Shortest Meeting Ever.

College Council Minutes for 10/25/00

[welcome]

Todd Rogers (Co-President) welcomed the five new first-year members of council to the shortest meeting in college council history: Matt Dahlman (Fay/East), Ari Kessler (Morgan/Lehman), Tim Patterson (Frosh Council), Federico Sosa Otero (Williams), and Sophie Hood (Sage). Todd also announced that MinCo approved the Intergroup fund on Monday.

[committee and group updates]

Dan Elsea (Mark Hopkins) reported that the Committee on Diversity and Community (CDC) has split into two groups: one on student life and one on curricular issues. The former is looking at harassment-type issues and will be considering what the role of the college should be in student conduct and behavior. The curricular subcommittee is working with the Committee on Educational Policy (CEP) and investigating whether the Williams curriculum represents the diversity of the world. If you have any questions for Dan, email 02dfe.

Mayo Shattuck (Class of 2003) reported from the Committee on Priorities and Resources, which, unsurprisingly, makes recommendations to the college on capital improvements. Several recent issues before the committee have been the Sand Springs Pool and the Performing Arts Center. Tim Karpoff (Co-Op) asked what CPR’s decision on the Sand Springs pool was. (Faculty like to bring their children there during the summer, because there’s not exactly a lot to do in Williamstown. So the question was whether or not the college should buy it for the faculty.) Mayo replied that because the committee frequently disagrees about decisions, their recommendation was both to not buy, and not to not buy. If you have any questions for CPR, you can email Mayo at 03mas_2.

[funding]

Ryan Mayhew (Treasurer) updated council on remaining funds: $31,112.47 in the general fund (with $12,693 allocated for the rest of the fall semester), $5,250 in the nationals fund, $1,750 in the Intergroup Fund, and $15,091.91 in the group contingency fund (for established groups who may need money later in the semester).

[calendar and scheduling appointments]

Ami Parekh (Co-President) asked for college council representatives to the Calendar and Scheduling Committee, which has considered such issues as the division of day (do we really need a 4-6 block with no classes? What about a 3-4 block for lectures?), the necessity of winter study, the efficiency of Fall Reading period (since many midterms are scheduled before it), and whether we should have 7:30am classes (the student members on the committee two years ago blocked this). This year will be an especially important year because of the new strategic planning goals. Ari and Kate DeLuca (Tyler) volunteered to be on the committee, so if you have any suggestions concerning the above issues, email 04ask_3 or 03krd.

[opinions]

Mayo was again graced with many opinions:

The Lasell Clock is 7 minutes ahead of time. Which is annoying, because it rings 4 times an hour. Tim Patterson (04tcp) offered to deal with this.

Currier Clubs – where are they? Is it true that there are going to be less this year? Erin Sullivan (SAC) answered, after the meeting, that the main obstacle to holding Currier Club has been a scheduling one. They had originally planned the first one on Friday the 13^th, but because the Queer Bash was held that night, SAC had to push it back. The first free weekend after the 13^th is the weekend of November 10-11, and SAC will be Dancing at Dodd then (same idea as Currier Club).

A student was upset about an ad endorsing Ralph Nader in the DA several days ago. Joe Masters (Secretary, 02jtm) responded that the DA is fair game for political discourse, and anyone could place an ad for a particular candidate in it, provided they pay the $1/day fee.

There were several complaints about the Goodrich coffee bar. Apparently there isn’t any butter or other appropriate bagel toppings (other than cream cheese), and the orange juice is frequently out of stock. This was forwarded to the CC rep to Goodrich, Chris Koegel (01cbk)

Another particularly profane complaint about the extremely loud slamming door in Goodrich was also forwarded to Chris.

Someone requested more water fountains in the weight room because the current one is blocked by equipment. After one suggestion that perhaps we should just move the equipment, the opinion was sent to Fletcher Brooks and Ash Bradly (03ajb).

Phone solicitors are calling students again. Ezra Goldschläger (03eeg) took it, explaining that when solicitors call, you need to say “Put me on your do-not-call list,” otherwise they’ll just take you off their “do-not-call-back-in-6-hours list.”

There were two complaints about the way voting was done at CC last week, accusing CC members of voting in self-interest. Mayo responded: “Of course we did,” and will respond to the opinion. Tracy Cheung (Pratt) asked if the vote could be put to all of the campus instead of just to council. Nishant Nayyar (At-Large) explained that if an open forum is announced to the campus two weeks in advance, if 250 students vote in favor of the proposal, they could overturn the vote. However, council is then allowed to reaffirm their position, and can do so with a two-thirds majority. Finally, the student body can override that with another forum with 1000 students voting against council.

There were also several opinions upset with the final decision against the Thompson parking proposal, and two in favor of the final decision.

[open time]

Nishant announced that there will be a student on the Admissions Director Search Committee. Shenil Saya (At-Large) encouraged everyone to nominate themselves. It will work this way: the Appointments Committee (the seven college council campus representatives) will selects five students and forward them to the search committee, which will then select two of those. The students on the committee will have full voting ability. It will start in November, but most of the work will be through next semester. There will be an all-campus email about this, so watch your inbox.

Joe updated council on the status of two of his projects, the faculty facebook and public printers. The faculty facebook will be going online, hopefully at the beginning of second semester, and the printed facebook will not be printed anymore (but there is a run planned for this year). The public printers for Dodd and Greylock are sitting in Jesup and waiting for network jacks to be installed. The Greylock printer will be in the basement of Mark Hopkins A, and the Dodd printer will be in the custodial area in the basement. Mayo asked whom students should about getting paper in the printers (the mission printer is always out). Joe replied that it’s the area managers’ responsibility to keep the printers full of paper and toner. Just call your area manager and let him or her know that it’s out.

Nishant asked why JOSE wasn’t used to elect the frosh reps this year. He was concerned that some students who ran were also counting the votes. Apparently they decided to use a ballot because (a) first-years may find JOSE a too-confusing system to use and (b) they were able to get around a 90% turnout by having voting by ballot at snacks. (For reference, last year’s first-year turnout for college council reps was around 50-60% using JOSE).

Federico would like to see more washing machines in Williams because the ones currently there are always in use. Rob Sica (At-Large) replied that an outside company, MacGray, maintains the machines and you need to call their 800 number (listed somewhere in your laundry room) and/or Tom McEvoy to have them consider installing more machines.

Gideon Lee (MinCo) asked why copy machines cost money, but printers are free. Todd replied that printers are only free because there’s really no way to charge for using them. Matt Wessler (Off-Campus) added that there has been a plan in the works for a couple years now to limit the amount of printing per student (because we waste so much paper), but it hasn’t been put into effect yet (possibly because there’s no way to really implement it).

Finally, Gus Howard (Dennett) concluded the meeting with an informational warning. Students who are stealing the eight balls from pool tables around campus should beware: You think they cause good luck, but really, they cause baldness and impotence.

[notes]

Finally, a set of minutes that you can read in one sitting. I promise to produce another mammoth, no-spaced, no-margined double-sided piece of legal paper for next week, but for a meeting that lasted less than forty-five minutes, this is as verbose as I can be.

Joe Masters

CC Secretary

wso.williams.edu/cc