2015-2016 ASUCM Senate
ASUCM Regular Senate Meeting Agenda
5200 N. Lake Road KL169, Merced, CA 95343 – P: (209) 228-7468
E: asucm@ucmerced.edu W: http://asucm.ucmerced.edu
FALL 2015 Session
Wednesday, November 18th, 2015 7:30 pm
Chancellor’s Conference Room (KL 232)
I.
Call to Order
Called to order at 7:30 pm
II.
Roll Call
a. Senators Hulbert, Wachira, Manon, Menon, Gonzalez, Guaderrama, Maldonado, Acosta,
Wallace, Castillo, Barba, Yang, Nunez, Martinez, Trejo, and Drobenaire present
b. Advisor Steve Lerer present
c. IVP Huber Munoz
d. ASUCM Intern Adriana K. Gomez.
III.
Approval of Agenda
a. Motion to approve by Senator Trejo
b. Seconded by Senator Maldonado
c. Unanimously approved
IV.
Approval of Minutes
a. Motion to approve by Senator Castillo
b. Seconded by Senator Wachira
c. Unanimously approved
V.
Guest Speaker
a. Martin Reed, Director for Housing and Residence Life
Martin Reed: Good evening everyone. It’s great to be here. I was here last year and spoke to the
group and I’m glad to be back- hopefully I can come back next year. I am the Director of
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Housing and Residence life. February will be my second year here at UC Merced. Prior, I was
at Western Washington University for 5 ½ years. Prior to that, I was at UC Berkeley for a year.
Before that, I was at UC Irvine for 10 years. I move around a lot. It’s been a great experience
and have enjoyed my time at all the different campuses. Last year when I came, I gave a brief
update of what I hope to accomplish. One of the things we got done last year was that we
established a memorandum of understanding for voter registration in the residence halls. It’s a
work in progress but we have an agreement in place that we can have as a standard moving
forward. This allows students to exercise their rights. One of the things we did to promote
sustainability on campus- we installed 13 hydration stations on campus and worked with dining
services to provide water bottles as a welcome gift. We will try to repeat that experience to
provide a water bottle and limit plastic on campus.
Looking ahead, where we are going with 2020 is on everyone’s minds. If everything
goes well, we will start planning to open more buildings. Housing is expected to grow by 2,000
beds. Some of those beds will be allocated for graduate and family students. Probably about 2300 apartments. The rest will be for undergrads. Besides that, one of the most important things
we have coming online is that we have some occupancy guarantees in order to fulfill our 2 year
guarantee. Somehow we were able to accommodate all of our first year students but had to turn
away a lot of upper division students. We are trying to master lease an apartment complex in
Merced. We might start looking at renting hotels. We have to consider all of our options. There
are not a lot of apartment complexes nearby and we don’t want to interrupt other people’s lives.
We would like around 300 beds off-campus. If we can do that, we should be able to honor our
2-year guarantee and our incoming demand. We need to know something by January 31st in
order to be ready for our housing applications this year. I spoke with President Jones and Huber.
I understand there is some need where we can provide advising and housing for off-campus
students. We are going to create a position- we are creating job descriptions right now- and then
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we can hire 1 or 2 positions- so that we can provide more guidance to off-campus students. We
will also be helping new faculty and staff with transitional housing. That team will also help
with that. We have 2020- this new off-campus housing service we are trying to get off the
ground. We are also trying to do EcoReps and partnered with Colleen McCormick- the Director
of Sustainability. This will help create programs for on-campus students around sustainability. I
am working with admissions to create showrooms on campus. One of the challenges right nowall of these tours happening on campus want to see student rooms. We are looking at having an
empty room or two, or hiring students to show their rooms. We are working with the admissions
department and are looking at having this figured out by Spring 2016. Those are some of the big
things I am working on that you might be interested in. Any questions?
Senator Memon: So, as far as the off campus options you are looking at, has there been
any discussion around dining services or transportation?
Reed: I will have to work with all of those different units. We are talking about how we
are going to provide reliable transportation and meal services. I am having conversations with
students, faculty and staff to see what people are interested in having. I take that information to
the director of Dining and TAPS, and even Rec and Athletics, to see how we can connect offcampus students to see that even if we have a master lease off campus, how can we make that a
positive experience. I had a conversation with campus police, and there are a lot of different
ways to provide the service to make sure it meets the need but doesn’t cost a lot of money. Does
that help?
Senator Wachira: Maybe this is way ahead, but how is the RA situation going to work?
Reed: We are starting to think about that. We need to have this figured out as soon as
possible. There are already RA info sessions happening right now. We need to have residential
life staff out there, especially with 300 beds. There will be more upper division students
assigned to those units. These staff will be like advisors, counselors, to help mediate roommate
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conflicts as needed. We try to assign people in groups. You can’t go in solo. If you go solo you
are going to have to live on campus. It’s usually a group of 4 or 5 people that have to live
together. I will have to do some programming.
