BOD Minutes 2.23.14
1. Future Conference Update:
a. Steve: SERMAL team needs to be discreet about our most recent
amendment.
b. Jill: IMUN speaker and rooms taken care of. Applications need to be
sent out and received.
c. BMAL: The only building and rooms available are in Richards Hall.
Everything else is essentially set up except for
d. SERMAL: Specific travel arrangements needed in the very near future.
2. NATO Recap
a. Steph: Motion for a round robin.
i. Bridget: The quality of delegates was not what I expected. We
really need to work on the agenda, and I’m glad we will get to
set the agenda.
ii. Will: Nuclear Planning was better in that there were other
people in the room who contributed and debated. It seemed
like Romania had a more negative experience.
iii. Merlinda: With the exception of a few delegates, the level of
debate was not what it could be. I’m glad that we can hopefully
raise the level of debate with the agenda.
iv. Miranda: There was not a lot of positive treatment of others
going on in Nuclear Planning.
v. Evan: Went pretty well in Defense Planning. It was an
improvement over last year. Us controlling the agenda will
improve things a lot.
vi. Steph: It will be awesome that we can control the agenda. I’m
more interested in discussing what we will do with the grant
money.
vii. Muji: I think we need to prepare our own delegates to handle
other delegates who don’t know as much. I just want to
reiterate that considering how many people we lost to chairing
it’s even more impressive that we did so well.
viii. Neiha: I was underwhelmed by the level of debate, mostly
because I’ve heard so many
ix. Jane R.: Well I had a good time. I wouldn’t trade it for a lot of
things. I think we as a team need to seriously be better about
our attitudes going into it. People not knowing policy is
frustrating, but it’s a pattern. We need to do more than just
take a pessimistic attitude.
x. Phil: It was a better conference this year than last year. Some of
the new teams did really well and brought a lot to debate. My
sense is that the conference is still not where we want it to be,
but that we are making steps in that direction.
xi. Justin: I have noticed that there is a concerted effort to block
Northeastern in debate because we have won so much. People
were trying to make sure that Northeastern
xii. Kaz: It wasn’t what I expected. I was surprised that people
didn’t know procedure as well as they should have and that I
looked like the bad guy for knowing it so well.
b. Will: 5 minute moderated caucus (30 second speaking time) to
discuss preparing our team for next year.
i. Will: We need to focus on dealing with rude people. If someone
is rude or doesn’t know what they’re talking about, you have to
rise above. If you treat them like idiots, you will isolate yourself
from the rest of the committee.
ii. Jane R.: Attitude in preparation is important. You have to go
into it with a good attitude or you’re never going to have a
good conference experience.
iii. Phil: Part of this is something that the EVP should look into.
You have to face the fact that teams come to this conference
with a strategy, and that now that strategy is often to beat
Northeastern.
iv. Justin: I think we should continue to train the teams separately.
v. Steph: I agree with Justin. I appreciated how you didn’t pit the
teams against each other. I would like to see the same kind of
training that we did go forward.
vi. Neiha: We should clarify how awards work so that people stop
thinking that Northeastern gets treated unfairly.
vii. Jane R.: I think we could address how awards work in opening
ceremonies
viii. Will: Cam did a great job of mentioning tally sheets and
referencing them throughout. Also, it’s important that we work
on hiding our true feelings when someone
c. Justin: 5 moderated caucus (30 second speaking time)
i. Justin: It’s something that I observed starting very early in
committee. There was a concerted effort to block Northeastern
from resolutions and to push them through quickly
ii. Steve: There was definitely a lot of this going on. They set the
committee up so that they eliminated most of the debate
process by throwing things on the floor and forcing them
through so that we never got a chance to discuss anything of
substance.
iii. Steph: Kelsey was actively shut out by delegates in my
committee. It was more overt than I was expecting.
iv. Evan: This happened in our committee too
v. Bridget: I understand that EAPC is often where schools send
their less experienced delegates. The tension was there in our
room, but because no one was experienced enough to carry the
debate by themselves, it got ignored.
vi. Merlinda: I’m really surprised because our committee was not
like this at all. It got to the point where we were fine with
things throughout the process.
vii. Jane C.: I think it would have been less blatantly against us if
Converse were also present.
viii. Muji: I think we need to sometimes be ready to put out quick
resolutions at the start so that that tactic can’t be used against
us. I think it’s very important to not point out everything
procedurally.
