Association of Amherst Students

March 23, 2009
Once upon a time, there was a senate blog. As my senate project, I’ve decided to reinstate it. If you’re yearning for more senate news after watching Jared’s youtube channel, then hooray, huzzah, and welcome. This is the place for you.

I think it’s safe to say that usually, the Red Room is the Place To Be on Monday nights. Forget Gads. You want drama and amusement? Come to a senate meeting. Admittedly, today was a bit underwhelming, but I guess that’s to be expected on the first day back from spring break.

Moving on to business:

8:51 pm – twenty minutes into the meeting. My laptop made a bit of a scene while turning on. We approved the 21 pages of minutes from last time. We passed the BC minutes. The Amherst College Republicans are getting three hundred plus dollars to sign up for Smith’s shooting club, in order to exercise their interpretation of second amendment rights. Saumitra seemed surprised that there were no objections to the minutes as a whole. I suspect this had something to do with the guns, but I may be wrong.
We’re currently discussing funding of the Career Center’s “Junior Jumpstart” series, which is designed to “help Amherst juniors gain a head start on and better understanding of senior year options with early fall deadlines.” We’re discussing funding this because the Senate has set aside a fund to cover programs that have been dropped or could not come into existence because of budget cuts. Things we’re already taking over include Frost community tea, free condoms, and half of TYPO. A separate committee has been formed to deal with this.
9:00 pm - We discussed the all-school mailing list. Chris suggested we come up with a more efficient way to approve (and proofread?) emails that go out to the whole student body, because “every time there’s a typo it makes us look dumb.“ Fair enough.

9:16 pm - We tried to appoint a chair of the Elections Committee. This was tricky, because the chair had to be someone currently in senate who is not running for any sort of senate position next year. Michael volunteered.
9:21 pm - Claire gave an update on the Joint Projects Fund: a new collaboration between the AAS and the CCE, that will act as a budgetary committee for community-awareness, CCE-related student projects. They will meet biweekly. Hooray.

9:30 pm - Adjourned. Shortest senate meeting yet. To put things into perspective: our last meeting ran until 11:45. See the 21-page minutes for more details.

Further incentive to go look at our minutes: When Saumitra (our VP) brought up approving last week’s minutes, Chase said “yeah they’re accurate, but are we sure they don’t make us look dumb?”

See? Fun stuff.

This entry refers to the Senate meeting on October 27^th:

This meeting was the shortest one of the year so far! So this will probably be the shortest AmhPub entry too! Nick talked about the successful trustee lunch on Friday. We’re going to do it again in March, watch out.

In announcements and committee reports, Trustee Committee on Student Life met to discuss more institutional support for clubs and activities, ACEMS, and student health in General. ACPB is bringing Jay Black at 8pm on Nov. 4^th.

The library committee made a brief and not totally enlightening update on where the committee stands. People were curious about professor offices, different types of study environments especially looking at tables vs. desks vs. creepy study nooks.

BC recs passed quickly and finally we discussed the possibility of raising the coach cap to $4,500 under extenuating circumstances. And with that, we adjourned!

This entry refers to the Senate meeting on October 20^th:

This week we discussed Freshmen Seminars briefly. Freshmen have claimed that they don’t feel exposed to different types of thinking and are not writing enough. Really? You kids want more writing? Really?

After committee reports, College Council explained a little about itself. Each week, we meet with the deans to discuss anything nonacademic. In the past, we’ve discussed calendars, Valentine, renovations, theme houses, etc. In the senate meeting, someone also raised the issue of changing our mascot. Apparently this issue is pretty controversial as senators were evenly divided over whether or not they’d even like a discussion on the matter. Last year when we brought it up, the committee shut down the idea pretty quickly. This week’s Chase’s Point of General Privilege was to remind us that “Lord Jeff was a racist, genocidal figure” which was quickly countered by Mason’s remark that “the genocide is debatable.” Other people argued that the Lord Jeff grows on you, that Amherst already lacks in tradition and taking this away would be terrible. The Amherst Atlantic Humpbacked Dolphin, anyone?

