“You cannot use someone else's fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it.” – Audre Lorde Student Government of Loyola Chicago February 24, 2015, 4:00 PM Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt MPR South, Damen Student Center, Lake Shore Campus Senate Minutes
1. Roll Call a. Call to order at 4:00PM 2. Visitors and Guest Speakers 3. Approval of the Minutes a. Minutes approved. 4. Unfinished Business a. The Elections Code Amendment: Second Reading (Senator Kelley) i. Sen Kelley (affirmation): CRC has been working closely with the election board to put together these amendments. Overall, things that need to be clarified or revised. If there are any questions about the content of the legislation, I’d be happy to answer those. ii. Sen Kelley (affirmation): I move to make several amendments to this legislation. iii. Sen Kelley: CRC met on Thursday to discuss. These changes are a result of the conversation at Senate last week. Reducing number of candidate meeting from thirty to ten. This other amendment clarifies spending restriction of RSOs that choose to endorse candidates. iv. Sen Kelley (affirmation): Already mentioned first two. For third amendment, committee discussed last week whether or not to allow SSOs to endorse candidates. Came to the conclusion that it was best not to allow SSOs to endorse candidates. RSOs can only receive funding in one of two ways – SAF or from their own membership/fundraising activities. RSOs cannot use funding from SAF to endorse candidate. SSOs are sponsored by university departments, so they receive their funding from departments, which in turn receive their funding from the entire student body. If an SSO chooses to endorse a candidate, they will be doing so with funds that every student has paid into. If an RSO endorses, it is through money the RSO has internally raised. 1. KC: Not entirely accurate. SSOs have money they can use that is not university generated. 1. Sen Kelley: No restriction on a department giving funding to endorse a candidate. Would need to be a policy that says department funding cannot be used to endorse candidates. Only way the CRC, VP and President agreed would make it acceptable for SSO to endorse is if there was a restriction on using department funds to do so, where currently no restriction exists. v. Changed “or” to an “and” because a candidate would have to do all of those things for it to be a violation of the Articles, whereas now they only have to do one to be in the dog house, so to speak. vi. Technicality in regards to length of the campaign period. vii. Replaced 48 with “forty-eight” for consistency.
“You cannot use someone else's fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it.” – Audre Lorde Student Government of Loyola Chicago February 24, 2015, 4:00 PM Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt MPR South, Damen Student Center, Lake Shore Campus Senate Minutes
viii. Amendments approved. ix. Sen Santy: I move to vote on this legislation. x. Sen Santy (POI1): Press your vote as many times as possible. 1. A = approve of legislation. B = do not approve. C = abstain. xi. Sen Chavez: Turn it on, too. xii. Sen Fleisher: Turn it off after the vote because it dies fast. xiii. Sen Tsarouhis (POI): Do not press D or E, please. xiv. Legislation passes 30-0-0. 5. Committee and Board Reports a. Safety and Wellness (Chair Santy): i. Thank you to all who came to the Smoking Forum last night. Out of 20 survey participants, 95% were not smokers (19/20 people). We do need more representation from smoking population. Survey asked “How would you like to see smoking policy changed?” 35% for designated smoking zones; 40% for smoke-free campus;15% for stronger enforcement; 10% for no change. Next steps are to improve survey and redistribute through tabling and get more smokers in the conversation (faculty, staff, students). b. Academic Affairs (Chair Bosnich): i. Physics department and Psychology department will have reps from Academic Affairs to their book-selecting committees. Two out of twelve departments we emailed. ii. Heard back from Provost about Finals’ Review Committee legislation. He is planning to organize a review body, but his original vision wouldn’t include students because of fear of violating FERPA. Brainstorming how to get students involved without violating that law. Will be tabling to get more finals schedule data. Thanks for all the support with OpenStax. c. Justice (Chair Bunnage): i. If you can take this last time to please sign your name on the accreditation letter, share with your friends. Student meeting with accreditors on Monday. Flavio, Michael, Maura, Taylor, Rachel, other folks were there. Good representation from student government. Good way to share our experience. Feel positively about it. People from HLC did hear what we were saying. ii. Presenting on the Metropolis question at AFAC tonight at 7PM. About the survey that we did last December. Sharing statistics with Aramark. iii. Meeting with Jennifer Clark and Tim McGuriman at 10:30 tomorrow about the hotel. Doing a lot of work on that campaign over spring break. Lots of opportunities in March to meet workers. iv. Go out and vote, please! Chuy Garcia all the way. 1
Point of Information
“You cannot use someone else's fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it.” – Audre Lorde Student Government of Loyola Chicago February 24, 2015, 4:00 PM Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt MPR South, Damen Student Center, Lake Shore Campus Senate Minutes
