University of North Florida Student Senate
Senate Meeting Minutes – September 27th 2013 – 1:00 PM – Senate Chambers
I.
Call to Order
Meeting is called to order at 1:05 pm.
II.
Pledge of Allegiance – Sen. Bryan Jones
III.
Invocation – Sen. Morgan Wolf
IV.
Roll Call – Senate President Pro-Tempore Kaitlin Ramirez – sgaspt@unf.edu
Quorum is established with 31 voting members.
V.
Approval of Minutes
Motion from Sen. Turner to approve last week’s minutes. Second. No objections.
VI.
Approval of Agenda
Motion from Sen. Anderson to add SB-13F-2715 to fiscal requests. Second. No objections. Moved.
Motion from Sen. Garrity to approve the agenda as amended. Second. No objections. Moved.
VII.
Recognition of Students Seeking Appointment
None.
VIII.
Student Remarks
None.
IX.
Guest Speakers
a. Katie Delaney & Laura Berger
Katie Delaney – We’re here to talk to you about an opportunity to take part in a UNF tradition. That
is, Family Weekend and this is its 19th consecutive year. Student government has always been so
supportive of other departments and other programs on campus. We’ve particularly noticed how
you’ve reached out to our students and really showcases the awesomeness of our campus. We are
presenting the 19th annual Family Weekend on October 11-13. We’d love to have you come out and
show your support.
Laura Berger – This weekend we’re in need of volunteers for the Family Fun Zone on Saturday from
10:30am-3:30 pm out on the amphitheater. The Family Fun Zone will have many activities for
students and their families to participate in such as a quarterback toss, relay races and other
interactive games. Volunteers will help set up and break down this event, manage race and game
stations, and help collect donations for the Lend-a-Wing Pantry. We will be happy to apply these
hours towards the scholarship or various volunteer hours you might need. For any of you that are in
a club or organization on campus, there’s also an opportunity to reserve a table to promote your
events. This is great interaction with students on campus and their families to try to get them
involved. If you’re interested in volunteering or reserving a table please contact Katie Delaney. We
have handouts that are right up here. Please take one and we’d love to have take part in this
wonderful weekend. Thanks very much for your support.
b. James Taylor
I’m from the Environmental Center; our office is academic, and we do a lot of campus sustainability.
I would like to thank Senate President Brady for letting me come here and Sen. Anderson for letting
me know about the opportunity. I’m really excited to tell you guys about this event; it’s Garbage on
the Green, and this is also somewhat of a campus tradition but much younger. This is going to be
our 7th year. It’s basically a waste audit. We go through garbage throughout campus; it’s actually
about 5 buildings, and it’s about 1,000 pounds worth of trash. Volunteers do most of the sorting and
we usually have about 100-200 volunteers throughout the day. It’s an all day event; it starts at 7:30 am
with the campus clean up. We send out about 30-50 students throughout campus to clean up trash
and litter, and as beautiful as the campus is there’s lots of cigarette butts and leaflets and all that kind
of stuff hidden in the bushes. At about 10:30 we start the waste audit. Also during the waste audit,
we invite exhibitors throughout the community to come and exhibit. Most of them are
environmentally oriented, but anybody can come out; we encourage even SG to come out, even
Greek Life that wants to come out and table or volunteer, just contact me. This the clean up; you can
see a lot of students get out there in the morning. The waste audit is in the afternoon where we
actually dig through garbage which I always thought would be the hardest part of my job to get the
students to dig through but it’s actually pretty easy. If you give them a t-shirt they’ll do anything. It’s
a pretty lively event. We’ll have Pita Pit again this year giving away free pita pit to the volunteers. We
also give out t-shrits to volunteers. The point is, we’re not just digging in garbage for fun, it helps us
