Eastern Connecticut State University
83 Windham Street, Willimantic, CT 06226 Phone: 860-465-0123
Student Government Association
General Board Meeting
February 10th, 2014
Present:
Executive Board: P. Bjornstad (President), A. Bullard (Vice President), M. Hicks
(BAM), K. Chrzanowska (Treasurer), Z. Yeager (Secretary)
Advisors: M. Delaney
Senators: J. Ahern, E. Benoit, A. Burns, V. Cosma, E. Drouin, D. Dykstra, A. Fiducia, J.
Garzone, C. Gosselin, M. Kandemir, E. McDonald, M. McFall-Gorman, E. Pelletier, R.
Perry, J. Reid, R. Rivera, M. Silver, M. Styrczula, M. Fournier
Guests: R. Labrie, W. McLaughlin
Meeting called to order at 3:03 PM
1. Acceptance of Minutes for 01/27/14
a. Motion # 38 (E. Pelletier , A. Fiducia) Motion to accept the minutes from
01/27/14 (22-0-1) Motion Carries.
2. President’s Report:
a. Treasurer Position:
Motion # 39 (E. Drouin, J. Reid) Motion to induct Karolina Chrzanowska as
Treasurer for the remainder of the 2013-2014 academic year. (22-0-1)
Motion Carries.
b. Compensation:
P. Bjornstad is glad to see that we are debating about what we believe is
right and having healthy discussion, but believes that we should keep it to
the SGA Suite. There should not be tension outside of the organization, and
ideas and opinions regarding compensation should not be adversely
affecting relationships outside of the organization.
i. K. Bedini likes the idea of compensation but states that it is up to
SGA. He is willing to approve up to $5000.00, as a credit to E-Board
members at the end of the semester but insists that SGA be as
transparent as possible. We will need to explain and educate the
student body if the idea passes.
ii. Z. Yeager requested the amounts that E-Board developed but they
were not readily available.
iii. P. Bjornstad mentioned that each person will have just one minute to
talk regarding their stance on the issue.
iv. The Senate was presented with two questions:
1.) Do you agree with compensation?
2.) Do you think that we should poll the students regarding
compensation?
Eastern Connecticut State University Student Government Association
“Students Serving Students”
E. Pelletier states that she put a lot of work into it, but is opposed to
the idea. She feels that by polling the students, that we will not get a
representative population. In addition, E. Pelletier thinks that $5000
is a lot of money.
E. Drouin is unsure about it currently. She does not think we
deserve $5000. In her opinion, $50 in Express Cash would be good
enough. She also believes that we will not get enough responses if
the students are polled without an incentive to them.
J. Reid recommended sending out an online survey to poll the
students. She is unsure about compensation though because original
estimates were around $1000 total. She does not want to compare us
to the other CSUs and base our decision off of theirs. She feels better
with us not getting compensation.
M. Kandemir thinks it is a bad idea asking the students about it
because of the way it will portray the organization.
J. Garzone stated that given the timing with tuition increases,
students are not going to approve it and it would create a bad public
image of SGA. He believes the only way to do this would be going
behind students’ backs, but would feel dirty doing so.
A. Fiducia supports the idea, but his biggest fear is about PR and our
branding. SGA has spent a lot of time branding itself this year. We
would need to be meticulous about how to present to the students.
He fears bad PR for SGA.
M. McFall-Gorman thinks compensation is worth going for, but
believes that we table monetary compensation until the Senate can
come up with one agreement on amounts.
M. Silver approves of compensation and wants to see the plan and
how far it could go. She likes the idea of what we could make out of
it. She brought up the possibility of people doing it for the money,
but countered that con with a suggestion that you have to be a
senator for a year first in order to be on Executive Board.
D. Dykstra does not agree with compensation but says that her
reasoning is not because we do not deserve it. We are the only CSU
that does not get/need compensation and says that we are
functioning well without it. Her conclusion is that she does not agree
with it because we are already doing a good job.
R. Labrie said the organization as a whole is a group effort because
everyone pitches in, including senators, and the senators are not
getting compensated. She said that the Senate is already
compensated via trips and retreats. These benefit the students with
bonding, leadership development, and team building exercises.
E. McDonald worries about the number of people responding to the
survey. The majority of Eastern students do not know what SGA is or
feel that we have helped them in any way. E. McDonald also
mentioned our tagline: “Students Serving Students.” We are doing this
because we want to; we should not get paid to help others. She
brought up a survey from a past Student Issues event. The question
was: What is an issue you feel that SGA can work on? The answer
reads: “Tuition money, [and] helping students, not the institution” E.
McDonald alluded this to our tagline.
J. Ahern read an e-mail from a student who wishes to remain
anonymous. The student related compensation to volunteer
fire/EMS and how those who volunteer in such a way do not expect
compensation because they are volunteering for it.
