Cabinet Meeting Minutes
Thursday, 14 November 2013
Attendance: Kevin Crooks, Larry Hailsham, Brogan McGowan, Aurora Arop, Skyler Ray, Sarah
Naughton, Kushtrim Miftari, Garrett Devenney, Katie Beck, Gretchen Symons
Gretchen has candy!
Kevin
- Larry and I met with Sue Gaylor and Linda Wetsel about increasing tuition
- Basically, it's a complicated situation
- It's just something they have to do for various reasons
- Will come in to ASG in January so we can get feedback for the budget
Katie
- Last semester, a group of students presented to me about an initiative about fixing tuition for a class's
entry.
- There's a conference that was formed out of that idea
- Can't remember any names
Gretchen
- There is a movement across the country for colleges and universities to do that
- I don't know the students who are involved here
Kevin
- Essentially, that would just mean less profit for the college
Gretchen
- Yes
Kevin
- My initial thought process was that you would have to increase the freshman's tuition a lot more
Garrett
- But we're adding more and more freshmen each year
Kevin
- My impression was that this year was a bit of an exception
Katie
- Can we invite those students in?
Brogan
- What operations on campus justify a 3-4% raise in tuition?
Larry
- In actuality, this increase happens but the same ticket price that you pay does not reflect that
- Our school has to maintain a competitive rate
- Somehow, the price you pay for an institution is reflected
- For the school to look better, it has to look more expensive
Kevin
- This is compared against other schools in the region
- We're also going to up the the professor salaries
Katie
- It seems weird to me that the Trustee Scholarship says the same but the tuition increases
Kevin
- That goes back to the capital campaign
Gretchen
- They are in their quiet phase right now. The capital campaign is $200 million
Aurora
- Maybe look at how they look at financial aid
Kevin
- That's more of the financial aid office
Gretchen
- It all comes together
- That's why the capital campaign is looking at scholarships and opportunities
- Also looking at financial aid in terms of retention, because we're finding that some students simply
cannot afford the school
Kevin
- Lee and I met with the faculty council on Tuesday
- Bascailly, we need to start communicating better with them
- Cabinet does stuff, and Faculty does stuff, but the real happenings happen in those all-college
committees
- We need to get updates from those college committees
- That should help us
- Curriculum Committee Change:
- In order to stay in line with our strategic plan, they're thinking of doing away with the distribution
requirement
Larry
- Intentional Requirements, 5 of them
Kevin
- That's a big change that's going to affect everybody, so the Curriculum Committee is going to present
that to us
Katie
- How many people are on the faculty council?
- 12?
Kevin
- There were about 7 people that that meeting on Tuesday,
- They're similar to us: they take different issues and outsource them to the different committees
- What we're going to do is make a direct link to them on our website
- And we're going to be put on the main website with all of their
- There is already a college committee link on our page, and they're going to link to us and there are
going to be more links everywhere
- Hut-a-Thon on Friday night
- Next week's meeting
- Blue courts
- How do we want it to be set up?
Katie Beck
- Microphone?
Sarah Naughton
- Games?
Katie Beck
- The accoustics
Larry Hailsham
- The acoustics aren't so great
Gretchen
- I would see if you can get a sound system
(Grace Flowers walks in)
Aurora
- Do you want to sit in a circle?
Kevin
- I'm assuming that we would be at the front
Aurora
- Labels?
Sarah Naughton
- Seminar style?
Larry Hailsham
- I think we should discuss whether the Blue Courts will be an issue
- In terms of the number of votes, and how that goes
- I was under the impression that we needed quorem, and we had quorem, and it didn't pass
Katie
- I was confused because the bylaws state that you need 50% + 1
- Can we make this
Aurora
- Don't confuse quorem with a simple majority
Gretchen
- The body is 40 people
- So a simple majority would be 20 + 1, so 21
- So you could have 21 people there and have quorem, and if all of those people vote yes, then you had
no problem
Katie
- My other issue is that proxies can vote, and that is not the case
- There were proxies who didn't vote
– Garrett leaves –
– Some discussion on that –
Kevin
- This afternoon, when we send out the minutes and the agenda
- I also think we should meet in 301/302
(Gretchen runs off to check)
Grace
- I think we need to discuss the appropriate tone for when conducting business
(Gretchen checks us)
Sarah
- We need to be more clear about answering questions that people are asking
Larry
- We all, as a Cabinet, need to figure out our stance on this
- That will be whatever we say in the meeting
- In the beginning of the conversation, we can say that we talked about this in Cabinet and that we are
for this
- Leaves our uncertaintly
Aurora
- Just for us to feel like we have an opinion leaves our the input from the Senate
- I can make a basic rule
Kevin
- We have those, so I think we can just go to class meetings and talk about them
- To Larry's point, I think that our meeting was so great because we left it up t the Senate to decide
- We didn't push it, and we didn't control
- I think it was great when Larry facilitated the discussion around the amendment
Brogan
- I think that it offers a perspective to the Senate to have us all support one another
- If we're sitting up in the front of the room and putting conflicting ideas in front of each other
- I think we should support Katie because this is her job
Aurora
- Say we vote on an issue and we say that we don't want it, it really eliminates the power of the Seantor
Brogan
- I never said that we would have to come to Senate and dictate
- I was just saying that Cabinet should support Cabinet
Sarah
- The issue with that is that if we do all come together and agree on something, it's influential on the
Senate
- If Cabinet is unified, there are certain characteristics
- If we don't support it, we shouldn't have to say
Brogan
- I do not think that we need to go to Senate and support it
- But we need to keep our game faces on
Larry
- If you have anything productive to add to the conversation, you should talk to Katie and include it
- I just think that it's important to have a united opinion
Grace
- It would have been helpful if Cabinet had the documentation during the meeting
Sarah
- We're still part of ASG, so when ASG puts its name on this, we're still intertwined
- So if you have something to say on Cabinet, you should still say it
- You were appointed, and you're still part of this conversation
Brogan
- We should have a conversation about whether we support it, and whether each of us has an idea
Aurora
- I don't see the importance in that
- We can just go to Katie in private
Kevin
- Last Thursday, we talked about this and provided some constructive comments on it
Jake
- Game face
- We should know what
Skyler
- My two concerns from Thursday were not addressed
- We were talking about limiting the number of clubs, and that was not
- We also talked about this not being so binding, but at the same time, in Tuesday, Lee asked why we
would vote to remove this from their constitution
- There was a first-year who had the great idea of having a badge of having done that training, which
removes the incentive
Sarah
- Here's my issue with the cap: the document is about being inclusive, but the document isn't going to
Kevin
- We have over 100 organizations
Gretchen
- Not all of them
Grace
- I'm just trying to be financially responsible
Gretchen
- Thinking about the some of the previous initiatives, we had a Green Fund and it never really took off
- There was $10,000 set aside in the budget for that
- Is it not necessarily a cap, but a budget amount
- State this as a priority and state that this is what we've set aside
- You can't force clubs to do stuff
Kevin
- Can we add a budget in the middle of the year?
Gretchen
- Sure you can!
Katie
- I can send out an updated document
- Meeting is going to be in the 301/302 next week
- Any agenda requests?
Meeting End: 1:14
