Tuesday, October 8, 2019, 7:30-9:30Hopkins Hall 001

All College Council Meetings are open to the Williams Community. Anyone who wishes to speak before Council should contact Ellie or Los (eas6 or cc15).

Called to Order:

Guests/Proxies:Absences:

I. Approval of Prior Minutes

Motion to approve: PorterSecond: TylerThe Ayes have it.

II. Budgets

Jamie: Once a week, I will go over the budgets once and then go back over and see if anyone has any questions.

Converging World, $2000Circle of Women, $12Women in Business, $520Williams Badminton Club, $309.95Club Volleyball, $300Williams Intervarsity Christian Fellows, $308.79SpeakFree, $1060The Williams Telos, $3600WCFM, $4440NovelTeas, $145

Max: why is Intervarsity recommended less money than they requested?

Jamie: With Intervarsity, there is a bit of a question about the request. With any group on campus, there are two parts of an organization: both what the organization is expressly for (badminton plays badminton), but with Intervarsity, they are trying to have a

community type of event where they planned on going apple picking. Where we typically fall is that we try not to fund events that are not related to the expressed purpose of the group.

Nate: Just a question about the speaker funding. Is our choice to fund the speakers for events one of the check points regarding our last week’s discussion

Los: absolutely. If a group tries to invite someone like David Duke, we certainly could use our prerogative to block the funding.

III. Pub Night BylawJamie: Last year we cut down on a lot of the funds that we had listed in the bylaws, but I believe this is one that is important to add to the rules. As we talked about last week, Pub Night is one of the more successful things CC has done in recent years. I was speaking to Jesse recently and he told me they go through about $900 a week on food and beer, so I figured it would be good to create a separate fund for accounting purposes so that it is easier to have a sense of how much money we have remaining for all other events. This fund would be allowing the board of pub night to use this money as they need throughout the year, and it would allow us to keep a clearer idea of how much money we have remaining.

Ruairi: How much would this be?

Jamie: About $20,000 in total

Los: We actually have Jesse here now to give us some thoughts on the bylaw.

Jesse: When Jamie brought this idea to me at the start of the year, I thought it would be super convenient because currently we come in and request a budget about once every few weeks. It would be helpful to go ahead and get this out of the way now for the longer term.

Motion to Approve bylaw: WillSecond: Tyler21-0-0The Ayes have it.

IV. New VP of Student AffairsLos: For those who read the Record, you may know that we have a vacancy. Tristan Whalen, who used to be our VP of Student Affairs, stepped down in a quite public fashion, and we wish him well in whatever his next steps may be. The next steps are to nominate a new member and then vote to approve him.

Ellie: Our nomination is Ben Leary, a former member of council and someone who we believe is very qualified.

Motion to Approve bylaw: TylerSecond: Lance21-0-0The Ayes have it

V. Projects/GoalsLos: We all had goals when we ran for CC. Whether it is heated sidewalks so no one slips and falls when walking in the snow, or abolishing College Council, we all have ideas. Projects are the space where we plan these.

Will: We should note that there are some projects that have been tried in the past and haven’t actually worked. Like the 6 pack parking lot in Greylock… It turns out you can’t make a student parking lot out of it.

Ellie: just because it hasn’t been done doesn’t mean it isn’t possible!

Nate: So do we need to know what ideas to do right now?

Ellie: We will go over them right now, but we can also add them over time.

Jamie: One is student storage for RSOs.

Tyler: Didn’t we do work on this last semester?

Ellie: Projects kind of got derailed last semester

Peter: I think abolishing CC is a good idea. Last week we talked about possibly creating a committee that is dedicated to it? Could we vote on that?

Max: Significantly reform CC? Maybe not abolish?

True: I have a few ideas: I want to install one of those water bottle fillers in Sage. Also, a lot of my friends have complained about feeling scared or alone when walking back from TA sessions… so maybe more lights on the paths back? Also, a lot of people have been pushing for being able to trade swipes.

