AAS Meeting Minutes 10/15/12
Meeting Begins: 8:30 PM
I. Attendance (Noah Gordon ‘14)
II. Public Comment
a. Open to all students on any topic
III. BC Recs (Abigail Xu ‘15)
Abigail: two clubs requesting emergency funding.
Jenny Xiao ’15: LINK (North Korea) Food = $80.00. Film screening: tomorrow
at 7 PM in Fayerweather.
Mock Trial: Requesting hotel rooms for two nights. $1500. Tournaments 19th,
20th and 21st.
Samson Tan ‘14: Entrepreneur Society Paino Lecture Hall event (class of 92)
this Friday. Ticket prices rose.
Jess Sidhu ‘14: Amherst Political Union holding debate next Friday. Secured
John Samples, CATO Institute speaker (Airline ticket prices have risen).
Abigail: Men’s ultimate Frisbee team had a tournament in Montreal. The AAS
will only fund ex-post facto requests when AAS is at fault or if students
requesting have suffered medical/family/life complications.
IV. Reports
a. Committee Reports
Noah: Appointments board met. Recommendations for you so stay tuned.
George Tepe ‘14: CPR met. We discussed ANNEX briefly (second
online consortium). They differ from TUTOR because they want to
open up to the world. Amherst would potentially become the third
founder (first two are Harvard and MIT).
b.
General Announcements
JJ Hoffstein ‘14: My Senate project is called The Party Fund
(students can submit receipts/get refunded for nonfood/beverage related items).
John Yarchoan ‘13: Trying to come up with longer term
solution to club transportation issue raised last week when
rugby tried to get a bus.
Benyam Ashenafi ‘15: Dean Boykin East decided to donate a
bike rack!
Noah: To build upon what John said, we need a new van policy
that makes more sense for who can use the van and when.
Adam Gerchick ‘13: CEP met. Administration has delayed
timeline to moving ahead with online courses. We may be
hearing about this in the future.
Tania Dias ‘13: 600 people came to Val! There was enough ice
cream. There was a tremendously long line! We’re going to
get funding from the Dean of students. Also, Grab&Go
option at Keefe worked so well. It’s only the first day! I
also want to organize a meeting with Biddy (she should
host them once a month because they’re so good). I want
AAS to organize a rally for next week.
Andre Wang ‘14: Is it the best we can do?
Tania: No, but it’s the first step. I also have an idea for senate
project. We could buy pumpkins and have an all-school
pumpkin carving event. Senate figures there is too much
liability (dangerous carving utensils).
Rama Hagos ‘15: Next Wednesday, Program Board is having
a Halloween event.
Tania: On Facebook: We do so much and we’re involved. How
do we transmit this message to the student body? I have a
vision for our Facebook page and we’re getting this done.
Jared: People should be able to see all events for AAS on a
calendar on Facebook.
c.
Officer Reports
George: TurboVote is finally ready! At the meeting with Biddy
last night, students complained that there weren’t any atlarge students on the Title IX. committee.
V. Discussion of Resolution Calling for a Ban of TD Fraternity (No Vote
Planned) (Chris Friend ‘14)
Chris Friend: This topic has blown up in the past few weeks. We need to
analyze pros/cons of actions that the AAS can take. If not specific
actions, perhaps the AAS can take more general actions in terms of
sexual respect.
Tania Dias ’13: At the meeting yesterday in the Friedmann room, I got a
sense that the issue wasn’t about frats… it was about sexual assault and
how we can better deal with this issue as a community. We could take
action, but the tone of last night’s meeting was more one of support.
How can we come up with initiatives and promote community action?
Tania: I’m on college council and we’re going to talk about what it means to
have a student life experience at Amherst. What is the role of frats in the
long term plan of Amherst? We’ll be discussing frats in a broader
context.
Frat Rep: I stand here today not to defend the t-shirts and I’m sincerely
sorry about them and about the frat, too. To be honest, I think a lot of
animosity toward frats is misconstrued. We need to discuss what frats
actually are. Sports teams are just like frats. Amherst wants diversity,
but on the lacrosse team, the majority of players are white and
Caucasian. As Amherst students, we care about diversity. TD is one of
the most diverse groups on campus: we have the wealthiest kids and
poorest kids in the frat. Frats are just 25 guys who enjoy a drink, pizza
and hanging out. It’s open, not exclusive. The T-shirts should not have
been made, but I don’t think frats should be completely banned. Normal
and decent people join frats. Shouldn’t Amherst students have the choice
to join one?
Meghna Sridhar ‘14: We should not center this discussion on frats. That’s a
discussion for another time in another context. The AAS cannot take
serious action on the incident. As a rep of the student body, we should
do something saying that we do not approve this incident. If we let this
incident slide, it’s as if the AAS is shrugging off the incident.
Vote to display picture of t-shirt on the screen.
Passed.
Peter Crane ‘15: I have friends who go to your parties and girls feel
completely safe. But we have an outstanding issue here with sexual
assault. We need to join together to combat the atmosphere of
“shrugging it off.” I hope you all can teach lessons to others, like your
younger brothers, for instance. The AAS is not going to put action
against the members of the frat. It’s important to join forces.
