Student Assembly

MINUTES
Cornell University Student Assembly
December 3, 2010
4:45pm — 7:00pm
McGraw Hall, Room 125

I. Call to Order

V. Andrews called the meeting to order at 4:51pm.

II. Roll Call

Members Present: S. Agard, V. Andrews, A. Bajaj, G. Block, A. Brokman, M. Danzer, R. Desai, C. Feng, A. Gitlin, M. Gulrajani, C. Jenkins, J. Kay, D. Kuhr, T. Lenardo, R. Mensah, A. Nicoletti, A. Pruce, N. Raps, J. Rau, U. Smith, A. Yozwiak

Members Absent: M. Finn, S. Pendleton

III. Open Microphone — Ray Mensah

The Outdoor Education Open Climb Day is Monday at 2pm in Barton.

A. Gitlin is going to send out attendance and the policies regarding it.

U. Smith sent an email about the leadership meeting diversity in AAP. The leadership meeting is Sunday the fifth and welcome reception on the eighth from 2–3 in Sibley, tentatively.

R. Mensah closed open microphone.

IV. Announcements/Reports

1. OSC, Class Councils, and Alternative Breaks Reports — Adam Nicoletti

There were 3 reports here, Alternative Breaks was approved as byline funded last year for the first year, and they have been doing a terrific job. Class Councils was heard Monday. They have been improving but are looking for larger scale events. The OSC talked about January orientation, working with transfer orientation, and they are confident the OSC is under good management

Some special projects need to come to the SA. It needs 2/3 to vote down The first is $1300.50 for book from yesterday. Then, there was a $600 SAORC increased budget because their meetings run long, for food. They will bring that up at first SA meeting next semester, will require 2/3 to overturn.

2. SA Judicial Board Ad-hoc Committee Report (4:55pm — 5:15pm)

R. Mensah said that they have met and have report but due to time, he’ll email the presentation out within the next hour to look at over break and if you have questions, ask him or Pruce or Block or Brokman. They will try to formally present at first meeting next semester.

3. SAFC ad-hoc review

For funding, they met and finally finished recommendations. V. Andrews just emailed the long summary which is comprehensive. If you didn’t read the newsletter piece, what they’re proposing to write is that groups will now be able to submit missing documentation at their hearing and the SAFC will have to let them know before the hearing. And that will hopefully complete funding. No longer only 1 funding cycle per semester. There will be 2. The caveat is that a group can only apply once in the semester for funding. Will now be moving toward year long budgets and if you request money in the fall and don’t spend all that money, it’ll roll over into the spring. That allows the office not to have to close all the accounts and then re-open them. There is a lot less busywork ad administrative work for the office and allows the groups to plan on a more long term process. There would be the same funding period in the spring. Caps will be determined on a year-long level. The full report will be emailed to the SA list-serve. They are pushing to different organizations, the dean of students, and independent student organizations after they’ve finished their spring budgets so they’re not confused.

V. Business of the Day

1. Resolution 48 — SAFC Guideline Changes

These have to be passed this semester if we want them to come into effect. The changes are being proposed to us from the commission.

There are seven changes. None are monumental. The first is addressing the issue from lack of logo. Lauren said that it has been an unwritten rule just made official now. Dan said that the second is prohibiting a few more expenses that are personal items. 3 is saying they can apply for a repair on durable goods bought in the past. 4 is saying that we don’t fund retreats and won’t pay for parking/subway/fees for travel once they are in the destination city. 5 is need documentation for airfare/busfare. 6 creates a new minimum for copies of a publication (100 is a reasonable number to get out to student body). 7 is procedural for budget hearings to say they can’t get there later than 10 minutes post the hearing. Lauren explained that the 10 minutes is there because they wanted a quantification that is in there so people won’t squabble.

M. Danzer asked if groups have been requesting the prohibited stuff and what purpose have they justified it Lauren explained that they have, but with no real justification. They think if a good is essential to the purpose, they can make the argument and it’ll go through M. Danzer said that beyond the changes, for next semester they included all byline funding orgs to include a nondiscrimination clause, is SAFC looking to do that? Lauren said that in order to get funded you have to adhere to the code of ethics which says you can’t discriminate. But they can make explicit.

A. Bajaj asked how exceptions work. Dan said that he thinks a lot of it was while that’s their purpose, you can make any club with any purpose. A lot are for personal use. This is an indirect way of mandating consumer electronics.

A. Nicoletti said that the pressure is put on the group to provide parking. He moved to strike travel expenses up to parking fees. D. Kuhr agreed. It places undue burdens on students. Lauren said that one way to try to solve differing opinions is to put a cap on the money allowed for parking on a daily basis because they want to make sure money is being spent economically. That would be a better way of spending student money.

A. Pruce agrees with the idea of capping it. He asked what a fair cap would be. Lauren was not sure. They usually don’t get too many requests about it in general but it came out this year. A. Pruce said if there are few groups abusing it, putting a cap wouldn’t make much of a difference Lauren said it is important to put something in the guidelines about it because we don’t know whether we’re allowed to fund it if it’s not in the guidelines.

