[what exactly does your sga senate do?]

I'm tired of students not having any idea what goes on in SGA. I don't know whose fault it is, but I decided to post some notes I took during tonight's meeting. These are biased and incomplete because they are from my perspective, but the official minutes will be posted on the official SGA announcements blog... eventually. (Seriously, the last Senate update is from 2/23/09.)

I'm sitting here in the Senate meeting. It's 5:30 PM, and we're in room 318 of the Commons.

Rahilla, speaker of the Senate, calls the meeting to order.

Katie Boone, director of Residential Life, presents a slide show about the new Displaced Students Policy and other changes this year. I stated that I thought Residential Life should have told students about this in the Fall when they made the decision instead of waiting until so recently. Katie insisted that they did in fact publicize the policy when the decision was being made and that she couldn't help it if students ignored the publications or didn't read them. I don't remember seeing anything. The song and dance about information being available and students "choosing" not to read, however, it is not new to me.

I also grilled her about the decision to switch from Walker leases to Walker licenses and expressed frustration with the lack of student involvement in the policy, the short notice given to students, and the utter removal of student/tenant rights in favor of making it easier to Capstone and Residential Life to remove students. Katie admitted that the decision was made to make it easier for them and apologized that the policy had made me unhappy. She said she didn't even think students would notice the policy change, much less care about it or face difficulties because of it. I have to move off-campus next year because I have no where else to go in the case that I did get kicked out and couldn't risk that happening.

Katie then talked a little bit about upcoming renovations to the residential areas and asked the Senate to give input by show of hands what renovation should be done next between more patio/grilling areas, a tennis court, a basketball court, or a volleyball court. The Senate and others present overwhelmingly voted for a basketball court in the area of the residence halls.

Katie finished at 6:20, and we moved into a review of the past week's activities.

Whitney said she met with Ken Baron.

Rahilla announced that RSA elections are coming up, as is Dog-a-palooza.

At 6:23 we moved into legislation.

The Retriever Weekly budget ($45,500), which comes out of the SGA budget, was passed without any discussion. (EDIT: Minutes from a previous meeting where this was discussed.)

Rahilla asked whether anyone moved to vote on the next piece of legislation, the SEB budget ($163,000). Toby asked whether we'd be discussing this or not, and Rahilla said she'd assumed we were all comfortable voting already. Toby expressed a concern about the Quadmania show appealing to such a small group of people for such a high cost. Amber said different artists were chosen every year and students were welcome to give input. Jen pointed out that we had asked for a more detailed budget and we never got one. Rahilla decided to table this piece of legislation until next week. (EDIT: Minutes from a previous meeting where this was discussed before.)

Kati Henry, the election board chair, presented an amendment to the SGA Constitution which would allow first semester transfer students to run for SGA office using their cumulative GPA from their previous college(s) since they would not yet have an established GPA at UMBC at the time of the election application. For example, this would apply to students who transferred at the beginning of a Spring semester and wanted to run for an elected position for the upcoming year. Many present had positive things to say about the amendment. Jen Kent moved to approve, and the amendment passed.

The next item of business was approving the SGA budget for the 2009-2010 school year. The only discussion point was one I raised. Even though we had discussed replacing the elected positions of Student Organization Advocates with appointed positions under the Vice President of Student Organizations, the stipends ($500 x 5) for Student Organization Advocates were not indicated in the budget to be spent on VPSO staff if the amendment to eliminate the Student Organization Advocates passed. I thought that if we were proposing to eliminate $2500 worth of staff resources for student organizations and replace them with VPSO staff, we needed to indicate that we would commit that same $2500 to supporting student organizations with staff. The purpose of eliminating the Student Organization Advocates was to fix a broken system, not take money away from the support of student organizations. Others disagreed with me and said it should be left in the executive fund and left to the discretion of the SGA President and Treasurer, citing that other executive staff often weren't paid and the fact that the VPSO might choose not to hire staff. The budget passed unanimously without further discussion.

Yasmin proposed a piece of legislation to allocate an additional $10,000 to student organizations. After some discussion on why this was necessary, the legislation passed.