understand solid waste on campus. We have a goal to reach a 75% recycling rate. Right now, we’re
hovering around 35%; but we’re increasing it. I’ve been involved in this for a couple years now and
we started around 20-25% and so we keep getting higher and higher. You can see the breakdown,
and I’ll share this PowerPoint with anyone that wants it. You can see mixed paper; food packaging is
the most common thing, followed by plastics. This is actually the most important number that we
find; so we sort both trash and recycling bins and we know where all the garbage came from. This
yellow part basically means that 40% of everything we put in the garbage can could have been
recycled. That’s really what we’re trying to specifically target: why people are putting things in the
wrong cans. There’s lots of conflicts about where to put cans and things like that. Unfortunately we
don’t have enough staffing to put a can in every room, but generally if you go to a hallway there’s a
recycling can there. We’ve been trying to encourage students to take their bottles outside the
classrooms and take them to the recycling bins outside, but there’s other issues to. Another thing, we
work with Chartwells; Project Clean Plate is trying to reduce food waste. That’s another issue that we
find is that students are wasting a lot of food; it’s something we’re trying to prevent before it even
gets to the garbage can. We actually measure trash before and after, and without telling students not
to waste food, we waste about 4500 pounds a week of cafeteria food; people just scrape the food of
their plate. That costs money; we pay for that as we dispose of it. But if we just tabled and told
people to not waste food, it’s about 1,000 less; so just that little bit of acknowledgement makes the
difference. We have a 75% goal; we throw away about 2 million pounds of trash a year. About 35%
of that is recyclable, but if we just get that 40% that we’re throwing away then our purpose would be
right there on the 60-65%. I left some volunteer applications with Aaron, because that’s what we’re
trying to do, to get volunteers. Feel free to grab one from him, and he’ll bring them back to our
office, or you can do that.
X.
Judicial Branch Report
a. Chief Justice – Alex Goetz (sgajc@unf.edu) (5-minutes)
Right now the judicial branch is busting about 150 appeals a week, so we’re moving at full force. Still
working on fixing parking a little bit but we have 3 good candidates forwarded to the Student Body
President for review. So hopefully by next senate we’ll have someone up here to get confirmed into
the branch and have a full board.
XIV.
Executive Agency Reports: (3-minutes each)
a. Osprey Productions - opdir@unf.edu
Brett Weisman – I’ll be doing both reports today as OP is at a conference. Despicable Me 2 is Wednesday at
7:00 and 9:45pm; Battle of the Bands is Thursday at 7:00pm; and the 6th annual Rocky Horror Picture Show
with a live shadow cast is Friday at 10:00pm at the Lazarra Theater. Anything more from OP, email them.
b. Club Alliance – Brett Weismann, Director sgacluba@unf.edu
Club Fest is next Thursday, on the green, not at the plaza. We have burgers, hot dogs, lemonade, cotton
candy, popcorn, shaved ice, t-shirts and a lot more giveaways. 75 clubs have signed up; 15 more than the
Luau. We’re hoping to have more; they’ve all been confirmed as well so we’re hoping to have more than 75.
You guys probably got my email about volunteers. We’ve had a number of you sign up, most for the 7:30
slot; the 7:30 slot is full, and we have none for the 10:00 shift or the 12:30 shift, and only 1 person for 3:00.
So if you guys are available on that day at all, please we could really use volunteers for set up and flyering.
Sen. Caudio – What would senators be doing that day?
Brett Weisman – 7:30 slot will be setting up tables and chairs and making sure the event is in place; 10:00 &
12:30 is probably filling in for my staff, doing sign-ins, handing out t-shirts and giveaways, maybe handing out
flyers at the student union plaza and making sure people go to the green; 3:00 would be taking all the tables
down.
XI.
