Adam C. Weiss, Executive Vice President
Ashley Carter, Secretary of the Senate
______
Senate Meeting Agenda
Wednesday, September9, 2015
9:10pm in LLC 006
- Call to Order: 9:10pm
- Roll Call
- Present:
- Absent/Excused:
- Non-Voting Officers Present:
- Public Previous Business
- Community Comment
None
- Approval of Minutes
Motion to approve
Approved
- Elections Report & Verification
Sandra Rubinchik:
Brandeis 1L: Three-way runoff will occur
Cardozo 1L: Sean Winker
Jackson 1L: Donald Crowell
Jay 1L: Sarah Friedman
Marshall 1L: Samantha Block
O’Connor: Nick Gumas
O’Connor 2L: Danniyal Ahmed
Transfer: Lexi White
LLM: Alice Sarvi
Motion to verify election results
Verified
- Swearing In
New Senators sworn in except Sarah Friedman
- New Senate Meeting Time
9:10 on Tuesdays – arrive at 9:05 – tentatively changed, needs to be confirmed by people who could not attend tonight
- Executive Reports
- President -George Soussou
Spoke to Dean Monroe – in the opinion of legal counsel, SBA’s initiative last year allows specifically chartered student organizations to establish certain requirements for leadership if national bylaws or agreements suggest those requirements
In final stages of planning Halloween party
New CADE policy – no longer need RAMS, can now just have sober monitors, rather than having SBA provide RAMS
- Vice President of Finance - Jeremy Buday
Not present
- Chief of Staff - Jesse Isleman
- Executive Application
Applications are open, please push those applications to let everyone know that they should apply for positions and get involved
Next week, Thirsty Thursday will be an outreach TT for SBA Senators – if you can be there, please attend, and if not, spread the word. Exec would like people to meet their Senators and improve transparency.
- Senate Business
- Executive Vice President Report – Adam C. Weiss
- Appointment of the President Pro Tempore
Max Weiss appointed as President Pro Tempore
- Election of Sergeant at Arms
Caleb Raymond: elected as new Sergeant at Arms
- Budget Meeting Operating Rules
At every hour we’ll take a five minute break, make sure to take refreshment
During discussion of line-items, limit to three comments per Senator per line-item
Will not include requests for information as a comment
Raise your hand unless you want to make an interrupting motion – then raise your placard
If President has a comment, his comment will move to front of the queue
Senators on organization Exec Boards:
Saniya Ahmed – SALSA
Alice: SELS
Mike: Entrepreneurship
Nick: Lambda
Mihir: Entrepreneurship
- Committee Chair Reports
- Rules and Constitution: Michael Omboni
Looking at filling any vacancies for Supreme Court
If you’re looking to make changes to bylaws, please send at least a week in advance
- Facilities and Technology: Gil Landau
Shane: Lerner 3rd Floor water fountain bottle spout
Mihir: No AC in classrooms (L301, L202)
George: Dean Molinengo trying to fix AC problems
Caleb: Don’t have housekeeping taking out trash or cleaning bathrooms
Jesse: Broken outlet in LLC006
Adam: Lock on 1st and 2nd floor between Lisner and Stuart currently don’t require keycard access
Ashley: Broken sink on 2nd floor of Stockton
Mike: Water fountains are almost impossible to draw water from due to water pressure issues – administration has
Sean: Men’s room in soft lounge – sink on the right doesn’t work, 2nd floor of Burns, broken spigot for bottles
Sarah: Lerner 401, socket falling off
- Student Organization and Charter: Sonia Shaikh
Trying to implement tracking system for student orgs, looking to also make rules for becoming a new student organizations a little more stringent
Have some issues coming up with people who aren’t part of the law school joining law school clubs – need to sort out membership
- Wellness and Programming: Shane Miller
Working on Health and Wellness Week coming up, working with Exec counterparts and Dean of Students – please email Shane with suggestions
- Academic Policy: Katie Mello, Kevin Wiatrak
No report
- Finance: Calvin Lee
Lots of budget hearings, committee has done a lot of work
- Audit: Max Weiss
All students understand policy
- Senate Comment
One of Katie’s constituents brought up issue with security guard at Thirsty Thursday – if anyone else feels that security guards are intimidating students at Thirsty Thursday, should be brought to attention of Senate
Danniyal: Also started implementing the policy at other events, we just seem to have many more people in attendance
Sonya: Several student orgs have been emailing to say that their organizations should receive precedent because some of their members are on SBA Exec or are Senators – make sure you don’t encourage orgs to feel this way
Swearing in of Sarah
- Introduction of New Legislation
- Bill 01 - 2015-2016 SBA Student Organization Annual Budgets Act
ACS:
Ryan Caden: Appeal is based on the fact that amount of money they thought was in R Fund might not be there and another event that was not funded, but would like to request funding for
George: Money carries over – no loss to your organization when the amount does come out
Ryan: Correct, but the money we reported in our R fund was not reported correctly during budget decisions, would request to make that up
Calvin: We did consider R funds, but looked at total amount requested, didn’t factor in R fund
Matt: What you’re describing is that it’s based off net C-Fund budget request – we just took into account the amount requested, R fund was not as significant as might be anticipated
Mike: What amount are you asking for?
