STUDENT ASSOCIATION
General Assembly Meeting
March 27th, 2014
G-24 McEwen Hall, 5:30pm
1. Call to Order
a. Roll Call
b. Approval of the Minutes
c. Concerns of the Audience
i. Dr. Jennifer Hildebrand
2. Consent Agenda
a. Courtney Hout for Chief Justice of the Student Association
b. Sigma Gamma Phi for Re-Acknowledgement
c. Sigma Kappa for Re-Acknowledgement
d. Sigma Phi Epsilon for Re-Acknowledgement
e. Sigma Tau Delta for Re-Acknowledgement
f. Tonmeisters for Re-Acknowledgement
g. SUNY Fredonia USITT for Re-Charter
h. Teacher Education Club for Re-Charter
i. Health Professions Club for Re-Acknowledgment
j. Premium Blend for Re-Acknowledgement
k. PRSSA For Re-Charter
l. E-Sports Club for Re-Provisional Recognition
m. Fredonia Gospel Choir for Re-Acknowledgement
n. Release Request for French Club for $400.00 from Allocations
o. Release Request for Fredonia Quidditch for $359.30 from Allocations
p. Release Request for Leadership Corps for $511.80 from Allocations
q. Release Request for Korean International Student Society for $1,000.00
r. Release Request for Colleges Against Cancer for $500.00 from Allocations
s. Release Request for Student Dance Organization for $600.00 from Allocations
t. Release Request for ASL Club for $350.00 from Allocations
3. Reports
a. Judicial Branch
i. Chief Justice Jordan Nicholson
b. Legislative Branch
i. Speaker of the Assembly Justin Dickerson
a. Vice President Dr. David Herman
ii. Assistant Speaker of the Assembly Jefferson Dedrick
c. Executive Branch
i. President Antonio Regulier
ii. Vice President Hughdean Blake
iii. Student Comptroller Kyle Stolt
iv. Executive Departments
b. Chair of Public Relations Tracy Halloran
c. Chair of Student Relations Carl Lam
d. Chair of Community Relations Jason Burgos
e. Chair of Environmental Affairs Chloe Elberty
f. Chair of Diversity Relations Angel Roopnarine
4. Special Orders
5. General Orders
a. Improv Society for Re-Charter
b. Sport Management and Exercise Science Club for Re-Acknowledgment
c. Release Request for Golden Key for $270.00 from Allocations
6. Unfinished Business
7. New Business
8. Adjournment
STUDENT ASSOCIATION
General Assembly Meeting
March 13th, 2014
G-24 McEwen Hall, 5:30pm
9. Call to Order
a. Roll Call
Justin: I hereby call this meeting of the General Assembly to order at 5:32pm on March 13th, 2014. Hello, my name is Justin Dickerson. I am the Speaker of the Assembly and we’re gonna start with a quick attendance.
Representatives:
Monica White –Present
Kristin Beck –Present
Jennifer Hildebrand – Present
Connor Hoffman—Present
James Hobbs – Present
Jefferson Dedrick – Present
Katie White – Present
Meghan Bartok – Present
Tracy Halloran – Present
William Sattelberg – Present
Nayla Kabir – Present
Abigail Dry – Present
Jason Burgos – Present
Kaitlyn Hayes – Present
Kevin Traiman – Absent
Maguette Ndiaye – Present
Laura Haak – Excused
Anthony Mercedes – Present
Christopher Sanchez – Present
Ellie Brion – Present
Justin Cunningham –Present
Justin Dickerson – Present
Patrick Kennedy – Present
Constituted Groups:
Art Forum – Present
Fred ASSIST – Present
Black Horse Rugby – Present
BSU – Present
Club Hockey – Present
Club Ultimate Frisbee – Present
Ethos – Present
FRS – Present
Hillel - Present
Intramurals – Present
Jazz Workshop –Present
Lacrosse – Present
LU – Present
Leader – Present
Orchesis – Present
PAC – Present
Percussion Guild –Absent
Pride Alliance – Present
Sound Services –Absent
Spectrum – Present
SOTA – Present
STEPS – Present
WNYF – Present
WSU – Present
b. Approval of the Minutes
Justin: Are there any changes to the minutes? Christopher Sanchez?
Chris: I’m here for BSU today, sorry if you said that already.
Justin: I already—yea, they’re all good.
Chris: Ok.
Justin: Do you yield?
Chris: Yes, I yield. Sorry.
Justin: Is there anything for approval of the minutes? Seeing none, the chair seeks a motion. Chief Justice Nicholson?