Senator Acosta: For the off-campus housing, will that be the same price?
Reed: It will not be the same, but it will be comparable. We have to pay market rate for
that master lease. Whatever a 2 bedroom costs in Merced, that’s how we have to pay for it.
Sometimes we have to pay a little bit above. So it starts there- and we have to provide the same
level of service and amenities- then we have to provide cable tv, internet, staff, mail, etc. They
all have to be comparable. Then I try to have a price that students can afford. There are a lot of
variables coming down to that number. But once we know what the master lease process is we
can start talking about what kind of service can be provided. If it’s too expensive, we may just
have a hotline. We try to find something in the middle of what students are paying.
Senator Hulbert: I see that you are having a growth problem if you are even looking at
hotel rooms. Is housing and residence life up to par with the 2020 plan?
Reed: Are we on target in terms of getting everything done by 2020? Right now, the
regents have to vote on it, and then there has to be one more vote. In terms of the scope of the
work, I’m involved in what the housing and residence life aspect will look like. That’s what I
can speak to. In my opinion, we are close to being on target. But we are still dealing with
unknown variables. I think we are on schedule and that this project will happen. When I hear
about Napolitano wanting to increase enrollment, they are going to need UC Merced to help
carry some of that.
Senator Martinez: There’s not enough space- even though housing is guaranteed. Are we
still trying to increase enrollment when we don’t have the room?
Reed: The University’s goal is to up enrollment to 10,000 students. Plus, Napolitano
wants to increase UC enrollment. One of the things we did last year with ASUCM was an offF15:11.18.2015
campus housing fair. We are going to need to repeat that again, and make it bigger and better.
This is also why I want to hire students to be counselors and advisors. If we can’t provide
housing on campus, we will have to try and create more space in some of our current buildings.
We can turn triples in Half Dome into quads. When we Quad more of the rooms in Half Dome,
that means that there are more people sharing a bathroom. That building was designed for 500
people, but now it has 700. We are going to have to have more off-campus housing fairs. These
are some of the things we’d like to do. The system is growing. We need to have conversations
with ASUCM and other students to make difficult decisions.
Motion to extend time, Senator Wachira by 15 minutes.
Seconded by Senator Memon
Approved by Senators Hulbert, Wachira, Espinosa, Nunez, yang, Wallace, Gonzalez,
martinez, Guaderrama, Maldonado, Nunez, Manon, Trejo, Memon and Castillo.
Opposed Drobenaire.
Motion Approved
Senator Wachira: Because of everything that is still happening, will incoming freshman
have the 2-year guarantee. Say I don’t get the master lease? Then the 2-year guarantee needs to
be discussed. Right now, due to the enrollment target I have that was going to be in November,
we are going to need 300 beds. We want to find a master lease in North Merced. This will help
us provide all the housing we can.
Senator Trejo: Thank you for taking the time to come out and speak with us. Many of
our students living off campus are not aware of renter’s rights. Many of the property managers
are taking advantage of students. I know because I have experienced it. Maybe if we had one
workshop about who we could contact if our rights are being violated. What can we do to
educate students so that we are not being taken advantage of? I would really appreciate it if you
can do that for us.
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Senator Acosta: Thank you for your time- Maybe if we can have a number of someone
we can talk to about this. Something that I heard that could be taken into consideration is having
a coin machine in the laundry rooms. There are pros and cons of having coin machines in the
laundry rooms.
Senator Memon: Being that you worked at other university campuses that we could
bring back to Merced.
Reed: My last campus was really good at voter registration. They had a system in place
where- WWU is a public university of about 12,000 students- they would register more students
than UW and the other public schools. They were also very god and supporting alternative
transportation and sustainability. My other school also had parking challenges. One of the
things we will have to do to make move in better is that they had volunteers that moved
personal belongings in. We were able to move 4,000 people in one day. We could work with
TAPS, the police, and 2-300 volunteers. I have EcoReps and the memorandum of understanding
available. One day we might have a Greek row. The last university I worked at didn’t have a
Greek row- in fact, they didn’t like it at all. They thought it was elitist and exclusive. When I
was at UC Irvine and UC Berkeley we had a very good on campus Greek system.
Senator Guaderrama: Just to clarify, is it safe to assume that the 300 students are going
to be paying the same price as students living on campus?
Reed: It wont be the same, it will be close. On campus, we have single, double, triple
and quad. To make that the same, look at a regular apartment. How do you make that a single,
double, triple, quad. We have to have those conversations and make that clear. Then we have to
provide the same amenities, services and experience.
Senator Guaderrama: I save thousands of dollars living off campus. How do you help
students understand that they could live more economically off campus. On our website, we
have the student application, educate the student on their options to help them make an
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informed choice. Most of the time it works, but there are always students that get confused. I’m
always curious- right now I have been having more informal conversations and I scan
Classifieds and Facebook.
