THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT
CHAPEL HILL
EXECUTIVE BRANCH OF STUDENT GOVERNMENT
LAMBDEN ADMINISTRATION
MARCH REPORT
“Putting Carolina First”
-Christy Lambden
March 2014
Prepared by the Office of the Student Body Secretary
Suite 2501, Carolina Student Union
Chapel Hill, NC 27599
http://www.unc.edu/studgov
This publication was funded at least in part by student fees which were
appropriated and dispersed by the Student Government at UNC-Chapel
Hill
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MARCH REPORT
Prepared by the Office of the Student Body Secretary
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
A Reflection on Student Government…..................................................5
Executive Branch Officers
Student Body President...............................................................................6
Student Body Vice President...................................................................17
Student Body Secretary.............................................................................28
Student Body Treasurer............................................................................35
Chief of Staff....................................................................................................43
Director of State and External Affairs…………………………………..48
Senior Advisor...............................................................................................53
Cabinet Committees and Special Projects
Steering Committee for the Arts ...........................................................58
Carolina Athletics …….................................................................................61
Environmental Affairs................................................................................67
Fix My Campus……………………….............................................................70
First Year Focus Council ……..................................................................74
Multicultural Affairs and Diversity Outreach...................................84
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Public Relations, Outreach and Design................................................88
Safety..................................................................................................................94
Public Service Advocacy………………………………………………………100
Speakers…………………………………………………………………………….107
Town and External……………………………………………………………...110
University Services.......................................................................................112
Technology and Web...................................................................................116
Academic Affairs………………………………………………………………….119
Appendices
Letters to the Editor.....................................................................................124
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Hello fellow Tarheels!
We are happy to present to you our March Report, a compilation of all of the
progress we have made during the Lambden administration, and other projects
midway through our administration’s term.
It has been our absolute pleasure to serve the student body. We are happy to pass
the torch on to Andrew Powell and his talented executive team—we can only hope
they grow as close as our administration did this year. Student Government is more
than an extracurricular activity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, it’s
an opportunity to grow, inspire, and connect.
Always putting Carolina First,
The 2013-2014 Executive Branch Officers
Christy, Jacob, Hannah, Matt, Emma, Shelby and Kevin
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Student Body President
Christy Lambden
lambden@live.unc.edu
OVERVIEW OF RESPONSIBILITIES
The Student Body President is the only elected position in the Executive Branch of
Student Government at Carolina. They are the Chief Executive Officer and are
responsible for the management of the Executive Branch. They are responsible for
the appointment of the other Executive Branch Officers, and creating a team that
they believe can be effective.
My section of the March report focuses on the main projects that I have been
involved in during my term in office. In addition to the below areas I have also
served on the following committees: Athletic Board of Directors, GAA Board of
Directors, Commencement Advisory Committee, Commencement Speaker Selection
Committee, Price Steering committee, Kenan Biddle Grant Proposal, One Carolina
planning committee, selection committee for attorney General and Executive branch
senior leadership.
Affordability
One of the three main tenants of my platform, affordability is by far one of the most
pressing issues that face not only current Carolina students but future students as
well. As such I have sought to find ways to make Carolina more affordable. While
tuition is often focused on, tuition is an area that we as students have the least
impact on changing. While I will relentlessly fight to prevent tuition from increasing
for both in and out-of-state students I have also explored non-traditional channels
to limit the cost of attending Carolina as well. These include fees, housing, dining,
insurance and test prep courses. A team of Executive Assistants has been
instrumental in providing me with the research to allow this to happen.
Tuition
In an effort to curb the trend of increases in tuition I have done a number of things.
The first is to negotiate myself a position onto the Finance and Infrastructure
committee within the Board of Trustees. Being the first SBP to hold this seat I now
get a direct voice at the negotiating table where these increases are drafted. Second,
to new position I created for the executive branch (Director of State and External
Relations) has been working with many people to lobby North Carolina’s General
Assembly to prevent tuition increases for out-of-state students. Finally, we have
begun researching alternative venues to bring in revenue thus reducing the need to
have tuition increases in the first place.
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Along with the Provost I served as co-chair of the Tuition and Fee Task Force that
was responsible for recommending tuition and fee changes to the Board of Trustees
and subsequently the Board of Governors. The Task force confirmed that there
would be no increase in tuition for in-state students, furthering Carolina’s
commitment to an affordable and accessible education for the residents of North
Carolina. The University also confirmed that they would not be asking for any
campus-based increase in tuition and demonstrated a commitment to ask the
Legislature to reconsider the 12.3% increase for out of state students. The task force
decided that there would be a $350 increase for all graduate students that would go
solely towards financial aid and faculty retention. I agreed with all of the solutions
that the task force reached but I also acknowledge that with increasing economic
pressures on the University put it in challenging situation in maintaining current
tuition levels.
Fees
To help curve the increases of fees I used my position as the co-chair of the Student
Fee Advisory Sub-committee to monitor all fee increase. This year the committee
decided to review all fee increases including inflationary increase. For more specific
information about Fees please see the report of the Student Body Treasurer.
Other Costs
To help combat any rising prices in housing, dining and insurance I have asked my
team of executive assistants to gather information regarding comparable prices at
peer institutions, the cost break down of our current systems and alternative venues
to garner revenue without increasing or potentially decrease costs. Once all
preliminary back ground information has been discovered and established they will
proceed to determine students opinions on different amenities that are covered
under the money that we spend towards these areas. For housing we will establish
which programs if any are redundant or do not fulfill the needs of the students
incurring those costs. For dining we expect to establish a break down of every dollar
spent towards dining and evaluate and examine any possible alternatives to
decrease overall costs. In the last few years UNC’s Health Insurance has been
affected by not only the Affordable Care Act but also by the recent changes in Health
Care Providers. As such we are examining the reasons behind these changes, the
alternatives that exist and the changing climate that ensues as we forge ahead, and
how we respond to that change.
In the last year UNC has done away with it’s offering of highly subsidized test prep
courses and has entered into a contract with the Princeton Review. While the
courses offered by the Princeton Review are also subsidized, the costs are still
significantly higher than those courses offered by UNC’s Learning Center. As such
we have been investigating the effects of those prep courses offered by UNC, the
costs incurred by the University to provide them and why the courses were
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eliminated originally. From there we expect to help reinstate the courses if they are
deemed to be an effective tool for the preparation for these exams.
Sexual Assault: Policy, Prevention, and response.
I have said throughout the course of this year that the most challenging issue that
Carolina faces is sexual assault on our campus. This has been true since the first day
that I stepped into office. As such I made it my number one priority from day one
until now to help shape the future of the sexual assault policy and culture here at
Carolina. I have worked in 5 key areas; Student Task Force, Sexual Assault Forums,
University Task Force, Title IX search committee, and Education.
Student Task Force
Due to growing unrest surrounding the Universities response to sexual harassment
and misconduct, one of the first actions I took, as Student Body President was to
convene a student task force to explore and identify the flaws and strengths of the
existing policy. I chaired the Task Force that consisted of 13 student leaders from
around campus including the Graduate and Professional Federation President,
members of UNC Safer, Feminist United, the Attorney General Staff, and other
representatives from within student government. Representing a variety of views I
tasked the committee to come together and develop a list of suggestions that would
then be passed on to the University task force commissioned by former Chancellor
Thorp.
After meeting on three separate occasions the task force agreed on 27 criterions
consisting of both policy and procedural recommendations. Policy suggestions
focused on the content of the policy while procedural concerned itself with the
application and implementation of said policy. Policy recommendations included
clear definitions of what is and is not sexual assault, harassment, misconduct and
consent while procedural included suggestions such as creating new departments,
training and restructuring the student grievance committee.
Sexual Assault Forums
One of the most complex components in the process of re-writing the sexual assault
policy at UNC is communicating to the student population the process that has taken
place since I have taken office. As such I thought the best way to bridge this gap is to
hold two forums on campus where those who have had the most say in re-writing
and defining the process sit down and engage in a discussion with the student
population.
The first forum was held on April 17th in the Anne Queen Lounge of the Campus Y.
The event featured Intern Title IX Coordinator Christi Hurt, Deputy Title IX
Coordinator Ew Quimbaya-Winship, Interpersonal Violence Prevention Coordinator
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Bob Pleasants, and Rape Prevention Education Coordinator Kelli Raker. The event
drew a crowd of 50+ individuals. The panelists were able to respond to student
concerns about the Universities response and students voiced opinions about how
to improve the policy and culture at Carolina.
The second forum held true to style and was also co-hosted and held in the Campus
Y. On September 23rd over 60 people came out to hear Ew Quimbaya-Winship,
Christi Hurt and Bob Pleasants explain the developments since the last forum. As
with the previous forum the panelist gave an update of developments and the future
going ahead while also actively engaging the crowd in a Q&A session in which both
the panelist proposed questions and answered questions about the policy,
implementation and training of the campus community.
I also took part as a panelist for a forum regarding sexual assault at Carolina and the
role that students can play in changing policies and also the culture at Carolina, on
February 25th. It was a pleasure to take part in the discussion along with Christi
Hurt, Ew Quimbaya-Winship, Howie Kallem (Title IX coordinator), and Kelli Raker
and to help promote discussions with more students and educate students on
changes that had been made at Carolina and how they can remain involved and
work for positive change.
Task Force
I was asked to serve as a member of the University’s Task Force that was reviewing
the sexual assault policy. The task force was changed with reviewing the existing
policy in 4 separate areas: Content, Style, Tone, and Layout. I wanted to make sure
that the recommendations that the Student Task Force had created were listened to
throughout the process, and I presented the 27 recommendations on 3 separate
occasions throughout the summer.
The initial target of the Task Force was to create a new policy for the start of the fall
semester. We started off the summer meeting once a week for 3 hours every
Wednesday morning and started by working on definitions and what we wanted to
see in a new policy. The key definition that was made a focal point for our policy was
“Consent.” We wanted to be really clear on what exactly was required for consent to
be given, and situations when consent could not be given due to incapacitation of
some sort. Additionally, we sort to define what constitutes sexual harassment,
assault, and misconduct by providing clear definitions while also providing
examples.
As the summer progressed we ended up deciding that we need to meet more as a
group and scheduled 3 day long meetings. During those meetings we separated the
days in half, using one half of the day to continue to construct definitions while using
the other half to start a discussion about the process, and how a case of sexual
misconduct may proceed through our system. It was widely acknowledged that we
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our current system is too complex to navigate and we wanted to simplify it in a way
that made it easy to understand. We started off with the idea that the most
important factor at the start was making sure that then victim had the support that
they needed, whether it be medical or emotional.
As the school year has progressed again we have discussed the nature of the
investigation of a case, who ultimately hears the case and who was responsible for
implementing sanctions if they are needed. The key talking points were around how
we minimize stress for all parties, by providing an efficient process that is handled
with sensitivity while also making sure that we obtain due process. Recently we
have resolved the process by which a report is investigated and brought to a hearing
and have determined that there will be a hearing panel that is responsible for both
hearing a case and assigning sanctions. To make the process efficient and fair we
decided to ask the investigator to determine a finding in the case and present that
finding to both parties, allowing them to accept it and conclude the proceedings.
