Big Cheese Forum 11/13

Big Cheese Forum 11/13

Absent: Sharan Mehta, Carmen Lai, Courtney Pinkerton, Alice Fischer, Kelly Wilkinson, Raella Rothman, Danyelle Phillips

What’s your favorite kind of cheese: mozzerella, brie, smoked gouda duh, Dubliner or Jarlsberg, all, cheese provided by SGA, valdeon or etorki, Wensleydale, chevre, camembert, cheddar, goat cheese, Cotswold, monteray jack, string cheese, goat cheese/barrel-aged feta, AMERICAN!, orange, nard question, feta cheese and brie, provolone, extra sharp cheddar, gouda, swiss, sharp cheddar, lactose intolerant, um…, Colby jack/brie, munster, parmesan, n/a, cheese whiz, ¡Queso Fresco!, gouda is so gooooda!, poop, nacho cheese, all??!

Announcements

Molly Reinganum ’12: I’m the senior gift co-chair. So far we’ve had 36% participation. We should be proud. We’re having another event in the campus center to encourage giving in honor of thanksgiving. There will be hand turkeys.

Noreen Neal ’14: In the next week Students for Education Reform is having several events in honor ofInternational EducationWeek. There will be a talk with President McAuliffe and we will be fundraising in the campus center. If you have any questions email nnneal@brynmawr.

Elizabeth Held ’12:Looking ahead to the February round of elections – it has been hard to get people to run in this round. Start thinking about how you want to nominate for positions and talking to people now. This round of elections will start February 23rd.

Emma Geering ’14: Saturday is fall student dance concert. Many Bryn Mawr and Haverford students have been working hard. The concert will be at 2:30pm and 7:00pm.

Lee McClenon ’14: We are going tooccupy the campus center. If anyone is interested, let me know.

Lindsey Crowe ’14: The soccer team is selling candles. If you like candles, they’re a great gift. There are no flame options so you can put them in your rooms.

Karen Leitner ’14: The Sustainable Food Committee is going to be doing a trial run of composting Tuesday through Friday. We’re looking for volunteers. If you have hours free, see the Bryn Mawr Composting Initiative on facebook for information about how to sign up.

Sarah Lovegren ’14: There’s a food drive for ACLAMO and a coat drive. Please drop off coats and food!

Caroline Kenward ’12: SJPP coffee hour is this Friday at 9:30 in the MCC.

Priya Saxena ’12: There is going to be a de-stress Honor Board community meeting and academic honesty tea on Thursday. We’re making stress balls and there will be candy. The Miss Representation screening is this Thursday at 7:00pm in TGH!

Rebecca Sanders ’12: Shout out to appointments committee for the work that they do! The positions that were recently appointed were:

Conflict management committee: Elsie Chung, Nkechi Ampah, Isabella Bartenstein, Charlotte McConaghy.

Social Committee: Jenny Kwan, Marian Slocum, Kristie Oh, Kim Wiley, Charlotte McConaghy

Independent major rep: Kersti Francis

Hell week committee:Ariel Furman, Archana Kaku, Sarah Lovegren, Sarah Fischer, Hannah Lehman

Go Board moderators:

Thanks to everyone who applied. The November round of appointments begins today. The positions that are up for appointment are:

Customs committee

Access services representatives

Computer access co coordinators

Graduate school representatives

Applications are due this Friday at 5:00pm.

YJ ’12: The monthly report for assembly members for October is due next Sunday. The Miss Representation screening is Thursday at 7pm. Be there. It’s going to be awesome. It’s open to the Tri-Co community. This is the only place in the Philadelphia area that is screening Miss Representation. The chat with grads is on Thursday at 4pm. We just got back from the Seven Sisters Conference. Theupdate for the conference will be next Sunday.

Big Cheese Forum

Jane McAuliffe: We were told we could ask questions of you as well. How many of you have been to community forums so far? We’re looking for feedback about the process. Is that a good way to gather a community?

Irene Shin ’13: It was informative and good. Everyone should go. There was a small amount of students who went. It might be because it was the first time around. If you did it again, students should be encouraged to attend.

Saba Quadir ’13: I went to the first discussion and I really enjoyed it. It was a good way of talking to different people. There should be more in the future. The conversation would have been better if there were more students there.

Blair Smith ’12: It would be great have them in the evenings. Students couldn’t make the Tuesday meeting because of class.

Jane McAuliffe:We’re probably going to hold a fourth one because faculty haven’t been able to come either. I will suggest that as a possibility. We will try.

Julie Gorham ’12: I haven’t been to a community forum yet. But as a point of reference, I just got back from the Seven Sister’s Conference at Mount Holyoke and Bryn Mawr is the only self-governance association, as opposed to student government association. We have a really unique opportunity to respond to and give back to administration. Everyone who can should come.