Executive Branch Reports
a. Attorney General – Paige Lehman, sgaag@unf.edu (3-minutes)
In the past week I’ve been working with Sen. Antworth to prepare for the fall elections. I also wrote
an interpretation earlier this week; it’s in display in the Rotunda until 5:00pm on Monday, so if you
didn’t get a look at it I encourage you to do so. If you have any questions please let me know.
b. Treasurer – Joe Turner, sgasbt@unf.edu (3-minutes)
There are two things I would like to report to the senate today: the first of which is the volunteer
coordinator position that has been reported to you previously by our Vice President. It is the
administration’s solution in better lay of delivering the services that used to be provided by the
Volunteer Center, at a much-reduced cost. It’s actually going to be more effective. The job has been
worked out, the arrangements have been made, it has been funded, and the job posted currently and,
hopefully, starting November 1, we will have somebody doing that job and getting results for us. I’ll
let you know when we get those numbers in. Also I’d like to report that, on behalf of President Fassi,
our senate president and I have conducted a meeting with various university officials, Dr. Gonzalez
and the Vice President of Expansion, for Pita Pit; we had a conference call to talk about the logistics
of what it would take to get a Pita Pit on this campus and, as you know, it’s something that Carlo and
the administration is working towards and trying to make happen. The meeting was not, it didn’t get
shut down, it’s still in the works and it’s a possibility. We’re going to report back to you when we
know more specifics about what the next step is going to be.
c. Vice President – Billy Namen, sgavpres@unf.edu (3 minutes)
I just want to go over a few things. A few weeks ago I talked to you about the SG convention and
the results and what the students really want. Today, I want to talk to you about the progress in the
executive branch and where we’ve gone from that. One of the things was registration enhancements;
course scheduler, it’s a program that automates registering for everybody. You would put in the
classes that you need, it will search a thousand different types of formats for classes; it can even plug
in if you have soccer practice that day or you have work this day, and it will formulate classes around
that schedule. Basically, it makes things a lot easier, and then once you have that formulated you pick
the schedule you want and it automatically registers that for you. This has been used on a few other
universities, I believe University of California got a 20% increase in its enrollment of credits. I believe
it’s Ohio State, I can’t remember, that got 4% first year, 5% the second year, and 9% the third year.
It’s definitely proof that it really works; we’re really excited about this. In terms for Student
Government, we really just have to help in advertising the program for the university. The second
thing is parking monitors; unfortunately we can’t just build a parking garage like that. But what we
can do is make parking more accessible for all students. What we’ve come up with is a parking
monitor program that can, not regulate, but tell you how many parking spots are available. We’re
pushing for the first to be here in the arena garage. Rough estimates are about $100,000, but we really
don’t know yet, so don’t out my word on that. It’s looking good, the CPSR is starting up and we’ll
have more information as that goes on. Universal scantrons – I met with Dr. Moore who is on the
campus technology committee, she’s the chairwoman; they’re sitting on a survey to all the professors
and finding out what scantrons is used the most. Once they figure that out, we can try to push for
that scantrons. I did send them some of our reports that students get from here. That’s going on as
well. Lastly, Jaguars have come out about 4 times now. We’ve sold about 2700 of our tickets out of
the 3500 that we have. The new program that we’re going to go with, well the plan that we’re going
to take is, that students can go to the Jaguar stadium anytime during the business hours and get the
student discount there with their UNF ID card. It’s the same discount; all the games are still available
except the Colts one which is sold out. That’s all I have.
d. President – Carlo Fassi, sgapres@unf.edu (5-minutes)
First, I want to wish our Vice President a happy birthday; everybody a round of applause for Billy.
This week I attended the first week for interim committees in Tallahassee. Essentially what happens
around ever October – September, the legislatures go to Tallahassee and start to review what next
year’s priorities are going to be for the 2014-2015 session. Our lobbyist was able to secure quiet a few
meetings with leadership within the legislature. We’re working on getting more for the following
week as the second week of interim committees. I attended Florida senate & House representatives
budge appropriations committee. The state is expecting about $846 million in additional revenue for
fiscal year 14-15; $396 million of that is recurring so we can expect that same amount next year; and
$450 million of that will be nonrecurring. What hits us probably the most is a lack of PECO funding,
which again is the Public Educational Capital Outreach revenue, which funds all the academic
buildings on campus. We’re not expected to get any PECO funds this upcoming year, so what a lot
of the legislatures were mentioning to Matt and I was the fact that they’re going to do something
similar for us as to what they did last year and essentially take some of that $850 million that’s
additional this upcoming year and roll it into the Higher Education and education for capital projects.