Next we elected a new BC member and an Elections Committee member. Congrats Katrina and Emily. Amherst Australian Bandicoots?

Then we discussed our new PR blitz. Remember that crazy guy in a box asking for suggestions? Yeah, that’s us. Amherst dorm Olympics? Yeah, that might be us later. I had to leave the meeting and after I left, senators proposed to write a weekly column in the Student because “no one reads AmhPub”. Ouch. And lastly, we want to throw a party to finally put our money to good use. Amherst Antillean Fruit-eating Bats?

Sorry I have been slacking on my blogging duties. Prepare for an onslaught of postings.

This entry refers to the Senate meeting on October 6th:

Without any E-board reports, we dived right into committee reports. Aaron of the Committee on Educational Priorities explained the nuance between “writing intensive” and “writing attentive”. Apparently, the CEP spent the entire meeting discussing this. They even created an ad-hoc committee for the online catalogue. Sign me up.

Next, we inducted 11 new senators including 8 first years.

In BC recommendations, the senate was totally hoodwinked this week. It was ridiculous. I felt like Haley Joel Osment in the Sixth Sense except that instead of seeing dead people, I’m the only person to see dumb decisions. First, we debated some not-so-controversial, but micromanagy, issues like how many color pages of the Element there should be and whether or not to give indoor soccer club money to buy cleats. The senate has the precedent of only buying gear that can be used for future students. Senators argued that maybe it’s difficult (not to mention gross) to pass down size 11 cleats. But we voted for it anyway considering financial need of students to participate in these activities. These decisions were fine and totally understandable.

So, here’s the rock in my BC recommendation shoe. The Mixed Martial Arts Organization (AMMO). They asked for $900 for an extra “instructor’s contract” for a series of “workshops” and $629.45 for Jiu Jitsu uniforms. So we have a precedent of only funding $3000 for any coach for any one club, right? So this series consists of “on-going” “workshops” with their coach which will eventually lead to competition creating the need for uniforms. Does this sound familiar? Yeah, it should because it’s the exactly what a club sport does. All you have to do is replace “workshop” with “practice”. I think Swing and Ballroom Dance made a good case for their general classes and even Fencing for their workshops, but AMMO clearly did not pass any kind of threshold for believability. We don’t have an automated funding system so that senators can use their discretion to recognize when something is a legitimate claim and when someone is trying to pull a fast one. How did they fool the 30 senators who voted for it? I’ll never know.

After a few relatively noncontroversial budget requests from Educate! and Mock Trial, the Committee on Priority and Resources described what they do. Right now, they’re changing faculty benefits – mainly the health care plan and childcare plan. Even the members on the CPR called it “arcane and boring”. Capital campaign… etc. etc. Finally we got to the important part. When is Val and the campus center going to be remodeled? The answer? Not in any of our lifetimes so stop asking.

Then we voted on a new BC member. Congrats to Wanza. Anticipate being harassed by students. We’re also instituting senate office hours because BC office hours are so popular (not). So now we have a PR committee that will hopefully deal with these issues. And with that, we adjourned.

This entry refers to the Senate meeting on September 29^th:

Once the year starts going, senate meetings start establishing a routine. In officer reports, Nick always brings up some awesome new initiative he has going on. This week he described a new freshman dorm initiative that will install monitors in freshman dorms monitoring the amount of energy freshmen use, you know, watching Gossip Girl and playing World of Warcraft. Raj always thanks people for going to their respective meetings. Peter brings up some news about money. In case we don’t get the point, at some point he also wants to bring in Peter Shea to talk about money and how the current economic situation will affect Amherst. Mike approves some more clubs. This week the JC approved the Argentinean Tango Club and the Investment Club.

In committee reports, the Disciplinary Committee discussed what constitutes rape and sexual abuse. Haley explained the current situation of the Olio – they need 5 more section editors. Remember three years ago when instead of seeing faces of cheery Amherst students in the Olio, you saw big gray rectangular placeholders? I guess three years ago, we didn’t find those 5 section editors; let’s hope we’re luckier this year. Mason, our IT superhero, single handedly wrote the program for the elections after the guy hired to do so failed.