R. Rivera stated that we represent 200 students. He also mentioned
that students do not vote as it is. If it went to referendum, they would
not vote either. R. Rivera likes the idea of compensation, but believes
that it needs to be discussed more. He clarified a question and asked
that if we do not go ahead on compensation would the discussion be
over? The answer was yes. He urged others in the Senate to base
their vote on their own opinions, not what everyone else thinks.
M. Styrczula: M. Sytrczula is on the fence regarding the issue.
V. Cosma agrees with J. Garzone regarding the timing and PR move.
She questioned where the money comes from. It was answered by
the E-Board that the money would come from Student Activity fee
money and come out of SGA’s budget.
E. Benoit is in favor of moving forward with it and thinks that asking
the students is a great idea. She said that the people that care about
how their money is used are the ones that take surveys. She also
stated that we will get some opinion while polling the students and
that is better than none.
W. McLaughlin introduced himself. He also mentioned that others
could come into E-Board directly from another club, but suggested
that we amend the constitution to allow only Senators to be eligible
for E-Board (similar to M. Silver’s idea). He also suggested that
Eastern have an appointed SGA E-Board by the Senate without
student voters. W. McLaughlin also mentioned that Campus Activity
Board (CAB) is an organization similar to us that does get paid, so we
should look into how it works for them. He also compared SGA’s EBoard to being the equivalent of another class because of the amount
of work that is done by the members but said that it is cynical to say
that people would be here for the money.
M. Fournier asked a Resident Assistant (RA) that is on E-Board of
MALES and PHP. They do a lot more than us to service the students
and they do not get compensated for their work. M. Fournier also
mentioned that he cannot think of one thing that SGA has done this
year to help serve the students and encouraged Senators to think
about what we have done that separates us from the clubs we
oversee. He also said that he would support it and look into moving
forward if we did more and serviced more students, but stated again
that we have not done much this year.
C. Gosselin: C. Gosselin is personally against it. The Senate and EBoard are getting enough rewards out of the organization already
without money. We go on trips and that benefits us well enough. He
doesn’t think the students would want tuition money and student
activity fee money going to pay an E-Board.
A. Burns is opposed to compensation and thinks we should go to
referendum if we move forward to asking the students.
R. Perry is opposed to it. He believes that the organization could
spend more time on the letter writing campaign to increase funding
or the constitution revisions. R. Perry also said that SGA needs to
focus on helping the students out. He said that some voting students
would make a big deal out of the idea.
K. Chrzanowska refrained from speaking.
Z. Yeager is opposed to it and referred to what J. Garzone said
regarding a bad PR move. We cannot expect students to say yes to an
increase in funding at the same time we expect them to say yes to
paying an organization’s E-Board.
A Bullard mentioned our tagline: “Students Serving Students” and
stated that we are spending too much time on something that is not
serving students. She would rather focus on a letter writing
campaign that can increase funding to all of the State Universities so
that we can serve the largest number of students. This campaign
would truly make the students of Eastern happy. She mentions that
she may be on board in the future, but wants the organization to do
something big first.
M. Hicks still has not made a decision. He mentioned that you get a
lot more out of SGA than compensation could put forth including
leadership development, personal development, challenging
ourselves, and University connections. There are two types of
legislators: Those who vote on what they believe is best for their
constituents and those who vote on based on their personal
opinions. M. Hicks believes that we should see the student opinion
whether you are for or against compensation.
P. Bjornstad mentioned some statistics: 85 % of state schools get
compensation. In addition, Central, Southern and Western
(Connecticut State Universities) get compensated. He also stated that
we each have to ask why we deserve compensation: the
responsibilities of an E-Board member and the amount of work that
is put in. P. Bjornstad said that he is for it and is curious as to what
the students would say.
The Senators were then given a secret ballot and the votes were
tallied. Results were e-mailed out to the Senate stating that SGA will
not continue to pursue compensation.
c. Constitution Revisions:
E. Pelletier went over the Constitution revisions. They will be voted on at our
next meeting.
i. The first change is to add “gender identity” to the preamble.
ii. The second change would alter Article 2, Section 2, Subsection a: “A
Senator of the SGA whose GPA falls below 2.5 shall lose voting rights
for one full semester. All other loss of privilege is to the discretion of
the E-Board, with confirmation of a 2/3 majority vote.”