d. Facilities (Chair Torossy): i. Thank you to Sen Santy and the rest of the Safety and Wellness committee. Creating dialogue with the student body. Round of applause for them! ii. Had reps from SEA at our last meeting and they brought to us an idea of asking all new construction on campus to be green-friendly, so we will look into that. e. RCDC (Chair Winn): i. AFAC meeting tonight at 7pm in Damen 214. Amy will be here. Melinda will be giving presentation on Metropolis. 1. Sen Bunnage: Just the survey data! f. Sen Caldwell: Sign up for the Relay for Life team. g. Allocations (Sen Henry): i. Allocations had SPOT 2 this past weekend. Funded 98% of our requests. Saved additional $7000 that will go towards SBR. h. Advisor’s Report (KC): i. Would like to thank those of you who attended student forum as apart of the accreditation process. Visit went very well. Process should conclude officially tomorrow afternoon. ii. Wish you all a very happy and safe spring break! i. Executive Report i. VP Fasullo: University Senate meeting was held on Friday at 3PM downtown. Passed two resolutions – textbook proposal that was passed here in the fall. Provost tasked to submit yearly report to faculty about alternative affordable options in regards to texts they require. Voted on resolution to recommend President to divest from fossil fuels within a five year span. Jared was there as well, President of SEA was there. Chief Investment Officer thinks it is easy to divest from our direct investments, but comingled funds will be more convoluted in terms of our investments. Recommended a five year span for that. Board of Trustees will be here this Thursday. Student reps invited to the dinner. Will not be having a Board of Trustees luncheon this year, timeframe didn’t work out. If you have any specific questions you’d like to ask them, please send them my way. ii. CSO Kadri: Demonstration policy forum went well. Meeting with administrators to solidify. SOA nominations closing Friday. iii. CCO Cheng: Have our new cover photo up for Spring Elections; we encourage other members to make it their cover photo. Share when candidate meetings are. 6. New Business and Discussion a. Metropolis Coffee Referendum
“You cannot use someone else's fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it.” – Audre Lorde Student Government of Loyola Chicago February 24, 2015, 4:00 PM Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt MPR South, Damen Student Center, Lake Shore Campus Senate Minutes
i. Sen Bunnage: 70% of 550 people voted to have Metropolis back in our surveys. Aramark said it was not enough people, and we needed to survey 2000-3000 students to get a response that was strong enough. Wanted to put question of Metropolis on as a referendum vote so that students could vote and we could get the numbers necessary to show Aramark that it is something students care about. Encountered problem as ITS changed the campaign dates, so our timeline was super messed up. Didn’t have time to go through legislative process to get the referendum vote to get the question on the ballot. Alternative is to get majority vote from Senate. Want to introduce legislation saying student government supports Metropolis, but I messed up on that and submitted it thirty minutes late, but that’s okay, it will be read next time. I’m just going to read the legislation now. 1. Legislation is read by Sen Bunnage. ii. Sen Bunnage: Would I open it up to discussion right now? iii. Sen Bosnich: Can someone explain to me what’s happening or am I about to find out? 1. Sen Bunnage: Asking Senate to vote to put this question on the referendum ballot. “Do you approve of a change of the official coffee vendor of Loyola University Chicago from Starbucks Coffee Company (National Chain, Partially Fair Trade Certified) to Metropolis Coffee Company (Local Business, 100% Fair Trade Certified)?” 2. Sen Kelley: Intention to introduce legislation (which she just read a draft of) that would, on behalf of the student body, ask that Aramark change back to having Metropolis be its exclusive coffee provider at Loyola. Justice Committee would like to place this question on the ballot. For a referendum question to be put on the ballot, it needs to be approved by Senate by a majority vote. Expresses Senate’s position and also asks that the question be placed on the ballot. Voting on whether or not to put this question on the ballot, and at a later meeting will vote on legislation which would be Senate voting on behalf of the student body saying we approve of changing the coffee vendor from Starbucks back to Metropolis. Voting right now on whether or not to place this question on the ballot. iv. Sen Paulson: You said in your legislation that only 8% is fair trade for Starbucks, maybe put that in the question instead of “partially”, since you included 100% for Metropolis. 1. CCRO Rocks: We said partially because they are 8% pure fair trade and a certain percentage of sort of fair trade… different
“You cannot use someone else's fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it.” – Audre Lorde Student Government of Loyola Chicago February 24, 2015, 4:00 PM Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt MPR South, Damen Student Center, Lake Shore Campus Senate Minutes