So it’s not PECO money it’s general revenue that we’re still using for universities and for the other
schools who need facilities funding. We met with the representative from the governor’s office.
Governor Scott last week came out and said he wants a $500 million tax cut – taking an additional
tax and fee cut, so basically taking the additional revenue that we have and giving it back to the
citizens of Florida. We met with the house budget chairman who agrees with the concept, however
he preferred to have them more family-oriented, so slashing the requirements for a driver’s license to
pay for tag on your car so it directly impacts you more than giving the tax breaks to larger
corporations and businesses. The senate appropriations chair talked about spending a lot of this
additional revenue on the Judicial branch in Florida, for Everglades assistance, and rolling $1.5 billion
to our state’s reserves so our bond rating would be higher next year so the state can issue more
bonds for capital projects. We’re looking for a new chancellor for the state university system, seeing
as Frank Brogan is moving to Pennsylvania; we shared something on Facebook that on Wednesday
of next week I’ll be going to Tampa for a Board of Governors facilities workshop. We are basically
reviewing every new project all the 11 schools are proposing for new buildings & we’re going to
prioritize them. The two projects that UNF is looking into is first buying for $16 million land that’s
near Tech Parkway, right outside near Kernan, and then renovations for buildings 3 & 4, which I
think are biology, they’re Skinner North and Skinner South next to building 1 and 2, it’d be a $6-12
million project. This weekend the Florida Student Association is meeting in Orlando on Sunday to
finalize our legislative agenda. From the conversations I’ve had with the other SG presidents we’re
most likely going to be focusing mostly on facilities funding. With the climate in Tallahassee, with the
governor planning to veto any tuition increase, our area of focus should be the facilities crisis that the
Board of Governors stated multiple times that we have in our system. For those of you who are
interested in studying aboard, we have a representative from Thessaloniki, Greece from the
American College of Thessaloniki, his name is Tarak Kuwatley, he’s sitting back there. The SG
leadership actually, over the summer, went to Thessaloniki to review our partnership with that
institution and the institution in Athens. At 2:00 in the ballrooms right after this, he’s going to be
giving a little infomercial on the American College of Thessaloniki, so if you are interested in going
to Greece, which I will be and I will be there after this, please join me and listen to what Tarak has
to. Besides that, I just want to echo the statement that Joe said about Pita Pit. We’re hard at work to
make sure the administration understands that we want brand names; it’s the only way we’re going to
increase the overall share of revenue that Chartwells receive and students have proven they want to
be spending their money on brand name concepts – Pita Pit, Chick-fil-a, the Jamba Juice. Another
Ozzie’s convenience store doesn’t really attract to many students and I’m convinced about that and
we’re steadfast in our point of view that we want another brand name and that it will do great for the
housing students there.
XII.
Legislative Cabinet Reports
a. Constitution and Statutes Committee – Chairwoman Kaitlin Ramirez (sgacsc@unf.edu)
To remind you, if you miss a committee meeting or miss senate, to please turn in an absentee form;
they can be picked up in the rotunda; timestamp them no later than 5 days after the missed event. All
our meetings are on Fridays so make sure you turn them in no later than a week by 5:00pm so you
can hopefully get them appealed and turned into Chris who will either excuse or unexcuse them.