Next the Dining Services Committee members, Katie, Jared, and David solicited opinions on how to spice up (hehe) Val. They started out by tossing in some of their delicious ideas – the stirfry station turning into an omelet station in the morning, blenders for a smoothie stations, more ice cream toppings like crushed Oreo’s, Reese’s Pieces, etc., nutrition information online, better salad options like nuts or cranberries, and new meal plans. In the open discussion, we discussed the fantastic idea of a 24 Hour Val station where cereal or something else easy could be accessible 24/7. And of course, no discussion of Val could be had without the fruitless (hehe) discussion of our limited meal plan options. Senators (waffle) ironed out issues like how difficult it is to get off the meal plan and encouraged the committee to look at different number of meals a week or creating an off-campus meal plan. Chris makes the reasonable comparison of the balsalmic vinegar to battery acid.

Chase’s Point of General Privilege this week: Val’s meat right now is the lowest grade of edible meat. He recommends that we upgrade.

Any other ideas about how to improve Val?

BC recs were pretty tame this week. The biggest controversy was Habitat for Humanity’s request for fees for a Pioneer Valley Walk. This is that type of thing where you’re supposed to get people to sponsor you for every mile or whatever. People tried to show how this is analogous to conference fees since they get networking opportunities. While that may be true, I hope the senate realizes that there are appreciable differences which should encourage them to continue to fund conference fees while never funding these type of fundraiser requests. At conferences, one receives specific training and workshops by paid professionals unlike this walk. Moreover, the whole point of this type of walk is to encourage these students to do their own fundraising and have people sponsoring them thereby raising awareness and starting serious discussions on poverty and gentrification (maybe). They even admitted as much by explaining that they wouldn’t ask for this money next year and that it was only a one time thing in order to guarantee participants.

Finally we moved on to something more controversial than the BC recs. We discussed a senate project to dorm storm for voter registration. Chris wanted money for food for student volunteers to encourage students to go around to the hostile upperclassmen dorms. What this debate came down to was Senate privilege. If MassPIRG had come to us asking for money for their freshman dorm storming event, we would have flatly said no on the grounds that we only provide food for the first meeting for any club. Chase made the dubious claim that because we were elected by the students, we have the authority to make value judgments about what is important to fund. This claim, while an interesting one to consider, opposes the general senate position that we try to allocate funds in a consistently fair way without judging what is important to the student body as a whole. Mason made a similarly dubious claim that because a presidential election only happens once in our Amherst career and its great importance, we should privilege this event. I think the line is finer than he makes out. There are quite a few events that only happen once in our Amherst career and are pretty important – the turkey drop, for example, or that one time you go for Val bulgogi. Okay these are terrible examples, but the point is I don’t think you can tell students what they should consider important above all other things (in this case politics over all other interests like tango or LBGTQ issues) and by giving this particular issue funding when we wouldn’t otherwise does exactly that. For once, the side of fiscal conservativism scored a ringing success as the senate denied the funding.

This entry refers to the Senate meeting on September 22^nd:

This week, when senators walked into the Red Room, they were greeted by about 12 new faces, mainly first years looking to run for senate (we’re still looking for upperclassmen to run). They introduced themselves, and I’m totally excited about the class of 2012. One of them even called Raj a douchebag (granted it was Romen, Raj’s brother), but a first year called Raj a douchebag!! During officer reports, Nick lied to the freshmen by telling them that “senate meetings are fun.” He continued by describing his conversation with Marx (Nick’s definition of fun?). They talked about the Economics and Psychology Department crunches and what might be causing them — class times, major requirements, changing trends in college students, etc (Intro to Psych had 180 people and it’s an 8:30 class?!). Thoughts?

This week, excitement was mainly to be found in an unusual place, the committee reports. Program Board wants to bring Girl Talk and Frank Warren from Post Secret? Yeah, I miss high school, too. Furthermore, in the TV Show polling, the Office (the link is an example of a post secret) won by TWO HUNDRED votes. That’s more than many Senate elections get.