Senator Guaderrama: I’d like to suggest that students who SIR or enroll, we send an
email to students that help students understand their housing options.
Reed: We are always trying to improve. Take a look at the UC admissions page, we
finally have a 360 degree virtual tour. You see all the different housing areas on that tour. We
will keep working on that.
Senator Drobenaire: Has there been any discussion about food security for off-campus
students?
Reed: There have been many conversations about food security. That has been a
conversation with many people system-wide. We are trying to see how we can inform students
of all the options. If you have any ideas, I’m always open to discussing it.
Senator Drobenaire: Are there any off-campus choices? For example, students that
qualify for FAFSA?
Reed: We are working on that- hopefully that will start next year. This is why on-campus
and off-campus will not be the same. If you live off-campus, you won’t need as many meals.
Ideally, we’d provide a commuter plan. Maybe the marketplace we have will start to sell more
food items that can be taken and cooked at home. It might just be cat dollars for more
flexibility.
EVP Coba (by Martinez): President Napolitano has asked to increase us to 10,000
students. We are running out of housing options and we are running out of apartments. But we
are sacrificing the quality and accessibility to students.
Reed: What we are thinking about in the short term, we are looking to see if we can
honor these 2-year contracts. We are going to start those negotiations. With the 2020 project, by
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2018-2019, we will have more residence halls. I know from my conversations with my housing
directors, they are concenrned about 10,000 students being admitted. There are only 2 campus
that are excited about it. There is not a lot of pressure put on UCM because they know we don’t
have the space. Our responsibility is less compared to UC Davis, who is going to get hit very
hard.
Motion to extend to10 minutes by Senator Martinez
Seconded by Senator Gonzalez.
Approved by Senators Hulbert, Wachira, Nunez, Gonzalez, Martinez, Guaderrama,
Manon, Barba, Memon. (IVP Munoz also approved)
Approved.
Senator Wachira: I know that you have talked about job descriptions for these new jobs.
Reed: Once I get the approval, I will assign it to one of my team members who will put
together a hiring committee to put that together.
Senator Wachira: As far as buildings, was a building supposed to be built this year?
Reed: There was an RFP that went out in July of 2015. In that RFP, we were going to
either master lease an apartment complex or to build a new one. The earliest we are going to see
a new housing structure is 2018-2019.
Senator Wachira: How about parking?
Reed: From my understanding if they take those 200 spaces, they have to move those
sections to a new place.
Senator Martinez: How are we including students with the whole master lease proves.
Are students allowed to have a process?
Reed: There are a lot of UCOP rules and policies that need to be followed- this is more
of a business deal. It’s not a very public process.
Senator Martinez: We briefly touched upon off campus housing- they also need to know
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how much money people would lose in their housing of campus from their Bobcat Grants.
Senator Acosta: I know we have the Fiat Lux and Afro-Terrace living programs.
Reed: Those conversations are always on going. We still have Student-Initiated Learning
Communities. First we have to meet our first year guarantee, and then the 2-year guarantee. We
are starting to have these conversations down the road. At UC Irvine, they have the
International village. Basically, you bring American students and international students and
create a residential learning environment for international learning environment based on peace
and harmony. So that’s in the works. We need to get that of the ground within a gear or two. If
you are interested, let me know.
Senator Memon: Currently, there are a lot of problems on campus, what are the
discussions about current on campus housing problems?
Reed: Depending on the issues- I hear about dining a lt. I only hear about unique cases.
The other thing I talked to the dining director about- we need to have a dining committee.
That’s usually make up of different people- and they give feedback. Depending on the card
readers- those are always a challenge. But when we get that feedback, hopefully we can get that
fixed as soon as possible. We try to resolve those as soon as possible. The past two years we
have gotten very good survey result feedback. There is always something that needs to be
improved or fixed. We need to figure out how to meet with students. In the past I used to have
interaction with students.
Senator Nunez: Does the first year guarantee apply to transfers?
Reed: Yes. It applies to all new students.
Senator Hulbert: So you mentioned that you didn’t have as much interaction with
students. From the AS, is there anything that you need from us?
Reed: Any time you want to share feedback- like 1:1 meetings or emails. I try to talk to
the OAs at the front desk a lot. I kneed to have more interaction. The first two years- I have
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tried to stay on top of everything. I could come to this meeting more often. I am always willing
to meet with students if you have questions or concerns.
IVP Munoz: I think that RHA can take more of a roll in housing experiences.
Reed: I was president of RHA, and I have an affinity for them. We are going to review
operating budgets. Ideally I will come here to present the budgets for you guys.
Thank you for your time.
VI.