 There is a lack of information regarding privileges in the
Constitution about a Senator’s GPA falling below 2.5. J. Reid
asked if the 2.5 is cumulative or for the previous semester. It
is the cumulative total. Advisor, M. Delaney, brought up the
point of eligibility for voting rights.. E-Board discussed that it
could not be a 2/3 majority vote of E-Board, but rather a
simple majority with only 4 voting members. M. Hicks
mentioned that this 2/3 majority vote would be regarding
delegates’ ability to go on retreats, trips, etc. The perspective
of also losing voting rights for one full semester was brought
up. The Constitution states that you must have above a 2.5
GPA, so we could not penalize them for only one semester,
but until the GPA increases above a 2.5. A. Bullard stated that
the E-Board will write the delegate program’s parameters
out at their next meeting and present them to Internal and
the Senate. W. McLaughlin added that you should be able to
participate if your GPA is below the threshold, but would still
be a delegate, not a Senator. R. Rivera believes there should
be a penalty for a GPA falling below a 2.5.
iii. The next revision would add part iv to Article V, Section 1,
Subsection a stating: “If a Committee meeting takes place on the
same day as General Board, the SGA member will only be penalized
for the General Board absence.”
 Senators discussed that the committees are a commitment,
and would not be fair to those who have meetings on the
same day as General Board. Some Senators could technically
violate the policy and not be penalized because of this rule.
iv. An additional revision regarding E-Board absences was proposed. “If
an executive fails to attend any two consecutive meetings or any two
meetings of the SGA or Committee meetings during one semester
(without an excuse from E-Board), he or she may be subject to
impeachment.”
 The idea of this was not favored upon by certain members of
the SGA.
v. An addition to Article V, Section 1, part ii would change the majority
vote needed for E-Board to validate excused absences from 3/4 to
2/3 in order to be consistent with Robert’s Rules of Order.
 It was mentioned that it should simply read “majority”
because of circumstances involving E-Board members where
only 3 could vote, or regarding Senators where a total of 4
could vote.
vi. Article II, Section 6, Subsection b of the Bylaws would change the
time allowed for the Secretary to send out minutes from 72 hours to
48 hours in order to be consistent with the rest of the Constitution.
vii. Article II, Section 8 of the Bylaws would change the word “board” to
“Council” in SAB (therefore changing it to the updated SAC) in every
mention of it.
viii. M. Delaney encouraged the Senate to look at the “3-Meeting Rule”
which allows an interested student to become a Senator if they
attend 3 consecutive meetings. It was suggested that we look into a
special election for cases of this sort. M. Hicks will look into this. If
we have a full Senate, and there are 3 people that want an open spot,
who would receive the open spot?
 Senators who do not have the 2.5 GPA may not fall under the
“3-Meeting Rule”
d. CCSU Meeting:
P. Bjornstad and J. Ahern recently attended a meeting at CCSU with
participants from all of the State Universities regarding how to approach
legislative ideas and how to increase the funding to the CSU System. The
representatives from the other schools suggested that we go to legislative
events where legislators will be present. There is one in Manchester coming
up fairly soon.
e. Cleaning Campaign:
The next cleaning campaign will be Saturday, April 5th at 12 PM. The town
liked that we did it.
f.
Social Media Program:
Motion # 40 (J. Garzone, M. McFall-Gorman) Motion not to exceed $150
for additional money from the E-Board account to assist Student Activities
for a Social Media Speaker (22-0-1) Motion Carries.
i. The speaker will speak about use of Facebook, Twitter, and how to
use our influence in a more positive way.
ii. The event will take place on February 26th at 5 PM. Senators are
encouraged to attend.
3. Vice President’s Report:
a. Committees
i. Student Issues:
Students have enough computer access on campus. The need for
additional ones does not outweigh the costs.
ii. Public Relations:
PR is working on a bucket list event where students will write what
they want to accomplish at Eastern before they graduate. V. Cosma
has been creating little paper buckets to use at the event.
iii. Internal:
The update was given previously with the Constitution revisions.
iv. BAM:
M. Hicks has filled the two vacancies and would like to thank M.
McFall-Gorman and C. Gosselin for taking the available spots.
M. Hicks also mentioned the upcoming Bowl-A-Thon which benefits
the ECSU Foundation. Money raised goes into a scholarship fund
which is then given out to the students. The event will take place on
March 1 and more information will be passed along to the Senate
regarding volunteers, time, etc.
Thanks
4. Treasurer’s Report:
Nothing to report at this time.
5. Secretary’s Report:
Nothing to report at this time.
6. Advisor’s Report:
C. Ambrosio will be holding his Leadership Series on Wednesday at 3 PM in the SC
Theatre. The meeting will be about retention rates in clubs/organizations and how
to increase membership. Senators are encouraged to attend.
7. Old Business:
8. New Business:
Motion # 41 (R. Rivera, C. Gosselin) Motion not to exceed $200 to pay for books
for the Fall 2013 Senator of the Semester (13-0-2) Motion Carries.
9. Open Floor:
Meeting adjourned at 4:40 PM.