Tuesday, March 5, 2019, 7:30-9:00Hopkins Hall 002

All College Council Meetings are open to the Williams Community. Anyone who wishes to speak before Council should contact Ellie or Olivia (eas6 or cot1).

Called to Order: 7:3

Guests/Proxies:Katrina - Proxy for Tyler Johnson ‘21Philemon - Grand Canyon TripMatthew - Springstreeters

Absences:

I. Approval of Prior Minutes

Motion to approve: ShaneSecond: PorterThe Ayes have it

II. Budgets

Olivia: Time for budgets

CoSponsorship FundSpeakfree

● Spoken word poet and activistCASO

● Participation in a night market as a part of their heritage monthJamie: we don’t have enough money in CoSponsorship to fund this, and Benefits fund is mainly untouched. I think we should move money from Benefits. Benefits is basically CC helping with fundraisers, and we have a lot of leftover money.

Motion to reallocate funding and fund both in full: Jake Second: Will C.The Ayes have it.

Benefits FundRugby and MHC

● $65 to help run an event with chile cookoff

Motion to fund: Alex Z.Second: PorterThe Ayes have it

General Fund

Jamie: A note on Paying Students: we aren’t able to pay through accounts payable. We’d have to set it up with HR. In the meantime between now and getting student jobs set up, we can’t really compensate students due to legal reasons. Until that point, we have to stop.

Ritmo Budget:● FinCom recommended $1000, not paying for students labor because of legal

issues

Motion to allocate: Will H.Second: Will C.The Ayes have it

Jamie: For Springstreeters, we have Matthew here to talk about their budget

Matthew: We have been going to this trip for several years, and we intend to go on this trip in order to perform with other groups in the past. This improves our singing as we get to see how other schools do it, and we can improve and bring that back to Williams. Also, CC has been funding basically this request since back to 2010.

Will: What was the revision to this budget?

Jamie: it was largely a change in the dates, there were some other changes regarding food

Motion to allocate in full: MaxSecond: JakeThe Ayes have it.

WOC Grand Canyon TripPhilemon: we were not given a slot on FinCom, and I felt kinda bad about that since I included in the email that this was through WOC. This is a trip to the Grand Canyon, and we are not a CLIA group. I find the decision not to hear us in FinCom and disregarding our trip because it is a Spring Break trip to be disrespectful. While not a CLIA breakout trip, this does offer an opportunity to ‘break out’ of the Purple Bubble. A lot of the students are low income, students of color, too. We have reached out to a lot of different funding sources, and with all the support we have received, the cost per person is still $900 per person. As noted before, mostly POC. Scott Lewis noted that, in the history of the trip, only three POC have gone. This is a unique year in which we have a lot of POC going on the trip. This is something that allows us all to break out of what is usual to us. As a PoliSci and Africana Studies major, this is something that allows me to do something I wouldn’t be able to do normally. It would be very nice if CC funded this in light of funding other break out trips. I think it is kind of crazy that I had to come to Council specifically and that our request was disregarded before we got to mention it, despite other BOTs being given a spot.

Solly: is it 7 or 8 students?

Philemon: I would have to check with Scott Lewis to be sure.

Jessy: This isn’t a break out trip as referred to in our bylaws, and we just funded the Springstreeters so I can’t see a problem.

Linda: why isn’t CLIA involved?

Philemon: I’m not sure

Will H.: Have we paid this in the past?

Philemon: I don’t believe so. In the past students just paid out of pocket, and this year we have much more people on finaid.

Porter: What are the chances people go, even with our funding. $900 is a lot out of pocket.

Joseph: The trip has been booked already, so we all have to go.

Lance: Out bylaws don’t refer to RSO requests, simply CLIA requests. We believe we have some obligation to RSOs that we don’t have to non-RSOs, and that is why we have a cap on BOTs usually. Also, just to clarify: you weren’t even given a spot at FinCom? Because every student has a right to request funding.

Jamie: I can clarify. We haven’t been giving spots for BOTs for anyone. When I got the budget from this group, it had the CLIA budget, so I lumped it with. That was my mistake. I’m sorry. I hope you feel like you’ve had a platform to request money.

Philemon: I do.

Motion to fund $2,400 in full: JessySecond: Alex Z.The Ayes have it.

Jake: if this was requested from WOC and not as a CLIA BOT, would they have been able to request more money?

Jamie: I’m not sure. They possibly could have

Kai: Did you suggest to Springstreeters to ask for food?