Chair's Report- Huber Munoz
a. Good evening everyone- I know it’s been a while since I’ve been with you all. Hope everyone is recovering
and staying on top of midterms. It seems like everything that was supposed to be due this semester was due
this week. I don’t have much, but please make sure to come out to the in-service potluck this Sunday. I will be
bugging you for the rest of the week until you reply. For the potluck, make sure you sign up. It’s now from 124. It will be in SSB 160. We are going to have food and everything. This is open to everyone in ASUCM. That
includes external office, court, interns, anyone that would like to come. That’s pretty much it. It will be a
relaxed afternoon. I know we haven’t had a chance with that to really and enjoy each other’s company. That’s
pretty much it.
VII.
Elected & Appointed Officers Report
a. Director for Student Advocacy- Hi everyone. I wanted to update you all on a few things.
Yesterday the Ombuds search committee and we discussed our 6 candidates. We are trying
to see who would be the perfect fit. Hopefully by the end of the semester we will have a
new hire. We drafted the safe campus opposition paper. We posted that to the ASUCM page.
If you all want to read over that and add edits. We are planning on submitting this next
week. Hopefully if you all want to get involved- on past resolutions, they had a sponsored
list. We are planning on getting student input on this. We are going to have free food so
people actually show up. There have been a lot of people pulling their support form this
resolution. If anyone has questions or concerns, please let me know.
Senator Menon: Last time you mentioned disability services and UCI. Any progress?
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DSA Fitzgerald: In discussion with UCI road rides- they give students with temporary
disabilities rides to their classes. They have about 9 student drivers. Hurt students will pick
people up at designated locations. The first bus stop could be the first stop. This is the first year
they are doing it in order to deal with liability. They have one ride every 20 minutes. They
recommend that we have a soft opening. We let students know but we don’t throw it all out
there. They have their own training for this- the students driving the golf carts will learn
everything about liability They give training on how to pick people up. They are not allowed to
put students into the cart for disability issues. A difficulty they face is that they don’t know how
to set up a system to get students to sign up. On their campus, there could be a lot of students
hurt, and they don’t always have enough drivers. It is also difficult to meet demand every 20
minutes. Also, since the only run is 20 minutes, they give accommodation letters to students
explaining that they are injured and are required to take Road Rides. Students have to meet 1:1
to understand how to use the service. They register the students online to help register the rides.
They are serviced through a vendor and they pay around $98,000. The students get paid $10.00
an hour.
Senator Acosta: Are you looking at other areas of advocacy?
DSA Fitzgerald: Stephanie wants to pick up on suicide awareness and the mental health
campaign. Anything else?
Justice Carlos Gutierrez: Good evening senators. I am here today to speak to you guys
about a new program we are trying to institute on a weekly basis. We are going to come and
present a section of the bylaws, UCOP policy or the constitution that share with you guys.
Today, since this is the first time, we are going it- this is from the financial bylaws. “After
passage of an ASUCM senate bill that grants and RCO funding for an event of convere, centhe
prespective intorduccer of the bill shall be responsible for providing the c;ub preseidnt with an
ASUCM post event report. This report will be available…….” That was article 3 section 1
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ubsectikon D. Any questions?
Senator Acosta: Where do you find the event form?
Justice Gutierrez: Maybe the ASUCM treasurer can better answer that. We will follow
up on that.
EVP Coba: Good evening everyone. Quick updates- so I never gave an update on
SOCC. We had a lot of students dropping out and coming in. We kept our numbers pretty up to
par. I heard some student concerns about the conference, and other campuses have said similar
things. We do have a best and worst practices session. The Regent’s meeting is going to be
tomorrow. I was all on board to speak on public forum, but I will not be able to but trust that
however is going will be able to speak about that. We had the opportunity to discuss a
multicultural center. In the past we have used a complaints and compliments but instead we real
sat down and discussed something. It was something other students have and they are really
trying to get one of these. We started a group, we are 77 students but now we have grad students
and faculty and are in talks with Marjory Zatz. He is CC’ing all 77 students, but we need to get
a working group. Dr. Nies has reached out to Dr. Davis, who works with cross-cultural centers.
We meet and will start outreaching and breaking into different groups. We meet Sundays at 2
pm. I was asked to give a SAGE update. GSA is voting on SAGE, which passed. Other
associations, such as at UCR, approved this resolution. Berkeley passed it, Davis has passed it,
and there was some conflict at UCSC. I put in the budget for UCSA in the work group. To
reference it- to approve the budget, we will bring it back to our respective campuses. EVPs
never really brought back the budget. Any comments or concerns, I’d be happy to answer. If
you all are fine with it, or if you feel strongly against, it, you are welcome to veto it. Our budget
is now recorded from July to June instead of a whole calendar year. Any questions?
Drobenaire: Do you thing its wise to spend the whole budget?
EVP Coba: We do keep some rollover- I know we have a reserve fund and there is some
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allocated to save. UCSB pays $7. We have a budget that is in reserve just because we make
more of a profit than we anticipated.