The work of the Task Force has been slow in nature and we have had to consider
complicated federal laws and University system policies, which has further
complicated the issues. However, as we come towards the end of the process I
believe that the policy that we have created is clearer, more efficient, and fairer
because of the work that has taken place. I will continue to serve on the Task Force
until it reaches a resolution and I am excited to obtain feedback on the new policy
from students and incorporate that into the final version.
Title IX search committee
I was asked to serve on the search committee for the new Title IX coordinator
position. I was tasked along with 7 other members of finding an individual to
replace our interim Title IX coordinator Christi Hurt, as she transitioned back to the
Women’s center. Central to our search was the idea that we needed to find
somebody who could coordinate our Title IX responsibilities on campus. We had
nearly 50 applications for the position and held phone interviews with about 10
individuals. Eventually we decided to bring two candidates to campus for a day of
interviews and discussions with various constituencies including students. The new
Title IX coordinator, Howie Kallem, a former attorney at the Office of Civil Rights,
took office in January 2014 and I have worked with him consistently since his
introduction to campus.
Education
An essential discussion to have as we move forward with sexual assault prevention
is how we educate our community around this issue. I have entered into a number
of discussions with member of our title IX team, and representatives from student
affairs about the ways in which we can reach the most number of students. We
already have trainings such as OneAct and Haven in place at Carolina, so it becomes
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a question of how we can educate more of our community to prevent and respond to
Sexual Assault. We agreed that encouraging key communities such as the Greek
community and athletics to engage in training would be a starting point as we also
move towards a system of mandatory training for all students. These programs are
already being implement by the University and I believe that as a result we will have
a safer community that is better able to support victims of sexual assault.
I was also very pleased to represent Carolina at a discussion on sexual assault at the
University of Virginia along with the Chancellor, Howie Kallem, and Christi Hurt. We
were all able to learn of what other universities were doing in their policies and
education and that informed a number of the discussions occurring at Carolina.
Housing Occupancy Rule
In November, after hearing stories of evictions and landlord fines being passed on to
students, I commissioned a group to conduct research about the history of the
occupancy rule that limited the number of unrelated people that could live in a
single unit dwelling to 4. The group concluded that the occupancy rule is harmful to
both students and the greater Chapel Hill community. It recommended removal of
this occupancy rule and a return to the 6-unrelated-persons occupancy limit that is
mandated by the State’s fire code. In its consideration it looked at the impact on
both students, and community members in Chapel Hill.
As the research concluded and it became clear that there was harm being done to
students and that the occupancy rule was not fulfilling its original purpose, I
launched a petition asking students to support me in my request to the town council
that the occupancy rule be repealed. The petition received 917 signatures and
sparked a debate among the student population with regards to the role that
students should play in the town.
To address concerns from within the student population I hosted a forum in which I
presented the research that had been conducted and the reasoning behind our
conclusion that the occupancy rule should be repealed. After the forum we heard
positive feedback from students and on March 24th I petitioned the town council for
the removal of the occupancy rule. The town council was receptive to the request
and agreed to look at the rule at the same time as reviewing the limitations on
affordable housing in the area,
My hope is that the petition not only creates debate between the town and the
University with regards to the effectiveness of the Occupancy Rule but also acts as a
way for students to come to the table for other discussions including affordable
housing and how students can be better neighbors.
Board of Trustees
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May
At my first meeting in May I was sworn in as a member of the board. This was the
last meeting for many of the board members and much of the discussion focused
about how to ensure an effective transition for new Board members and also for the
new Chancellor and Provost. We confirmed Jim Dean, the Dean of the business
school, as the new Provost. My remarks served as an introduction to the three most
important parts of my platform: Affordability, Academics, and Safety. As part of my
discussion around safety I expressed my dissatisfaction with the Board of Governors
decision to prohibit Gender non-specific housing and reminded the Board of
Trustees that this was a program that they had unanimously supported.
Between the May meeting and the July meetings of the Board, I worked with the new
board leadership to discuss the role of students at the Board of Trustees meetings. I
asked to be moved from the University Affairs committee to the Finance and
infrastructure committee, so that students could have a vote on tuition and fee
increases at every stage of the process. In addition to moving to changing
committees I also reached an agreement with the Board leadership that there
should be a student voice on every committee. As a result, the Vice-President now
has speaking rights at the University Affairs committee, while the Director of State
and External affairs participates in the External Affairs committee and is also a
voting member of the External Affairs task force of the Board. Finally, the Graduate
and Professional School Federation president now has a standing report to the
University Affairs committee.
July
The July meeting of the board also served as an orientation for the new members of
the board. This was Chancellor Folt’s first meeting with the board and much of the
meeting was focused on building relations with the Chancellor and making plans for
how we could help her successfully transition to Carolina. In my report to the board
I touched on the concerning budget in the state legislature, which included the
12.3% tuition increase on out of state students, and provided an update on my work
with the sexual assault task force.
September
A focus point of discussion at the September board of Trustees meeting was
alcoholism and its affects on sexual assault and hazing. Although there was no
conclusion reached at the meeting it was clear that this will be a discussion that will
continue throughout the remainder of my time on the board. I was delighted that
the Divest from Coal movement were able to present to the board, and I am excited
to work with the administration and Divest from Coal to analyze the effect of
Carolina’s investment in the coal industry. My report to the board highlighted upon
the developing gap in financial aid for Out of State students as well as arguing
against the reduction in the drop/add period from 8 weeks to 10 days. Finally, the
Board voted to approve David Routh as the new Vice Chancellor for Development.
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November
In the November meeting we had a series of discussions about the Greek system at
the University. The information that we received will inform decisions that the
Board makes on the Greek system and the and in particular the use of a minimum
GPA requirement for Greek houses. My report to the board highlighted the work
that student government had put in to rebut the change in the drop/add policy. It
also once again drew attention to the ramifications of the increase in out-of-state
tuition, for all students enrolled at Carolina. Finally, the Board voted to approve Joel
Curran as the new Vice Chancellor for Communications.
January
The January meeting of the board focused a lot on the issues of college athletics. The
board discussed the recent allegations regarding the literacy of our student athletes.
My report to the board focused on the changes that student government had
managed to influence with regards to the pass/fail policy. I also discussed the work
of the sexual assault task force and the positive steps that we being taken to ensure
a swift resolution to the process and a new policy being created for students that
represented the needs of the student population. Finally, I updated the board on the
steps that student government planned to take with regards to the Occupancy rule
within the town and let them know that the election process for the next Student
Body President had begun.
March
March was my final meeting with the board and I used it as an opportunity to
highlight some of the major accomplishments from my administration including the
work done on building relationships with state government, protecting affordability,
continuing to ensure academic policies that promote student success, and success of
the sexual assault task force. I also used it as an opportunity to vocalize concerns
that I had with regards to the Greek community, and the media’s interaction with
Carolina. One of the main points of discussion from the board was the review of the
Health fee that had been requested by the Board of Governors. I voted against a
motion to decrease the health fee but the motion still passed. We also heard a
presentation from a number of student athletes about what is was like to be an
athlete at Carolina.
I have greatly enjoyed my work with the board this year. I have fostered very close
relationships with a number of members of the board and have strived to ensure
that the student voice was always heard and accounted for by the board. I know that
all members of the board are passionate about Carolina and will do everything to
make sure that Carolina continues to thrive. I know that a number of members of
the board are fostering relations with the state legislature and board of governors to
make sure that Carolina’s interests are represented.
Administrative Relations
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This year has been a huge time of change in the senior leadership at Carolina. At the
very top of the organization we had the introduction of both a new Chancellor and a
new Provost. I was delighted that Chancellor Folt made the commitment to have
lunch with a graduate student and myself on her first day in office. I have cherished
the relationship that I have been able to build with the Chancellor and have fostered
a strong working relationship that has enabled both of us to remain well informed of
the issues that both of us are facing. The Provost and I have also maintained a close
relationship and I worked very closely with him throughout the fee and tuition
discussions in the fall semester to create policies and changes that promoted
affordability and accessibility at the University. It has been a pleasure to work with
both the Chancellor and the Provost in their transition at the University and being
able to help define and promote their vision for Carolina.
In addition to the changes in the top two positions we have seen the introduction of
3 new Vice Chancellors: David Routh (Development), Joel Curran (Communications)
and Felecia Washington (Workforce strategy, equity, and engagement). We are also
waiting for a new Vice Chancellor for communications.
I have worked very closely with Vice Chancellor Crisp (Student Affairs) throughout
the year and have worked with him to advocate and protect students through a
series of issues including sexual assault, fees, honor system reform, and reforms to
the Greek system. It is important for the student population that the Student Body
President has a close relationship with the Vice Chancellor Crips so that they can
remain on the same page in advocating for student needs.
Despite the changes in senior leadership at the University I take pride in the
relations that I have been able to build with all of the new administrators. In their
transition into Carolina I made sure that they understood the student perspective on
the issues that they were tackling and that they knew they could approach me for
input and feedback where appropriate.
I am confident that administrators at the University are receptive and responsive to
the needs of the students and I hope that by building close relationships with
administrators this year that I have furthered students interests and made more
people aware of student needs.
Accessibility
In an effort to improve accessibility to the University for students my administration
has taken a number of steps. I have had open office hours every week throughout
my term and have had many good discussions with students during those times.
Beyond this I have took the initiative to host office hours in the Pit where students
were encouraged to come out and talk to my administration and myself.
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I sought out new opportunities to engage students in student governance. In an
effort to clear confusion around the current state of sexual assault I have sent an
email to the entire student population explaining the current state of sexual assault
and what is being done now and in the future. Furthermore, in an effort to maintain
accessibility with student congress I have attended every session of full congress
and given a report of what has occurred over the past two weeks. Moreover, in my
first weeks as SBP I noticed a lack of interaction of students in the student
government suite. As such I have took multiple steps to transform the suite into an
open, inviting area by bringing in a T.V. and a foosball table at no cost. At the start of
the year I attended multiple “Pizza with the Presidents” events; at these events
presidents of large student organizations come together in locations convenient to
students to promote their organizations and enter into a dialogue with students.
As we worked through new issues in the spring semester I worked to communicate
and hear from students through an online platform, neighborland. We also hosted a
number of forums and events to receive student feedback on issues and help to
inform the steps that we needed to take moving forward to solve problems that
students were facing, We also released a series of statements to better demonstrate
our stance on issues.