Moving on, the BC rec’s only major debate was the South Asian Students Association’s dinner/fundraiser in Friedmann Room. They wanted $3,000 for food/drinks plus $500 in other miscellaneous costs. They anticipate 150 students which brings the cost to $23.33 for dinner from India House which seems pretty ridiculous for a fundraiser.

So, there were many issues at play here. One issue the Senate apparently never tires of debating is the cost/effectiveness of fundraisers. Let’s do the math: Cost of event is $3,500. Revenue of event is (at best) $900, which includes $5 suggested donation ($750 for 150 students) + $1 raffle tickets ($150 for 150 students). Clearly that doesn’t make sense. And the representative claimed that even $100 would make a huge difference in India, but what would $3,500 do? So that’s one dilemma the senate has always faced, how to account for the fact that our “fundraisers” never actually make a profit. This has historically been solved by recognizing the cultural value and fact that it is still a student activity. Most senators, however, were still concerned about the exorbitant costs of the dinner which included all Hallal meat. The Senate voted to fund only $2,000 instead of the $3,000.

Finishing BC recs, we moved onto a special presentation by Chris and Aaron about the Committee on Educational Policy. They started out by telling us that a lot of what they talk about is confidential so they actually can’t talk about it. Mainly, they mean the Fulltime Equivalent Requests which in English translates to open professor positions. These must be confidential or else the departmental squabbling would be bad. While FTE’s can’t be discussed, the result becomes obvious once they start searching for professors. For example, Psych and Econ are about to start their search. Next Chris and Aaron raised the single most exciting thing that will ever happen to us during the first two weeks of every semester – electronic registration! It will probably be exactly like the system we have now, but without paper. We won’t be moving toward radical online registration changes like auctioning off credits or Smith’s code system. Like the good ol’ Amherst way, prerequisites won’t prohibit you from enrolling in any classes and the professors will still have full discretion over who can enroll in their classes.

Lastly, they discussed the proposed changes to Summa and Magna. As of now to get these Latin Honors, you must be recommended for them through your thesis work and also be in the top 25% of the class. They are proposing to graduate the percentages like the honors. In order to get Summa, you have to be recommended and be in the top 25%. To get Magna, you have to be recommended and be in the top 30%. Alternatively, they’re considering tightening Summa honors. Mainly, Summa doesn’t mean that much if up to a fourth of the graduating class is eligible. Egregia cum laude anyone? Weigh ins?

This entry refers to the Senate meeting on September 15^th:

Hi friends, this week was relatively docile. We had one lengthy debate during the BC recommendations and one election for a seat on the Disciplinary Committee. Weeee…

First, officer reports and committee reports. VP Raj told us about the high level of freshmen interest in the senate. Every year, I relish that brilliant moment of disillusionment after freshmen senators sit through their first senate meeting. Pres Nick is meeting with Marx about the responsible endowment coalition, green Amherst, and the multicultural center. Treasurer Peter wants more on his plate by asking senators to refer all questions about the BC to him or other BC members. Mike approved 2 clubs this week – Homeless Connect and Think. Chris, representative to the Committee on Educational Policy, announced that we are finally moving into the 21^st century, and by next semester, the electronic registration process should be rolling out. Thank the Lord and Al Gore.

Next, BC recs. The debate this week was over the swing and ballroom club. When was the last time anyone seriously debated swing and ballroom dance? The disagreement is this: we have a precedent of allowing each club sport to have one coach with a fee cap of $3,000 per semester. This precedent prevents sports from decimating our semester budget. Swing and ballroom dance, however, wanted to pay their coach for lessons for the general public and for the competitive sport. The argument hinged on the question whether or not swing and ballroom dance should count as a club sport and therefore should be subject to the $3,000 limit for their coach or if it is more like two things: a club sport and a student activity. On one hand, it does seem like we’re paying one coach to teach two levels of the same activity – recreationally and competitively. On the other hand, maybe swing and ballroom dance is different. They advertise for all open lessons and have a huge group of students who swing and dance purely for recreation. Similarly, dancing is different from playing football or soccer. You can have a pick-up football game without a coach, but you can’t have a pick-up swing dance in the middle of the Hamilton ballroom. The senate decided to approach it as two separate entities.