ix. Will: We got out in front of this in our committee by pulling in a
lot of the unaligned people on our side.
x. Steph: We need to work on “killing them with kindness”. You
need to get to them on a personal level because they will be
much less likely to be rude to you.
xi. Neiha: In retrospect, a lot of people who didn’t speak often
came to me because they knew I was from Northeastern.
xii. Justin: We have to recognize that a lot of these schools were
willing to disregard policy in order to defeat Northeastern. I
think we need to accept that people will not stick to policy.
xiii. Muji: It’s so important to reach out to people who are not
actively trying to block you. It’s the best way to make their plan
backfire.
xiv. Bridget: there has to be a way for us to train so that we can
non-aggressively point out other peoples’ mistakes.
xv. Will: We were apologetic early on and it was very beneficial to
our debate.
xvi. Merlinda: You need to be cautious when making alliances with
people before you know their debate style
3. What are we going to do with extra funds from NATO?
a. Justin: We had several ideas for this. We thought about doing an event
as an organization, or deferring costs from other organizational costs.
b. Steve: Every person on the NATO team will be getting a $100
c. Phil: We should use the money for either investment in things that
need improvement (ex. printer). Or if we don’t have a good idea of
what to do, we should just put it in the rainy day fund.
d. Steph: 5 minute moderated caucus (30 second speaking time) to
discuss $Da Moneez$
i. Steph: I like both the ideas. Are there any limits on this grant
money. I think that having some kind of team celebration
would be great, but that we need to do something substantial
first.
ii. Phil: The money can be used on essentially anything. We are
also supposed to receive $800, but that’s already built into the
budget.
iii. Steve: This money will be in a Northeastern account and is
therefore
iv. Jerry: I don’t think we should throw a party with the money. I
think we could possibly reduce the membership fees as they
have been going up.
v. Steve: We can’t really do much for dues. It’s an option, but we
don’t have enough money to guarantee that.
vi. Will: I’m definitely in favor of considering a capital outlay. I
think the printer is definitely a useful way to use the money.
vii. Sehej: I’m definitely for the capital investment. I also think we
should look at using the money we currently do have to
fundraise so that we have even more in the future.
viii. Andrew: They just installed a bitcoin machine in South Station.
So we should just do stuff for that.
ix. Justin: Is there a possibility that President Aoun will buy us a
printer? Because if he will we should use the money for other
things.
x. Phil: In addition to the printer, we might want to look into the
transportation of the printer. I don’t see anything wrong with
using the money to augment the costs
xi. Miranda: Investing in the printer would be a good idea, but I
think that we should definitely invest in some sort of rainy day
fund since we’re most definitely going to have a crisis in the
future.
4. Jerry: The future of BMAL needs to be discussed. Is it going to be collegiate,
high school, JCC, formal debate, etc.? We need to start planning it earlier if we
want to make it more successful. Jerry motioned for a round robin.
a. Jerry: We need to have the SG and ASG chosen way in advance and
work on recruitment during the summer.
b. Steph: I don’t like the idea of involving high school kids. I don’t know
why it’s a JCC this year, but I’m sure someone can explain it. We
definitely need to work on this earlier.
c. Jillian: I wish we could have started in the summer so that we could
have had a nicer conference with other universities.
d. Evan: I’ve been recruiting schools for NERMAL. I think whoever the
next Chair of Recruitment, Retention, and Branding needs to start
working immediately
e. Miranda: It became a JCC for us because we didn’t plan far enough in
advance.
f. Will: I think that trying to make BMAL as big will be impossible
because all of the travel members are too burned out by then.
g. Justin: It’s too exhausting to plan a huge conference. It’s important for
us to maintain the JCC since NERMAL JCC grows every year.
h. Phil: Jerry is correct. If this is going to be significant, we need to make
this happen during the summer. I recommend that we don’t try to
change it too much this year because we’re already restructuring UN
and doing a lot of other things.
i.
Steve: The idea that this can be NERMAL is misguided. We need to
decide whether or not it’s going to be an in-house conference.
j. Jerry: Do you want BMAL to be a JCC or a conference?
k. Phil: It’s not up to me. It has to be a program that the team will enjoy.
We don’t want to have to force anyone to do it. If the program is going
to continue to exist, it has to be attractive to our members.
l. Steve: We’ll discuss this further at the E-Board meetings, especially
after
5. Motion to adjourn meeting