Athletics
At the beginning of the Spring Semester questions emerged in relation to the
academic standards of athletes at Carolina. Student government released a
statement challenging the data that had been published and reaffirming the belief
that student-athletes at Carolina are of the highest caliber, both athletically and
academically. Although the debate is still ongoing I believe that the University has
put in place a number of policies and procedures that highlight its dedication to all
of its students. The “Tar Heels for Life “ program that was announced by the
Chancellor, which grants any athlete who received a scholarship from the University
the right to return to the University if they do not complete their degree, and finish
their education, and that the scholarship will be upheld to allow them to do that.
Carolina has clearly made errors in the past but as we continue I firmly believe that
all of the right steps are being taken to ensure academic integrity in all of our
athletic programs. Our student athletes are being unduly criticized and I am glad
that student government did what it could to represent the voice of students and
protect student athletes throughout this debate.
Licensing Labor Code Advisory Committee
Towards the tail end of the fall semester and the spring semester I served as a
member of the Licensing Labor Code Advisory Committee. The committee was made
up of one other student member, a number of faculty and administrators. The
committee was convened to review the policy it had in place with its licensees who
were manufacturing products in Bangladesh. Following a series of reports regarding
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safety concerns in factories in Bangladesh two organizations had emerged to help
institute safe practices in the region: the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety and
the Accord on Fire and building safety in Bangladesh. The committee was asked to
research and review the different practices for manufacturers in Bangladesh and
recommend to the Chancellor and her cabinet what policy the University should
adopt for their license agreements. Along with a number of members of the
committee I felt that the Accord offered a preferable solution, and it was noted in
the recommendation passed on to the chancellor’s cabinet that the Accord was the
strong preference of the committee.
OFFICER PERSPECTIVE
This has been a tough year at Carolina. It has been packed with major issues and
national media attention. Additionally, it has been a major time of change at the
University, and a different political landscape in the state than has been seen in
decades; In short it was a challenging year to serve as Student Body President.
At the start of the year I pledged that I would approach the year by trying to
promote three key values: Safety, Affordability and Academic standards. The steps
that my team and I have taken have advanced all three of these issues in a positive
way for students. We have sought to build and foster relations, not only within the
student population, but also with administrators, faculty, trustees, and state
legislatures.
Although we have not won all of the battles, I believe that the efforts of my team and
I have furthered the experience that students will have at Carolina and have laid a
foundation for student government to remain engaged in a number of debates that
we were not previously in. As a result of the work that we have done, students have
a greater role in determining the future of the University and having a voice on
many of the issues that the University is tackling.
I remain dedicated to Carolina and the students here and I know that the future is
bright for the University. Carolina has been the most wonderful place to spend my 4
years as an undergraduate and I hope to remain engaged with Carolina and help in
way that I possibly can to further the University and the students here.
Thank you for giving me the honor of serving as President this year and for giving
me the best possible 4 years of my life.
In the Carolina Way,
Christy
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Student Body Vice President
Jacob M Morse
morsejm@live.unc.edu
OVERVIEW OF RESPONSIBILITIES
The enumerated duties of the Student Body Vice President (SBVP) include
overseeing the External Appointments Process, chairing the Student Advisory
Committee to the Chancellor (SACC), serving on the Student Fee Audit Committee
(SFAC) and acting on behalf of the Student Body President (SBP) when he or she
requires such. Additionally, the SBVP serves in a number of capacities that allow
him or her to best serve the student body as an advocate and Executive Branch
Officer. These roles include serving on special committees and boards, carrying out
individual projects and tasks, handling internal affairs, and assisting others in
meeting the goals of the administration. This report will briefly describe the work
of the SBVP as it relates to the description provided.
Student Advisory Committee to the Chancellor (SACC)
The Student Advisory Committee to the Chancellor (SACC) is a group comprised of
Undergraduate and Graduate students from areas all across the student population
that works to represent student interests directly to the Chancellor and the Vice
Chancellor for Student Affairs. This committee is first and foremost an advisory
committee – rendering advice and opinions from a student perspective on issues
that affect student life and experience at Carolina. Its discussion-based format
allows students and administrators to engage in university issues in a way that is
open, free flowing, candid, and responsive. The committee is best functioning when
the students at the table represent a collectively diverse population, so that the
work of the committee has as many students and stakeholders in mind.
Additionally, the committee works to complete various tasks and projects that
members see fit.
The committee is comprised of twelve standing members that meet weekly as a
group and monthly with the Chancellor. The undergraduate students are chosen
from a pool of applicants by the SBVP and the graduate students are chosen by the
President of the Graduate and Professional Student Federation. This year, Jacob
worked to ensure that the voices at the table were as diverse as possible in all
senses of the word. The committee now boasts membership of three graduate
students, three seniors, three juniors, three sophomores and two first-years. These
members collectively represent students who identify as African-American, Latino,
Greek, LGBTQ, first-generation college student and international, as well as students
who represent a variety of academic interests. By putting this wide variety of
backgrounds at the table, the committee is better able to bring diverse opinions to
the Chancellor.
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Meetings with the Chancellor once a month provide the committee with the
opportunity to bring forward items of interest. The agendas change monthly, and
largely represent a) current or pressing issues of the student body or b) work or
projects of the committee and its members. Many times, administrators will
comment on the feasibility (or lack thereof) of different ideas and projects and also
listen to the desires of the student members. These meetings also allow
administrators to give constructive feedback to student members on how to best go
forward in a productive direction with their ideas and goals.
A sample of the things that the current committee has been interested in discussing
and working on includes: the Chancellor’s presence on social media, UNC’s brand
image, representation of graduate students at the state level, tuition and budget
cuts, the implementation of the Dance minor, the campaign to allow in-state tuition
for undocumented students, the recruiting and retention of minority students, the
University’s leadership transition, reforming the Honor System (and diversifying it),
graduate student faculty mentors, and the relationship between student athletes
and the University. Additionally, the committee planned and carried out the
inaugural student open house for Chancellor Folt (held on February 5, 2014) and is
organizing a second open house to happen during the middle of April 2014.
The first meeting with the Chancellor and Vice Chancellor was held on September
23. This meeting included introductions of the student members and
administrators where emphasis was placed on interests and background of the
people at the table. The meeting also included an outline for the committee’s
purpose and philosophy and an introduction of what the committee had been
discussing and working on thus far.
The second meeting with the Chancellor was on October 23. This meeting included
issues that student members were focused on, and the agenda centered around
updates on committee member work and advice from the administrators at the
table. The Chancellor gave clear direction on a number of issues, including where
she can be of help and what students should do to see their vision carried out.
The third meeting was held on November 6. This meeting included updates from
the administration on the Cobb fire and the respective response, TedX and it’s
presence at the Board of Trustees meetings, the Chancellor’s presence at Halloween
celebrations, and the standing of the Dance Minor. The committee brought issues to
the table, including continued work on the new add/drop policy, the diversification
of the Honor System (possibly including a class or new recruitment techniques), and
the idea to bring UNC System President Tom Ross to campus.
In December, the Chancellor invited the committee to her house for a student
holiday reception, where the committee was able to interact with administrators as
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October Report 2013
well as other students from groups like The Daily Tar Heel and the Student Athlete
Advisory Committee.
In January, the group held an informal meeting with the Chancellor at her house
over dinner and discussion. The committee discussed detailed format for the Open
House in February, as well as student-led discussion on topics of the University’s
partnerships with Israeli universities and the then-recent allegations about student
athlete literacy at UNC. The Chancellor and Vice Chancellor gave very candid and indepth perspectives on the issue, as well as provided an overview of the
administration’s response and take on the issue.
In early February, the committee hosted the Chancellor’s first Open House, taking
place in the Carolina Union’s fish tank lounge upstairs. The Provost and Vice
Chancellor for Student Affairs both attended, making the date a widely publicized
and acclaimed event. Over 100 students attended, and participated in a 25-minute
small group discussion led by SACC members (as administrators circled and
interacted) and a 25-minute Q&A period. Members of the media were present and
the Chancellor was able to give remarks publically on topics of student interest. The
committee is currently planning for an open house in the middle of April 2014.
The committee met with the Chancellor on February 17 for the monthly meeting. At
this time, the committee recapped the open house and heard from the Chancellor on
her opinion on format and how it went. While overall very happy, the Chancellor
commented that she saw room for more time and perhaps more small group
interaction. Additionally, the University’s first Vice Chancellor for Communications,
Joel Curran, appeared to discuss the committee’s push to get the Chancellor on
Twitter. To the committee’s delight, he promised that they’re working on it and will
be a matter of time. One committee member, Taf Matika, presented his work on
male minority retention and the action points he hopes to accomplish strategically
going forward.
Most recently, the committee had it’s March meeting on March 19th. At this meeting,
the committee heard updates from the administration, and asked for the
Chancellor’s commentary and suggestions on graduate students at the state level
and the recent cut of $74 million to the education budget. The Chancellor told the
committee about her meeting with the state’s budget director, and the committee
informed the Chancellor about the discussion students are having about the town’s
4-person occupancy rule. Finally, Jacob discussed how transition happens and what
to expect in the coming weeks.
Academic Policy Work
A key role that the SBVP traditionally plays in the Executive Branch is to be a
resource and advocate for students on academic policy and strategy at the
University. The SBP typically will allow the SBVP to handle academic affairs as the
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October Report 2013
Executive Branch’s chief expert on the issue. This means that the SBVP is the SBP’s
proxy to a number of different policy making bodies and committees but also that he
or she oversees different initiatives surrounding academic issues.
Committee Memberships
In his role as SBVP, Jacob is involved with a number of different groups that work on
academic policy and initiatives. To begin, Jacob is a member of the Academic
Advising Program Council. This group functions to advise the Dean and Associate
Dean of Advising as well as their staffs on the different ideas, programs, issues, and
regulations of advising. At previous meetings, different staff members presented on
their new initiatives and as one of two student members, Jacob was able to offer
insight on a great deal of a student’s perspective. Additionally, Jacob was able to
bring up issues to the group for consideration, including the recent add drop policy.
Most recently, the group talked about priority registration and the great number of
staff positions including associate deans that are opening up in advising. They also
discussed the new changes to summer registration for incoming first year students.
Jacob also serves on the Retention Working Group – a group that is charged to
discuss and explore the different strategies to retain students of at-risk populations
at the University. The work of this group brings together different members of the
Carolina community that have paid attention to the important issue, to analyze what
works and what doesn’t. The group recently hosted a day-long symposium on “best
practices” for engaged classroom learning to increase retention of students. In his
role, Jacob introduced the keynote speaker at the event that was held at the GAA’s
building in central campus.
A committee that Jacob recently attended was the Academic Calendar Planning
Committee. This committee is chaired by the Registrar and is charged with
submitted a planned calendar to the Chancellor. The group worked on the calendar
for the 2015-2016 academic year, and Jacob raised two concerns: there is only
about 36 hours between the last possible exam and the beginning of commencement
for the class of 2016 and that the drop deadline is not listed on the Chancellor’s
calendar. He is working to make sure that officials are aware of this problem and
can do what is necessary to make changes and help fix the issues.