R. Desai said that something to take a look would be breaking down travel more. He called to question and seconded. By a vote of 7–7−4, V. Andrews weighed in to break the tie and voted to reject the amendment.

R. Mensah was concerned with the last change. He was curious to know if every group has a budget hearing, if so why should they have their allocation knocked down just for not coming if all of their forms are in order. Lauren replied that groups over 500 are ALLOWED to sign up for a time if they want. They are allowed to cancel it up to one day before their hearing. Other than that, expect them to be there because it’s been in the guidelines for years to get a 10% reduction. The only real change is quantifying what late means. R. Mensah would like to make an amendment to change ten minutes to 20 minutes simply because ten minutes isn’t adequate time if you’re not there to lose 10% of budget. Lauren replied that each budget hearing is 15 minutes long, so if they’re 20 minutes late, it backs up everyone who is supposed to be at the table so there is an issue with making it 20 minutes. Dan said that coming so late is like they never come. Lauren replied that if they’re a few minutes late, they try to accommodate them and if they’ve missed their slot, they allow them to wait till the end. R. Mensah withdrew the amendment.

S. Agard asked if a URL counted for change one. Dan replied that it did.

D. Kuhr asked if emails count as validation. They do.

R. Desai called to question. It was seconded. There was dissent.

The call to question has been withdrawn.

A. Pruce was concerned with change number two. It became an issue with appropriations committee over whether a membership to a tennis center is a durable good. He moved to amend that membership fees not count under durable goods saying, “ A membership of any kind would not be included in a durable goods list but would be in local events.”

A. Nicoletti noted that if new SAFC procedure does come into effect, a commissioner could say let’s just move it and you wouldn’t have to put it in the guidelines.

R. Desai said that while this is a good idea in principle, he’s against it. He had a group apply and looked at it and said it would be fine. It was a four minute discussion in appropriations. Throwing it in might cause more confusion. He called to question. It was seconded. There was dissent. The vote went through. By a vote of 5–8−5, the amendment fails.

C. Jenkins said that for the first change in documentation, it says they send you a word document of the quote, would you print out the email confirmation or the doc itself. Dan said anything that proves that they didn’t write it themselves. C. Jenkins called to question. There was dissent. The motion was withdrawn.

R. Mensah said that while taking away the clause, it’s a good thing to have. Parking fees are expensive and does think that it is an essential part of a trip. His amendment is to take away “and parking fees.”

M. Danzer doesn’t agree with it just because if you’re going to a city to do an event, don’t think the student body should pick up every piece of that tab. He called to question. It was seconded. There was dissent. By a vote to vote of 10–8, it didn’t get 2/3 to vote.

M Gulrajani said that they put thought into rules and deal with it hands on. He recommended you vote in favor of what they proposed. R. Mensah already heard that they don’t see many cases where it comes up. He doesn’t want this to be an unlimited fee.

D. Kuhr said that it doesn’t happen enough where it needs to be blocked.

A. Bajaj agreed that they should respect them and want a cap. In the interim strike it and come back with a cap on the next funding. Cycle. There was a call to question. It was seconded. By a vote of 11–7−1, the amendment passes.

There was a call to question on the entire resolution. It was seconded. There was dissent. The vote to vote was 13–5. By a vote of 19–0−1, the resolution passed.

2. Resolution 49 — SAFC New Commissioners

Lauren said that they decided to have five people join the commission. Yes there is a big commission but they wanted to continue recruitment efforts because of abroad people and second semester seniors. Second part is e-board elections and current e-board except one co-chair expires so they need to replace them.

V. Andrews had serious issues because the amount of DSP representation on the commission. Next time 3/5 of the e-board members are. Proposed 3/5 new members to commission are DSP members. And including graduation of the seniors and the trend continues, soon 50% of commission will be DSP Lauren said that a vast amount of people who are in the commission joined DSP after joining SAFC. V. Andrews said that this represented issues with recruitment process of new commissioners and having so many be in one organization that it may lead to bias. Since SAFC is a committee of SA, it should have more of a representation of larger student body. He asked them to look into it.

Kevin was recently elected. A bunch of internal improvements to process in motion so there is a structured, objective and fair recruitment to pick the best candidates for the job. Right now it is DSP heavy but doesn’t affect the quality of the work done or lead to subjectivity. That happens naturally and can attest to DSP being all decent people. There are a lot of different other organizations represented within SAFC. Around 75% of people are in organizations. That gravitates toward each other because they’re interested in finance. It is unfair to penalize people for being motivated.

M. Danzer asked if SAFC funds DSP. Lauren said that yes, but they do have to sign a document saying they will be ethical when assessing budgets and DSP members are not allowed to review DSP budget. M. Danzer asked if they are all qualified. Yes.