Senator Acosta: So about the cross-cultural center, does that include LGBTQ+?
EVP Coba: We have members of SALE and Lambda involved with this.
Senator Acosta: What is the vision for this- is it going to be run by faculty or is it only
student run?
EVP Coba: Great questions- You can reach out to Onar Primitivo who is going to help
up figure that out. The hierarchy of that all is still up in the air, but we are looking at offering
working opportunities.
Motion to extend time by 2 minutes by Senator Nunez
Seconded by Senator Barba.
Unanimously approved.
Senator Nunez: Have you looked into off-campus spaces?
EVP Coba: One of the big decisions we made is having this scape on campus. In the
2020 plan we are offering these spaces to students. I know BSU meets in KL and some clubs
meet here and others meet in SSB so we want to have one space and know that someone will be
there at all times. How can we help students figure out where they met, what time they met, etc.
We want to look way from the $30 million building model and instead think about a portable or
something. There is no UCSA board meting in December, the net one I s in break over January.
OD Negrete: Hello everyone! I wanted to touch on the Million-Student march and talk
about what is happening at other campuses. We called off the Million Student march on our
campus because we only have one road, and there were still al lot of emotional feelings about
Scholar’s Bridge. A protest would take a way from the meaning of the vigil and the moment of
silence- It just wasn’t the right time. However, I do thing that tuition protests need to happen
every year until there is change. Overall, the march was huge and successful. There were 115
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marches, making it the largest student protest ever. I am proud to say that we were going to
participate. It’s still happening. People are still fighting for the 3 demands. At UCB, they had
over 1,000 students and 500 nurses from the CANA, they had a lot of speakers. UCSB had
about 1500. They went right up to their UCOP office and protested at the door. They had Know
Your Rights sheets so that people knew their rights before protesting. Davis brought up the right
to add Mizzou. They have very effective organizing.. With the timing, Mizzou was the focus.
For those who don’t know, they got their president to resign based on racist issues. If you have
been posting about Facebook about Mizzou, please highlight that these are black students who
are being threatened and affected. This is important for us to stand in full solidarity with them.
Also- Berkeley High. On their campus, a student posted very racist comments on all their
computers in the library. They had a walk-out about this, and this energy was channeled into the
million student march. Howard University in DC- after what’s going on with Mizzou- there was
a threat from a student from Mizzou that posted an image that was a warning to the black
students at Howard that if they were on campus at a certain time, he would kill them all. There
are so many racist issues happening around our country that we need to stand up against. Some
of the words used for million student march talk about us as militants, but this is inappropriate.
These are the real issues. Please start talking and don’t let these things happen. Also- look out
for protests next semester. Phil touched on the cross cultural center. Meetings are on Sundays at
2. We will post our location soon. Unification is so important. Also, there have been more
negative news articles posted about Faisal himself- combat the narrative, don’t let these things
happen, and be ready to protest next semester.
ICC Chair Anh Diep: Good evening, everyone. My name is Anh Diep I am mainly here
to speak to the senators who didn’t attend the meeting last week. We are moving to last year’s
structure and we are moving to being the representatives of the delegates from last year. For
every ten RCOs there was supposed to be one representative. Unfortunately we didn’t fill the
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numbers we were looking for. Out of all the people that we looked for, we only have 6 people
who are committed to their work. As the bylaws stand out, we don’t have the power to hold a
vote. I really encourage you all to think about the future of ICC. Ultimately this is going to play
into the conversation of what we can do in the future. For ICC, there are some things happening
with funding bylaws. That conversation in on pause until then.
Senator Hulbert: I come today to speak about the chair for the strategic investments
committee. We just went live. Now, for the TAPS advisory report. They said that they send their
thoughts and prayers about what has been happening here recently. They also said they have
applied for something for strategic investment of the cart program. They modeled their pilot
program about that. I let them know about UCI. The only difference between USC and UCI is
that they run them through TAPS vs. their disability program. Disability services feels that
TAPS is better equipped to run the program. Other posts on Facebook- please tag me in them so
that I can send that information to taps. There was something with the meters recently taking
people’s money. I just let Karen know about it yesterday. I brought it up to Karen and that
sometimes they reserve spaces for special events and don’t give notification about it. I brought
it up and mentioned it on happenings. I told her I would provide feed back from students for
this. Would you be interested in having happening email for this?
Advisor Lerer: Are you asking them to send emails out about every single reserved
space?
Senator Hulbert: I’m talking about when the trustees were here and the first two rows of
parking were taken. Any other questions?
Senator Wachira: I sit on the CACSW. We were talking about changing the CORE book
from one about peaches to something like Kite Runner. We are compiling a list of different books we
might like to see.