Before I move on to the Disciplinary Committee election, I’m going to explain something I want to start in this blog. Chase, as all senators can attest to, is one of the most outspoken senators, God bless him, and considering how often he raises extremely technical points, I’ve learned a lot from the kid and want to spread this learnin’. Therefore, I’m going to start “Weekly ‘Points of General Privilege’ I learned from Chase” (if any other senator says something particularly enlightening or random, maybe s/he will get the privilege for the week). This week’s “Weekly ‘Points of General Privilege’ I learn from Chase is”: Did you know that all club sports have to accept anybody who wants to just come and hang out for one practice? According to Chase, that means that if I want to, I can crash a [enter club sport] and they have to allow me or else I can threaten to defund them. Suck it!

After BC recommendations passed with quite a few “no’s” (me among them), we elected one senator to the Disciplinary Committee. The DC helps makes rulings on what happens to students when they break the code of conduct or the honor code. Still unsure of what exactly the DC does, Mason asked, “What kind of things go through there?” Nick responded, “Serious stuff.” Enlightening. Victor and Nic were nominated. These two speeches were the most awesome speeches so far heard before the 2008-2009 senate. Victor claims that he “knows a lot of students who have committed some of these offenses and [he’d] like to be a part of the decision making process.” Awesome. I’m glad we have senators representing all our constituents including Amherst’s seedy underbelly. Nic provided by far the best reason, however, for being qualified to serve on the DC. While serving in the Singaporean military, he “knows a lot about discipline”!! Holy shit, I bet he does!! Nic was elected.

On that note, we adjourned.

Edited: thanks to vigilant commenters.

This post regards the first Senate meeting of the year, which happened on September 8th:

Hi friends! My name is Selena and this is my third year as a senator. I blogged for the last three senate meetings last year and I guess I wasn’t crass enough so here I am again. This year however, Senate minutes are up on the website so this will mainly serve as a highlight reel and commentary.

Like my first blog entry last year, I want to start out this one with a description of the Senate’s responsibilities especially since this has shifted in my eyes since last year. I’m going to quote from my first blog in case you’re too lazy to read the “recent entries” (it happens) and because I’m too lazy to write a new description (it happens):

Conventional wisdom contends that all the Senate does is dole out money to campus groups. This claim is only about 50% true. The senate has a considerable responsibility in allocating money from the Comprehensive Fee. Of that whooping $45,000 you may pay a year, the Senate gets 1%. While that seems like a lot of money, the senate funds things you might not think of: ACEMS, Olio, sports teams, Program Board, SoCo, all club budgets, etc. We also sit on faculty committees — like the Committee on Educational Policy, College Council — and Trustee committees. And we’re supposed to accomplish one Senate project. These projects are generally not earth-shattering but make Amherst life a little rosier. For example, the box giveaway at the end of the year is a senate project. Getting DDR in the Campus Center was a proposed Senate Project.

So that was written almost exactly 5 months ago. It’s still true but after one of the Senate meetings last year, I realized we rarely follow one aspect of what the constitution demands which is “[articulate] student voices for advancing action and change.” At this meeting, we passed a resolution censuring the Counseling Center and asking for a review of their services. I’m not sure how much concrete change that resolution created, but it was the only case I remember where we directly represented student voices. Senate resolutions have potential to actually advocate student interests, and this year, senators should take this power more seriously.

Okay, I’m off my high horse and ready to talk about the Senate meetings. What happens between those magical hours of 8:30 and 10:00? First, we take attendance and then the Executive Board members each report. This week, President Nick Pastan described the five billion different initiatives he has going on. VP Raj Borsellino used his Big Brother powers to tell us how many Senators didn’t check Blackboard. Treasurer Peter Tang announced that the Budgetary Committee (BC) has a new website. Secretary Jackie De La Fuente told us about the awesome new grill and the awesome old vans that students can borrow. Judiciary Chair Mike Gutilla described the five trillion clubs wanting official recognition.

