University of Cincinnati
Undergraduate Student Senate
Meeting Minutes
Date: April 16, 2014
CALL TO ORDER- 6:02pm
PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE-Sen Goldenberg
ALMA MATER- Sen Goldenberg
ROLL CALL
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
· Pres Beer: all of the appointed cabinet members, pending senate approval
· VP Shah: Hi Dr. Mayo
APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES- Sen Gearhart
SPECIAL ORDER
· none
REPORT OF THE SPEAKER OF SENATE
· sent out survey this morning to update contact info in the directory and a way for you to state the 5 gov interests you have this year. Please fill it out by this Friday or I will hunt you down and email you personally dun dun dun. If you are interested in chairing a committee, we are going to make them more effective. Please take to me and denote your interest in the survey
· Project portal: place to post projects you are working on, not just senators but also cabinet. I will be convening a group to go over it so if you are interested in working on something like this in a reasonable way, please send me an email. We will meet over summer to make it a thing.
· We will be revieing bylaws! We already did the constitution so we will review them over the summer. If you want to look over them, send me an email. Basically, everyone will make their own preferred changes and then hash them all out as a group.
· Questions?
REPORT OF THE STUDENT BODY PRESIDENT
· Summer senate meetings: we talked as an exec and decided that first off, everyone needs to turn them in. We will have one before July 1 but in order to use the funds of the new year, that blocks off two months where we wont use money. We came up with having two summer senate meetings actually in summer. The one in july is on a Wednesday night and we want you here but if at all necessary, we can skype you in. that is not preferred method. So be here please. The second one is also in July (?) and will be on a Saturday and will be more of a retreat type thing and have a social afterwards
· UC invents was this apst weekend. It was held in TUC Great Hall. The first palce winner is a UC food mobile app that incorporates all the different dining halls and look up the food and nutrition info for all different stuff. We will be pairing all the winners with a SG mentor to help them oversee them. I will let Trustee Keefe touch on tuition increase of 2%. This includes in student life fees and general fees.
· Mainstreet Stride: Greg Hand is retiring which is very sad. Shivam and I are having lunch with him Friday
· Bearcats at the Ballpark: May 9, allows anyone affiliated with UC to go to a bearcat game. It is after school ends but we want everyone to go so try and get there and bring friends
· SG office swipe thing works. We are working on deciding who gets swipe access and who doesn’t. there will be an application to get swipe in during hours
· Questions?
o Sen Quadalbaum: what does student life encompass? Trustee Keefe will talk about it
o Trustee Keefe: will SG office be open regularly during business hours? Ms. Charlene is in there during business hours and will be there in the summer but if you want to request access outside those hours, you have to go through application process
o Sen Goldenberg: why is June meeting on a Wednesday, not a weekend? Because it is not an all day event but if not conveneient, we can make it Saturday.
REPORT OF THE STUDENT BODY VICE PRESIDENT
· Of you have stuff in SG office, pelase clean it out for reorgniazation purposes.
· Live Safe app is the one that UC has decided to roll with. They are in middle of a soft roll out, it’s a free app and you type in UC and we are starting to slowly populate it with more and more info. It will be rolled out to all freshman students in their orientation materials next year.
· Questions?
o Former Sen Akomolede: what does it do? It can report suspicious activity anonymously, you can click something and the police or a number will be able to see where you are, etc.
o Pres Beer: it is live, huge props to Joe and Jaclyn to make it happen, you should check it out and we are potentially looking to add nightride to it
REPORT OF THE INTERNAL HOLDOVER SENATOR
· Working to register all tribunals so your pres and treas should be in communication with me
· Planning to meet with VP of Student Affairs to talk about tribunal funding on either taking funds or keeping them where they are
· Tribunal effectiveness check: we want to see how well they work with respect to colleges
· Questions?
o Sen Quadalbaum: Do we have a meeting afer this? No, not until the fall. What about concerning bill that was passed for the holdover money? Sen Boggs says that there is brief meeting for tribunal senators to work out the details for tribunal breakfast next week.
REPORT OF THE EXTERNAL HOLDOVER SENATOR:
· We had 92 aplicatoins, we have picked our new ones and we have 32 new members with senate approval
· Over next week, I will be reviewing applications and interviews and see if they want anyone in SG to reach out to them and get in contact to make sure that all awesome initatives are getting done and taken care of. Those nominations who couldn’t make it today will be there over the summer to get approved.
· Questions?
REPORT OF THE FINANCE DIRECTOR
· If you are a tribunal senator and are using the rollover fund, please get those invoices in as soon as possible so we can get paperwork turned in and spend the money.
· Last senate meeting. Bye Tyler! I loved your bowties and your hair.
REPORT OF THE STUDENT TRUSTEE
· Yesterday, board approved the 2% across the board tuition increase and increase in student fees. So when you enroll, you have those fees plus tuition and stuff. So that grouped together has a 2% increase. It’s the first one in 5 years. We’ve been avoiding it but it is happening cause inflation and the board of regents and ohio assembly says so. It is quite nominal and I think everything will be okay.