Please remember you can only get up to 4 absentee points. Each meeting is 2 points if you miss the
whole thing, 1 point per roll call.
b. Budget and Allocations Committee – Chairman Fransua Estrada (sgabac@unf.edu)
Currently we have $24,305.39 in the Student Travel Conference index. A fair warning, if you guys
want to attend next week’s meeting, we have 5 requests all ready to go and 3 are pending. So we will
have, hopefully, around 8 requests in total.
c. Elections and Appointments Committee – Chairwoman Emily Antworth (sgaesac@unf.edu)
This past week we had the Declarations of Intents due. We got 33 submitted. They’re going through
the election process now. A lot of you have submitted some as well. The next big due date for
everyone is their whole application which is due October 8th. Other than that, keep in mind that the
elections are the 29th & 30th of October, so that’s coming up fast. Those of you not running in the
elections will be working the polls and I will have poll sign ups coming out very shortly.
d. Student Advocacy Committee – Chairman Aaron Anderson (sgasac@unf.edu)
We had 3 Osprey Voice questions approved in our last committee meeting; one of them was to ask
students if they would be interested in Pita Pit or something else. The other 2 were concerning
academic advising and One Stop. So we have a new system that we’re going to do for Osprey Voice
because we didn’t have a lot of participation last time, and this is something that we’ve talked about
instituting in our committee. We’re going to have 2 tabling areas and we’re going to have volunteer
sign ups from 10:00-2:00 on Tuesday & Wednesday, the 8th & 9th in 2 weeks, and it just takes so long
to set up this new way of doing it. I will be sending you that sign up sheet in the email and also
background information & the questions. The questions are going to be asked by you to students
while you’re sitting at these tabling areas and the students will be able to fill out on a computer the
answers. That way we don’t have problems with handwriting, and it’s going to be easier for me to
quantify and qualify the answers to these questions. Again there will be 2 tabling spots, outside the
library and outside in the Student Union plaza here. That will be from 10:00am – 2:00pm, and we will
have sign up sheets for everybody in that email. Again, you will be asking the questions; I’m really
encouraging you to participate in this and interact with the students as much as possible. That’s really
what a lot of this Student Advocacy has to do with, and obviously Osprey Voice as well. I want you
to ask the questions and have students fill out the answers.
Sen. Caudio – Is this instead of Osprey Voice?
Sen. Anderson – This is an osprey voice; it’s a different way of doing it.
Sen. Caudio – How are you going to figure out which senators have done it or not?
Sen. Anderson – We still have in the Policy & Procedures we have to have 35 students answer each
question. We will be able to quantify that at the end of it all.
Sen. Bachmann – Will the computer allow the responses to remain anonymous?
Sen. Anderson – Yes. Absolutely.
Sen. Hamid – Are these questions going to be accessible through myWings?
Sen. Anderson – Not yet. We’re looking at doing an online aspect, and not totally going to online but
that’s going to be something that we institute in the future. Again, I’ll do my part to best explain this
in the email, and if you have any questions please come up and ask.
e. University Affairs Committee – Chairman Justin Turner (sgauac@unf.edu)
I’ve only got 1 new report from the last meeting of the Parking Advisory Council; the only big thing
that I got out of that was them talking about the new parking garage that is going to start being in the
works soon. The estimated date that they have right now for starting the build is next fall. I’ll have
the monthly report of all the university-wide committees posted on the SG webpage, so if you’re
curious about what’s going around the university take a look. There’s a lot of really pertinent and
relevant information that you all could use. I also have a calendar on Outlook if you want to use it.
Let me know and I’ll get you hooked up to it. That way you can see what’s going on, and you can
attend these meetings even if you’re not assigned to it.
f.
