ASG General Meeting VI
Tuesday, 08 October 2013
Meeting Start: 8:02
Attendance
See Attendance document
Approval of Minutes
Miguel, Matt
Approved
Finance Report – Skylar Ray
→ Kevin Orr – Men's Lax, $837.43, tabled because of the $300 precedent
→ Bridgette McCauley. Ski and Snowboard Club, amount, reasons, was budgeted, approved
→ Ashley Hollenback, Food Rescue, $415 surplus, new food storage containers, approved
→ Hannah Russel, $3622, International Club Dinner, tabled
→ 90 tshirts, asked to reconsider
→ Idea of the Brooks swipe instead of the traditional payment
→ Pre-Dental, $451, Dental Admissions Test, approved
→ Senior Class, $100, October 18th
→ Class of 2016, Pumpkin Spice and Everything Nice, on Gator Quad, bonfire, open to everyone
Approval of Finance
→ Devin, Leanne
Ava
→ What's going on with WARC?
Skylar
→ After meeting with Gretchen, we're temporarily holding approval on their funding based on the
amount they've already spent
→ Gretchen will meet with their advisor to sort this out
Quinn
→ Is the $300 limit for new clubs a finance committee policy?
, just for seniors, purchase of bunny ears
Skylar
→ Yes
Passes
1. Rules – Aurora Arop
Bill Ross Meeting Update
→ Discussed policies involving the one-year policy requirement for club sports to become “official”
Pre-Health Meetings
→ Some minor issues
→ Kevin, Larry and Aurora met with KP to get on the same page and work out some issues
(scheduling, etc.)
Marlys
→ How was the discussion with the Allegheny Pre-Health representatives. You mentioned more issues
that haven't been worked out.
Aurora
→ I meant issues that we compromised on
→ All of the clubs were happy to compromise and make things work
→ Communication and lack of transparency
→ They are all going to meet once or twice a month
→ More focus
Marlys
→ Anything come up if somebody were to propose a new club?
Aurora
→ That's why we had that meeting
→ Talking with those students and seeing what can be done to accommodate
2. Garrett Devenney
October Energy Challenge
→ October Energy Challenge OFFICIALLY STARTED YESTERDAY
→ Already down by 6%
→ Please email your constituents!
→ Turn off what you don't need, unplug cords, etc.
→ Committee is working on preparing fliers and creating a list to send out for Fall Break prep when
students leave campus
Lee
→ How is that being advertised?
Garrett
→ All of the fliers were printed yesterday
→ Just hung that sign up there * points *
→ ES classes are doing things
Lance
→ The whole month?
Garrett
→ Yes, ends November 1
3. Student Affairs – Andre Green
Religious Life seeking students
→ Jane Ellen needs three students to participate in discussion about secularism on campus
→ Jake will forward this to everyone
→ Committee is meeting with Physical Plant 12:30 in Gold Room, tomorrow
4. Diversity Initiatives – Katie Beck
Allegheny Confessions
→ Had a lot of people show up at our discussion at GFC
→ It was a conversation that needed to happen
→ There are a lot of issues that reach beyond the Facebook page
→ There's a lot of work that still needs to be done
→ That page is a direct violation of our statement of community
→ Proposes an unmoderated caucus
Alexis → Moves for a 5minute unmoderated discussion
Leanne
Lee
→ What's an unmoderated caucus?
Kevin
→ It should be unmoderated, but we'll take everyone's name down
Katie
→ Focus: What can ASG do to reinforce the statement of community?
Passes
Alexis Nielson
→ This Facebook page is not just happening on the Internet; these are conversations that are a part od
our community
→ Conversations like that we had in GFC need to continue
→ This takes agency away from the hands of the
Marlys
→ Could you give me a specific example of what was said on the page that specifically violates our
statement of community?
Katie
→ Would prefer not to say it through the microphone
→
Marlys
→ Oh. * was confused *
Yemi
→ Will there be more conversations like this?
Katie
→ There are conversations happening put on by a lot of different organizations
→ Look at MyAllegheny, look at the CIASS
→ A lot of things are happening and everyone is invited to them
SJ
→ Are we able to shut it down?
Katie
→ We wanted to see what steps ASG could take
→ As a student organization, we cannot shut down the page
Yemi
→ We do need to take the Allegheny College name off of the page
SJ
→ Are we able to get people not anonymously post things about what they want to change?
→ We have Direct Representation, but is there anything else?
Grant Richman
→ AS a Student government, we have to consider that this might be fueling the fire
→ The people that post on this
→ They might be happy that
Katie
→ But are we supposed to ignore it?
Marlys
→ Do we know who does this?
→ They have to post which ones they want to post, so can't we just ask them?
→ GATORS NOT HATORS
Alexis
→ Fighting fire with fire and creating a Facebook group would not be productive
→ We shouldn't ignore it; students are feeling hurt and unsafe
→ Some of these are really triggering subjects for a lot of page
→ It's not that you can just not look in the page, because people are going around thinking all of these
things
SJ
→ Move to extend the caucus for 5 minutes
→ Miguel
Passes
Devon
→ Did anybody see the super creepy soundbyte?
→ If we keep trying to fight and destroy it, it's only going to be a bigger deal on campus
SJ
→ When I said a page, wanted to be more of a discussion on what ASG could do about it
→ It's a start on how we could field this in a more positive way
→ Some of these things could be constructive and go through the DR process (Brooks food, ie)
Andrew
→ How do you kill a snake? You cut off the head?