Senator Drobenaire: Hello everyone- I am the Undergraduate Council. We met in
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Tuesday at 10:15 to discuss the education policy provisions to make regarding AP students. We
also discussed opportunities for getting UROC to advertise their positions better. Also, we are
looking at adding new courses and two were approved last week. The teacher is excited about
teaching an online only class. Some concerns arose about the waiting times for CAPS. It is
unacceptable to have to wait 2-3 weeks for an appointment. There are talks about that as well.
Any questions or concerns?
VIII.
Officer Reports
a. Senate Pro-Tempore- Cecilya Barba
Hello everyone. I hope you are all having a good week. Hope you all are living healthily. Take care of your
mind and body. If you are stressed out, I’m always here.
b. Sergeant at Arms- Gabriel Hulbert
Hello everyone- just a reminder, if there is a speaker, please avoid checking your computer. Also, please
double check your bylaws for bills. We don’t want bills taken to court for other things. In service this Saturday.
Lastly, members of the public, please sign in. Have a great meeting.
c. Secretary- Louie Castillo
Nothing.
d. ICC Liaison- Hunter Drobenaire
Bylaw revisions are being made. Future of ICC is being discussed.
e. Court Liaison- Salma Memon
Yield floor to Carlos. Hello everyone- this week was pretty long. We talked about ICC to discuss revisions to
her bylaws regarding financial and some kind of elections bylaws. That was just today- no word from her. We
decided to meet Tuesdays from 11-12 next semester. . That is our set time for next semester. Associate Justice
Siler also discussed ________. ON a monthly basis, we are going to discuss having one topic to discus
residents, what are you entitled to, etc. That is still in the works. We are still talking about court procedureswe went through all of them today. We expect to have it done by the end of the semester.
IX.
Committee Reports
a. Budget and Finance- Johnny Yang
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Good evening everyone. We met toady at 1:30. Senators Hulbert, Maldonado, Trejo and myself where there.
We discussed the two bills that will be presented tonight. We also discussed the financial bylaws. We will be
joined by Anh Diep next week.
b. Academic Affairs- Hunter Drobenaire
We met yesterday to discuss the bylaws and bring up our concerns about updates. Student Activities met today
at 6:45. We had some light discussions about what we wanted to do for student activities. Being student
government, we were talking about political conversations happening on campus. We were talking about what
we can do as senators. Just email or Facebook me or Senator Gonzalez. That’s it.
c. Student Activities- Louie Castillo
Nothing to report
d. Student Advocacy- Michael Wallace
Nothing to report
We did not vote on bills.
X.
Advisor's Report- Steve Lerer
Hello- couple things to talk about today. That conversation with Martin was awesome. I like it when people come
in and leave feeling like they have things to think about. I am going to start booking speakers for the spring starting
in January. Next semester we will see if we can get vice chancellors and provosts. I will try to schedule them. Next
meeting we will have Karen Froth. You can bring your questions to the table. Next week is a non-instruction day
on Wednesday. That means you don’t have class. If the professor says otherwise, they are wrong. Make sure you
are on top of that. I will not be at the meting on December 2 nd. Either Brian Aruba or LeTrice Curl will be here.
Leah Beza one of our office assistants is leaving, and we just hired her replacement. His name is Devon Ogles.
This leads me into the next conversation- what really sold us to him. Why do you want to be involved- and he said
I am a junior and I haven’t been involved with ASUCM. But I got the feeling that ASUCM had something to do
with funding. But what happened with the incident and how you all handled it, and how that went, he realized he
wanted to help out with this committee.” The feedback across the board is that we are amazed and impressed with
how you all reacted to this tragedy. We are all so proud of the support you guys provided. I think they would echo
that if they were in the room. The tee shirts that we gave from the vigil- we gave out 6500. We are going to start
selling them online so that we can cover the cost of the tee shirts. Whatever profit we make will go to the student
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emergency funds. This will go to situations of need in the future. We will make that clear to people on the website
that we are not profiting from this. We are hoping you all are trying to get back on some kind of routine. We hope
you all can focus on this and get ready for next semester.
Senator Wachira: I remember President Jones said that one of the Regents is coming to speak to you guys.
Advisor Lerer: Regent Ruiz is coming.
Senator Wachira: Do you know why there is no class on Wednesday?
Advisor Lerer: It’s clear that no one is here the day before thanksgiving. So they just decided that they
should accept that it’s a waste of time.
Senator Nunez: Does the guest speaker have to be a staff or a higher up, or can it be a community college
trustee?
Advisor Lerer: No. Al I do is send out the formal invitations.
President's Report- Domonique Jones
Absent.
XI.
Treasurer's Report- Joshua Bustamante
Hello everyone .I just want to update you on the budget. You have $25,000 left for your allocated funds. I
just want to take that into account for your bills being discussed. We’re thinking about bringing chargers
like this to rent one of these outs for the day since Dr. Nies hasn’t responded with the other charging
stations we wanted to purchase. Also, we wanted to discuss what the material items that we are purchasing
are.