Senate President Christopher Brady (sgasp@unf.edu)
I want to remind you all that we do have a QPR training today after senate at 3:00pm. You have to
sign in with Ms. Celeste Watkins, she’ll have a sign in sheet; if you don’t sign in you will be assessed
absentee points, just like you would if you didn’t attend a senate meeting. If we get done before 3:00
and you would like to leave and come back, you’re more than welcome to, just make sure you are
back here by 3:00. It’s really pertinent you’re all here for this meeting; you’ve been told about this for
the past 2 months about this workshop so you need to make sure that you’re there. Candidates in the
back, make sure you come see me afterwards so I can sign your application form or else you can’t
continue running in the elections. Make sure you see me afterwards. To go off what Brett said about
Club Alliance needing volunteers, I want to remind you it is in your duties to work 2 agencies events,
10 hours in the pantry, or a combination of those 2 each semester. Kaitlin has the form that you will
need to get signed by Brett if you work that event. It’s good to go ahead and do that rather than wait
until the end of the semester. Make sure you jump on that as soon as possible. Also, I talked about
this at the last meeting, you guys need to come meet with me. Only a couple of you have done that
so far. I want to talk to you about senate, see what your plans are about the future, and really sit
down and have that 1-on-1 with you all. Everybody take a pen out right now and write down my
email address: sgasp@unf.edu. Email me by the end of today or by the end of the day on Monday
telling me what times you’re available to meet with me over the next 2 weeks. I will accommodate my
schedule to make sure I can meet with every one of you in the next 2 weeks. So please email me so
that can happen. Lastly, Osprey Voice: yes, this is a new way we’re going to try to do Osprey Voice. I
feel it’s a good way, to keep track of who’s doing it, meaning you will have to sign up in advance and
what time slot you’re going to be at the table. I actually will be sending people out that I know that
you don’t know to walk by while you’re tabling to see if you approach them to do Osprey Voice. We
will be making sure that you guys are actively engaging students to participate. I want to see you guys
asking questions, grabbing students, and doing your job as senators.
Sen. Wolfe – If the senate meeting finishes early can we begin the training early?
Senate President Brady – It’s not a training from us, it’s a QPR training and there’s somebody
coming in from another part of the University so we can’t start it earlier, otherwise we would.
XIII.
Judicial Appointments
XV.
Fiscal Requests
XVI.
New Business
a. Legislation considered for 1st Reading
b. Senate and Joint Resolutions on 1st Reading
c. Legislation considered for 2nd Reading
d. Senate and Joint Resolutions on 2nd Reading
e. SB-13F-2715 – Sen. Anderson
Sen. Anderson – I’m here to present Ryan and Ross. They are looking at getting funding. I’d like to hear a
motion on changing the funding amount to $1,400; they found a cheaper way to go; and we’ll hear a motion
at the end. It’s a great opportunity for students to go out and learn leadership skills. And there’s also going to
be a great job fair there. With that, I give you Ross and Ryan of the Organic Project.
Ryan Holme– We’re from the Organic Project, based out of the organic garden on campus, and I encourage
you to stop by when you get some time. It’s a club that’s really accelerating. Just to give you a basic thing
about what we’re presenting: we are trying to bring students to an environmental leadership conference in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania this year. We are requesting travel requests for funding for about 18 students.
They’re going to go up there to get valuable training and experience, and come back here to participate in a
local campaign we have going on on campus, and get that rolling along. That is our end plan.
Ross Keen – I’m the president of the UNF Organic Project and this is our secretary Ryan Holme. The UNF
Organic Project was founded by myself last summer, and we’ve had a really big year. If any of you aren’t
familiar with the UNF Ogier Garden, we are affiliated directly with the Department of Health Promotion.
Through a generous donation from Bruce Ogier and endless support from the Department of Health
Promotion, and Becky Purser and everyone over there, we’ve had a hugely successful year in building the
Ogier Garden out by the skate park behind lot 18. At the garden, we not only grow crops and grow food to
sell to the cafeteria, we sell directly to Chartwells and our food will directly be featured in the cafeteria this
year. As well, we do an adopt-a-bed program where different clubs, Greek organizations, groups of students
or just friends come out and adopt a bed for themselves and we teach organic gardening workshops,
composting workshops, perma-cultural principle workshops, and basically teach students to be a little more
self sufficient and grow their own food. We do a lot of cool events. We have our monthly tea party deal,
which is basically, we have a lot of different herbs and, it’s not actually tea, it’s the ironic thing that we do
because tea is actually, you have to have a lot of tea to be able to even make one cup of it. We do a lot of
different herbal infusions. This is our big event this year, taking students to this environmental summit in
Pittsburgh.