Jamie: Goodrich is open on Sunday morning, but we can’t take swipes because dining services aren’t open on Sunday mornings. There is a new dining service director, so maybe this time.

Margot: I think there should be a way to get everyone bystander trained.

Ruairi: I think this could possibly be done if we had some manner of keeping track of who has been bystander trained so people don’t have to do it 3-4 times, and instead we can focus on making sure everyone does it at least once.

Tyler: We have a VR room on campus. Most people don’t know that. Most people don’t know how to use it. Currently, if you don’t know what steam is, and if you don’t have your own account, it’s hard to use it. I think there is a way to make it a better resource on campus.

Nate: When I was a freshman, you used to have to request a key using a Harry Potter quote… is it public access now?

Tyler: Yeah it is.

Jonathan: More parking? Better food at Mission.

Will: I have a question and some suggestions. Is this going to be sent out to everyone? Also, with the water idea, I think it should be expanded to Mission. Also, there is an app called headspace and there was a state school that purchased a subscription for all of their students. I think something like that would be cool.

Shreyam: Like my fellow class of 2021 rep said, parking and food/swipes is a huge thing. In terms of other stuff, I want to tackle the student athlete divide and trying to look into balancing workload balance. I think currently some courses are much greater work loads than others.

Cameron: We talked briefly about expanding printer access in Mission… Mission’s printer never works.

Kai: it’s actually out of paper. Apparently Mission reps are expected to bring paper from Sawyer to Mission… which is ridiculous and I feel there should be a better solution.

Cameron: Also, I have heard a lot of friends complain about the Halal food selection in Paresky. You have to specifically request it, and a lot of times they will tell you that they are out.

Manny: I think some type of standardization across dining halls with regards to specific dietary restrictions would be helpful. I also think communication with other groups on campus that are clearer and better would be a good idea. Instead of waiting for people to come and complain in person, we should set up some kind of comment box similar to the thing dining services has. Also, I second the workload comment. Some of my classes definitely have us go to lectures that seem to go beyond the workload requirements that should exist.

Jamie: One more thing, Williams has a lot of cool resources and initiatives that many students have no idea about. It would be really cool to have one centralized database of all things that Williams has to offer so that students can go to one place and get an answer on something.

Tyler: One more thing about Paresky, I went to Lyceum with a professor and one thing he suggested was that Paresky could open the second door in Paresky. Apparently they used to open it, but they no longer do it.

Shreyam: I feel there is some way we can set up a turn-style system so that it directs traffic one way with both doors open so we don’t have to worry about theft.

Manny: On the comment about the resource guide, I know this year a group of students sent an unofficial resource guide. Perhaps making an official resource guide would be good.

True: Another project idea, maybe something like a pub night but for tailgating for football games?

Jesse: One thing I know about Pub night is that it was hard to convince administrator to allow Pub Night. One of the reasons it is at on Thursday night is that they assume students won’t be pregaming with it, so a tailgate probably would work.

True: maybe at least some kind of barbecue would be cool.

Kai: Some students have told me that Mission is really bland, and they think maybe some form of student mural on it would make it look nice.

Manny: Adding on to the Mission thing, and this may not be an issue for us, but updating the plaque for the Haystack monument would be good.

Kai: or maybe tearing the whole thing down would be good –– but that would be another discussion

Nate: I want to do a campus singalong. It has happened in the past, and sounds fun. Also, I want to abolish PE. Or at least reform it.

Will: There seem to be a lot of excellent ideas here. But if ideas like these had been done in the past, I feel that CC wouldn’t be as unpopular as it is now. How many of these will actually been done?

Ellie: A lot of it comes down to a lack of accountability, and also you are all living your own lives and doing your own things.

Lance: we haven't dedicated any time for them in person in meetings, and I am in favor of spending more time on projects in meetings.

Shreyam: Also, the administration can present a lot of roadblocks. Last year I know they put international student storage in a pod that was unfortunately placed behind Thompson parking lot… of all the places.