levels. Certain percentage that is ecologically friendly, not purely fair trade. v. Sen Bunnage: I move to place the following referendum question on the elections ballot: “Do you approve of a change of the official coffee vendor of Loyola University Chicago from Starbucks Coffee Company (National Chain, Partially Fair Trade Certified) to Metropolis Coffee Company (Local Business, 100% Fair Trade Certified)?” 1. Sen Bunnage (affirmation): I think that piece of legislation was a pretty darn good affirmation. 2. Sen Bosnich (affirmation): Interesting precedent to set by making it a referendum question, but I have no problem paving that path. Kudos to Melinda and everyone else. Thank you for doing what’s better for Loyola. vi. Vote by iClicker. Motion passes 29-0-0. b. The Magis Scholarship Referenda Resolution: Senator Chavez (First Reading) c. Discussion about apathy in SGLC i. Attorney General Lynch: Danish, Kelsey and I collaborated on this discussion topic in light of the Candidate Rally that Spring Elections held recently. Are you aware that you need to re-run for elections? Please raise your hand if you know that. Can’t fully express my disappointment for the complete flop of the candidate rally. Working our tails off to try to make it a success, and ten people showed up to the rally. That includes myself, Danish, and the state Senator we got to bring in, who was doing it as a favor to my family because he went to school with my mother. Really disappointing to see, especially when everyone is apparently aware that they need to run again for re-election. Want to open the floor up to that discussion and how we can not be apathetic because it’s an issue right now. When you work hard on something and no one shows up for it, it’s disappointing. ii. Sen Bosnich: Kudos to Dom and the Elections committee. I couldn’t be there, had class. Apathy at Loyola in general has been a topic of discussion for a while now. Nearly impossible to build culture top-down. Put in tons of work for Arch Madness, everything they could do but nothing could come from the top. Not to disqualify this conversation, but we’ve had discussions like this before and nothing has come of it. I have the same problem in other organizations. What are Loyola students doing after they go to class? Nothing, it looks like. It’s difficult. Student bodies are transient. Here for four years, then you’re out. Most people probably don’t relocate in Rogers Park if they relocate in Chicago at all. I had a conflict, couldn’t be there. I do agree there is an apathy on the body. Challenge yourself to think: as an invested member in this community, am
“You cannot use someone else's fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it.” – Audre Lorde Student Government of Loyola Chicago February 24, 2015, 4:00 PM Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt MPR South, Damen Student Center, Lake Shore Campus Senate Minutes
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I putting forth 100% effort to leave it better than when I came to it? I sympathize with you, Dom, it’s frustrating, but what can you do? Sen D’Onofrio: Not trying to target individuals on this body. I understand we all have class, other organizations, some have work. If it is an event made for this body, needs to be more representation from people in this room. Need to be united as a body in order to bring in people. Make sacrifices within your own schedule so we are united for the rest of the student body. Numbers were sad at the smoking forum, too. Sen Santy: We all study, we all have classes. Think about it in the terms of the people who put on that event. Tirelessly worked to do the budget requests, reserve rooms, have everything set up. Don’t assume your role in SGLC does not take outside of 4-7pm on Tuesdays and the hour that your committee meets. That should not be how you look at your involvement in this organization. Sen Chavez: Very sad when every committee works so hard and then no one from our body shows up. Disappointing because we talk about it here, Sen Caldwell sends events to us. I don’t go to all of them, but we still have to make it a priority within us. We’re a family and we have to support each other. AG Lynch: Coming to these events is investing in the success of this organization. If you want SGLC to succeed, have to come to events! I want to see participation. Really demoralizing because the message that’s sent is that you’re not invested and don’t want to see this organization succeed outside of taking a vote. So much more to it than just taking a vote. Sen Hines: If we’re impassioned by what we’re talking about here, it should naturally coincide with our interests and obligations. See the events as an opportunity to see what we’re working on. Sen Syed: Level of passion. We all care about SGLC. Majority of the events, we invite via Facebook. Go ahead an invite your friends to the event. CCRO Rocks: As someone who has been involved as legislative and executive member, my question is how does this change? How do you encourage the change for yourselves? Personal accountability conversations apparently not being particularly effective. Sen Kelley: Compelling that members of SGLC attend a certain number of events might be something valid and useful to look into for the future. Your obligation extends far beyond the confines of 4-7pm on Tuesdays in this room. Issue of apathy is something that seems to be engrained within the culture of Loyola students. Speaking on behalf of our constituents, don’t think there is a deficiency of enthusiasm. If attendance was all
“You cannot use someone else's fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it.” – Audre Lorde Student Government of Loyola Chicago February 24, 2015, 4:00 PM Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt MPR South, Damen Student Center, Lake Shore Campus Senate Minutes