James McCauley proposed a piece of legislation to provide funding to fix Erikson field and maintain its upkeep by seeding and aerating the field after each major campus event and fertilizing it three times per year. The proposed cost was $2,600. Josh Paiva asked if this cost included drainage. James explained that aerating the field would take care of most of that problem, but that draining would be an additional cost. Simmi asked if we should be the ones paying for this. James replied by saying that we as an organization were one of the primary users and destroyers of the field and that many students use this field for recreational sports. Brian Frazee expressed concern about the fiscal responsibility of us paying for a project that was not guaranteed to succeed, citing failed past attempts to fix Erikson field. He suggested lobbying facilities management or waiting until another year to attempt this project. James explained that in the past, the field had been seeded but not aerated or watered, which is why past attempts to fix the field had failed. Josh suggested paying student organizations to do the work instead of paying facilities management. James replied that the scope of the project didn't lend itself to such a solution, but that he'd considered it. Chidi asked how we would keep people from using the field. James replied that we wanted people to use the field and that the idea was not to stop them. The idea was to maintain the field after events such as the bonfire destroyed it so that it would not decline in quality throughout the year. Amber expressed support for the project and asked where the quotes came from. James said facilities management took care of that using the bid system required by state law. Jen Kent asked why the cost was so low. James said facilities management was covering part of the cost. Yasmin asked who James spoke to at facilities management and James said Donna Anderson. Yasmin said she talked to Mr. Donoland (sp?) who had told her about other master plans to do much more work on Erikson field in the future and expressed concern over spending money now when these plans might be on the way. Brian Frazee said that he thought our job was to fund student organization events, etc., not fix the field. James asked if the Senate wanted him to have the contractor come in to speak to them.

At this point, I expressed disappointment in the Senate for being so hostile toward this project. I pointed out that I did not think that our job was purely to fund student organization events. There are many students on this campus who would very much like to see Erikson field fixed but may never go to student organization events or SGA events. Those students pay a student activity fee too and playing frisbee is just as legitimate an activity as a costly event in the UC Ballroom. I was disappointed because I do not think that the Senate is truly representing all students if it says that fixing the field is less legitimate an expense than funding an event. The discussion was tabled after a few responses.

At 7:25 we moved into committee reports.

The "Extending Library Hours" committee is looking into making the Chil-Fil-A a 24-hour study space and is meeting with President's Council (President Hrabowski) to discuss extending the library hours. (Reported by Toby Le.)

The "Black and Gold Signage" committee reported something I wasn't paying attention to (Whitney). Toby Le added that making the red card into a black and gold card was progressing.

Josh Paiva reported back for the "Investigating Fees" committee. They are investigating laundry fees because many other USM schools charge a flat fee for laundry per semester instead of charging to do laundry. He is also investigating printing fees because at many other institutions printing is free.

At 7:40 we moved into executive reports.

Some people said some stuff.

Gabe is firing the Director of Diversity Affairs, Damola Sijuwade, because he has missed the last three executive cabinet meetings and has not responded to any emails since Gabe took office. Cabinet directors make a stipend of approximately $1,000 per school year.

Josh Paiva reported back from RSA. The only thing that caught my ears is that they want to look into removing the Designated Smoking Areas that are within 20 feet of academic buildings and move them further away from buildings.

Brian Frazee suggested that we pass legislation to encourage organizations and individuals not to hold events on reading day (May 13). Yasmin and I pointed out that we are unveiling the Green Space (from ProveIT!) on reading day. Some further discussion ensued.

Michael Hincke wanted to discuss why it was so difficult to get a temporary parking permit from parking services (having to request in advance, parking services having limited hours) at the next meeting. Jen Kent suggested he talk to parking services.

At this point I stopped paying attention for a little while for reasons unknown to me. I don't think anything terribly important was missed.

Lynn Shafer is coming to the Senate meeting next week. She decides stuff about fees. We're going to talk about how to make sure that if the student body passes the increased student activity fee, we actually get to implement it. (UMBC can only raise its fees by 4% each year, and what could happen is that UMBC could deny raising the student activity fee so that they can raise other fees to use up that full 4%.)

The meeting adjourned around 8. We passed the gavel around and each made brief comments on how the meeting went. Gabe Rettaliata, the SGA President, expressed disappointment in the way the meeting had gone but refrained from commenting further.

Want to come to a Senate meeting and see how things go for yourself? Then be in Commons 318 next Monday at 5:30 PM!