Joe Kim ‘14: I spoke to a few people and there seems to be a lot of
disappointment with the Dean of Students Office (previous one) and the
Health Center… that these have alienated victims. When a young
woman approached the Dean with a rape incident, he asked her if she
wanted to ruin the attacker’s life. The Dean suggested the girl take a
semester off and deal with her issues. This is not how the administration
should be acting.
John: The language should be changed to something saying that we as an
institution should address this as a priority. I know many people in frats.
The policy is completely broken. They either need to be regulated or
disbanded.
Bess Hanish ‘13: We can start discussing the atmosphere of the frat. The
apology came after the reaction of the student body. The issue is how do
we regulate what is sexist and what is not. Because frats are banned and
hidden, there’s no way of knowing what is happening within them. We
may need to discuss frat culture.
Tania: The regulation and disbandment of frats is one issue, but the AAS
needs to address what we can do, what initiatives we can create and
what people can do on an everyday basis.
Masudi Minga (Falone) ‘16: My friends question me about what the Senate
is doing about sexual assault. People need to know.
Andre Wang ’14: I’m not sure if it’s okay to regulate frat culture… I don’t
know if we can regulate a culture, no matter what culture it is. The frat
culture reflects a larger national network. Taking action against a certain
frat culture itself may not be effective. We can address inadequacies or
obstacles in policies.
Brendan Burke ’13: What we’re actually talking about here is the status of
jokes on campus. Last year, we had a joke of a Jamaican Jerk-off. We
shouldn’t publicize events that make jokes about particular groups of
people because it cheats people of having honest relationships with each
other.
Adugo (AAS Reporter): These TD shirts are very offensive and connect
back to frats. A lot of people say that Amherst has “baby” frats.
However, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t tolerate this issue of sexual
disrespect. We need to have dialogue and discuss how we can move
forward. Together, we need to work as a community to address what
jokes are okay and what jokes are wrong. We need to be careful not to
violate other people’s value and worth.
Chris: Thank you everyone for coming out here tonight. In the gray zone,
we run into difficulties we don’t want to deal with. We should at least
ask the administration to help us move forward on these issues.
Meghna: The AAS should have a zero tolerance policy for
Tania: First point directed to Falone: my goal is for Senate to go through
bystander training. The AAS could organize a rally for survivors. A
resolution can be passed. The student body thinks we put things we vote
upon on the internet but they don’t think we do anything about issues.
Some students complain about the jokes in GAD’s. I’m pushing less
toward a resolution and more towards what we can do.
Adugo: I’m part of a women’s support group. On Wednesday, we’re doing
an anonymous poster project. We’re making posters with quotes on the
bottom of experiences in sexual assault. This could potentially be
implemented on a greater scale for the whole school that could lead up
to a rally. Students ultimately shouldn’t have to justify to others what
they stand for; they should feel comfortable on campus.
VI. 4 new cabinet positions (Tania)
a. Film and Media Director – Nicole Umina ‘15
b. Entrepreneurship Coordinator – Samson Tan ‘14
Tania: I realized entrepreneurship brings different types of
people together over common values. Samson intends to
organize an entrepreneurship competition and bring speaker
to campus.
c. Campus Inclusion Coordinator – Katrin Marquez
There was discussion on whether or not to allow Miss Marquez
to represent the AAS after a controversial article she wrote
in The Amherst Student. However, after much debate, AAS
decides that she will make an outstanding and hardworking Campus Inclusion Coordinator who will be able to
provide different and necessary perspectives.
Passes by a vote of 14 to 7 to 5.
d. All-Campus Tradition Coordinator – Brendan Burke
VII. MRC Special Committee Creation (Tania)
Tania: Committee in charge of developing a strategic long-term plan for the
MRC. The committee will consist of the Dean of Students, the MRC
coordinator, MRC peer programmers, Dean of Student Activities,
students, two senators, the Campus Inclusion Coordinator, the President
of the Student Body, the Provost, and the President of the School.
Jess Sidhu ‘14: Is there a reason for zero faculty?
Tania: Faculty position was added.
VIII. MRC Special Committee Election (George)
a. 2 senators
Andre Wang ‘14 and Dvij Bajpai ‘15
IX. Faculty Committee on Admission and Financial Aid (George)
a. 1 senator
Bess Hanish ‘13 is appointed.
X. Student Computing Committee (Also known as IT Policy
Committee)(George)
a. 4 senators
Christina Won ‘15, Hao Liu ‘16, Shruthi Badri ‘16, Servet
Bayimli ‘16
XI. Judiciary Council Election (George) (If time allows)
a. 1 senator
XII. Student Community Engagement Fund (George) (If time allows)
a. 1 senator
XIII. Orientation and First-year Life Committee Election (If time allows)
a. 2 first-years
XIV. Arts Committee (George) (If time allows)
a. 1 senator
XV. Approve Minutes, 10-01-12 (George)
Minutes approved.
XVI. New Business
XVII. Adjournment: 10:44 PM