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SGLC members, hasn’t done a lot to benefit the overall student body. Has to make the student body more enthusiastic and more involved. I invite people to just about every event SGLC puts on. I always hear “Is my voice going to make a difference? Is something actually going to happen?” I don’t have a good answer for them. Things are done at this university without student input and I can only say it seems like our voice and efforts don’t really make a lot of difference. Perception amongst the student body that there’s not really a whole lot we can do to enact change. That plays into the overall issue. Sen Tsarouhis: When I was a freshman and a sophomore, had no clue what USGA was. Found out about it because I happened to be friends with the former Attorney General. How can we expect this organization to be a success when we’re not doing a good enough job with representation ourselves at these events? How can we get other students motivated to come to these events? Agree that part of it lies on the administration. They have made decisions without notifying us, does affect how someone perceives what they can and cannot do at this university. I got the same exact response Ryan got when I was advertising USGA a year ago. I don’t know how we can get students to unite and start coming out to these events. Sen Bunnage: This conversation about apathy is hard for me. Everyone personally responsible. I wasn’t at those events because I was planning like ten others. Working on four different SGLC projects over the past week, can only sustain that because of passion. Apathy is one way to describe it. Communication is another way. Against any sort of policy or requirement because I think you should be moved to do it through your passion for being in the organization. AG Lynch: Building off of what Constantine and Maura brought up. People are apathetic; they don’t care about a lot things. Spring Elections committee needs everyone’s help right now. Deadline is March 1st and that put us in a tough spot. We haven’t received petitions from a single candidate yet. We should start there, start recruiting candidates, start spreading the word. This is elections season. Committee will be tabling tomorrow. Great opportunity to come out, stop by, connect with students. Tangible way to make a difference. We need your help because the deadline is coming up and there is only so much my committee can do. Sen McNelis: Sharing things on Facebook is a great way of getting things around, but Twitter is a quick way to get a lot of information across. SGLC Twitter account doesn’t get much reciprocation. If we were actively retweeting, that could be effective. Or MySpace is you’re still on that. Building a culture that wants to get involved, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
“You cannot use someone else's fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it.” – Audre Lorde Student Government of Loyola Chicago February 24, 2015, 4:00 PM Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt MPR South, Damen Student Center, Lake Shore Campus Senate Minutes
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Will take a while. Ideas to improve that. End-of-Year Review of what we did that we could put online and could share around – seems like a concern the study body has of what change has actually happened. Publicly shows people we are getting stuff done and planning on getting more stuff done. Senator of the Year Award for the most seemingly passionate/active/involved Senator. Sen Santy: Don’t think making requirements to events would be changing the culture. To make it required would not necessarily solve the problem the way we want it to be solved. Explore how to get to the problem at the root, not just how to get people there. Sen Alam: Heard this conversation turn from addressing an issue more to lecturing each other to solutions. Like seeing the solutions end of it. Everyone is passionate about student government in different ways. All the work we do is important. Sen Kimble: Just as guilty of apathy in this organization as anyone. Liking and sharing posts is effective. Having requirements does work. Brings an accountability to it and it’s about how you frame the requirement. Make it a more positive tone. Encourage each Senator to bring out 2-3 friends. Things like that really do help. Sen Fleisher: Missing big immediate issue that we have zero applications for candidates. What ITS did is ridiculous. What do we do? Not going to be able to get 28 people. Not realistic. 1. KC: It was this body that delayed its work in starting this process. Spring is busiest for ITS. Someone else assuming this project. They want to help us but they ask that we stick to the timeline we had last year. We started our work late. 2. AG Lynch: We did start late by a week. Formed the committee one week late. Were able to meet once before Christmas break, had communication over break, met after break and have had weekly meetings ever since. Had planned for a longer pre-campaign period but that was modified. It’s been tough from the start. Sen Nowak: Send out schedule of upcoming events so other students can plan ahead, gets rid of the issue that people are busy. Sen Caldwell: I go on OrgSync and look at the events and they are all on the calendar. Communications have been doing an awesome job sending out the Facebook blasts. Student Development emails go out every week. We have our biweekly newsletter that Kelsey started, but maybe that could be sent out to the whole student body? Sen Santy: People tend to get things in at the last minute. It is concerning that we have zero right now, but just a thought.