Ryan Holmes – I am the campus coordinator for PowerShift this year for UNF. I’ve been working with
stately coordinator who is over about 3-4 other universities, and she has been helping me immensely in this.
This is just a basic overview of what’s going to be happening at PowerShift this year. They’re expecting
10,000 young students and leaders to converge in Pittsburgh to attend this conference. There will be
workshops and trainings to really get the students interested some great experience and tools to bring back to
their own campus; like Aaron mentioned there’s going to be a great organizational and career fair. Because, as
we know, students aren’t really solid in their job expectations after they graduate; so this gives them a great
opportunity to really expand on their interest, and give them a nice outlet to be open to and have as a tool.
Also, there will be panels from influential figures, big names in environmental activists, civil rights leaders
currently working in the fields, and on the last day, as they did in 2011 which was when the last conference
was (I think that has been going on since 2007 every other year), there will be a big action to demonstrate the
views and the wishes of the people there. Leadership skills: what the students will be benefiting from if they
attend this conference. There’s going to be panels from community leaders that are involve in this and are
affected by environmental issues; they’re going to be speaking and presenting, letting students know what is
going on at a local level and what they can do to help. Key note speakers: very influential people, like Bill
McKinnon who is the founder of 350 Org and started this whole thing and investment campaigns across the
whole nation which are now present in some form on many campuses across the country. The panels
workshops – there’s going to be over 200 – training for students and the sessions are tailored to a variety so
you can pick where you like to go, so if you’re not interested in a certain aspect like civil rights or human
rights you can go towards an environmentalist side, and experience the conference in that way. These are
some of the students will be participating in and experiencing; you’ll learn who you need to talk to on your
campus to make a difference, who affects them, how to talk to them in sufficient ways, who you should be
targeting for your campaign, how to get efficiently a recruitment campaign going. We’ll be talking about the
specific campaigns that are going on under this movement; PowerShift is very broad, all-encompassing
conference that’s going to be talking about divestment campaigns, the endowment training which is the pool
of money that colleges have to invest to get returns in, just basic organizing training that students may not
really be aware of right now, and of course environmental issues as the broad subject of it is environmental
issues. The career fair: there will be an awesome opportunity for students to go and participate in this, find
employers that are looking for young graduate students to get involved in this environmental, sustainable,
responsibly-conscious movement that is happening all across the country. I’m sure you guys have experienced
it one way or another it’s gained momentum and we want students to be able to have a future after their
college experience and be involved in this and have a viable way to sustain themselves after, and not just
volunteer opportunities. After everything we want to bring the trained students back to UNF; this is our goal,
to bring them up there to the training and work on local campaigns and community. They’re going to be
experienced, they’re going to be motivated, to come back and work on these progressive, sustainability
campaigns that UNF, I feel, basically has identified with most – its image is very a progressive college that’s
going to be a big influence on Florida, on other college campuses around the country – and it’s going to
progress our ethical commitments that we’ve stated as our.
Ross Keen – It is a UNF value, and this is going to be a great opportunity for students to come back and
really be motivated to start more movements and really put UNF on the map as a place where these
progressive things are happening.
Ryan Holmes – This is the numbers that we’re working with right now for the conference: student
registration, which is going to be covered by students, is slowly creeping up as it approaches the date of the
conference. Right now it’s $65 but PowerShift is constantly putting out new promotional offers for this week
– if you bring a friend and you’re already registered for the conference, you get a $15 discount for the
registration fee. They’re trying to get as many people there as they can, and really do what they can to get
people on a student budget to come and attend, to get these experiences. We’re chartering a bus with Florida
Atlantic University and we are going to split the cost with them to bring it up there; like I said we found a
cheaper way to do it, so this is the total cost. The charter bus is going to be $8400 – that is the only thing we
need funded. We have housing already established up there – a student has family in Pittsburgh and we’re
money value for us, and students are going to pay for their own lunch and dinner, so that’s something else.