→ We all can agree
→ We need to find out who's doing thing this
→ But as soon as we catch who this is and punish them, we can fix the problem
Aurora
→ It's important to consider Katie's original suggestion
→ Please do that with your comment
Lee
→ First, to Andrew's point
→ Saying that we have to target one person is not a constructive solution because its not addressing the
community
→ Aurora, you said we want to find a solution, but that's also problematic because there's really no
easy goal
→ No language
→ Before we reach a solution, we have to know how to talk about it
→ There are a lot of discussions about this
→ ASG doesn't have a responsibility to provide more conversations
→ But we should be supporting them, because that shows how ASG cares
Brogan
→ We keep talking about the page and what we can do about the page, but the issue is what's being
said on the page
→ The conversation here is asking everyone is take steps
Leslie
→ Remove the Allegheny Confessions aspect from the conversation
→ The only resolution is to create more positive environments
→ It's easy to put yourself away from the situation
→ But you can have a conversation with anyone
Katie
→ Really appreciate all of the willing comments
→ Will be having meetings about the soundcloud, not because it's ASG-related, but because they're
trying to fight back
→ My wonderful committee is working on this too
Larry
→ If you have any questions, please go talk to Katie
President's Report – Kevin Crooks
Direct Representation Emails
→ Thanks for coming here and talking about these things!
→ There are some empty seats, want to press that it's not just my job or Jake's job to get all of the
senators here, but if you guys talk about attendance, that's helpful
→ There is an attendance policy, and some people have broken that
→ Just shoot them a text message if you notice an empty seat!
→ Some people aren't getting Direct Representation emails!
→ People want emails!
→ We should all be a little more open about our PR
→ That's something we all can work on
Joe DiChristina
→ Sunday night, a few administrators got together with a few people from ASG Cabinet to talk about
the Allegheny College Confessions
→ Appreciate the leadership about that forum
→ Along with that leadership comes with some tough decisions: is there something else that you
should do as a student government?
→ Here to get a sense of where students are on this
→ It's important to get a read of what students are saying about this
→ Of this opinion: The way to deal with negative speech is to keep asking people to have more
conversations
→ This can get repetitive, but you have to keep finding ways to engage people in dialogue
→ It's not reasonable to think that we can track somebody down and cut off the head of the snake
→ Instead: figure out how we're going to be civil
→ What does the statement of community mean, in terms of our values?
→ If there is a violation of college policy, CERTAINLY that is something administration can follow
up on
→ President Mullen supports ASG if they want to host something after break
→ It's not just ASG's presence, but the collective college's presence
→ Alexis is right: there are a lot of hurtful statements on there, and that makes it hard for people to
walk around on campus because they wonder if this is the right place for them
→ Administration will be there to support you guys and be at another forum if you host another forum
→ That's STRONG LEADERSHIP!
→ Any questions?
Quinn
→ You spoke about civility, and I think that that's the most likely thing, but when there are anonymous
posts going on, that can't be civil. If there's any way we can shut down the page and continue having
these discussions in a healthy way...
Joe Di
→ Sadly, SurveyMonkey and Facebook put out statements that allow people to be anonymous
→ So it's not something we can do
→ We've seen this in our society; the NSA peering into people's emails, etc
→ When you look at SurveyMonkey, they will protect people
→ Our IT department looked into that
→ At this point, it doesn't seem likely that we can do that
Nick Gordon (Constituent!)
→ You talked about legal action that this school can take
→ A lot of schools have subpoenaed courts
→ Is Allegheny College incapable of doing that, or do you say that we shouldn't do that?
Joe Di
→ We're saying that what's going on is something that we can't shut down
→ If there was a true nasty threat targeting a person, Facebook should step forward and handle that
→ It's not about money; it's about how can we, as an institution, create something that's positive, and
how can we drown out these negative environments?
→ Five years ago it was juicycampus, and we did the same thing back then
Nick
→ You said that Facebook and SurveyMonkey cannot
→ The first page was shut down because of the Facebook Terms of Use
Joe Di
→ Facebook did that, not me
Nick
→ But people must request for that to happen
→ For example, the Allegheny College name and logo are our property
Lee
→ Wanted to challenge what was said about being anonymous
→ If they aren't anonymous anymore, we can look at them and say this person is the problem; these
people and their names are the problem
→ Instead, it's the big community that creating these people that's the problem
→ Another problem when looking at anonymous comments is that you don't know how to see
→ For example, the Greek Life Forum: you have preconceived notions and political biases
→ But you can't just do that!
→ Sometimes I just wasn't sure what to feel when looking at the Facebook page
→ Targeting people? Sure. Go ahead.
→ Targeting people and saying “you're the problem” isn't going to solve anything
→ Talk about community
Kevin
→ This is really great, but we're in the President's Report right now
Vice President's Report – Larry Hailsham
→ If you have any more questions, please feel free to stay after the meeting
→ It's important that we stay active and pay attention at these meetings
→ Please try to stay engaged and pay attention to what's going on
→ Also, please try to take these conversations outside of campus
Class Reports
None
Constituent Comments
Nick Gordon
→ An invitation!
→ Sunday, October 22nd
bible which are used to demonize the LGBTQ community
→ So we're having a community forum
→ Called All means All
Unfinished Business
None
New Business
None
Announcements
None
Motion to Close
Shep, Doranny
Passes
Meeting End: 8:52
, the Chapel and Q&A are hosting a talk about the sermons and passages in the