Ryan: For convenience purposes, asking for $750
Caleb: What is the difference between C Fund and R Fund?
George: R Fund is money that organization uses for whatever purpose they want, but rolls over – C Fund is money that must be used to benefit the entire student body
Adam: Ad-Hoc Funds go into C Fund and rolls over, R Fund is budgeted money
Mihir: Do we vote on each org separately?
Adam: Will present the entire budget at the end of the meeting and then Senators can adjust amounts as needed
Matt: If opening budget doc, if looking at ACS, we allocated 1200 but the budget will say 950 – can fix it
BLSA:
Holdyn Brand and Tatiana Cody:
Appealing general body meeting fund: Already had a general body meeting, have already exhausted the amount given to general body meetings , particularly because BLSA had a much larger turnout than expected, really need an opportunity for students to come to more general body meetings and currently cannot hold any other general body meetings with funding received
Told by finance committee that they would be given enough money to fund two GBM, one per semester, but were not given the amount requested during in their budget to fund those two meetings
Max: Granted 360 dollars more than last year in this budget – why do you need more funding?
Holdyn: Issue is that we cannot have general body meetings without funding for them – these sessions are much more significant than most general body meetings
Tatiana: Amount specifically allocated to general body meetings was 350 dollars, want to spend the money that was allocated for the reasons allocated
Katie: Expected attendance is much larger than most student organizations have – over 200 – do you have any anecdotal evidence that this many people will attend?
Holdyn: Have already seen many more students interested in attending, particularly at the student org fair, want to open up events
Katie: But why do you think so many more students will attend panels if your GBMs have between 65-80?
Holdyn: Strategically developed programming in order to appeal to the most students
Sarah: If we’re not able to provide funding, how do you plan to make that money go farther? How can you make GBMs successful?
Tatiana: Have actually talked about cancelling GBMs, if we cannot feed eighty to ninety people, we would not be able to have as many meetings
Holdyn: If we could at least have something that could practically be stretched, we can make it work
Calvin: How much did you spend on first GBM?
Sonia: Fundraising – if you have so many students coming in, why is your fundraising amount low?
Holdyn: We can either put money and time and effort into strategic events, or into making more unique events with additional fundraising capabilities
Motion to extend – 2 minutes
Passed
Mike: You know about the ad hoc process – many of these meetings will occur later – if you didn’t get your funding now, and you could bring back numbers for attendance to us later, would you be opposed to that process?
Tatiana: It was my understanding that ad-hoc funding was for new events, and GBM are not these kind
Danny: Do you have membership dues?
Tatiana: Yes – pay for members-only events, such as academic sessions, tshirts, etc.
Holdyn: Also, not every member pays their dues, don’t want money to serve as a bar membership
Katie: You want 7 meetings and 300 dollars for each?
Holdyn: We believe that 1400 would be a better compromise, to stretch over 7
Calvin: How much are dues?
Holdyn: 20 dollars currently
Matt: To explain GBM, used standard that would fund one each semester, it’s in the financial policy – just a guideline
Calvin: So up to 150 dollars per meeting at 2 meetings a year
Matt: The 300 dollars per meeting, for 63 people, is about double what other clubs are spending for the GBM – so we used an average for what other student orgs are spending, which is how we came to 350 for two general body meetings
Caleb: Are most orgs dues in their budgets?
Matt: Yes – most put revenue from dues in their request – we don’t have that information for them
Mike: What makes these meetings not ad hoc eligible?
George: Nothing, they are eligible
Sonia: Is this a longstanding guideline?
Adam: When we created the policy last year, we used an already existing guideline – this is just guideline to treat everyone equally, but Senate can override
Calvin: Budget process was similar last year as well
Mihir: Did you do same amount for each GBM?
Matt: NO – based the amount on amount of people expected – about $2.50 per person expected to attend GBM
Lambda:
David Hart, Darby Rapun, Caroline Reeves, Nathan ?
Proposed budget was 1800, we originally requested 4800, now we’re requesting 3500 total now, based on removal of social events and some reimbursements
Additional events asked to fund: 350 for marriage estates event, 300 for annual AIDS walk (required event that we must have based on Constitution), 225 for mentor-mentee barbecue based on specific community needs, 100 for meet and greet for LGBT orgs on campus, 200 for co-sponsorship events, 75 dollars to sponsor Bar Review, historically have received about 3000 dollars, last year hosted 26
Mike: How much additional from last year are you asking for?