The only thing we need funded is this charter bus that is going to make this trip a lot more comfortable and
cheaper for UNF and the other university participating in it. This is the amount we have pledged so far from
donors; the donors consist of organizations like Sierra Club & 350 Jacksonville, which are all environmental
organizations and the other donations have come from individuals. We are asking for $1,400 from Student
Government, which is about $400 shy of our total goal from $2,800 from the university. That will get us up
to the conference and get all these kids their experience. I feel it would greatly benefit them and the
university.
Sen. Estrada – I just wanted to make a point of information to all the senators. I advised my committee to
purposely go this bill due to time constraints. They were unable to present and we wanted to give them a just
and fair chance to come up and present before senate.
Sen. Pino –You said that 18 students are going, is that simply based on the people who are willing to attend
and pay for the registration fee?
Ryan Holmes – It’s just a number that is divided on the bus so that the universities that are going have an
equal amount of students going. So that’s basically we’re counting it at 18 just as, you know it may go a little
over depending on what the universities are bringing; we’re trying to pack the bus out so we have the most
efficient travel possible. But that’s just a division.
Sen. Caudio – How do you see this trip impacting the students that go and UNF as whole?
Ryan Holmes – Like we presented, there are trainings and workshops that the students are going to
participate in, as well as many other activities. There are speeches that are going to get them motivated and try
to get students to realize what their passions are. They’re going to go up, get trainings, get motivated, and
bring that trainings and motivations back to UNF.
Ross Keen – There are going to be environmental leaderships at PowerShift that are going to raise issues that
a lot of students aren’t even going to be, that we aren’t even, aware of. There will be these issues that will be
presented and the trainings on how to actually make a difference in regards to these issues. Our hope is that
our group of students is going to come back, now being aware of a bunch of issues facing our planet and
facing the wellbeing of humanity in relation to the planet as well, and they’ll have an idea of where to go with
that information, how to start a movement, how to get people aware and hopefully that will be able to bring
change to Jacksonville.
Ryan Holmes – Also the very real-world application if of the job fair, with a bunch of great green companies,
and companies that are just promoting sustainability, looking for students to apply and get involved in their
businesses that are going to better the planet, that are going to better everyone and the university.
Sen. Estrada – If you guys were to be funded, do you have an estimate of how much will be coming out of
the pockets of the students individually?
Ryan Holmes – Just the registration is what we’re planning on the students paying and the food for the
weekend, their lunch and dinner. That’s really all. We have the funding to cover everything else, with student
government money. We have raised money and have people pledging the remainder of the fees basically. We
also have a donor who is fronting the money so it eliminates any kind of deadlines, which for the bus would
have been October 4. It extends that to the actual date of the conference, so we have a lot of extra time to
raise barely any money. We have the majority of everything we need right now.
Ross Keen – But we anticipate for students probably around $100.
Motion from Sen. Tortolero to strike line 22-25 to read the total amount requested of $1,400. Second. No
objections. No discussion. Roll call vote.
Motion from Sen. Caudio for unanimous consent. Second. No objections. Moved.
Motion from Sen. Caudio to approve SB-13F-2715. Second. No objections.
Sen. Caudio – I find that this is a great trip and I cannot wait to see how it’s going to benefit UNF in the long
run.
Roll call vote. Passes 31-0-1.
XVII. Announcements
Senate President Brady – I apologize for getting out an hour earlier than what the training is scheduled for.
It’s really hard for us to gauge 2 months in advice what time senate is going to get out. We will have an hour
break right now; if you want to go to the Career Fair on campus, if you want to go to the study abroad about
Thessaloniki which is a really pretty place; you have a lot of options just make sure you’re back here by
2:55pm so you can sign in with Ms. Celeste and not get your absentee points.
XIV.
Final Roll Call - Senate President Pro-Tempore Kaitlin Ramirez – sgaspt@unf.edu
Quorum is reestablished with 32 voting members.
XVIII. Adjournment
Meeting is adjourned at 1:55pm.