Jacob is also a member of the Academic Planning Steering Committee. This planning
committee regulates and implements different policies surrounding the general
curriculum of the University as well as report to the Provost. This year, the
committee has held a meeting with the newly installed Provost in which members
informed him of the background of the document but also put it into context with
respect to the current academic environment and in light of the changes of political
landscape in North Carolina
Jacob spent some time meeting with Vice Provost Carol Tresolini on proposed
changes to the weekly class schedule. To be in full compliance with space usage
Lambden Administration 21
October Report 2013
requirements, the University is likely going to transition to 15-minute breaks
(currently policy is 10-minutes) between classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and
Fridays. This will allow students, faculty, and staff to commute to spaces further
spread across campus and plan classes at more-desired times.
Add/Drop Policy
Over the summer, Jacob and Christy began researching the different impacts that
the Board of Governor’s decision to change the add/drop period to 10 days may
have. Following the work of the previous Leimenstoll Administration, Jacob began
to work with members of the Provost’s office and of the Faculty Leadership to
discuss and analyze the detrimental impacts that the one-size-fits-all policy would
have at UNC Chapel Hill. In early October, following a report by the Daily Tar Heel,
Jacob, with the help of other Executive Branch Officers and his staff, launched an
online petition of UNC Chapel Hill Stakeholders against the policy. The petition
enumerated the response and opposition to the policy, citing thousands of voices
that believe the policy will amongst other things: diminish the creative abilities of
students, infringe upon institutional autonomy, create a negative light for students
hoping to apply to graduate school, and take away from the ability of students to
challenge themselves. All together, a number exceeding 7,600 students, faculty,
alumni, and student parents have signed the petition.
Jacob presented to the Residence Hall Association and won their endorsement of the
petition. Jacob has conducted various interviews on the topic and worked with
members of the Executive Branch including other EBO members, the Academic
Affairs Committee of Cabinet, and some external appointments to publicize the
change and the tagline for the petition, “Defend The Drop”. This included a multi-day
Pit petition-gathering event towards the end of the fall.
Recently, Jacob has met with members of the Education Policy Committee to discuss
the changes going forward. It is a measure of success that administration was able
to increase the number of hours students may pass/fail to 16 and Jacob is currently
working to ensure that the “D” that appears in the Pass/D/Fail will be removed,
giving students the option to truly pass/fail a course.
Other Committee Memberships and Work
Breakshuttle – Jacob has been active in the discussion surrounding the idea of
partnering with a private firm that would offer shuttles to NC communities for
students during peak break seasons. This service, in which students would
purchase low-cost bus fare to travel home, would provide a means of transportation
that many students currently do not have access to. It is especially helpful in light of
the fact that first-year students do not have cars and their parents or family
members must commute to and from campus to take them home.
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October Report 2013
Lighting Tour – In November, Jacob participated in the University’s bi-annual
lighting tour with members of facilities and the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs.
The tour allows students and staff to observe areas of campus that facilities
managers are planning to renovate and allows students to point out areas that are in
need of more lighting. From this meeting, Jacob followed up with facilities managers
and offered perspective on updating and feasibility.
Union Board of Directors – Jacob has been named the official member and proxy for
the Student Body President. In this capacity, Jacob serves as both a student voice
but also as a part of the membership committee and part of the finance committee.
Most of these meetings allow the Union Board to give thoughts and opinions to
Union staff, including the new Director of the FPG Student Union. In addition, the
Board voices opinions on programming, expenditures, and the like. Jacob has a vote
in the committees and at the full board. Recently, Jacob has worked with the new
Director of the FPG Union to discuss changes from staffing to Board function and to
physical space usage. It is expected that many spaces will change, including moving
CUAB and the Student Government space. Jacob also was active in the selection of
the new President of Carolina Union, Gabe Chess.
Commencement Speaker Advisory Committee - Jacob also serves alongside a number
of faculty leaders as well as student leaders on the Commencement Speaker
Advisory Committee. As it is appropriately named, the committee seeks to provide a
list of recommended speakers for a commencement about 18 months away to the
Chancellor for her selection. The committee works in confidentiality until after the
Chancellor selects his or her name. This year, Jacob is proud to have submitted a list
of names that includes the committee’s number one choice for the commencement
speaker of Spring of 2015. However, it is yet to be determined if the speaker will be
available and if the Chancellor will make the same choice as the committee!
Board of Trustees (BOT) – One of the newest developments out of the Lambden
Administration was to make students more represented at the policy making entity
and governing body of the University: the UNC Chapel Hill Board of Trustees. At the
beginning of his term, Christy elected to serve on the Finance Committee so that he
would be better able to advocate on issues of tuition and fees. Thus, there was no
student representation at another vital committee: The University Affairs
Committee. So, Christy worked to ensure that Jacob would have a seat at the table
as a student advocate. Since the summer, Jacob has been in attendance at the BOT
meetings and as a sitting member of the committee. At these meetings, Jacob is
given full speaking and question rights, and has the privilege of representing
students to the standing reports of the committee, including a number of Vice
Chancellors and Department Directors
ASG - In August, Jacob went with Shelby Hudspeth (Director of State and External
Affairs and Christy’s proxy vote) to East Carolina University for the year’s first
Association of Student Government meetings. While not a voting member, Jacob
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October Report 2013
participated in committee meetings as a student representative from Carolina. In
one meeting, the appropriation of salaries for a new position was discussed. Jacob
and the representative from NC State both helped facilitate dialogue about the
stability of the funding structure, as well as posed questions about the new job
description. The discussion prompted the group to take action to delay the vote
until after clarification was made.
ACC Student Body Presidents Conference - In September, in lieu of Christy, Jacob
attended the first annual ACC Student Body Presidents Conference. The meeting of
the group featured all but two of the member schools, and Jacob was one of only two
Vice Presidents to attend. At this weekend’s events, Jacob was involved in a
dialogue of issues facing students on a national scale but also issues that were
individual to each campus. As North Carolina is facing a unique circumstance with
respect to issues coming down from the state government, the section Jacob
participated in (with the representatives from Duke and NC State) was quite
detailed.
External Appointments
External Appointments are selected by the Office of the Student Body Vice President
on behalf of and in consultation with the SBP. The roughly 150 appointees represent
the student body through review committees, advisory boards, and other
administrative positions. Some committees are student-run, including the Student
Safety and Security Committee and the Renewable Energy Special Projects
Committee. The Executive Branch also selects students for positions in other
branches, such as Chief Justices of the Student Supreme Court and Chair of the
Board of Elections. However, a great deal of the appointees serve on committees in
which administrators have asked for representatives from Student Government. In
many cases, the SBP is unable to serve in a position, and Student Government seeks
qualified and interested applicants for the position.
The process for making such a large number of appointments to the wide array of
positions with unique schedules requires that the selection take place in two cycles.
The first cycle occurred immediately following inauguration in April 2013, and the
second cycle took place in September 2013. During the selection process, the
applications were publicized and collected via an online portal. Applications were
then reviewed thoroughly, and selected candidates were invited to interview with
the Student Body Vice President and his staff. The Student Body Vice President then
made final decisions regarding appointments. Appointments found in the Student
Code (http://congress.unc.edu/student-code/) then went through the respective
Student Congress Committees and full Student Congress. Appointees were then
connected with their committees.
Committee Changes
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October Report 2013
Due the ever-changing nature of the university, the Student Body Vice President
focused on updating and fixing any inconsistencies with materials from previous
administrations. These changes included the addition of new appointments and the
removal of now defunct committees. The inconsistencies also revealed missing
documentation for some appointments.
The changes made include:
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Creating a new appointment to the Enterprise Applications Coordinating
Committee Operational Subcommittee
Creating a new position for a student appointee to the International Affairs
Advisory Council
Creating the student-run Priority Registration Advisory Committee to
function in tandem with the Student Academic Advising Board
Adding a new student appointment to the Stone Center Advisory Board
Removing the position to the defunct Career Services Advisory Board from
the External Appointment Guide
Increasing collaboration among external appointments and cabinet
committees on relevant issues, such as the Academic Affairs Committee and
the Student Academic Advising Board
Relationship and Expectations
Beyond representing students, External Appointments are responsible for keeping
the Executive Branch informed about any changes or issues that may need the
attention of an Executive Branch Officer. Appointees can update the Executive
Branch in whichever way is most appropriate of the following:
1. Formal Meetings: Appointees can schedule a formal meeting to update the
Executive Branch. This can allow the appointee and/or Student Body Vice
President to set action steps and create an appropriate plan for moving
forward on the issue.
2. Informal Meetings: Appointees are always allowed and encouraged to stop
by during the Student Body Vice President’s office hours to update the
Executive Branch on any issues or meetings that may be relevant.
3. Periodic Reports: Several throughout the year, External Appointments are
asked to submit a report about their work. This documents appointees’
participation within each committee and how they are representing the
student body. The Student Body Vice President reads the full report and then
can choose to engage with any appointees that may need advice or support
from an Executive Branch Officer.
4. Communication: Any Executive Branch Officer may contact an appointment
with questions about the work they are doing, including committee business
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October Report 2013
and information pertaining to the post. In some cases, an Executive Branch
Officer may accompany appointments to their committee meetings or
interact to prepare for different tasks, etc.
External Appointment Guide
Last year, the External Appointment Guide was updated by Student Body Vice
President Rachel Myrick of the Leimenstoll Administration for the first time in three
years in order to help Executive Branch Administrations more smoothly transition.
The External Appointment Guide proved extremely useful during the transition in
April 2013. However, it also revealed a number of problems that may be present
during any transition.
The Office of the Student Body Vice President has created a plan for how best to
combat the problems that can arise during transition moving forward and will work
this year in order to implement these changes. The plan will rely on holding all
parties more accountable and maintaining up-to-date records.
The following is an outline of the proposed changes and reasoning behind each:
External Appointment Perspective Report:
At the end of the current administration’s term, each appointee will be sent an
extended version of the periodic report. After summarizing the work that they did
as an appointee, it will gather feedback regarding the value of the student voice on
the committee, the role they played on the committee, and anything that they felt
was needed or unnecessary. It will also gage their interest in returning to the
position for the next year. First, this will ensure that the incoming-Student Body
Vice President knows which appointees are interested in returning. Also, it will give
the new Student Body Vice President a better idea of what is expected from each
appointment, including the time commitment and purpose of each committee.
Therefore, the Student Body Vice President can better understand and articulate the
role of each appointee should there be a vacancy. Since appointments are made as
soon as the new administration takes office, it is oftentimes hard to convey to
applicants what will be expected of them due to the new Student Body Vice
President’s own lack of knowledge about each position.
End-of-Administration Reports
Similar to the External Appointment’s report, Administrative Reports will be sent
out at the end of the year to gather feedback from the administrators that are in
charge of each committee. These reports will focus on two main components.