Motion made by Jordan Nicholson to approve the minutes from March 6th, seconded by Patrick Kennedy. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none, we will move into a vote. All in favor, please say “aye,” all opposed, please say “nay.” Any abstentions? In the opinion of the chair the aye’s have it and the minutes are so approved.
c. Concerns of the Audience
i. Joyce Harvard Smith – Volunteer and Community Services
Joyce: Thank you. So, um, I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about some of our upcoming events and also to encourage you to participate in community service, and to do some volunteering in the community, ‘cause it’s very important to be able to volunteer and to do service in the community and be able to give back. Last year, students performed over 15,000 hours of service, and I want to thank you for that, so give yourself a round of applause (applause). Um, one of the things that’s in pressing need of—is Pennies for Paws, the Chautauqua Humane Society. It’s trying to raise funds for their animal shelter and to encourage the upkeep of the animals. And, what I’m going to do, there is a schedule that I have for Friday, April 11th, and April 12th, and April 13th, and we need somebody—they’re two hour shifts at Walmart to collect funds for Pennies for Paws. And also, I want to mention—and, actually, Ellie and Amanda are going to talk more about Relay for Life. It’s going to be coming up April 12th. And, also, Adopt-A-Beach cleanup. This is during Earth Week, and that’s 27th from 12 to 2pm and that’s at the beach in Dunkirk. So, we’re gonna be having a cleanup for that. And then April 29th is Buffalo News Kids’ Day. We had some people participate last year and hopefully people participate again this year. And also, we constantly need help at the friendly kitchen. There—um, we can have somebody as far as cleanup, serve meals. That’s an ongoing thing. And also, the food pantry, they’re really low on canned goods. So, if you all could consider doing a food drive. I know one group came in and mentioned that. They constantly need canned goods. And also, the Salvation Army with the food pantry, and the Westville Community Kitchen, they also need canned goods. So, if you’re interested, if you can help out or come in and see me—my office is located in the Williams Center in S227. So, you can come up and let me know if you’re interested in any of these, or if you have any community service projects that you’re interested in, you can come see me. And also, on May 1st is an engaging art community series, students in service. So, some of you participated in that last year for community service projects. So, you can also come in and see me for that. And I’m gonna give you some handouts. Do you have any questions in regards to service?
Justin: Are there any questions for Joyce Harvard Smith?
Joyce: Ok, thank you.
ii. Ellie Brion and Amanda Suter – Relay for Life
Amanda: Hi guys, I’m Amanda. I’m a junior here on campus and I am one of the chairs for Relay for Life on campus, along with Ellie. I just want to do a quick activity real quick. It’ll just take a couple seconds. How many of you have personally had cancer? Please stand up. Oh, thank God. How many of you have a mother or father who has had cancer? Please stand up. How many have had a grandparent with cancer? Please stand up. Has anybody had a sibling with cancer? Please stand up. Stay standing if you’re standing. Has anybody had an aunt or uncle with cancer? Has anyone had a friend who has had cancer?
Ellie: Has anybody known anybody, or known anyone who’s known anyone who has had cancer?
Amanda: Alright, so basically as you can see, cancer affects all of us in one way, shape, or form. You can all sit back down.
Ellie: So, this is why we do what we do. We’re working with the American Cancer Society to raise money for funding for research. We’ve been supporting cancer patients, for—it’s been going on for over 100 years now. This year we really want to “finish the fight”, that’s the whole slogan for this year. So, our event, we want it to be as big as possible. It’s on April 12th to the 13th from 4pm to 4am in the Steele Hall field house. It’s $10 to register by March 28th, and that means we need the money by March 28th if you want to pay cash. After that, it goes up to $20.
Amanda: Um, each team that brings people, we ask that you guys donate a basket for our gift raffle. It’s something that brings in a lot of money for our event as well. Last year we raised over $34,000. We’re trying to beat that this year. We’re just shy of $10,000 right now so we’re hoping that with your guys’ help that you’ll definitely help us raise more money this year. In fact, Geneseo, even though they’re about the same size as us, is already at $50,000. They’re kicking our butt. So, it’s like driving me even more to raise money. Um, we do zumba at midnight. Sam is gonna help us out with that. Um, we have a photo booth at our event this year, s that’ll be fun. We have a bunch of different things. Our theme is Dr. Seuss. Um, we’re also doing t-shirts for the event this year. We’re trying to get as much money raised as possible. They’re $15 from small to extra large, and $18 fro XXL up. We tried not to put any characters, based on laws an whatever, but we do have the cat and the hat logo on their, and our slogan on there, “We meant what we said and we said what we meant. We’ll finish this fight 100%.” Um, I have fliers outside our office, S220 our club office, and if you find one of us we have them as well. The money is due on the 24th, the day we come back from spring break.