Jamie: My experience with the administration is that they are living their own lives and trying to run a college, and it may take a while to get something done but I’ve found everyone wants to help out.

Porter: One thing that we talked about last year was the fact that we have very flat land in Dodd circle that we could do something with. Currently its just grass. Also, as a council we need to figure out what we are going to be doing about Spring Breakout Trips. We need to coordinate with CLIA and we need to figure out how we will treat them this year.

Ellie: For context, CLIA runs Spring Breakout Trips every spring. While the trips may be great, they often run a very large amount of money for very few students. We run into a lot of questions like whether or not we want to fund expensive trips outside of Williams,

whether we want to encourage them to stay local, or how much money we want to dedicate to them at all.

Will: We need to discuss this sooner than later because the past two years, we have waited until it was too late when CLIA groups have come to us, saying they do not have time to discuss whether or not we give them the money and we are ultimately forced to just give them the money.

Jamie: I have begun this conversation, and I have told CLIA that they shouldn’t count on our funding because we have $70,000 less this semester and we likely won’t be able to help as much this year.

Will: have we considered at all raising the SAT tax?

Ellie: you get into a lot of issues with that

Jamie: its not us, its the administration

Will: it seems like it may be a good idea -- marginal increases could be a lot of extra money for student groups

Jamie: it isn’t a bad idea to raise it considering it hasn’t been increased in a long time to match inflation, but this is a longer-term goal. The truth about breakout trips, though, is that there is no reason to travel around the world on CC’s money. Every individual on CLIA breakout trips get more out of an individual trip than any individual actually pays in.

Guest: thoughts on fundraising for CC?

Jonathan: we should create a paid parking lot to raising money. We can buy up land and charge to park.

Lance: there is a lot of cheap vacant land in Arkansas.

Manny: I think we should talk about raising voter turnout for Council elections. We should figure out how to raise the people who interact with us.

Shreyam: one last idea, going back to Kai’s point about financial aid… currently international admissions are not need blind, so a lot of international students do not apply for financial aid even if they need it, and raising the SAT would raise it for those students.

VI. Internal Review/Town Hall

Ellie: We had two discussions last week: the livestream and the town hall. We should continue them now.

Los: let’s finish up the conversation about whether we want to be livestreamed.

Jonathan: I gave some thought about this, if I was a Williams student who knew CC was live streaming meetings, I wouldn’t come close at all. I think we need to get rid of it.

Adly: I have a few things. I think we absolutely need to make it possible for students to come and turn off the livestream. The other thing is that I think CC is too detached from the Williams community, so I don’t know why we would do anything to get even further away from that. Let’s be honest, no one wants to spend their Tuesday nights coming and speaking to us.

Peter: I agree with what was said, if anyone wishes to come in to the meeting, they should have the ability to turn off the livestream. Also, I think the Mabie Room is still a better choice than this one.

Nate: I understand that people want transparency and accountability, and I understand that. We do have notes and an audio recording, so I don’t see why we also need a video.

Porter: With the livestream, I don’t think we should just turn it off and on. Also, last year we had it with a big deadzone on the side of the room. Anyone wishing not to be in the video, we don’t have to turn it off, they can just stand on the side.

Jonathan: I think we need to take what happened last semester should be taken seriously.

Max: I think we should have a livestream. We should allow people to come and ask for it to be turned off if we need to.

Tyler: If we remember, the one time we had the video off, the group that had come the week prior came the next week and said that we had misrepresented them in the minutes. Having the video helps.

Shreyam: I agree with Nate. I don’t understand why we need to have a video in addition to everything we already have. Video brings in a lot of biases that aren’t captured by the audio.

Will: on the point of notes, we had a group come back and say that Lance hadn’t typed their words exactly the way they had wanted them to be typed –– which by the way, we love you Lance –– so we need something more than just notes as well. I think we need audio, perhaps more public than having to email Lance to get them.