Jamie: I do for all groups.

Jake: except not for this WOC group, it seems, right?

Jamie: I usually do

Jake: I move to reconsider what we funded. I’d like to look back at the budget that was sent to us and see if we can help in any more way.

Motion to allocate food costs for 5 days: Alex Z.Second: ?The Ayes have it

Margot: I think we should do as much as we can to do to give funds to this group.

Jamie: we need to remember that increasing funding for some groups, we need to still be asking if, dollar for dollar, the funding we spend is the best to bring value to this campus. If not, we are just opening our money as first-come-first-serve.

Jessy: I’d like to point out some things. Why did this not get pointed out during Springstreeters?

Jamie: I think BOTs are a new thing generally. The amount we have spent on BOTs is substantially more than we have in the past. That means less money spent on campus.

Jessy: right, but the Springstreeters is over the Spring Break

Olivia: most a capella groups generally don’t get their funding

Will: I have a friend that is on the Octet who is very mad that the Springstreeters always get their funding for their trip.

Solly: this has happened a lot, we should have this discussion.

Jake: is the full budget transparent and easy to access for all students?

Jamie: No, but it can be made that way

Jake: it’s hard to judge opportunity cost when I can’t see the other budgets. Can we put them out

Olivia: can we have the CFA displayed going forward

Brendan: Can we make a committee on this? We should stop putting a lot of time into it.

Olivia: Lance has Rules committee1

William C.: Can we have breakdowns on whether or not we are spending faster than normal

Jamie: we can do something like that… My personal thoughts are, we need to compare the amount of money we spend on the small, easy requests than the large, hard requests (BOT, Springstreeters, etc.). I think we do better stuff for the campus with the easy and small requests. We should do more of those.

Jake: there seems to be some bias in determining which are recommended to be funded between the BOTs and Springstreeters.

Jamie: this was because we thought the BOT was a CLIA group.

Philemon: if more and more students want to go off campus, isn’t that implying that more students value leaving campus and should be supported with all of our CC funds

Will: with WOC, we have to remember that WOC is getting a large pot of money separately. Most people at Williams are members of WOC and they send $10 a year. This is a great discussion, but I move to table this until next week.

Motion to table until next week: WillSecond: LanceOn a tie, the chair denies the motion

Lili: can we try and save some funding that we can expect to be needed from annual requests so we can see them coming?

Ellie: subgroup at the beginning of the year is a time where we fund big, established events or trips far in the future. That’s the theoretic point of subgroup.

Will: we give out ⅗ of our money in subgroup.

Tristan: I guess I’ll say one brief thing. The best way to use this money to make Williams a place we like is to spend it on groups on this campus. I don’t think the increase demand in off-campus trips is an indication of a dwindling campus life, but I think that it

1 Yes, I do! Let me know if you want to join!

is a call to reconsider how we can best spread the utility of our money around the campus.

Solly: an idea that popped up is to perhaps set up a fund specifically for travel. This Travel fund will provide an ability for us to track the funds being spent down over time.

Nationals FundJamie:

Quiz Bowl● Going to nationals, in Chicago, only one person with a driver’s license

Motion to allocate in full: ShaneSecond: Will C.The Ayes have it

Jamie: deadlines are now moving up. Annual budgets are due by April 6th at 11:59PM. We need to do more publicity for this.

III. SOC BylawWill: people complain about too many committees, and I want to cut one: SOC. SOC is not really a needed committee, so I want to consolidate it into a committee that simply sends an email that solicits the same, simple questions asked at every SOC meeting. The idea of this bylaw is to ensure that we follow our constitution, and also make the process simpler.

*Will explains his bylaw*2

Tristan: I brought this up in exec, but I am worried a bit about the fact that this committee has one member. If I want to start a club, and I submit my club to a board of 3 members, the approval of three members means a lot to me. I think that leaving you the discretion to decide which clubs are referred to CC is maybe a little too broad.

Will: the reason I include the ability to meet with me in the bylaws is so that, if I think a group will have trouble with CC, I can meet with you and walk you through it. Regarding

2 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mdqy97iruCqxeR_Cm9YP_-mcjNE5-lRveAH90gasZcE/edit?usp=sharing

the approving of groups… as a member of SOC for the past semester, I can tell you I don’t feel that way. The committee members didn’t have much outside impact on the actual outcomes of the committee. Being on the committee felt unnecessary.