1. Committee Information: Administrators will be asked to review the
description of their committee and make any updates that they deem
necessary. This information will be used in both the application process and
External Appointment Guide. Administrators will be encouraged to give
thorough descriptions on both the purpose of the committee and the role the
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October Report 2013
student voice plays on it. It will also ask for details the time commitment an
appointee should expect, including meeting frequency and expectations
outside of official meetings. This will allow applicants to better understand a
position before applying and know whether or not they will have time to
commit.
2. Appointee Feedback: The administrators will also be asked to evaluate the
Executive Branch appointment on the committee. During the appointment
process, there is often little to no information regarding the work of an
appointee. This can make it difficult for the Student Body Vice President to
know whether or not a student should be reappointed to a position. This
addition will give administrators the opportunity to comment on appointees’
work on a committee and give recommendations regarding the position
moving forward. These recommendations should include information about
future appointees to the committee. These recommendations may be to
reappoint a student or criteria that should be used to evaluate potential
appointments.
3. Future Notes: Administrators will also be asked to provide feedback
regarding the committee’s future work. This information should include
updating the number of student appointments that are needed and
information about student perspectives that may have been missing in the
past. The administrators should also confirm that the committee will
continue to function in the following year and who will be the contact for the
following year if it is not said administrator.
Ultimately, the goal of these changes is to promote a smoother transition and
appointment process for future administrations, as well as increase communication
and collaboration between administrators and the Executive Branch.
OFFICER PERSPECTIVE:
Serving as Student Body Vice President for the 2013-2014 academic year has been
nothing but a privilege. On a daily basis, I get to interact with dedicated and
passionate Tar Heels who commit themselves to serving and working on behalf of
causes bigger than themselves. I also have been exposed to a great deal of
opportunities and experiences that I would have never otherwise been.
Working in Student Government at Carolina allows students to see the gears as they
turn with respect to operations of a University with a $2.5 billion budget. This year
has presented a great deal of unique challenges and opportunities, and even the
chance to help affect change is one that I am grateful for. In a one-year term,
Lambden Administration 27
October Report 2013
pragmatism and levelheadedness are qualities that Executive Branch officers should
bring to the table, and I hope I’ve been a source of both this year.
Out of the work I’ve accomplished, I’m very happy with the SACC team that’s been
assembled to advise our newest Chancellor, Dr. Carol Folt. I am continually
impressed with the group at each and every meeting we have, as the members bring
such a breadth and depth of perspective to the table. They also have a very unique
variety of personal interests that they bring to the table, which further lends itself to
the difference of experiences that are important for a new Chancellor to understand.
I appreciate her willingness to interact on a very real level with students, and have
nothing but optimism for continued student relationships.
Another highlight for me was working with the team that Christy assembled at the
beginning of his term. Day in and day out, the other Executive Branch Officers
provided me with a support system unlike any other, whether the realized it or not.
We are a cohesive unit that I genuinely enjoyed tackling tough issues with. Whether
it is complex problems or simple tasks, the team made the work seem less like work.
Going forward, I am excited about the opportunities ahead for Student Government
and the Powell Administration. I have no doubts that regardless of the issues at
hand, passionate Tar Heels will tackle them head on! In closing, I want to thank
Christy for his vote of confidence in me and the Carolina community for allowing me
to serve them.
Sincerely,
Jacob
Lambden Administration 28
October Report 2013
Student Body Secretary
Hannah Fussell
hfussell@live.unc.edu
OVERVIEW OF RESPONSIBILITIES
According to the Student Code, the Student Body Secretary (SBS) is in charge of
coordinating public relations and outreach activities of the Executive Branch,
ensuring that the Executive Branch periodically seeks direct input from the student
body about the activities and policies of the Executive Branch, overseeing the
maintenance and upkeep of the Executive Branch website, certifying Executive
Orders, and producing the October and March Reports. Unofficially, the Student
Body Secretary also helps fill in the gaps on projects on which the Executive Branch
Officers are working. In conjunction with the Lambden administration’s vision, the
Student Body Secretary is also asked to think creatively on ways to encourage the
Executive Branch’s accessibility and transparency with the Student Body.
Accessibility and Transparency
A large part of Hannah’s job involves promoting a major theme of Student
Government this year, accessibility and transparency. Whether through publicizing
Office Hours, upkeeping a weekly newsletter, coordinating events or fostering oncampus relations with other student organizations and administrators, all of the
SBS’s activities involve an emphasis on ensuring that Student Government
minimizes the number of students that wonder what Student Government is doing.
To do this, Hannah has recruited a team that has sat down and brainstormed ways
to maximize effort and reach. Along with the co-chairs of PROD, Hannah recruited
three Executive Assistants who each have different skills and social networks that
they bring to the table: Rachel Gogal (’16), Allison Whitmeyer (’15), and Michael Silk
(’17). Rachel Gogal was a member of Hannah’s First Year Focus committee last year,
and operates as Managing Executive Assistant. Allison Whitmeyer was an executive
assistant for Nikita Shamdasani, the Leimenstoll administration’s Student Body
Secretary. Michael Silk is a first-year interested in Business and Public Relations.
Along with the cooperative help from Cabinet and the Executive Branch Officers,
Hannah and her executive assistants have divided large projects and are working
hard to achieve their goals.
Sexual Assault
During the summer, the Student Body President started engaging in the topic of how
we respond to sexual assault on this campus. One region of his work has been
focused on Education of the topic. It is an essential part of moving forward that we
Lambden Administration 29
October Report 2013
manage discussion of this topic in our community.
We were notified in the Spring of interest from Bubba Cunningham to get Athletics
involved on this issue. The goal was to ultimately incorporate student athletes into
the discussion by encourage them to attend preventative trainings (Safezone and
One-Act) and by creating a Public Service Announcement with athletes on campus.
Hannah set up contact with the Meghan Lyons (’13), an athlete who left her
heelprint by setting up similar projects with athletes on campus. In addition, we
established contact with Gina Smith to brainstorm the best content for the project,
and Lyons got us in touch with Cricket Lane of Media Production on the best
directions for it.
We also set up multiple meetings with SWAG, who were helpful with creating a list
of star student athletes that we should get on board with the movement. SWAG
informed us that it would be best on for the Athletes if we aimed to get this done in
the Spring of our administration—as Sexual Assault Awareness month is in April
and we wanted to be fully prepared. Filming and trainings are planned to take place
in March and the beginning of April. We are excited for this project!
Recruitment and Week of Welcome Planning
In line with the theme of increased accessibility and transparency, Hannah came
into position ready to recruit more Cabinet co-chair and member applications this
year.
In the Spring, Hannah worked closely with the Chief of Staff Emma Zarriello to
publicize the co-chair applications through Press Releases, social media, and other
sources. After combing through 666 applications and interviewing a number of
fantastic students, Emma and Hannah settled on a solid group of leaders coming
from different backgrounds and experiences.
Settling into the Fall, Hannah took care of FallFest preparations for the Executive
Branch. She was in communication with our advisor and FallFest planner Tony
Patterson on strategic details, and worked with planners like Kristy Barngrover of
the Office of New Student and Parent Programming to plan the best events for our
students.
Come fall, Hannah coordinated co-chair volunteering, materials, and set-up for all
Student Government Week of Welcome events. The week of Welcome events
included two events Hannah planned with the President of CUAB Carly Matthews,
an Open House, and participation in Fall Fest.
The Pizza with Presidents event served as a great opportunity for Hannah to
establish close working contact with CUAB, as well as all of the Presidents of large
Student Organizations on campus. The first event was held in the Orange Room of
Hinton James to cater to First-Years, and the second event was held in the Great Hall
Lambden Administration 30
October Report 2013
of the Union. Christy Lambden was in attendance for both—speaking with first
years about what they could offer Student Government and likewise establishing
relations with newly appointed Presidents of organizations. Hannah worked with
Rachel Gogal and the CUAB team to publicize these events highly—they were a great
success.
Hannah went on to plan a Student Government Open House with all of the branches
present. Hannah coordinated all of the presenters, attendees materials, pubbing, and
food and drinks. The Open House was a huge success and we even had students
waiting outside the Student Government suite waiting to come in. Each branch was
present, with each committee manning a table there to answer any questions and
advertise for their projects.
Interested students hear from Vice President Jacob Morse
EBO Accessibility
Hannah’s work with Week of Welcome fostered accessibility, a top priority was
making sure it continued into the school year.
Lambden Administration 31
October Report 2013
Another part of the Student Body Secretary’s job involves fostering public and
private relations. In terms of external relations, the SBS has worked to increase the
number of avenues through which the Executive Branch disseminates information.
Hannah worked closely with Shelby to create a brand new database of the student
leaders of major organizations on campus that were invited to the CLCC. The CLCC
members have access to a calendar of all student groups events as to foster relations
and cohesion.
Hannah also has chosen to continue with the Executive Branch of Student
Government newsletter, which goes out to all of the students that signed up for the
listserv (over 400 people), Cabinet committee members and chairs, and External
Appointments. This newsletter goes out every Monday and it advertises Student
Government events and other pertinent events and applications. Hannah also works
with Senior Associate Director of Student Life and Activities Tony Patterson to
publicize events through the newsletter for the Union. Thanks to the newsletter, we
have been able to circulate materials more widely and keep a wide variety of
students engaged in what Student Government is doing.
In addition, Hannah coordinates and publisizes Office Hours in the Student
Government suite. All Executive Branch Officers are accessible at certain hours
during the week, and Hannah works to publisize when their hours are and what
kind of things students can visit us about.
Social Media
Hannah also was unsatisfied with Social Media in the administrations in the past
couple of years of Student Government. Hannah assigned a designated social media
helper from PROD to assist with Facebook and Twitter posts, and in addition,
created Executive Branch Instagrams and Vines. The largest difference here is the
use of these mechanisms to increase transparency. Hannah updates directly from
her iPhone any images of events or status updates—we have noticed an increase in
likes and interaction because of it.
Cabinet Involvement
While Hannah takes in minutes from all Cabinet and Executive Branch meetings,
Hannah’s involvement with Cabinet is not reserved to her presence in meetings.
Hannah also serves as an active resource for all Cabinet members and external
appointment members. Hannah works firsthand with members to publicize events
and aid members in managing press relations.
As the manager of the PROD committee, she also works with every committee to use
social media and technology as a channel for events. Hannah also meets biweekly
with the co-chairs of the PROD committee as to get a sense of how the three of them
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October Report 2013
are working together, and how she can serve as the best possible resource for their
committee. She also approves the social media that the committee pushes out each
week.
Hannah also sits in on CLCC (Carolina Leaders Collaborative) meetings alongside
Shelby Hudspeth and the Carolina Leaders. As Hannah helped create the list of
leaders and remains in contact with many leaders for event-planning, her
connections are helpful and comments insightful.
Daily Tar Heel Relations
A very important part of the Leimenstoll Administration’s approach to publicity
involves ensuring a good relationship with the Daily Tar Heel (DTH). The Lambden
Administration wanted to make sure that they served as resource for the DTH and
supply it with continuous updates concerning current projects and events.