Ellie: We’ll be in our office from 6 to 9pm.
Amanda: And this is just to ensure that you can have them the day of the event, but we will have some for sale at the event, but not that many.
Ellie: I have these forms. You can see me after the meeting tonight if you want some.
Amanda: And everyone—I should have asked this before. Does everyone kind of know what the gist of Relay for Life is? Like, it’s not a run, if anyone I concerned, ‘cause I don’t run. So. It’s really—it’s just a 12-hour event that we walk laps for. It’s just to show what cancer patients go through because it’s such a struggle. There’s up’s and down’s and that’s why we do what we do. The cancer survivor this year is a student on campus. He is a leukemia survivor and he is now a camp counselor for students with cancer and children with cancer. So, he has a really great story. He’ll be speaking and we’ll be honoring him, as well as a bunch of other cancer survivors. If any of you know any cancer survivors, please bring them to our event. We love to celebrate them and celebrate their life, celebrate the journey that they had. So, if anyone has any questions, you can see Ellie afterwards. I have to run to class, but we hope you’ll join us at our event this year.
Ellie: Please do.
iii. Dr. Rob Deemer and Dr. Bruce Simon
Justin: What did you do?
Jefferson: I don’t know what I pressed…
Dr. Deemer: Good afternoon—oh, switch to…
Justin: Solid.
Dr. Deemer: Alright, so, uh, howdy. Um, I’m Dr. Rob Deemer. Most of you saw me probably last semester when I came in and introduced myself. I’m the chair of the University Senate, and I mentioned back at the beginning of fall semester that one of the big projects that the University Senate is working on this year has been—this will be the second year we’ve been working on it—is the revision of the university general education program. And so, what—we’ve asked Antonio if we can come in and kind of give you guys an overview of where we’re at t this point because there’s been a lot of changes, a lot of proposals, and over the next few weeks we’re going to try and gather up all of the proposals and figure out where everyone feels we should be going and then hopefully, if all is good, we can actually get a program approved by the end of this year. It may or may not actually happen at the end of May because there’s just so many moving parts, but one of the reasons why—one of the ways that we’re gonna make that happen is to be able to come talk to all of the different constituencies. I’ve already sat down with all of the chairs on the different departments across campus, and so it made sense for us to come talk to you and give you a sense of where we’re at at this point and then get your feedback. So, I’ll get us into it and then I’ll actually let Bruce Simon, our Vice Chair, talk to you a little bit about the first part of it, which is—the three parts that are changing about gen ed, or at least the three things we want to talk about, are why are we changing gen ed, why are we revising it, what are we changing in gen ed, or t least what are being proposed, and who will that impact? And the first one, of course, is students. So, Bruce?
Dr. Simon: Well, this slide goes back to when President Hefner was here. He commissioned that—he was in conversation with a lot of business leaders and he asked them, “What are the skills that need to be provided to be useful to you?” And, this is not just based on their responses, this is based on national feedback, national surveys. So you can read them for yourself. This is basically just figuring out what we’re trying to emphasize in the new general education program. And we’ve been through a long process. Um, it goes back to spring of 2007 on this campus, um, and you can see all of the different data points and groups that have been involved in—like with the CCC idea, that’s brainstorming what we want out of the new general education project—program. When you go to the Ad Hoc general education review committee in fall 2010, it was going and continuing that brainstorming process. Uh, with the strategic plan, things got a little more focused and the two most recent changes that we’ve approved were approving the new baccalaureate goals and revising our mission statement to align with the new baccalaureate goals. The next step, logically, is to go to general education, make sure it is aligned with those baccalaureate goals. So, as you can see, the parts are for strategic plan. Um, let’s move on to the next slide. Now, why did this all start? One of the many drivers of this is that the SUNY system administration left it up to the campuses to be more flexible and open it up for students to have more flexibility if the campus is saying that that’s appropriate. Right now, we’re in a general education program that’s like a 10-10-30. There are ten categories, you have to take all ten, and it adds up to thirty credits. In fact, in Fredonia, it’s often more. Um, now, what the SUNY system allowed us to do, if we want, is to go to a 7-10-30, which means that we would only need to require 7 of the 10 categories, and those are the categories we see in general education today, you know, natural sciences, social sciences, those kinds of things. So, the big question facing the senate this next few weeks is, uh, what do we want to do with this flexibility? As you can see, lots of groups for several years have been coming up with ideas, and now is the time—we’ve been working really hard to kind of sort through those and kind of boil them down to a few key choices.