R. Desai said that they have spoken about it and hopes no one here is accusing SAFC or DSP of getting money unethically. Appropriations reviews SA budget. They’re always going to see overlaps. They have to trust that student leaders will be ethical. His concern is that students who aren’t in DSP won’t have equal opportunity to join the commission. SAFC recognizes and are willing to look at it. He urged not to reject recommendations. Giving them less commissioners and not a full e-board will be very detrimental to the entire funding process. They should let them deal with it. He called to question. It was seconded.

By a vote of 19–0−0, it was approved.

There was a break to reconvene at 6:05.

VI. Unfinished Business

1. Election rules

A. Gitlin said that ticketing makes more things more political.

U. Smith agrees with Gitlin. The ticketing system is awful. People should run on their own merits. Especially going to constituencies you would not normally. Run on your own merits. He motioned to strike everything to do with ticketing.

V. Andrews explained exactly where the resolution would be changed. It removes the ticketing process and is similar to last year’s except they can now challenge a candidate, no more regulation on electronic communication except for the university regulations.

M. Danzer said that a lot of the critique is that it forces people to reach out, force to run with people representing other communities and doesn’t think that’s a problem. Creates coalition building. It fosters one Cornell, greater sense of community. Political, using some community we don’t belong to win, but is a way of making sure people are reaching out to other communities and not relying on their base. Doesn’t think it’s bad to have. Would be a healthy addition to the SA.

C. Feng was talking with Adam and wasn’t sure if it was unclear. There will be a designation that people are ON a ticket but there is no rule to make a person vote for the entire ticket.

There was discussion in favor of and speaking against ticketing.

S. Agard said that using someone to get into student government has happened and afterwards, it was shown that the person was not committed and not there. He called to question. It was seconded. There was dissent. The motion was withdrawn.

There was more discussion on pros and cons of slating, ticketing, as well as the amendment itself.

There was a vote on Vince’s amendment. It would need 2/3 vote of the people voting yes or no. By a vote of 13–4−3 Ray says no to break the vote. Vince motioned to re-vote. There was a second. There was dissent. It was noted that 13–5 is still greater than 2/3.

There was a bote of no confidence in the chair. It was seconded. It did not pass by a vote of 9–6−4 because it doesn’t have 2/3 of the people. M. Danzer motioned to overrule the chair. By a vote of 15–1−3, the motion passes, therefore the amendment passes. V. Andrews takes the chair back.

M. Danzer motioned to amend article 1, section A, part 1, eligibility to include a clause c with new numbers for validation. He proposed At Large obtain 60, arts and sciences obtain 50, CALS and Engineering obtain 40; ILR, Hotel, AAP, and Human Ecology obtain 30.

A. Yozwiak said that the Elections Committee discussed this and it was decided that the status quo was okay because it was a minimum hurdle. He likes the idea of it being proportional. Perhaps 50 votes per student OR 5% of your college in order to give the smaller schools the chance.

U. Smith said that it is very difficult to reach the 50 signature mark particularly when CRP’s class ranges from 15–20 people per year. It is difficult to reach the architects and artists. Thinks it’s fair to allocate number of signatures in a tiered way.

S. Agard agrees and disagrees. For the Hotel school, he was able to get his 50 easily.

D. Kuhr said it really depends on the structure of your college. Humand Ecology is hard because you’re interspersed with Arts and CALS people so even though Human Ecology is bigger, it’s harder. S. Agard said that it forces you to meet your constituencies.

J. Kay wanted to echo what Savion said. Regardless, they need to make the effort. She thinks it reflects your motivation and doesn’t think the difference is unreasonable. M. Danzer said there is a difference is when it comes to at large, it makes it really easy providing a disincentive to represent schools.

C. Jenkins said that in the Hotel School, he could reach 50 people in the college. He thinks the college reps should choose.

J.Kay made an amendment to change at large to 100, all colleges to 50.

U. Smith agrees with Pruce. He likes at large at 100, but 50 for each of the colleges isn’t right. If you’re going to do it like this, needs to have it tiered.

A. Pruce said that a percent breakdown would give smaller colleges less, and bump up arts. J. Kay changes her amendment to 100 at large, 75 arts, 50 for rest. D. Kuhr still thought it was not fair that way. Need tiered.

A. Bajaj was fine with 75 for arts. Having an entire college only have 1 person who seeks to represent them is a problem. Understand that people should be motivated, but at the same time, have to recognize that he was trying hard and was barely able. He moved to amend J. Kay’s motion for moving back.

A. Nicoletti suggested 5% or 50, whichever is less, and keeping at-large at 100.

This would put ILR at 40, AAP at 26, Hotel at 43, HumEc, Engineering, CALS, and Arts at 50 By a vote of 11–4, they adopted the 5% rule. For at large, the options were 100, 60, or 50. 100 passed with 14 people in favor. There was a motion for Arts to be either upped to 100 or 75, or kept at 50. By a vote of 10–4, Arts was voted to move to 75.

R. Desai called the entire resolution to question. It was seconded. By a vote of 17–0−0, the amendment passed.

VII. Adjournment

There was a motion to adjourn. The meeting was adjourned at 7:38pm.

Respectfully Submitted,

Brittany Rosen