XII.
Public Forum
Hello everyone- I am Trey Millibeck representing AIAA. We are here to give you guys
an idea of what we are and what we do as a club. We are hands on, project building, and
we build rockets as part of Design. Build. Fly. With DBF, we want to get our students to
participate in a challenge that is happening in April. With the rockets, we just got a bill
passed with ICC. With level 1 rockets, they are eth lowest of the high powered rocketsit looks really good on college applications. We are trying to push right now a UAV
minor. Since we don’t have any aerospace options right now.
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ASUCM Intern Samantha Gaerlan: Hello everyone- I am one of your three interns at
ASUCM if you don’t know me. So a lot of you have expressed concern about the
communication within ASUCM. I am here to do a report and see where this takes off. I
know you guys have lots of meetings, some of them may have private or sensitive
information and you need a closed space. We have a Google form where you can
document that so that here is no confusion. This also goes for the table in the middle of
the office. This is to prevent overlapping meetings. Sometimes there are interruptions
and I would hate to keep kicking out members of ASUCM.
The office is getting messy with lots of Ozzie boxes and plates. Please clean up
after yourselves. It looks a bit dirty in the office if you have empty plates and food
containers out everywhere. You guys have had a lot of goals that you want to
accomplish. We are here to help you- if you need copies, emails, brochures, etc. Last
year, we make court procedure brochures. The only think we can’t do is table. Also, we
have a new administrative assistant- you will see him around the office. Last slide is
secret snowflake- I did not mean to make this about Jewish culture/ people. I do
understand that there are other cultures and religious people that do not celebrate
Christmas. However, please consider doing secret snowflake. It is a time for holiday
cheer. And we are going to get you something that you like that is under $25. The
deadline is this Friday for any of the deals that occur after Thanksgiving. Thank you for
your time.
I’m Ryan, the ACS president. I wanted to thank you for helping us get people out
to the conference. We went and heard a lot of good conversations, we sent a lot of people
that got to see new cutting edge research. One of them is going to come to UC Merced
and see what this subject is all about. You helped foster good chemists and good science
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out there. Thank you all.
Hello everyone. My name is Christian Kambein. I am an EcoRep coordinator. I
am here to talk about cool campus challenge. The reason I am here today- to ask you all
for your support. I have asked you all to create a team. Huber and Mauricio will be
helping with this- I will be back next Wednesday so that you guys can ask questions.
Basically, what it eh CCC is, it it’s a campus wide challenge to reduce our campuses
carbon footprint. You can turn off lights when you leave a room .You take pledges like
this and you earn points. The Eco Rep program and others from PowerSave will help
provide incentives for this. Fight now we have gift cards and solar powered chargers.
Please sign up and get those points. If you guys as an Org are in the top 3, we have a
cool surprise planned for all of you. With that, I appreciate your time and thank you all
for listening.
SSA: Hello everyone- I am the president of the Sikh student association. This is
the presentation of the float that we did. I left the camera at home, but my sister didn’t
send me all of them. This is at the beginning of the parade. We had about 25 – 30
members to participate in the float. We also had about 10-15 alumni come out. The
event went great; we had about 10 of our members who helped bring our float. We had a
truck pull the float. We were 6th in the parade. This is a shot facing the front. There were
10,000 attending. A lot of people came even though it raided the whole time. Lot s of
people came and asked about our cub and about U Merced. We had pennants on the side.
Our float was Kartar Singh Sarabha. His 100-year anniversary was celebrated this last
month. He was a pet and a journalist. There was a lot of information about him on the
float. It was a wooden portrait drawn by one of our own members. Like we mentioned,
we’d like to thank you for giving us funding for this and we hope to keep on doing this
and to use this float for future parades. We would really like to do the one in Livingston,
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and one the 2nd week of April in Stockton.
AIAA: Hello everyone- I am president of AIAA. We will be presenting two bills
shortly. We got the NASA Rocket. We had one of the line officer recruiters. We are now
working with the USAF. It doesn’t matter what your background is- especially if it is in
STEM or engineering. As long as you complete their process and have the willingness to
work. Anyone who wants to explore a future in aerospace can. Thank you.
XIII.
Old Business
a. Senate Bill #14:Funding for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics at UC
Merced Design, Build, Fly (DBF) Team Creation of Aircraft (Introduced by Senators Acosta and
Maldonado)
Motion to approve Sen. Martinez. Seconded Sen. Maldonado.
BFY, SAY, SANV, AAY
Acosta: The bill is for AIAA to go to this conference and international competition. It is where you take an
aircraft with school s from around the world. Last year they came in 60 th out of 100 and this is something
that they took for about $2,000 when there were rockets there for over 10,000.
Maldonado: The purpose of this bill is to allocate the amount to buy the equipment to build an aircraft so
that they can attend the conference in April. It takes place in Kansas.