In the spirit of this desire, Hannah has established closed connection with the DTH
Edit Board and coordinates meeting with DTH staff. Hannah has set up introductory
meetings, meetings to clear up questions regarding pieces published, and meetings
related to press releases. All of EBO has enjoyed and appreciated the working
relationship with the DTH thus far and hopes its open communication fosters that
relationship to finish off the year.
Chancellor Folt’s Installation
As soon as we received news that Chancellor Folt was to be appointed as the new
Chancellor, the Executive Branch knew we wanted to ensure she knew the students
she would be working for. Hannah reached
out to University Event Planners to see how
we could get involved. Alongside events and
C. Hawkins of the GAA, Hannah sat down and
hashed out ideas for getting students
involved in her installation weekend.
Folt Fest
Hannah and C. worked closely in this time
period to create an event wherein students
would have the opportunity to show Folt
exactly what it meant to be a student at UNC.
The idea to have a state-fair style, Southern
event was born, and Hannah recruited the
help of CUAB and Order of the Bell Tower to
make it happen. A rain delay caused us to
cancel on State Fair games and fun, but we
moved the event indoors and students flocked to it for the State Fair food and
Lambden Administration 33
October Report 2013
opportunity to hang out with the Chancellor.
Installation
To demonstrate support and excitement for the Chancellor, Hannah also decided to
get CLCC leaders and other leaders from across campus involved with the
Chancellor’s installation. After establishing contact with Laura Hayes from events,
Hannah and Kiran Bhardwaj of the Graduate and Professional Student Federation
created a list of student groups they would love to be represented at the Installation
event. Student leaders appreciated the opportunity to interact with the Chancellor—
and we were happy to have student leaders from over 35 different student
organization in attendance at the Installation.
Revamping the Website
At the end of last year, the Leimenstoll Administration’s Student Body Secretary
Nikita and the Public Relations and Outreach Committee brainstormed ways in
which to improve the website. They aimed to increase the traffic on the website, and
also wanted to create a more aesthetically pleasing format. Throughout the year,
Nikita continued to work with the Public Relations and Outreach team and a
member of the Technology and Web Committee to make improvements on the
website—but they were small and did not reach goals as other things developed in
the school year.
This administration, Hannah made it one of her top priorities to improve the
website. Starting as soon as she got into office, she recruited Dylan Simel—a
talented website and graphic designer that worked on Christy’s campaign website.
Dylan and Hannah worked in the spring with ITS on ways that we could change up
the website. It wasn’t until the end of Spring that ITS let us know that our ideas were
unable to happen in the format of the current wordpress layout.
Over the summer, Hannah worked directly with ITS support and provost Chris Kielt
in ways she could improve the website experience for all student organizations.
While Dylan and Hannah worked on ideas for the site, Hannah was able to convince
ITS that students should have more freedom to create modern, accessible and
exciting sites under the unc.edu domain. Hannah was able to get ITS support to pilot
a themeforest theme, Avada, in order to make the best site possible.
In the fall, Hannah recruited Brent Comstock—one of Christy’s EA’s, Michael Silk
and Ben Peltzer to be on the Website Revamping Committee. She also partnered
with a fellow Student Organization hoping to pilot the theme, Student Enrichment
Fund. Together Hannah and the Website Revamping Committee and leaders from
SEF finished the new, streamlined website. Please feel free to check it out at:
http://execbranch.unc.edu/.
Lambden Administration 34
October Report 2013
March Report
Lately, a job that has taken a large amount of the SBS’s time is this March Report.
After numerous edits, emails, and readings, she hopes you will enjoy this detailed
report of the Executive Branch’s activities while she enjoys some sleep.
Officer Perspective
As a graduating senior, I look back on my time at Carolina with massive amounts of
nostalgia. Who I am today is directly related to the people I’ve met, the work we’ve
done, and the passion I have witnessed on this campus. I want to specifically thank
Student Government for showing me what it means to be an active member of my
community—to give back, to reciprocate and participate in this wonderful place we
call home.
My relationship with this year’s administration and EBO has been specifically
noteworthy. While we tackled challenges, we grew closer together and pushed each
other harder than ever before. It is crucial that every student in college has a similar
organization that they commit themselves too—I could not be happier that I chose
Student Government as mine.
Lux Libertas,
Hannah
Lambden Administration 35
October Report 2013
Student Body Treasurer
Matthew Farley
mlfarley@live.unc.edu
Overview of Duties
The Student Body Treasurer (SBT) is responsible for assisting the Finance
Committee of Student Congress with fielding funding requests from student
organizations, and providing information for Annual Budget and Subsequent
Appropriations. Additionally, the SBT chairs the Student Fee Audit Committee and
serves as a member on the Student Fee Advisory Subcommittee and the Tuition and
Fee Task Force. In addition to the codified duties of the SBT, Matt also served on the
Selection Committee for the new Director of Carolina Student Legal Services.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Allocation of the Student Activity Fee
Matt serves as an ex-officio non-voting member of the Finance Committee of Student
Congress. In conjunction with Finance Committee Chair Brittany Best, Matt works to
advise student groups in the Subsequent Appropriations Process.
Spring Subsequent Allocations
There were 125 funding requests during the Spring Subsequent Allocation Period.
The funding portal was opened on the first day of classes. Finance committee was
only able to here 76 of these 125 groups before allocating the budget of $142,000
for the semester. Since 2011, the number of funding requests to Congress have
increased by almost 100% (Averaging 60+ in 2011-12. Averaging 120+ in 2013-14).
As a result of the limited funding many groups are not able to be heard and do not
feel that the finance process is a fair way to allocate the funds from the Student
Activity Fee.
Annual Budget
As required by the Student Code, 35% of the funds available to Student Congress are
allocated in the Annual Budget Process. In Annual Budget, Student Organizations
request money for events that will happen during the next fiscal year (July 1st 2014June 30th 2015).
35% of the budget totaled in $192,000 and was allocated to the more than 90
student organization that applied for annual budget funding over the weekend of
February 22nd and 23rd.
Lambden Administration 36
October Report 2013
Terminal Appropriations
As required by the Student Code, $5000 dollars has been set aside for Terminal
Appropriations. Terminal Allocations will begin with the first meeting of committee
in the 96th Student Congress after April 1st.
Notes on Congress Allocations:
Matt is of the opinion that there is currently too little money allocated from the
Student Activity Fee to different Student Organizations. Matt will be suggesting to
the next Student Body Treasurer that redistributing the Student Activity Fee may be
a feasible and beneficial way to allocate more money to Student Organizations.
Fees
Matt serves as a chair of the Student Fee Audit Committee and is a voting member of
the Student Fee Advisory Subcommittee. In the past, fees that were requesting an
increase of 1.6% or less were not reviewed by SFAC or SFAS. 1.6% is the Higher
Education Price Index and serves as the inflation rate for institutions of higher
learning. However, Matt decided that these 1.6% increases should not be passed
without further scrutiny.
In addition to reviewing fee increase requests, SFAC is able to audit any student fee.
In addition to the audit forms that were sent out in the Summer and last semester,
SFAC was able to audit every single student fee either by means of a formal audit in
the department or an informal query to representative body from different
departments / schools.
Carolina Student Legal Services Fee
The Student Legal Services Fee is a component of the larger Student Activity Fee.
This revenue from this fee is the sole funder of Carolina Student Legal Services,
attorneys independent of the University that serve as legal advisors to any Carolina
student free of charge. Based off of prior knowledge of the fee, fee request, and
confidence in the services provided, this was one of two fees that was not heard by
SFAC and instead received their 1.6% increase.
SFAC Recommendation: 1.6% or $.26
SFAS Recommendation: 1.6% or $.26
Board of Trustees Recommendation: 1.6% or $.26
Board of Governors: 1.6% or $.26
Campus Recreation Fee
Lambden Administration 37
October Report 2013
The revenues of the Campus Recreation Fee make up a majority of the budget for
Campus Rec Services including but not limited too: SRC, Rams Head Rec Center, and
Hooker Fields. The requested 1.6% increase would have been used to:
1. Extend Holiday Hours
2. Extend Weekend Hours
3. Funding student employment positions that were no longer funded by work study
4. Equipment Replacement
SFAC recommended an increase that would cover items 3 and 4 of this list.
SFAC Recommendation: $38,460 Annual Income Increase
SFAS Recommendation: $38,460 Annual Income Increase
Board of Trustees Recommendation: $38,460 Annual Income Increase
Board of Governors: $38,460 Annual Income Increase
Carolina Union Operating Fee
The Carolina Union Operating Fee goes towards the operation of the Frank Porter
Graham Student Union. It covers the costs of utilities, employees, etc. The Union
requested a 1.3% increase based off the predicted increase in cost of utilities. SFAC
voted not to recommend an increase to the fee based off of past overestimations of
the utilities budget. SFAS however, unanimously supported the increase of the fee.
SFAC Recommendation: 0% or $0
SFAS Recommendation: 1.3% or $1.80
Board of Trustees Recommendation: 1.3% or $1.80
Board of Governors: 1.3% or $1.80
Student Child Care Services
The revenues generated by the Student Child Care Services fee help to subsidize the
cost of childcare for Carolina students with Children. SFAC was at first unable to
make a request because of a lack of information. After the information was provided
both SFAC and SFAS voted to recommend the fee increase.
SFAC Recommendation: 1.5% or $.20
SFAS Recommendation: 1.5% or $.20
Board of Trustees Recommendation: 1.5% or $.20
Board of Governors: 1.5% or $.20
Athletics Fee
The Athletics fee goes towards subsidizing the cost of tickets so that Carolina
students can attend any Carolina Athletic Event for free and helps fund Carolina’s
Lambden Administration 38
October Report 2013
Olympic Sports i.e. all Varsity Sports other than Football and Men’s Basketball. The
Athletic Department requested the fee increase citing expansion of the ACC resulting
in rising travel costs. SFAC voted not to recommend the 1.7% fee increase saying
that it was not the student body’s responsibility to fund these sports. . SFAS was
unable to reach a consensus on the fee.
SFAC Recommendation: 0% or $0
SFAS Recommendation: No Consensus
Board of Trustees Recommendation: 0$
Board of Governors: 0$
UNC One Card Fee
The One Card Fee goes towards the printing of One Card ID cards and the services
provided by the one card office to other departments such as Campus Rec and
building access. The 1.7% increase was made to compensate for rising costs of
providing the services. Both SFAC and SFAS recommended this increase.
SFAC Recommendation: 1.7% or $.12
SFAS Recommendation: 1.7% or $.12
Board of Trustees Recommendation: 1.7% or $.12
Board of Governors: 1.7% or $.12
Incoming Student Fee
The Incoming Student Fee supports the programs and services provided to all firstyear students and transfer students by the Office of New Students & Carolina Parent
Programs. The reasons cited for this fee increase were all due to inflation. This is
one of the two fees not heard by SFAC that was recommended to SFAS.