After announcements and committee reports, we listen to any speakers we have. This week Interim Dean Hannah Fatemi came in and introduced herself. She is interim-ly replacing Dean Haynes who will be sorely missed. Unfortunately for us, he has taken another position at Drew College. My favorite moment in her appearance was when Chase tried to explain to her that Dean Haynes has a budget and a “budget” from which he has flexibility to allocate money as he wishes.

Next, the Senate looked BC recommendations for the week. This is usually where we spend most of our time, and tonight was no exception. Today the controversial dish was whether or not to fund the water polo team for two or one nights of hotel rooms. Chase very eloquently explained, over and over again, how if water polo has two nights, so should other teams that have to wake up at 4 in the morning. We looked at a smorgasboard of motions and talked a bit until finally it became apparent that the conversation was simply not productive and that the BC should do some research to see how this precedent might affect the Senate. However considering that there was an informal agreement between the BC and the water polo team, we decided to give them their two nights.

In New Business, we appointed a Five College Representative to the Five College Coordinating Board. This appointment raises a lot of good questions. Considering we are a part of this Five College Consortium, what role should the college play as a community of schools? Are we obligated to get to know different students on other campuses? Or does the proximity of the campuses merely provide more classes, someone to blame for the messes Sunday morning, and an excuse for Amherst girls to bitch about man-stealing Mohoes and Smithies? The three candidates, Mason, Haley, and Saumitra, all seemed to think that we are obligated to foster a more encompassing sense of community. Mason wants to pool all of our resources for a Five College Concert. Saumitra bragged about all his Mount Holyoke friends and wants to use this position to help students get to know other students on the different campuses and break the stereotypes we have. Haley echoed Saumitra’s sentiments and called for different events on the campuses. Mason won the election. Without any new business, we adjourned.

So April 28^th was the last meeting of the year. Last meetings can be fun because sometimes people swear and say things they’ll probably regret. No such luck this year. However, one thing we can always look forward to is the senate awards. Each senator gets an award based on the impression s/he has made this year. The nicer the award, the smaller the impression. Anyway, I should start at the beginning of the meeting.

And by “the beginning of the meeting,” I really mean the senator speeches which occurred before the meeting. As usual, only those students running for senate attended (to be fair, there was that one other guy… Sam, who also came). I was kind of shocked by how much BS-soaking some of the speeches had. I understand it when students who are new to the senate don’t comprehend the full workings of the senate, but I’m flabbergasted by the incumbent senators who say absurd things. For example, senators talked about increasing the transparency of the senate. Why weren’t they doing that this semester? Why are students promising things during election time when they already had this opportunity all year? Similarly, senators never make or seem to even recognize the difficult choices they have to make. They forcefully demand fiscal responsibility and student accessibility. These things are generally contradictory. The reason why the senate has to give students the run-around and why the senate asks students to go to different departments is to increase fiscal responsibility. But student organizations HATE partial funding. It’s a pain in the ass and decreases accessibility, but you have to choose: fiscal responsibility or accessibility. It’s like tequila and vodka. You can’t have both unless you want a puking mess all over the carpet. Okay, okay, it may not be as stark as that, but senators should be able to make these decisions.

Anyway troops, enough of the soapbox, let’s march onto the meeting. First, we passed discretionary and semester budgets. Scary. It was bad this semester. Like, Val scrod bad. First of all, who knew that martial arts needed two coaches (or “masters” as they’re called in the martial arts)? The senate decided that since no other sports were allowed two coaches, that the Martial Arts Club would be no different. However, the real pickle this meeting was handling two late budgets – BSU and Sailing. These are two clubs that will definitely get funding eventually. We just had to deal with whether or not we should give them funding at that meeting since they turned in their budgets late. BSU was only 5 minutes late, and while I appreciate Anneliese sticking to her guns in not letting BSU go through regular budgetary considerations because they were late, it caused major problems. So after the senate decided that we would fund Sailing and the BSU, we realized that we over-budgeted. That’s bad. Val Mexicorn Lasagna bad (okay, maybe not that bad). Although the senate wanted to give these clubs money, due to procedure, we simply did not have the flexibility the BC has to adjust the numbers. It devolved into a long proceeding full of motions and amendments and amendments on amendments. Parliamentary procedure has nothing on the AAS Senate. I don’t even remember how it turned out… I think we gave the BSU and Sailing partial funding and told them to ask us for the rest through discretionary.