Discussion:
Senator Maldonado: I want to make an amendment to the bill. I wanted to cut down
transportation and shipping and rental. The last few boxes will be cut down. That is going to change the
subtotal amount to $5,060.83. The change to the tax is 8.75%. The total is $442.83. The grand total is
$5503.65. Also, to be enacted needs to change to reflect the new value. And the purpose needs to be
amended as well.
Senator Gonzalez: I am not trying to discredit this bill, but aren’t we kind of funding it as a
department would? I’m not sure if you guys understand what I’m saying.
Senator Acosta: I don’t understand.
Senator Maldonado: Are you suggesting having the school of engineering funding it?
Senator Gonzalez: Shouldn’t they be doing that
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Senator Hulbert: This is a club funded by the school of engineering. However, they are still tight
on funds. The School of Engineering has a limited amount of funds.
Senator Acosta: Not just that, but School of Engineering only does reimbursements.
Senator Maldonado: They have been trying to fundraise to cut tdown the cost.
Motion to approve
Unanimously approved.
Senate Bill #15: Funding for AIAA Rocket Division at UC Merced (Introduced by
Senators Acosta and Maldonado)
Motion to approve: Sen. Acosta
Seconded by Sen. Maldonado
BFNV, SAY, SANV, AAY
Senator Acosta: So again, the AIAA wants to build rockets at a Level 2 certification that is a
certification for the National Association of Rockets.
Senator Hubert: There was a bylaw concern with this about the double-dipping. It’s better to be
safe then sorry that we review with this.
Motion to table for a week Sen. Hulbert. Seconded Sen. Martinez. All in favor: Hulbert, Yang,
Martinez, Manon, Trejo
Opposed: Drobenaire, Wallace, Gonzalez, Barba, Castillo, Memon, Maldonado. Guaderrama.
Abstention: Senator Acosta.
Senator Maldonado: I wanted to talk about their ICC bill, which was for a Level 1 rocket.
President Jones: The way it works is that we have level 1 2 and 3 certification. If we get the Level
2 rockets that we are trying to get, these have nothing to do with the level one rocket that ICC approved
and helped us purchase. Level 2 rockets are completely different, and used for completely different thins. I
know there are two divisions.
Chris Repps (yielded to by Sen. Drobenaire): Hi everyone- Like Juan said, I am the astronautics
head. Right now, I am head of rockets. We also have a level 1 rocket to compare. The 7 ½ foot rocket. This
3 foot one is level one. These are completely separate events and completely different rockets. People
participating in this will be participating in completely different events.
Senator Memon: Court has addressed the issue of the bylaw violation. They said it is frowned
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upon but there is nothing against it.
Advisor Lerer (yielded by Senator Hulbert): The most recent update is that the double dipping
bylaw disappeared. So technically it is not “not allowed” anymore.
Senator Drobenaire: I would like to see another AIAA minor coming out, or even a major .I think
this club is pioneering the way for that.
Senator Hulbert: If we do pass it, now that that concern is taken care of. I don’t think we need to
put in, or have to say anything about it now that Carlos has clarified that bylaw. We are not questioning
impact but it is just something to keep into account.
Senator Drobenaire: Then again, the first bill was for $12,000. Now it is $5,500. I’m not going to
compare this to what could have been, but it is much less expensive than what they were asking for.
New Business
b. Senate Bill #16: Funding for the Martial Arts Club (Introduced by Senator Trejo)
Motion to send bill to all committees by Sen. Trejo.
Seconded Sen. Barba.
Unanimously approved
c. Senate Bill #17: Funding for Project Protect for the Undergraduate Research Week
Symposium (Introduced by Senator Gonzalez)
Motion to send bill to all committees by Sen. Gonzalez.
Seconded Sen. Maldonado.
Unaniomusly approved.
XIV.
Announcements
Huber: Great job- I know I came in half way though. I do work in the housing office, and he
was worried about what he was going to say. They are really worried about the housing crises.
Good job everyone. Also- I will be forming the team for the CCC. And I encourage you all to
sign up for Secret Snowflake.
Senator Guaderrama: I was jut informed about the World AIDS day fair. We are also
talking about the escalation of STDs right now. Check it out.
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Steve (Acosta): two things. The 2012 iteration of ICC says they can’t double dip.
However, it was dropped off. If you want to change that, then you an do that for next semester.
Be cogniscent of the total amount of funs you have five to clubs over time. It is the treasurer’s
responsibility to understand what kinds of funds we are giving to specific clubs.
Frankie (yielded by Senator Drobenaire) Please make sure you guys go to in-service. We
work hard to put these things together. Pease bring a snack or food for the in-service.
XV.
Adjournment
a. Motion to adjourn by Senator Castillo.
b. Seconded by Senator Drobenaire.
c. Unanimously approved. Adjourned at 10:15.
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