SFAC Recommendation: 1.6% or $.82
SFAS Recommendation: 1.6% or $.82
Board of Trustees Recommendation: 1.6% or $.82
Board of Governors: 1.6% or $.82
Student Transportation Fee
The student Transportation fee is used to subsidize the cost of Chapel Hill Transit.
Originally Chapel Hill Transit received 1.5 million dollars from the parking permit
revenue to function. However, according to the 5 Year Plan for Transit that was
approved by the Board of Trustees, this 1.5 million should be reduced by $500,000.
The 5 year plan calls for this $500,000 to be made up for by increasing student fees.
The Department of Public Safety requested $18 per student increase to continue this
plan.
Lambden Administration 39
October Report 2013
In accordance with the advice of a parking consultant, DPS will be implementing
some sort of night parking fee that will cause night parkers to contribute in some
fashion to the cost of parking/transportation. DPS originally planned to begin selling
night parking permits for $227 each (the same cost of a park and ride permit), but at
the request of past students, DPS converted the night parking charge to a student
fee. DPS calculated that if they had sold permits for $227, they would have received
an additional $260,000 in annual revenue. When it was decided to switch to a
student fee, this $260,000 was divided among all students, other than first year
students that cannot own cars, resulting in a $10.40 fee request.
SFAC had concerns but saw no alternative to passing the fee out of fear of services
being cut or night parkers being charged $227 and passed the fee as is. SFAS was
unable to reach a consensus for different reasons.
At the Tuition and Fee Advisory Taskforce (TFAT), the Student Transportation Fee
was discussed in length. At the first meeting of the Tuition and Fee Advisory Task
Force, no consensus was reached on the $10.40 Night Parking Fee. But at the second
meeting it was recommended. Student Members of TFAT refrained from preventing
the recommendation out of fear of current student specific services being cut (Such
as the U and RU CHT Routes).
SFAC Recommendation: $28.41
SFAS Recommendation: No Consensus
Board of Trustees Recommendation: 19.41
Board of Governors: 19.41
Graduate Student Programming Fee
The Graduate Student Programming Fee funds programs such as Graduate Student
Orientation and Dissertation Boot Camps. Currently the fee is a $52.50 fee paid one
time upon commencing graduate level education Carolina. The graduate school
proposed that this fee should be reduced to $26.50 but be paid every semester. This
new model would have increased the overall income to Graduate School
programming. After gathering feedback from Graduate Students, SFAC
recommended a fee that would be paid every semester but would not result in an
increase in revenue. SFAS recommended that two options be given to the Graduate
School: Create 2 fees, a $10 Orientation Fee and a $25 Programming Fee or leave the
fee as it is.
After receiving the recommendation of SFAS, the Graduate School chose to
withdraw its fee request.
Lambden Administration 40
October Report 2013
SFAC Recommendation: 0% or 0$
SFAS Recommendation: Creation of two fees that would result in a minimal increase
for the graduate school or no change at all.
Board of Trustees Recommendation: N/A
Board of Governors: N/A
School of Social Work - JumpStart!
This fee is a one time fee for students in the School of Social Work to fund the
JumpStart! Program. This conference style program has received very positive
feedback from those participating in it. SFAC voted to allow GPSF representatives of
SFAC to gather feedback and present their recommendation to SFAS. These reps and
SFAS both recommended to increase the fee.
SFAC Recommendation: 1.6% $.83
SFAS Recommendation: 1.6% $.83
Board of Trustees Recommendation: 1.6% $.83
Board of Governors: 1.6% $.83
Tuition
Undergraduate Tuition:
UNC System President Thomas Ross stated in August that he did not want to
increase tuition for in-state undergraduate students at any UNC institution.
However, out of state students did not receive the same protection. According to the
budget signed in by Governor McCrory, UNC-CH is required to increase out of state
undergraduate tuition by 12.3%. In the past, UNC-CH has set a precedent that at
least 25% of revenue from all tuition increases should go back into Student
Financial Aid, but the NCGA Budget would call for all revenue from this tuition
increase to go directly back into the state. Many UNC System Schools are currently
attempting to lobby the NCGA, and the focuses of UNC-CH’s lobbying is on the
nonresident undergraduate tuition increase.
Graduate Student Tuition:
UNC Administration proposed a $350 increase for both resident and nonresident
graduate students. This would be a 4.2% and 1.4% increase for residents and
nonresidents respectively. 2/3 of the generated revenue will be going to graduate
student financial aid and the other 1/3 will be going directly towards faculty
retention.
Lambden Administration 41
October Report 2013
On top of the University mandated increases a select few schools chose to increase
their own tuition levels. These schools include the Kenan-Flagler School of Business,
the Knapp-Saunders School of Government, the School of Information and Library
Sciences, the School of Nursing, the School of Dentistry, the School of Medicine, the
School of Pharmacy, and the School of Medicine – Department of Allied Health
Sciences.
Numbers for these increases can be found at:
http://bot.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/1-Tuition-and-Fee-Slides-AY2014-15-Planning-Nov-2013-2.pdf
Message from GPSF President Kiran Bardwaj regarding Graduate Student Tuition:
“The base graduate tuition (both in-state and out-of-state) for the 2014-2015 academic year will
each be increased by 4.2% and 1.4%, respectively, for next year. This keeps in-state tuition as the
lowest amongst our public peers, and one of the lowest in the country. Out-of-state tuition is nearer
the middle of the pack, but the increase is still on par with inflation. The revenue from these
increases will go towards student financial aid, and the remainder ($2M) will go towards faculty
retention.”
Carolina Student Legal Services Director Search Committee
Matt was asked to serve as a member of the CSLS Director search committee. The
current director will be retiring towards the end of this school year. CSLS was
created by and is funded by student fees. Matt serves as the undergraduate input on
this committee. A job description was written and has been posted on the CSLS
website. This posting has also been sent to many publications and listservs.
Many applications were received, and 8 people received first round interviews.
Three finalists were chosen and are currently being scheduled for office visits and
interviews with the Board of Directors, current staff, and current director.
Officer’s Perspective
I have greatly enjoyed getting to work with the other members of EBO and the rest
of student government this year. I would like to thank my executive assistant, Daniel
Holmgren, for his continued work not only on SFAC but also in assisting in other
aspects of tuition and fees. I would also like to thank Finance Committee Chair,
Brittany Best, for her thankless work on finance committee and wish her the best of
luck as the 2014-2015 Student Body Treasurer.
The opportunity to represent students on these important matters has been a great
experience for myself but I could not do it alone. I would like to thanks Graduate and
Professional Student Federation President Kiran Bhardwaj, GPSF Treasurer Autumn
Lambden Administration 42
October Report 2013
McClellan, and GPSF Secretary JoEllen McBride, for their advice and perspective
throughout the entire fee process.
Serving as the Student Body Treasurer has proved to be every bit as challenging as I
was told but it was a challenge I immensely enjoyed.
In Community,
Matt
Lambden Administration 43
October Report 2013
Chief of Staff
Emma Zarriello
ezarrie@live.unc.edu
Overview of Responsibilities
As Chief of Staff, Emma is responsible for overseeing the 15 committees and
special projects of the Lambden Administration. Charged with a large majority of the
completion of Lambden’s platform, these committees and special projects are given
an insurmountable level of responsibility in representing the student body and its
needs throughout the year. Through weekly Cabinet meetings; scheduled and
impromptu meetings with co-chairs; program and project management and
oversight; collaboration with administrators and University officials; and any other
needed support of co-chairs and their initiatives, Emma manages the Executive
Branch by engaging actively and personally in each of the committee/project’s goals.
From April 2013 to April 2014, she is engaged in the selection, implementation and
growth of all selected co-chairs, fostering leadership and impact of each individual
student within the Executive Branch.
Spring 2014 Recruitment
Since October, numerous students have expressed interest in joining the
Executive Branch of Student Government. To remain as accessible and welcoming to
all students – even those who may not have discovered Student Government during
their first semester – Emma continues to welcome applicants to the Branch. When
students express interest in joining Student Government, Emma directs those
students to committees and special projects in need of membership or those simply
welcoming expansion. Several students have since joined Student Government –
many of whom missed Fall Fest or transferred to Carolina for the Spring semester –
and all of EBO encourages those still interested in joining to seek out innovative and
creative ways for Executive Branch involvement.
Cabinet Meetings
Since October, Emma has invited Christy to participate heavily in each
Cabinet meeting. Each Sunday, Christy engaged in pointed discussions with each cochair on those issues most salient to campus. From alcohol policy to proposed
changes in the Add/Drop policy, Christy created open dialogue with student leaders
to better understand student opinion across a variety of subjects. Feedback from cochairs about these open dialogues encouraged EBO to continue their incorporation
into weekly meetings and, each week, a new theme was added to the discussion
agenda.
In addition, Emma invited several campus administrators and officials to
Cabinet meetings to engage students in candid dialogue about University changes
and advancements. For example, Provost Dean attended Cabinet to discuss
Lambden Administration 44
October Report 2013
proposed academic policy changes with students and collect student feedback on
several proposed academic initiatives. Co-chairs found this, and other conversations
with administrators, highly encouraging and welcomed the chance to converse with
those working behind the scenes to improve the University from the inside-out.
Weekly Reports
Throughout the year, Weekly Reports have been an important way for Emma
to keep track of the daily goings-on of each committee and special project. As the
year progressed, however, Emma realized that a 5:00PM deadline was not
conducive to optimal chairperson success and adjusted the time to 12:00PM
Saturday evening. With close and personal help from one of her Executive
Assistants, Emma evaluates these reports each week and brings the results to EBO
for further collaboration and discussion. Oftentimes, chairpeople use these reports
to make requests and suggestions to EBO, as are discussed in weekly EBO meetings
each Sunday. In addition, the reports help Emma select a Committee/Project of the
Week.
To make each chairperson accessible, Emma mandated that each committee
or special project host weekly office hours for at least one hour every seven days.
Chairpeople use these office hours to engage with interested students, collaborate
with other Executive Branch committees/projects on initiatives, and solicit the
advice and feedback of all Executive Branch Officers.
Office hours have been an important way for chairpeople to hold themselves
accountable to the Student Body each week and to respond effectively to the
emerging questions of students both within and outside of the Executive Branch.
Cabinet Morale
Continuing with last semester’s emphasis on Cabinet morale, Emma
implemented a Committee/Project of the Week campaign which highlighted a
particular committee or special project that exhibited standout success or
improvements. Because a number of co-chairpeople opted out of Facebook
publication, Emma simply recognized the committees/projects at weekly Cabinet
and asked each selected committee/project to give a short presentation on the
factors that contributed to their selection. At the end of the semester, each Executive
Branch Officer attended a Committee/Project of the Week social. This event was
open to each co-chair recognized in the Fall for outstanding achievement in Student
Government. A similar function will be hosted at the end of the Spring Semesters for
co-chairs recognized in the Spring.
