WSA Brief

Minutes Summary for January 23, 2005 meeting:

• New members Emily Malkin, Ashley Martin, Jesse Watson, Gabe Tabak and Monica Arduini were appointed by the elections committee and approved by the assembly yesterday.

• The committee chairs of the WSA’s eight committees gave mid-year reports detailing the progress made during fall semester and improvements for the spring semester.

• President Emily Polak said that the WSA hopes to start a student-faculty-administrative decision-making body. The WSA will be continuing its push for a student representative to serve on the Master Plan Executive Committee and for a more codified way of making changes to the code of non-academic conduct in conjunction with the Student Judicial Board.

• Community Outreach Committee Chair (COCo) Nora Connor said that in the past semester, public safety put up two new blue light phones and public safety officers agreed to start attending sustained dialogue programs. COCo suggested sending one COCo member to each campus activity to ensure that funds are used appropriately. In addition, Jacob Mirsky has worked on an online calendar of events to better catalog campus group activities.

• Ali Gomer, chair of Coordinating Committee (CC), said that her committee has addressed issues of transparency of the WSA and relations with the student body. CC worked to publish minutes in the Argus, appointed several members, conducted the gender-neutral poll and the SBC election.

• Karen Courtheoux, chair of Educational Policy Committee (EPC), said that the goals of the EPC have and will continue to involve improving course access and better relations with professors. Faculty have adopted new guidelines so that more classes will occur at 2:40 and more classes will take place in the morning. The EPC will also continue to advocate strategic hiring in highly demanded fields.

• Nathan Victoria, chair of Finance and Facilities Committee (FiFac), said that the groundbreaking for the new university center will begin this spring. Everything except for the steel drum band has been moved out of the old buildings in that area. Students possess seats on every committee except for Long Lane Development, the Master Plan Executive committee and Campus Renewal committees, but FiFac hopes to make changes. Additionally FiFac would like to create a committee outside of the WSA that would discuss campus looks and facilities.

• Elaine Garven, chair of the Student Activities Committee (SAC), would like to improve the Student Advisory Board to the Office of Behavioral Health this semester. In regard to dining, SAC is working to get more to-go item menus and coffee available to students. SAC will be looking into how to get more points for financial aid students. Subcommittees will meet this week to discuss the master plan workshop and will solicit for community feedback in the near future.

• Pacho Carreno, chair of Student Budget Committee (SBC), said that our financial status is great at this point. The committee should be able to cover all expenses by the end of the year. The fall ‘O4 semester SBC finances and allocations will be posted online shortly. The SBC recently purchased new software that will make the accounting process easier for both the SBC and student organizations. More details can be found at the SBC link of the WSA website.

• Jeremy Abrams, chair of Independent Projects Committee, said that his committee is putting together a Career Resource Center Advisory Subcommittee. He will meet with the CRC staff representative along with one other IPC member and a WSA member. Together, they will work on making CRC functions more appropriately organized and might work on creating a “senior pack” that would allow seniors to sign up for many events at once. The IPC is still working on the Times readership, hoping to keep Wesleyan’s current subscription to the New York Times. The committee is working with Marcelo to create the GPS system in shuttles, but the funds are probably not available.

• A composite of the mid-year report will soon be sent out to students as a campus-wide email attachment as well as produced in hard copy and made available during the next student forum on Tuesday.

• Pacho Carreno resigned as the SBC chair and Brittany Mitchell was selected by the assembly to take his position.

• WSA members debated over the issue of representation at this week’s forum. They passed a motion declaring that certain WSA members, selected by the Executive Committee, should be represented on stage during this week’s forum, a decision that only confirms an arrangement already made by the Administration.