Cameron: I think student safety must be paramount. I think there are ways around the accountability issue that don’t put students at risk. I think with the point of location, it is both partly the location where we meet and also our lack of trying to motivate people to come. If people are motivated in advance perhaps we can get people to come.

Porter: one of the arguments I heard being made was that we could substitute a livestream with a more open space… in that instance, I don’t know how a more open space where everyone around us then has their own device, I don’t know how that is any different.

Margot: audio is better than video, but it is also particularly boring. Video is at least slightly more captivating. Perhaps explaining the dead zone would be good.

True: I’m sorry - what was the initial incident?

Ellie: Last semester a student came to voice his displeasure with how we had treated a budget for Black Preview, and, because it was live streamed, it went viral on YouTube and there were a lot of racist comments made. It was also leaked to some right-wing blogs, and overall it was a dangerous situation.

Peter: the more I’ve thought about it, I think the minutes and the audio are a better solution.

Motion to move to the Mabie Room for our Council meetings: PeterSecond: Shreyam12-7-1The Ayes have it.

Nate: I just wanted to reiterate that the use of a livestream that only focuses on half of the room seems like a bad idea. Also, forcing people to come and declare themselves as people who worry about being made unsafe by the existence of a livestream seems

like a bad approach. Also, accountability is the same with both livestreams and audio/minutes. We are debating over a matter of promotion and how we promote CC.

Jamie: I think it is important to think about this matter from any other student at Williams who is not currently in this room. What would be things that students would need to know to get involved? What would they need to know in order to come sit in person to these meetings? I think at the least sharing the agenda perhaps would be a good first start.

Ellie: We also have the TV in Paresky. That is a CC TV, so we could use that.

Jonathan: I wanted to agree with what has been said so far. I think posting the agenda would be a good first step, and it also isn’t that hard to walk across campus to come to one of these meetings.

Will: I agree with what people have said as well. I think it’s good to balance accountability with student safety as well as try to promote our meetings and what we do. I think with the issue of how we should deal with students who come in and speak when they don’t want to be on the recording, I think we should have the ability to have a discussion off the record if needed.

Kai: I think for the sake of time, we should consider moving on. We all want to get into talking about abolishing CC or majorly reforming it or whatever. I think it sounds like most of the arguments have been in favor of no video recording. I think we should never do video recording again because of the harm that it caused to all of the students involved.

Motion to No Longer livestream: KaiSecond: Jonathan

19-2-0The Ayes have it by over two-thirds, so the bylaw regarding live streaming will be removed.

Adly: I have watched generations and generations of students come and say they want to come and reform CC, but nothing ever happens. I don’t want this to become another thing where we make a committee, write a report, and in get back to everyone in 5 months. I think we should

have a town hall that focuses on whether or not CC should be abolished and what should replace it.

Will: I think this is a great idea. I think going into this and framing it as a discussion for what should replace CC is what should happen. This is why exec wanted to have this discussion.

Tyler: I think it is ambitious to have food and alcohol by next week.

Ellie: we will tentatively write down the 23rd as a potential date

Shreyam: I think its a great speech, and I think its a great idea, but I think we need to go into this with how we want to reform and be constructive on improving CC. Also, perhaps Dodd is a weird location.

Ellie: it definitely doesn’t have to be in Dodd.

Peter: I’m a big fan of what Adly had to say. We should set the precedent that this is about the potential abolishment of CC. I also think we need more time to talk about this internally so that we have ideas going into this. I am also all for the idea of restructuring or reforming CC. At the end of the day, there must be some elected student group that is responsible for giving funds to RSOs.

Jonathan: I think the history of dissolving governments and reforming a new government generally creates a new government that looks remarkably like the old government. I think reforms may be a good idea, but the abolishment of this government and then rewriting another similar one just to say we did it seems like not the best idea.