David: 1200
Matt: Could have members outside of Lambda participate in walk?
David: Yes – would encourage that
Caleb: Will the med school co-sponsor the meet and greet
Alice: How many members?
David: List-serv 400, 180 active members, for events last year 35 average attendees, GBM usually 80-90 people
David: One reason we dropped money is we understand you’re only funding 1 GBM, so took that from the budget
Danny: Did we say dues calculations were on spreadsheets?
Matt: They should be on spreadsheet
Caleb: Lambda does not charge membership dues
Katie: Shouldn’t be considering dues anyway, shouldn’t have impact on money we give them from budgets
National Security Law Association:
Have asked for money for ABA breakfast once per month, we would ask for more money to fund panel discussions, we understand that our scholarship funds were cut, very broad audiences reached with panel discussions – we would request a full 900 dollars for 300 dollars per panel, anywhere from 75-90 people coming to events, want to provide food – if we can’t get three panels funded, would ask for reallocation for events given funding for, 300 per event for 2 events
For the scholarship fund – essay competition every month, ABA has a standing committee on national security law, could do a lot of outreach through this scholarship fund
For panels, may not have same history, did not request any money at all last year, but did have multiple events with 75 attendees, have a listserv of over 200 members over one year, and are really looking to assist students with networking for national security law,
Patrick Stewart
Thomas (Treasurer)
Caleb: To clarify, funds are just for food?
Patrick: Yes – we already have members for one panel, not paying the speakers, just want to be able to provide food
Mike: What is the number you’re requesting?
Patrick: We’d request 340 dollars
Mike: I would encourage ad-hoc funding
Sarah: Have the scholarships historically gone to many students?
Patrick: This is a new thing we’re doing
Sonia: You have 200 members on listserv, how many active members do you have?
Patrick: We don’t have general body meetings, we’re a career focused organization, today we had an event with 50 students focused at 1Ls – our events target different audiences each time, rarely do we have events that target everyone
Thomas: averaged 75-80 people at events last year
Caleb: Are these just for law school students?
Patrick: These events are open to everyone that the ABA committee advertises to – we generally advertise in the law school, so generally law students, but everyone’s welcome
Sonia: Are those events open to the public alcohol events?
Patrick: No – no SBA money is used to pay for alcohol
PLS:
Nick Bidwell:
Allotted 1000 dollars for the year, feel it doesn’t reflect everything we’d like to accomplish, huge difference in programming over the last few years, going into election this year, definitely in a unique position to bring publicity and events to the school during this time, hoping for a supplement to the budget
One concern was fundraising, so trying to come up with more innovative fundraising efforts to combine with other more interesting events
Sean: Did you say how much you were requesting?
Nick: At least an extra 500, would like initial capital investment to start a solid fundraising effort – did a poor job of fundraising last year, think what we received last year was a more fair amount
Caleb: For some of these panels, you have 400 dollars asked for food for panels - why?
Nick: Work with faculty committee, faculty ask us to only use catering for food events for speakers because they are very
Caleb: Faculty will not help fund these events?
Nick: No
Katie: Co-sponsorship possibilities?
Nick: Would like to do co-sponsorship, have not had a chance to reach out yet to ask for those events
Sarah: Looking down the road, if you do increase membership this year, how will you keep that momentum?
Nick: Would love to do more events that don’t require funding – would like to look into doing events that might encourage membership
Danniyal: Expected attendance for events – are these projections based on your current membership or future membership?
Nick: GBM is about accurate, have about 120 new signups this week, speaker panel projections are definitely based on projections for growth
Caleb: Another organization wanted to go to the Supreme Court – ACLU wants to go
Sarah: Are any other political law groups in DC?
Nick: Yes – Georgetown does have one, looking to reach out to them
Street Law:
Megan Osbourne
JudeNwaokobia
Need transportation funds to get people to YSC in cars, significant costs associated
Also need specialized teacher training for YSC teachers – 125 for teacher training, this evening had first GBM, over 100 people signed up on listserv, have a very active organization, not just doing meeting, working with the community and representing GW
Usually use Street Law t-shirts to communicate during classes who we’re representing – asking for money for t-shirts at the beginning of the year, 400 dollars
Sonia: You said you use your own cars, budget requests say cabs/uber – what is the difference?
Megan: Originally asked for them for moot court, but not asking anymore – just asking for 300 for gas for personal cars, which will probably not be enough
George: Clarification – school won’t reimburse gas, possibly mileage
Jude: Traditionally we don’t ask for gas money, usually ask members to pay for gas, but this time around would like to pay them back
Caleb: You have several moot court competitions – are these for GW students?