Next, we revisited Josh’s counseling center resolution which the senate passed unanimously. Mike talked about the Constitutional Committee. I’m sure all of you have read our constitution and have productive ideas on how to improve it. Leave any comments below! Then (beware: self-promotion), the senate gave WAMH money to pay an awesome DJ, E-603, for its yearly party. It’s going to be sweet. Friday 10:00. Stone basement (always a good time). Do come. Finally, Josh and Dan De Zeeuw did some math showing us the price each student technically paid to go to Third Eye Blind — $60, in fact. Holy cow. We need to come up with a solution to the monetary fiasco Spring Concert is. Senators are trying to work one out, but if you got a good idea, leave a note below.

Anyway, finally we got to senate awards. Steph Gounder got the Senate award for excellent service which was well deserved. My favorite award this year was the “Pootie Tang” Award given to Peter Tang. Honorable mentions include the “Noah Webster Award for Using the Most Words Nobody has Ever Heard Of” given to none other than Chase Tanenbaum and the “We’re Only Here for Frisbee” Award given to Ronan and Paul (the only remark I remember hearing from this duo this entire semester was Paul who made some comment about the library. It was momentous).

Anyway, last thing I’ll say about this year is that the 08’ senators were fantastic and you will be missed!!

Edits: Thanks to Peter for pointing out a mistake in my entry. It has been corrected!

I guess I have met the expectations of students who think the Senate doesn’t do anything. I haven’t updated AmhPub on any of the meetings since April 14th. So, here’s an account of the meeting on April 21st:

First on the agenda, planners from Shepley Bulfinch (if you click that link, it’ll take you to their website which showcases some of their absolutely fantastic work), the architecture firm hired to give our sagging library a face lift , came in to ask the Senate about Frost. Senators raised issues including the unappealing aesthetics of Frost, the lack of 24/7 facilities, the weird metal benches on the third floor, the sense that A-Level is an “academic sweatshop”, the need for more casual, discussion areas like a café, etc. Senators would like to see Frost contain more glass to allow vistas of our beautiful campus. Many students were concerned about the dinginess and poorly-lit second, third, B level, and C level floors. I think the word “creepy” was thrown around at least 30 times. Victor said that he really liked the secret rooms he found around the library and encouraged there to be more secret rooms in the new library. The size of the desks came up again and again. What is the deal with those random compartmentalized cubicle desks on second floor (If you have any suggestions on how the new library should look or remarks on why our library sucks or doesn’t suck, please leave me a comment below and I will duly inform the library committee)?

Then, we funded the Senior Ball’s tent and other BC recommendations. As the semester winds down and as student groups hear that the Senate is flat broke, we’ve been getting fewer requests. Senior Ball got us talking about our alcohol policy. Anneliese adamantly said no to the question of if senate funds could buy alcohol. Josh (I think Josh may have been drunk to this meeting, actually, which makes sense as to why he would bring it up) wanted to have a discussion about how we could change that policy. Anneliese adamantly said no again. I love her, btw, and will sorely miss her next year.

We moved on to Josh’s other issue this week, the Counseling Resolution. You all probably know about the controversy surrounding the Counseling Center and the petition that a group of students passed around. Josh produced a resolution that would create a committee to review the Counseling Center and make further recommendations. Good work, Josh (seriously, I give Josh a lot of shit. but this was absolutely necessary).

Then we added a few surveys attached to the election last week and bought a grill. Good week, guys (April 28th was our last senate meeting and I’ll be writing a quick blog entry about that one, shortly).