John Griffith: I was asked to speak about the financial health of the college. Things that we can control are going well. We’re the only private college in the country to get our bond rate upgraded. This is the worst financial recession in out lifetime. It’s difficult to find donors to give money and students to pay tuition. If it weren’t for the recession, everything would be going great. Endowment is money that donors have given to us. Our endowment is our second largest revenue source after tuition. This is just to say continue to give for the rest of your careers. A bank outside the college holds money from trust and annuities. 8 million is what we have for operations. We spend what we take in every year and keep 1 percent as a rainy day fund. Students pay only 51% of cost of their Bryn Mawr education. A large part of the cost is supported by alums giving gifts. The message is that Bryn Mawr is successful because of alumnae giving. We lost 170 million dollars as a result of the market crash in 2008. We’re 19 million short of our height for funds, but recovery has been pretty strong in terms of jobs and the over all economy. Since the financial crisis, there has been a26% increase of in students who receive financial aid over the years.The college spends about 22,000 dollars per student. There are some colleges that we can compete with financially, then there are some colleges that can do things we can’t. Pomona pays out 45,000dollarsper student, which is more than twice what Bryn Mawr pays. If you like California, there’s a place to go. Faculty and staff and students ask why we don’t do things that Amherst and Swat are doing. BMC is fortunate to have the endowment it has, but there are a few schools that are more fortunate.

Lee McClenon ’14: What does Bryn Mawr do to invest in sustainable businesses?

John Griffith: We invest in things to support students. We invest in solar plants and windmills. Trustees do the screening. Any decent investor is screening things that are environmentally sustainable. Our goal is not to make a social statement, but to grow assets.

Jenny Rickard: I was asked to speak about the visual identity project. We now have one Bryn Mawr College typeface.We were looking tofind a typeface that is both reflective of the college’s tradition and also forward looking. We’re proud of Bryn Mawr’s boldness and innovation. We looked into different serif and sans serif types – we couldn’t get agree on whether it should be serif or sans serif. The company we were working with, Pentagram, found a typeface developed by a guy who won the MacArthur genius award for typefaces. He created Verdana and Georgia. The one we are using is called Carter Sans. We are the first institution to use it for an identity purpose. There was a debate about what Bryn Mawr icon we should use. We’ve used owls, turrets, lanterns,and arches. We landed on a lantern and monogram modeled in Carter Sans. Our colors are yellow and white. Since these are not the most lively colors we have some second primary accents that can be mixed and matched in any way you might want. We have a style guide on the website. There are now logos for certain organizations on campus, like the Self Government Assocation. Different applications of the new visual identity will roll out over the course of the year and we will have some new in the bookstore over the holidays.

Irene Shin ’13: Are these going to be on the tee-shirts?

Jenny Rickard: Yes. Tee-shirts, sweatshirts, hats…

Julia Fahl ‘12: I was wondering about the Proud to be Bryn Mawr slogan. I like it. Is it going to be kept?

Jenny Rickard: That’s a great question. The community workshops are part of a planning process looking at what you call the positioning of institutions where we consider how to talk about Bryn Mawr today. Every two years or so we go though this process and we’re about to go through it again. What happens with that slogan will depend on the results of that, but you can always be proud to be Bryn Mawr.

Lee McClenon ‘14: Thank you so much for the visual identity blog. A concern that was raised on the blog was phasing out the use of the seal in more conventional things. Will the seal be phased out?

Jenny Rickard: Last time we did a visual identity project was 1904 when we created the seal. None of us were alive except Jerry. Seal is reserved for official documents. It will be used on your diploma and on other documents. For other things, we’re moving to lantern icon and the BMC monogram.

Lee McClenon ‘14: How much education are you doing to give to heads of departments and to professors regarding the new visual identity?

Jenny Rickard: It will take the rest of the year to phase this in. We’re working with different departments to show them how to incorporate the new visual identity into their documentation. We have an agreement with Office Depot. This is what they will be using to produce the documents. In order for the new visual identity project to be success need people to use it.

YJ ’12: We can open the discussion up for questions.

Elizabeth Held ’12: Will the food cart be back in the spring?

Bernie Chung-Templeton: It’s hibernating for the winter, but we will bring it back.Are there any suggestions, questions, or comments regarding the food cart?I have heard that people would like more less expensive items.

Sophie Balis-Harris ’12: I have experienced frustrations with the financial aid office. People aren’t getting the sense that problems are a result of the college not being able to pay, but complications with the administration process in the financial aid office. Are there any plans for review to making the financial aid more accessible and easy to navigate?

Jenny Rickard: Could you give some examples of the type of problems you’ve experienced?

Sophie Balis-Harris ‘12: Totals will change as a result of a mathematical error. It will take eight months to deal with something that should take three months.

Jenny Rickard: The financial aid office was restructured last year, so the process was particularly was complicated and it took some work in order to realign everything. The financial aid office is about to move to guild. Once guild opens up, we’re going to talk about the general paper process.