Lance: my experience with Bowling club is that SOC is really not needed. It is not wholly different than the other points of the RSO creation process, and ultimately, CC will still decide on a club’s creation.

Jake: I hear that you are worried about accountability, but I think the important part of this bylaw is switching from a perspective of ‘accountability’ to a role of service and helping students best have their club created. It helps us help students rather than just focus on ourselves.

Tristan: My understanding is that that is how it always has been. Clubs have always had the ability to come to CC.

Will: my job here is to remove the middle step of SOC. I want to make sure that anyone who wants to bring a club to this campus is best helped to make their club as successful as possible.Will: one more thing, we thought on Rules Committee to remove the year requirement because we figured it was too much gatekeeping

Lance: it seems arbitrary: we ultimately decide in the end

Kai: can we make the wording more vague? Make it suggested that we wait for at least a semester so we can insure groups have time

Jessy: how would a semester waiting time work with the subgroup funding moving to the Spring?

Shane: That’s a good point with the semester thing. I think there still needs to be something in between. We need to make sure groups are well established enough to request the money.

Lance: I think the unneeded gatekeeping is a bad idea

Tristan: making the RSO process easier will have effects on our funding. Opening our subgroup process to just anyone will lead to a lot more people requesting money. I think we want to be careful not to open the money and make it too easy to get. I wonder if we can do something byway of a bylaw that says at 1 year, all groups are available for

funding, and then we make a time –– 3 months, 6 months, etc. –– they can come to FinCom and make a case for why they deserve money.

Porter: slightly addressing that, I would argue that to get registered as an RSO, there has to be a demonstrated interest on the point of the RSO. Let’s say I make climbing club, if I have to tell them that they have to wait for 6 months.

Olivia: this is just subgroup

Solly: I think we should do a middle group solution

Will: the correct process, and that isn’t changing, is that we have students hold an interest meeting. Generally, we’d like to see that sheet filled, but there are times we make exceptions. We’d like to see cross class year interest as well. With regards to subgroup funding, if we allow an RSO into subgroup, we don’t immediately give the funding to them. Perhaps let’s make a middle ground: RSOs must wait until the next CC, but we recommend a year.

Jake: I think people hearing the next CC session will lead people to think the next Tuesday.

Jamie: as of right now, there are no plans to do annual subgroup in the Fall.

Kai: I think to Shane’s point, asking to wait for a whole year for the subgroup funding is not unreasonable. Subgroup is a pot of money we put aside for events at the end of the year. I think putting young clubs into subgroup may lead to young clubs overestimating their club budget, and that will lead to more money than needed being allocated. We can’t get subgroup money back after it is given out.

Tristan: Thanks so much, Kai. I think that is right. Subgroup is for the year, and I think that the concept of young RSOs, under a year old, is able to put on an event that requires subgroup funding is unlikely.

Motion to approve the bylaw in full, with one year being the restriction: LanceSecond: Porter19-1-0The Ayes have it

IV. Projects

Ellie: we went through the projects, picked out the best, and now we are going to go through and narrow them down to five.

Tristan: we need to clarify these first

Ellie: we will!

Porter: Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t sophomores trying to set up a convenience store?

Ellie: the idea of this project is to turn Grab n’ Go after it closes into a convenience store. The hardest part of projects is finding someone in the school to maintain it beyond individual members

*proceed to go over projects*3

Swipe reform● Making swipes more easy to use, better in general

Kai: be careful, you will be told no a lot.

Dodd Circle Space● This is where the ice rink was, but is now free. The land is very flat. We paid a lot

of money to get it that flatCampus Art

● Trying to make more spaces for student art on campus. ID Code Building Access

● Making it possible to get into buildings with a code. This is something they do for pre-frosh during previews. The idea would be that perhaps your ID code could unlock doors.

Stuff Storage Space● There is a notable lack of space to store things on campus for RSOs. If you buy

something, there is nowhere on campus to put it, so this project would be to try and find more spaces to put stuff.

Will: Comment on this: my predecessor Maria is still trying to convert Dodd basement into this.

Student Spaces

3

● There are some but not many student-designated spaces on campus. Greylock, for instance, has an entire building that is barely used, so we could turn spaces like those into student spaces.

Breakout Trips● Trying to find administrative pockets of money to give

Snar Camera● Displays the length of a line for snar and estimates the time required to wait in

line.