· There is a shortage of housing so board approved a lease agreement with UPA for 400 beds which offsets the 224 beds that occurred when CRC was made into offices for the DYER not dwyer hall renovation. The other problem is that grad students don’t have a place to live so we are working on what is happening with that to solve problem
· Questions?
o Sen Quadalbaum: what kind of interest is there for graduate students to have housing? I don’t know what it is but it is something that is problematic but not urgent.
o Sen Phelps: for the increase, is that for everyone are have current students become grandfathered in? nope, it applies to everyone
o Sen Gogeinini: was there ever any student discussion? Well, the way it works is that you have the VP o finance who sets tuition and asks for increases and there is a budget he has to follow and we held off for a long time and he thinks it is a needed push. Its really just inflationary, its an expense in a business and stuff.
o Sen Goldenberg: are prospective students who committed able to renig on offers because of this? Is this the typical time for tuition increase? This is for fiscal year 2015 which starts in July so it happens now. So if anyone still wants to leave, then good riddance cause that’s how we treat prospective bearcats.
o Sen Gearhart: were there ever additional scholarships offered? That comes from a totally different entity
o Sen Heine: did you hear anything about plans for Scioto? As in renovations? So again, it might be worked out at administrative level but it hasn’t reached us.
o Sen Quadlabaum: is the 2% taken from full out of state or is it different from students who are in state? Its 2% across the board proportional to what is being paid.
EXECUTIVE NOMINATIONS
· Welcome to new tribunal senators who weren’t sworn in last week. Congrats.
· Woohoo cabinet and exec staff nominations and stuff. So the way this works. Each cabinet members has 1-2 minutes to talk about their initiatives and stuff and then there are questions. How many may be accepted? All of them. We vote on them as a slate.
o Thaddeus Voss (Director of LGBTQ Affairs): 5% of student popul but its thought that 10% are actually lgbtq. I ran under the initiatives to make sure the community feels comfortable here and to retain these students and make this campus a safe place for them. LGBTQ mentoring system out of the LGBTQ center and OSTEM which is a professional society for LGBTQ students, it is a national and professional group.
o Cierra Carter (Director of Ethnic and Cultural Affairs): interstudent organization collaboration and collaboration with the different offices and officers. I want to increase the number of events with overlapping identities to feel comfortable and increase attendance at the different events. I want to indicate if the student needs a translator or a speaker on a certain topic. Want to spotlight a culture or holiday each month where we ask organizations to take part each month.
o Hannah Greene (Director of Transportation Services): very excited for this; particularly to empower students to travel safely, easily and affordably. Connect students with downtown. Work with BTS to improve that and continually work with analysis team to improve it and put up signs and maps so students are confident. Also want to explore cincy route with Christina and shivam and promote the UC metro program.
o Miranda Hileman (Assistant to the President): excited to take on this role, I haven’t thought out all of my initaitives. I will be working closely with Christina and my own intiatives to make sure the office is clean and organized and assisting cabinet with anything they need help with.
o Akshayaa Venkatakrishnan (Assistant to the Vice President): I realized that I have interests in a variety of areas to help SG and Shivam and cabinet. I hope I can provide the support that cabinet needs to bring their ideas to life.
o James Brinkle (Research Director): applied because I want to change the fact that it hasn’t been filled. Doing some research, if you go to the UC research tab you don’t really find what we research here and what projects are being worked on. I want students to know what we do here and know what the instructors are doing outside of teaching your classes and make them more interesting, which will motivate students.
o Jake Holden and McKenzie Bale (Directors of Sustainability): we want to make a thing out of the Sustain UC fair in September to get it more integrated into SG and into campus as a whole. It’s an event that gives the opportunity for each organization on campus to allow people to market together. Sustainability Flagship event, huge push to get freshmen involved. Next step is to get Pres Ono and a bunch of other people to approve something. Also get water bottle filling stations part of building code.
o Venat (Director of Technology): I want to work on a project called Logic UC that is a logic layer built onto the things we already use. It supports the platform of one website, one calendar, you can log in and see all your tasks and emails in one place. You can upload assignments through this dashboard etc. Second project is a website for all off campus housing to try and make it efficient, reliable and consistent with information.
o Laura Freeman (Director of Disabilities): I want to increase safety in the awareness and education of disabilities. Most students have some knowledge but no enough, they don’t really know what the safe phones are. They don’t really take NightRide, or know the buddy system so I want to increase education. I also want to bring about the involvement on campus with disability programs. Most students don’t know what the TAPP program is and we need to connect these communities more.
o Francesca Dantzer (Director of Commuter Services): I want to reach out to freshman and see what I can do to increase their involvement and feeling of connectivity on campus. I definitely hope to reach out to commuter students and promote mentoring programs that already exist. There are plenty out there that improve student retention and recruitment so we need to increase knowledge and access to our resources.
o Sarah Carpenter and Tyler Behymer (Co Directors of FYLP): continue the success from this year. We want to revamp the mentor experience and make it more hands on and make sure they have the proper training. We want to incorporate the interns. We want to incorporate different meeting formats and ideas. We also want to facilitate an out of town service retreat working with habitat for humanity. We also want to increase an FYLP senate meeting attendance and incorporate the individuals who applied but didn’t get in so they don’t get discouraged.
o Libby Nawalneic (Director of Alumni Affairs): I want to bring several different things. I want to bring back family weekend next spring to replace sibs weekend and parents weekend. We need to focus on making sure there is strong communication and collaboration between the different organizations that are affected by this weekend. Also want to have a big event in Clifton that would rbing alums back to campus. I think we can rbing back a 5k run or a taste of Clifton event that draws a lot of people back.
o Gracie Waters (Finance Director): I want to increase transparency in the budget through weekly budget updates to show what areas are changing and such. Also include fun facts about budget rules for more taboo tihngs. Also want ot highlight areas of budget that aren’t frequently used. Also want to have bisemesterly budget reviews to move money as needed and I want to hold office hours for people to discuss different issues.
o Molly Hinken (Director of Campus Services): Intiatives include continuing working on signage on campus for the BTS and CTS to let go of the communication. We want to launch that in 2015. Also part of the team that is working on Cat Car and we want to get that implemented in the last school year. I also want to work on getting night ride on the app Shivam talked about. I also think that we need to find a place in Clifton that could offer free parking even if it is off campus a bit. I also want to see more blue campus safety phones.