Sophie Balis-Harris ’12: It seems like it’s a pervasive problem a lot of people are having that has to do with the way financial aid works.

Jenny Rickard: It would be helpful if you could come share some of the specific issues.

Sophie Balis-Harris ’12: I can send you an email.

Jenny Rickard: That would be great. It’s hard to know what the problem is because sometimes there are technical errors and filing errors. Information from outside vendors sometimes comes in incorrectly. I would love to hear that, if you wouldn’t mind.

Julia Fahl ‘12: Thank you for the SEPTA passes. Feel so close to Philly at this very moment. I was wondering if you could speak about process for coming up with ideas to improve the social climate on campus.

Michele Rasmussen: Thank John. It takes a college. A social committee has been newly appointed. I was thinking about working with this committee to get ideas about what o do if we had a blue sky and could do whatever to have more fun and figuring out what that would look like. I’m very leery of too much top down dictating of what would be fun because in my experiencecollaboratingwith students gets fruitful results. Right now, we’re looking to address immediate concerns, like trying to create more social space on campus and trying to build a system were there’s more consultation about events. I wish Mary Beth Horvath were here to speak about this, sinceit was her idea to do roller rink thing which was very successful. We would like to work with students to come up with ideas.

Julia Fahl ’12: Will the SEPTA passes to continue to be financially feasible?

Michele Rasmussen: We probably won’t be able to be as generous. We spent all of what is Haverford’s annual budget within the first six weeks. Clearly, the program has been really successful. Bryn Mawr is a Philadelphia college and you should spend as much time as possible in Philly. We’re not going to yank program because we’re committed to it, but it won’t be twenty passes anymore because that’s not financially sustainable.

Blair Smith ’12: Students really miss the midnight breakfast. Will it come back?

Bernie Chung-Templeton: We don’t have a midnight breakfast scheduled. We used to haveone per semester, but we had to cut it out due to economics. We know it was very popular and itwill be on list of things to consider.

Blair Smith ’12: Will there be a second Harry Potter dinner?

Bernie Chung-Templeton: Some people in the dining halls want to do it again and some don’t. It would be up to the dining halls.

Julie Gorham ’12: My question is for Ed. First, of all thank you. I was just on Mount Holyoke’s campus this weekend for the Seven Sister’s Conference. The grounds are extensive and beautiful and but we had to walk through a lot of leaves. We don’t have to do that at BMC. I was wondering about the path from the library to the Campus Center. Is it going to get paved? Or are we going to be forever battling between grass and students?

Ed Harman: Thank you. Facilities has been working on a plan for the front of the Campus Center for the last year about how to resolve that path. On November 29th we’ll be hosting a charrette. The charrette will explain how we attempt to move this plan forward and resolve what’s been issue for the past thirty years. A charrette is a collaboration between people from multiple disciples to look at different things and pick and choose what we want our design plan to be like.

Sarah Lovegren ’14: I was wondering if there were plans to have a conversation about the meal plan options. As a residential student, I don’t use mine all the time. Sometimes I just eat soup. It would be nice to have options that cost less.

Bernie Chung-Templeton: When you say more options, do you mean less expensive ones? One of the things I’ve been told is that the residential dining program is Bryn Mawr. When you come here you eat here. In order to support that, you need a certain amount of participation. Less expensive options are not going to happen. We forever had one but we’ve expanded it to three. One of the things I wanted to know is how many students would be interested in more choices even if they might cost more? Because we are one of the few institution that has few options. Would you like to see options that are less expensive or different?

Sarah Lovegren ’14: Both.

Bernie Chung-Templeton: Different how?

Sarah Lovegren ’14: It would be nice to have a meal plan that gave you credit at Uncommon Grounds.

Nora Chong ’12: I have several questions. What are the college’s priorities in terms of recruiting students from different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds what are the support systems that are put in place to bring students to a place where they can have conversation in the classroom that are constructive. What are the college’s policies regarding specifically racial diversity when hiring faculty and staff?

Jenny Rickard: Diversity is critical value of the college and is always a priority in terms of recruitment efforts. According to the U.S News College Report, Bryn Mawr ranks 5th in terms of racial and ethnic diversity, 3rd in terms of socioeconomic diversity, and 1st in terms of international student diversity. There has been increasing support for students as we have become more diverse.

Michele Rasmussen: The Office of Intercultural Affairs provides support. The definition of diversity has become more diverse and can be thought of in terms of socioeconomic background, gender and sexuality, religion, and class. Weare active across all fronts. There’s the Community Diversity Assistant program that assists in facilitating those conversations in the dorms and has been very active in starting discussions. The diversity council meets every two weeks and discusses issues that cut across students, staff, and faculty. We don’t relegate these responsibilities to a single person or office.