Olivia: you ever show up at snack bar and there is a long line and you don’t want to cut the line? Or you don’t want to wait in line I mean. Not that I’ve ever cut in line.

Snar Camera● This would hopefully give an idea of how long the line is

Jake: this could be used as surveillance by people.

Returnable Bins● The places to drop off dining services dishes. It feels like there aren’t enough of

themTwo-Ply Toilet Paper

● This one comes up every year, but it never really works out.

Tristan: how are we deciding these 5?

Ellie: we will be voting

Will H.: maybe we can make this only a thing that people on purple air can access? Then we wouldn’t have to worry about weird randos looking at anyone.

Shane: there are some weird randos on Williams, as well. This may be kind of uncomfortable to have people looking

Will C.: can we just agree to work on some other method of determining the line length?

Linda: is there any other manner to determine this?

Tristan: It’s important to note that this has worked in the past. I think we envision this as something that is easy to determine the time in line. We don’t have to use a camera that is any better than just being able to determine how many people are in line.

Jake: we’ve all heard about sexual abuse or sexual assault on campus, and while this snar camera is not relevant to me, I think it may be relevant to some people on campus. It’s important to remember that this is something that may affect some.

Will: I think it is important to remember that Paresky is a public place, and that most of us are in Paresky most days. We should definitely look into Jake’s concern about this, but it is different than pointing a camera in a dorm hallway.

Shane: some things I thought were a good idea: combining the Dodd Circle Space with Campus Art.

Linda: I had a question about ID code access. Has anyone passed this by CSS? I think there are a lot of concerns that CSS may have. My three main thoughts: unless you have a no-contact order, you have access to most buildings. In the case of a code, people can tell their friends their ID numbers, and that will lead to people being able to come in and out of buildings without an ID. I think this would negate a lot of the usefulness that CSS needs.

Will: I’d like to add on. Cards can be replaced, but codes are only one code.

Linda: to add an anecdote, CSS called me in to ask about an event on campus that I had used my swipe nearby.

Lance: I think with regards to the dodd circle space, I think that we sent out a poll last semester and the current residents of dodd don’t want anything there. This may just be solutions in search of problems, and I think the flatness of the land is remarkable. In a way, the flatness is beautiful and should be left as is.

Kai: the returnable bin idea is a good idea, but we have to remember someone is going to have to do this. It will be hard to find people to do this.

Tristan: thank you Kai. I think you may have a good point, but I think it is worthwhile question to answer. Another thing I have to say is about the dodd circle question: the people in the survey we sent out answered that we shouldn’t do anything with the land. I would be in favor of commissioning that space as a student art space on behalf of students, but we should also be careful with the knowledge that some people there don’t want anything.

Ellie: to clarify, only like 10 people filled that survey out, and only like 3 said leave it alone.

Lili: I just wanted to mention that some schools have a swipe-return system for reusable bins. Also, grab n go is used after hours as well so we can’t use that space.

Alex Z.: to Tristan’s point: we definitely need to determine the nitty gritty here to some extent. Kai, it definitely is a concern we need to have about whether or not dining services can help, if not, perhaps students can.

Lance: this has been tried before, and I think that it ultimately didn’t work

Alex: can we do a google forms to determine which are most feasible

Ellie: no one responded to the last one

Will C.: can we do a strawpoll then?

Shane: can we just go ahead and vote then?

The total 5 projects we voted on working on:● Swipe Reform● Stuff Storage Space● Student Spaces● Breakout Trips● Dodd Circle Space

Ellie: we will send out a google form, otherwise you will be randomly assignedV. Wise Words with Will

Will: bystander training next week from 7-9PM in Griffin 5. Please be there on time. We will take careful attendance, and if you don’t go, you will have your voting privileges revoked.

VI. Open Forum UpdateSolly: we are doing open forums from 7-9 in Lee’s on Mondays. The way we are going to do this is we are going to have rotating people there. The idea is that you can bring homework, eat snacks, and wait until people come. People probably won’t come, but if they do, it will be nice that you are there.

Ellie: it won’t be answering questions for 2 whole hours, but it is good to be there if people come and want to have questions answered.

VII. Wrap up

Jamie: I have one budget that was sent to me earlier today by Mental Health Committee

Motion to fund in full: tristanSecond: ?The Ayes have it

Motion to adjourn: LanceSecond: ?The Ayes have it

Meeting adjourned at 9:24

Respectfully Submitted,

Lance LedetParliamentarian, College Council