Porter: currently to ‘dissolve’ CC, we need at least 20% of the entire student body to vote in favor through the current constitution. Also, how is this going to be run? If people walk into the room and just see us, what keeps them there and actually has them willing to engage?

Los: Its probably good we are pushing it back. But anything could be done. Maybe some presentations about alternative forms of student governance.

Will: I think we should make the event well publicized, have an opening period where people are just socializing, and then lead into the open comment period. As far as the internal discussion as for how CC should go, I think it should be held on the record in this meeting and not in a committee.

Shreyam: I agree with Jonathan’s comments. If we abolish CC for the sake of abolishing CC, we are going to end up with a system that looks remarkably similar to CC. I think there are definitely areas we can focus on improving is the way to go about it. Also, Peter, I’m not sure if you were going for abolishing or reform or…

Peter: I’ll respond to that –– and Jonathan I wanted to respond to your point as well which is that this has devolved into a group of kids coming into a room and trying to play government. We just discussed some 40 project ideas, and 30 won’t happen.

Jonathan: 10 is better than none.

Peter: that may be true, but I think we need to recognize we have devolved into a group that just gives out of money. Also, I remember thinking that this organization had a bad campus reputation.

Kai: I think we need to go into this with the mindset of listening to student concerns. Calling the event an abolish/change CC… at least making sure that it isn’t the same as it was last semester. Also I think we need to take seriously that all the surveys we send out always have several remarks saying that we should abolish CC. Acting as though abolishing CC is not a part of this conversation is harmful.

Los: Jonathan, you bring up a good point. If we just changed our name and did the same thing is that any better? I think in order to work towards improving the way we serve the student body.

Jonathan: I generally agree that usually the most opinionated are the ones that respond. I think 90% of the campus doesn’t care about CC, and I think that those who do respond tend to have a lot of opinions about us. I think we do need to take ourselves less seriously

Ellie: A lot of people have said we have devolved into a group that just approves money. We are not supposed to be that form of student organization. We are supposed to try to bring fun activities to campus.

Motion to make the theme “Abolish or Change CC”: ShreyamSecond: Peter19 - 1 - 1The Ayes have it.

Ellie: let’s try and figure out a time

Margot: 7:30 will exclude a lot of athletes.

Kai: what about 6:30/7

Will: time is fine, but I think Baxter isn’t the best place to do it. It is very loud around dinner time. Maybe Goodrich? Goodrich won’t be used at dinner time.

Jamie: it will be hard to book, though

Ellie: How do we feel about selecting a date, time then location?

Los: wednesday is hard because of stressbusters

Tyler: stressbusters is later than 7, though

Motion for the 23rd to be the date: Margot Second: PeterBy the ears of the chair, the Ayes have it

Motion for 7PM: MargotSecond: Peter13-5-2The Ayes have it

Peter: Maybe we can do it in Griffin?

Tyler: Griffin may be too far out of the way.

Shreyam: Also Griffin may be a little elitist for the approachable event we are trying to run

Will: I like the point that Griffin 3 may be a little elitist. I think that any room where CC people are sitting on a stage will come across as elitist. I think Dodd is good for that reason.

Shreyam: I think we shouldn’t be on a stage. It should be mostly mingling. Also, I now that I think about it, classes at 7PM may prevent people from being able to do it. What about 6:45?

Max: what if we did it on a Tuesday and we ended our meetings earlier?

Motion to move the time to 6:30: ShreyamSecond: ??Objection: Porter: we can’t find a time for everyoneThe Nays have it.

True: can we do more than one? Maybe like a tuesday/wednesday thing?

Jonathan: Most people don’t love drinking at 6:30 on weekdays. I think if we want athletes and people to show up, we should move it later.

Motion to move it to 8PM on Tuesday, 22nd : JonathanSecond: ??14-1-5

The Ayes have it

Motion to adjourn: Tyler Second: KaiThe Ayes have it

Adjourned at 9:31

Respectfully Submitted,

Lance LedetParliamentarian, College Council