Cabinet Meeting XIV

Thursday, 21 November 2013

Meeting Start: 12:36

 

Attendance: Kevin Crooks, Larry Hailsham, Brogan McGowan, Grace Flowers, Skylar Ray, Garrett Devenney, Austin Cosgrove, Sloane Prince, Katie Beck

 

Constituents: Eric Chang

 

Kevin

Met with President Mullen and Gilly (?) yesterday morning

Next semester, going to have a meeting in Tippie with AEC

Main reason for meeting: increase communication between us, AEC, and Trustees

Will be continued with a series of presentations from them

Instead of just Kevin and Larry going, groups will be proposed and students from all-college committees

For more transparency, they will give us more minutes and agenda, and they'll get more ASG stuff

Sloane will work on a more comprehensive minutes listing

 

Looking forward a few weeks, we meet on Monday

Doing a team-building, opening-up activities

December 2nd, meeting to plan our December 3rd meeting

→ Jacquie is coming on

→ Student Reps from the Curriculum Committee and Academic Standards and Awards Committee

(Curriculum Committee is proposing that we get rid of distribution and replace them with a set of more intentional requirements)

(ASAC is going to bring some changes to the add/drop period)

 

Because of these things, I'm thinking of changing the room for that meeting

A square? Hang out nametags at the door, allow people to sit wherever

Give me some suggestions!

 

Since we only have a few more meetings, we need to stay focused

Cabinet on the 5th, Formal over the meeting, Final meeting on the 10th

 

Katie

Are we going to have a brainstorming session on Monday?

Bylaws → I don't have anything from my committee, and I'm a bit ignorant and confused about the whole thing

 

Kevin

We're updating bylaws, since they're a bit outdated, and we're adding Katie's committee

There was a document last semester; we'll try to get that

Look at the duties of the other members on Cabinet

 

Brogan

Wouldn't it need to have ASG Senators?

Larry

It would depend on how you write it

 

Kevin

Every standing committee does not have to a representative from each class

Unless you put something in there requiring senators, they don't need to be there

Some changes from last year: PR had 2, now it has one; EA had 1, now it has 2, etc.

 

With the newly passed commitment, we need to

1. Decide how to publicize and inform clubs

2. How we'll go about the constitutional changes

3. Follow-up from the clubs and the trainings, and the money

 

Katie

We could outline a step-by-step process

These things would go through the DIC, and we would keep track

Could we utilize PR for these things?

(Sloane nods)

 

Kevin

My clarification question is: they put it in their constitutions and then they go to the trainings?

 

Larry

I think it would be easier to have them add it to their constitution with the full intention that everyone on their Exec board commit to going through these things

 

- Some discussion on the timing -

 

Kevin

Just the wording says that all exec board members must go through it

 

Jake

But there's no termination period. We would need to set one

 

Katie

SET has something like that in their constitution, but it says by the 3rd general meeting

 

Larry

Somebody will have to start going through a step-by-step process for this

 

Kevin

Do you want to start the process next semester?

 

Katie

For Spring 2014

 

Kevin

So we would start it in the Spring, and clarify it differently for the years to come

We could even have an information session on it

I would like us to have those guidelines and start implementing those next semester

 

Katie

I can send you those

 

Kevin

Reflections on the meeting on Tuesday

 

Eric Chang

I talked to a couple of my senators after the meeting, and we all throught that meeting was very tense, and we thought that last vote was very pressured

I feel like that comment that Paige made pushed a lot of people's votes

 

Larry

Something that happened was that people took pictures of the vote

It could be documentation for the entire meeting, or it could

 

Brogan

I understand that the presence of 65 people is

But what is your impression, as a representative, as to what would happen if one of your constituents came up to do

 

Eric

I want to know their reasoning first, and then I would take that into consideration between my own feelings towards the bill

 

Brogan

But as a senator, you're supposed to serve as a neutral base

Why did you feel that you had to be swayed? Why did your personal opinion get in the way of that?

Why do you think that their presence was a negative thing

 

Larry

The main point of this was not

It's every senator's job to approach things with a level head and with an open vote

But at the end of the day, we can't control the way people vote

They just need to understand the way they vote should be representative of the people they talk to

 

Eric Chang

Maybe I should just go in with a more neutral thing, but maybe I should put a heavier weight on my constituent's opinions

But who can say they're going to be 100% neutral

When I talked to people who wanted to know more about the initiative, they were agreeing with what I was saying before I even mentioned my thoughts

 

Grace Flowers

If he got that opinion from people on campus and that opinion was swayed by those constituents, that could be an intimidating problem, and that should be addressed

 

Brogan

I guess that what I'm asking is, that, as a voter, what would you change to make you feel more comfortable?

 

Eric

What would be the possibility of doing the vote like a secret ballet?

 

Kevin

In the future, that could be possible

If we have another hot-button topic, we could have a write-in or an roll-call

 

Brogan

If you have a constituent, it's your responsibility to be transparent

 

Larry

As an elected official, it is your obligation to let people know how you voted

This is something where, even if we go through the proper procedure, we have to be transparent with voted

And this is how democracy works

Coercion is a huge part of democracy; if there was no coercion, nothing would get done

 

Katie

I've received a lot of emails from people and I'm not sure how to voice them in a perfessional session

 

Sloane

It's not practical to record who votes how in the minutes

But if we do a write-in vote, we would have that data

So in that sense, this would be even more transparent

 

Kevin

I think we need to addess different kinds of voting techniques

 

Katie

If we have a conversation like this, maybe we could have constituents involved

 

Larry

Regardless, somebody is going to be angry about something, and we have to go into anything accepting that

 

Kevin

That was a unique meeting and a unique vote, so some of the issues that we saw in that meeting are probably not going to be commonly-occurring

 

Eric Chang

Thank you for letting me make these comments and addressing them

I did have a lot of friends that were interested in this; they didn't think that this initiative was advertised enough

They hoped that, in the future, that big meetings like these would be advertised more, maybe big meetings or big posters

 

Katie Beck

I tried reaching out to the constituents that I remember were there

I received some back saying they were concerned about the state of ASG as a whole, and how we're run

Some said that, because of the message board, they don't know how things happened

They also addressed how Cabinet looks during the meetings

 

Kevin

Were there any specific issues?

If there was anything you don't want to mention, could you put them in a word document

The thing that worries about me is that the constituents that were coming to our meetings aren't really trusting our judgment on other issues

 

Larry

I think that, during our next meeting, we can talk about how ASG is going

 

Kevin

Before leaving, if you have any issues with anyone on ASG, I would try to talk to them first, and if that doesn't work, we can have a facilitated conversation