“You cannot use someone else's fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it.” – Audre Lorde Student Government of Loyola Chicago February 24, 2015, 4:00 PM Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt MPR South, Damen Student Center, Lake Shore Campus Senate Minutes
xxii. Sen Bosnich: Facebook and social media are great supplemental resources for advertising, but still believe best way to inform people is with a conversation and a handshake. I don’t know why there are zero candidate things turned in. Would hope everyone in this body would be able to turn them in promptly. xxiii. Sen Tsarouhis: Good amount of newer members on this body. A lot of you will probably run again. Will get some materials turned in. I would rather go directly to people. Went to IFC last night, went through the dates. Specifically gave them the first page with the dates because I want them to come to the office to pick that stuff up. If you know someone who might be on the eboard of an organization, ask them if you can go in and talk about elections. xxiv. Sen Bunnage: Another tangible thing moving forward is to have partnerships between committees. A lot of the work we do intersects in a lot of places. Two or three committees working together. Partnering with Facilities with the surveys was great. xxv. Sen Kelley: Senator Nowak brought up an interesting point of having an aggregated calendar of events. $500,000 allocated every year by Allocations for events. Student organizations deal with poor turnout and overestimated attendance a lot. We have a University calendar but it is largely underutilized. We might consider taking that calendar of all of the events, throw in the events we are planning, and send it out to the student body. d. Working with ITS i. Sen Tsarouhis: Want voters to be redirected to a link that has a coupon for 20% off Ireland’s. Need to figure out how to work with ITS and contact them for that. 1. KC: They are not opposed to it, but raised concern that anyone can print it and photocopy it and give it to people who didn’t vote. They are willing to work with you. Forwarded that information to Dominic, Flavio and Michael yesterday. 2. Pres Bravo: If Ireland’s is already taking that risk, then I don’t see why not. 3. Sen Kelley: Felice’s is interested in that same kind of deal. We are not concerned with that issue. Don’t let that be a roadblock in the process. e. Spring Elections Tabling i. AG Lynch: Spring Elections tabling 9am-2pm downstairs in front of the front desk. Donuts and Metropolis Coffee in the morning. Ryan hooked us up with Felice’s pizza in the afternoon. f. March 31st is our last Senate meeting.
“You cannot use someone else's fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it.” – Audre Lorde Student Government of Loyola Chicago February 24, 2015, 4:00 PM Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt MPR South, Damen Student Center, Lake Shore Campus Senate Minutes
g. SGLC Co-sponsoring Islam Appreciation Week i. Pres Bravo: Executive Committee considering cosponsoring Islam Appreciation Week through Executive Discretionary Fund, but open to any feedback from any branch since we will be putting student government’s name on it. Would be a monetary sponsorship. 1. Sen Kelley: If a member of the student body were to ask why SGLC is cosponsoring Islam Appreciation Week and not, for example, Hindu Awareness Week, what should we say? 1. Pres Bravo: They went out of their way to come to us. We’re open to anyone. Shannon recommended we create criteria – what does it mean when we sponsor or cosponsor a group on campus? i. Sen Kelley: Any criteria as of right now that would lead you to not provide financial support? 1. Pres Bravo: Yes. Our CFO brought forward sponsorship of a TEDx event. If it was TEDx Loyola, it would be an overwhelming yes. But it’s TEDx Chicago, so not Loyola affiliated. Main criteria right now are that it is Loyola affiliated and benefits the undergraduate body. h. Sen Nowak: Great time for Senators to sign petitions for candidacy right now to get this process going. 7. Adjourned at 5:42PM.