thing) and is mostly only necessary for CC members to know so that our meetings can be run efficiently. so, if you don’t mind, i'd rather not relive that experience by writing all about it.

josh frankel ‘02, rory kramer ‘03, and ian young ‘03 came to CC on behalf of sol ka fe to inform CC of their plans to sponsor a joint concert with students at MCLA on saturday, december 1^st. there would be about an hour of student performances, followed by two hours or so of hip hop acts. josh mentioned that as a joint activity with our neighboring school, this has the potential to be a really cool event. sol ka fe will be coming next week to officially request the money (probably approx. $3500) but they simply wanted to get CC thinking about it.

charlie davidson (dennett) said that he is still working on the movement to reinstitute drinking games, and that anyone who wants to help should contact him. sarah advised (she’s so smart) that maybe the person who actually meets with dean roseman about this actually be 21 years old.

mark rosenthal (class of ‘03) brought before council what has been a long-standing concern regarding student-faculty committees. one of his frosh was recently elected to the committee on undergraduate life (CUL) which meets between 4 and 6 pm. this particular student, however, is also a member of the football team, and cannot attend meetings during that time. he hopes that CC might come up with a way to reconcile this conflict of interest. will allen (all-campus) added that the housing committee also just appointed their representative to CUL, elliot morrison ‘04.

federico sosa (class of ‘04) reiterated his complaint with WSO and the broken computer terminals all over campus. in response to the many complaints, joe presented a statement on behalf of WSO that essentially states why members of WSO cannot respond immediately to each complaint that is filed, as they are volunteer students, not paid employees. it also suggests that anyone who is interested in joining WSO is welcome, and that offering to help is more productive that offering criticism.

charlie asked about the status of the purple bike project. jon wiener, who happened to be subbing for garry sanders (all-campus), provided an update: they have received funding to employ mechanics to work in the lock shop and they might have a few bikes up and running in the near future. if you would like to donate a bike to the purple bike project, contact jon or sarah barger (who desperately needs a bike so she can stop damaging the environment by driving all over campus).

caroline messmer (class of ‘02) presented the opinions for the week. she received two opinions against entering an exclusive deal with milestone traditions, and one for it. tom cubeta (carter) suggested that one future avenue might be to form an ad-hoc "ring advisory committee" to investigate milestone’s offer.

~ council business ~

josh burns (SAC president) came before CC to request $5,320 for an additional concert to be co-sponsored with WCFM. the concert would feature DJ logic and the logic project and would take place in goodrich on the last day of classes - december 7^th (yours truly also FINALLY turns 21 that day; my SU box is 2521 if you want to send presents).

mayo shattuck (gladden) asked why this concert doesn’t fit into SAC’s original budget allocation. burns replied by saying that this is an additional concert that was not originally planned in SAC’s budget, and that SAC is not going to make the same overspending mistakes as last year. fede asked burns if SAC had gone to the dean’s office to request funding. josh replied that he has considered that, but would like to secure whatever funding he can from CC before resorting to other options.

at this point, ching ho (all-campus) moved to fund SAC the full amount. charlie advocated for SAC, saying that CC should do its part to promote the social scene on campus, which is currently in a precarious position. hall o’donnell (tyler/annex) said that he is in favor of the concert, but not in favor of funding SAC the money. he pointed out that they still have $10,000 of undesignated money in their budget that they can use. laddie peterson (sub for jenny veraldi; co-op) replied that much of that money is used for co-sponsoring events with other groups.

JP (treasurer) said that he feels the request is "absolutely ridiculous". CC only has ~$30,000 left in its general fund budget for the rest of the year. meanwhile, SAC was allocated $92,000 and WCFM was allotted $15,000. in effect, SAC is requesting over 20% of our remaining budget. ching cautioned, however, that CC that we must look at SAC’s $92,000 in context. they co-sponsor events with other groups, and if we don’t give them this money, it will come back around to us in the future. tom moved to table the motion to fund SAC, reasoning that they have a lot of time to receive this funding. this failed 3-25-1 (2).

shehryar qureshi (dodd complex) moved to amend the motion to fund SAC $500 as a symbol of CC’s good faith. steve floyd (all-campus) moved to increase that amount to $3000, since $500 is virtually useless. both the proposal to increase from $500 to $3000 and the motion made by shehryar to fund SAC $500 failed by votes of 12-18-0 (3) and 8-17-1 (4), respectively. we then voted on SAC’s original request for $5,320 which also failed by a 7-22-1 (5) vote, and SAC did not get funded the money for the concert on december 7^th.

~ unfinished business ~

the bylaw change proposes to clarify that quorum for each CC vote be determined by the presence of 2/3 of the total number of CC representatives at the time of the vote. to avoid any possible confusion, the bylaw change was accepted by a 21-3-4 (7) vote. thus, CC votes are only valid if 2/3 of the representatives are present.

at this point, we returned to another topic of discussion from last week — how CC should deal with controversial groups on campus. at the last meeting, JP proposed a series of changes to the bylaws that would help to determine future CC actions regarding this topic. first of all, CC would not be allowed to "de-recognize" a group upon any grounds. instead, CC could remove a group from the funding process if and only if the following set of four conditions were met — 1) the group has received a vote of censure from CC (within the past four years), 2) 1/3 of the student body has petitioned CC for the removal of the group, 3) CC has voted by a 3/4 majority to remove the group, and 4) that no more than 180 days has passed between 1) and 3).

craig started off by saying that he is not comfortable with having such a strict set of guidelines and being forced to abide by those guidelines. joe agreed, saying that CC should retain the ability to remove a group from a subgroup without a petition from the student body. in accordance with these sentiments, JP moved to strike out the second condition, which required a petition of 1/3 of the student body. CC voted affirmatively, 20-4-2 (8).

hall then moved to reduce the 180 days in the fourth condition to 60 days, which passed by a 24-3-0 (9) vote. this was followed by a rather confusing series of amendments and votes (9, 10, 11). in order to save you (and myself) from that confusion, all that needs to be said is that the fourth and final condition of the proposal was amended so that it requires the passage of 60 days or 2 CC meetings, whichever is the greater amount of time, between steps 1) and 3). CC voted to approve this change to the proposal 21-5-2 (12).

JP, always vigilant about not letting CC meetings drag on for too long, moved to postpone this until next meeting. this passed by the slimmest of margins — 14-13-1 (13) — and will come up again at next week’s meeting.

~ new business ~

hall proposed that we strike from the attendance the line which requires that CC members be at the entire meeting or they will be counted as absent. he argues that CC members also have other things to do and that it’s unrealistic for us to expect everyone to be at every meeting in its entirety. other CC members contended, though, that reps should be held to the highest level of accountability, which includes staying for the entire meeting. the proposal failed, 2-22-3 (14).

JP moved to add to the bylaws a clause the requires any substitute to CC meetings to be a student currently enrolled in classes at williams. this is the only way, he argued, to guarantee that everyone at the meeting is directly affected by CC decisions. a few CC members spoke against the motion, saying that there are exceptions where it would make sense to let a student not currently enrolled (but perhaps taking a year off and planning on re-enrolling) to act as substitutes. michael henry (mills/thompson) formalized this by proposing an amendment to the motion to include students "taking a year off from williams with the intent to re-enroll" as eligible substitutes to CC meetings. this amendment failed, however, 2-22-3 (15). finally, CC voted to pass the original bylaw limiting eligible subs to currently enrolled williams students, 18-7-2 (16).

respectfully submitted,

craig tamamoto, CC secretary

02cat@williams.edu

~ absences ~

zach kung (fitch/currier)