Carolina Dining Initiative
In collaboration with University Auxiliary Services, Emma gathered a group
of 15 co-chairs and students to provide feedback to a University dining consultant.
The goal of this project has been to incorporate the current needs, desires and
Lambden Administration 45
October Report 2013
opinions of students across all class years into a five-year dining plan to take effect
after the project’s completion. Co-chairs from the First-Year Focus Council,
University Services, Fix My Campus, Environmental Affairs, and Greek Affairs – as
well as Emma’s Executive Assistants and other involved students – were invited to
multiple meetings to discuss with University administrators the upcoming proposal
to dining services on campus. This meeting was highly effective in engaging all levels
of University administration in a conversation salient to all students, and it gave
Student Government an opportunity to present a well-rounded opinion on proposed
changes to University life.
As the project continues over the next year, Emma encourages the incoming
administration to work with Auxiliary Services on this initiative to ensure that each
generation of Student Government is actively involved in this important process.
Committee/Project Member Evaluation
In the Spring semester, Emma and her Executive Assistants designed a
survey for chairpeople to administer to their respective committees/projects. This
survey was used to gauge committee/project member satisfaction with the
Executive Branch, chairpeople and overall committee/project. After completion of
the survey, Emma and her Assistants evaluated the anonymous responses to better
understand how the Executive Branch can interact with its members and how
chairpeople responsibilities can be better distributed to optimize results.
Overwhelmingly, students were satisfied with the performance of their chairpeople
and the entire branch. Although areas for improvement always exist, the results
were very encouraging and gave Emma concrete ideas of how Student Government
should continue in the future.
Emma discussed these results with EBO to plan an effective recommendation
for the 2014-15 administration. Following the official transition, Emma will share
the hard data with the new Chief of Staff so that he/she may have full knowledge of
the feedback prior to chairpeople selection.
2013 Transition and Co-Chair Selection
In anticipation of the upcoming transition, Emma has been working closely
with her Executive Assistants to prepare transition documents for the incoming
Chief of Staff. These documents will include all accounts passwords; all project
material; templates for Summer Reports, Weekly Reports, Co-Chair Evaluations, and
other forms normally distributed to co-chairs; lists of University contacts who have
collaborated closely with the Chief of Staff in past years; recommendations for cochair selections, including templates for previous co-chair interviews; and other
documentation necessary for a smooth transition between administrations. In
addition, Emma welcomes any meetings with the incoming Chief of Staff to ease the
learning curve and provide on-site training and advice for the new officer.
In addition, Emma has encouraged each co-chair to complete a Co-Chair
Recommendation form for the 2014-15 administration. Each committee and special
Lambden Administration 46
October Report 2013
project will be allowed to nominate up to two outstanding members of their
organizations for a future co-chair position. These recommendations will be passed
on to the incoming Chief of Staff to use in his/her evaluation of prospective cochairs.
Because Student Body President-Elect Andrew Powell promises a complete
restructuring of Student Government, Emma has not asked current co-chairs to
prepare transition documents for the incoming administration. This task will be
handled by the incoming Chief of Staff who has a better understanding of Powell’s
expectations and plans for each Student Government entity. Emma has, however,
instructed each committee and project to be prepared with transition information
immediately following April 1, 2014. In addition, Emma devoted two Cabinet
meetings to the concept of Student Government Reform. In these meetings,
chairpeople were asked to candidly evaluate Powell’s plans for Student Government
and offer general input on areas for improvement. These informal evaluative
meetings were very helpful for EBO to use as it advised the incoming administration
on all things Student Government. Finally, each committee and special project
completed a form for Powell. This form included such things as: committee/project
mission, yearly successes, plans for the incoming administration, and best idea of
how the committee/project best fits into the new plan for Student Government.
Officer Perspective
Because words alone cannot describe the whirlwind of experiences I have
had the honor of facing, I will simply say that the Executive Branch has shown me
more of Carolina than I would have had the pleasure of seeing. I have heard amazing
and often untold stories of students working behind the scenes to make this
University thrive; I have seen students roll up their sleeves and create projects and
programs and initiatives serve this University in ways often unrecognized by the
masses; and I have seen the utmost enjoyment in those student leaders
collaborating to represent the ever-changing needs of our University and the
students which compose it.
At an always pivotal time for our University, it is endlessly important to pull
from each corner of campus those students whose leadership can inspire activism,
encouragement and action. I am proud and humbled to say that I have had the
intimate opportunity to work with a handful of those students, and it leaves me ever
the more hopeful about those to come. I cannot imagine a year better spent than
with those students, underclassmen and upperclassmen alike, who truly bring spirit
to this campus. It has not been an easy task – managing 15 committees solitarily has
certainly been a daunting task at times – but it almost seems effortless with such a
strong group of committed individuals beside me every step of the way. To those
students, I offer utmost gratitude and confidence that they and those to come will
continue our legacy of excellence. To my fellow Executive Branch Officers, I offer
awed and impressed congratulations on your commitments to this community for
four trying years.
Lambden Administration 47
October Report 2013
And to Carolina – to the University without which none of this would be at all
possible – I offer the most affectionate of sentiments. I am excited to see the
relationships you build with budding first-years and seasoned graduate students,
alike. Providing me with an environment through which a thriving system of student
governance can grow has been the most satisfyingly challenging gift of my
undergraduate career.
Here’s to one heck of a ride thus far and countless, countless more to come.
In the Carolina Way,
Emma Zarriello
Lambden Administration 48
October Report 2013
Director of State and External Affairs
Shelby Hudspeth
Shelby.hudspeth@gmail.com
OVERVIEW OF RESPONSIBILITIES
The Director of and External Affairs is a new position on the Executive Branch of
Student Government’s Executive Board. It has been the responsibility of Shelby and
the rest of the Executive Board team to help to set a precedent for what this position
will be in the future and create a basis on which future officers in this position can
expand the role. The initial idea behind the position was a student advocate and
lobbyist that would seek to speak on behalf of students to a variety of groups and
institutions both within the University setting and outside of it. These groups
include but are not limited to the North Carolina General Assembly, the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill Board of Trustees, The University of North Carolina
General Administration and Board of Governors, and the North Carolina Association
of Student Governments. These roles as well as additional roles that have been
established throughout the first half of the term are described in more detail below
On-Campus Voting
Shelby, Student Body Vice President Jacob Morse, and Student Body Treasurer Matt
Farley were active in the process of interacting with UNC Administration in working
to find a convenient and accessible early-voting location for student and staff of the
Carolina Community. They met with County Officials at the Hillel Site late in the Fall
Semester. Shelby, Jacob, and Matt worked most closely with Linda Convissor, the
UNC Administrator dedicated to Town Relations. They advocated for a number of
sites on-campus including Cobb Dorm and The Stone Center. Though ultimately
Cobb Dorm was their preferred option, Hillel was eventually chosen by the County
Board.
University of North Carolina Board of Governors and University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill Board of Trustees
While Shelby does not have any specific speaking rights at the Board of Governors
meetings, Shelby continued to make it a priority to attend the committee meetings
and full board meetings unless she has a class conflict. It is important for members
of the Board and General Administration to see that there are students present at
discussions and taking an interest in the work of the Board and the Administration.
Through sitting in on meetings of committees such as Budget and Finance and
External Affairs, she is able to get valuable information about the policies of the
Board and the work that they do. By attending the meetings, she is able to meet
members of the Administration that work specifically with lobbying efforts and with
additional members of the State Relations team who provide here with useful tips
and information for the lobbying efforts and work back on the UNC-Campus. Finally,
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Shelby has made it a priority to get to know Robert Nunnery who is the student
voice on the University Of North Carolina Board Of Governors and has a good
relationship with the incoming ASG President, Alex Parker. He is a student at North
Carolina State and often aligns with Chapel Hill in legislation at ASG. Robert and
Alex’s role as president gives them the unique opportunity to speak for students at
the Board level, as he is the only official voice that the students have with the rest of
the Board. Shelby frequently talks to Robert about a variety of issues and ideas from
the UNC-CH campus specifically in hopes that he can use this information in his
conversations with the Board.
Like the Board of Governors, the Lambden Administration feels that it is extremely
important for there to be a student presence at the UNC-Chapel Hill’s Board of
Trustees. Christy of course has is a member of the Board of Trustees but over the
course of the term, Christy has heard many times the desire for there to be more
opportunities for students to have a voice within the Board. Christy, through
discussions with the Board, has made it possible for both Shelby, as the Director of
State and External Affairs, and Jacob, as the Vice President, to have speaking rights
on the External Affairs and University Affairs Committees respectively. In addition,
Shelby will be a part of an External Relations Task Force with other members of the
External Relations Committee, specifically focused on lobbying and work with the
General Assembly. This Task Force is still in the early stages and because the
General Assembly is not meeting at the moment, there has not been much work for
Shelby to attend to for the Task Force.
North Carolina Association of Student Governments
The North Carolina Association of Student Governments (ASG) was one of the
aspects of Shelby’s role that she was most excited about, yet one of the aspects of the
role that has provided the most disappointment. The relationship between UNCChapel Hill and ASG in the recent years is one that can be described as rocky and
uncertain. During the Cooper Administration, the possibility of leaving the
organization was placed on the ballot for the Student Body to vote on. The Student
Body however voted to stay in the organization. The Student Body once again voted
to get out of the organization during this organization and the Student Body once
again voted to stay in.
As a quick overview, the Association is an organization that seeks to bring four
delegates from the sixteen University of North Carolina Universities and the North
Carolina School of Science and Math together once a month to discuss pertinent
issues in North Carolina and to take a stand as a group for and against various
decisions made. Every student in attendance at one of these schools pays a dollar to
this organization through student fees.
Though the delegates of UNC-Chapel Hill have been unimpressed with the progress
on true advocacy and accessibility within the organization, they have remained
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committed to submitting legislation to the General Assembly of ASG month after
month. Through working with other student delegations, specifically that of
Appalachian State and the North Carolina State University, these delegations have
sought month after month to make sure that the student dollar that is being sent to
ASG is being spent on worthwhile actions.
While the future of UNC-Chapel Hill and ASG remains unclear, Shelby and the other
UNC-CH delegates are committed to continuing to advocate for students and find the
best avenues where students can have an effective voice.
Progress within the organization has gotten significantly better since the October
Report and the Organization has been successful in passing a variety of resolutions
and reform bills targeted at making the organization more effective and a true
advocacy force for Students of the UNC system.
As stated above, the UNC delegation under the Lambden Administration, has a good
relationship with Alex Parker. We are excited to see the work that he will oversee in
the organization next year and his commitment to make ASG a strong and respected
voice!
Carolina Leader Collaboration Committee
Christy created the Carolina Leader Collaboration Committee as a part of his
platform in an effort to bring student leaders from a variety of student groups and
backgrounds together once a month to discuss issues affecting students. A large goal
for the Lambden Administration is to increase collaboration and dialogue on major
campus issues. As we tackle some of the most difficult and persistent issues of our
time here, CLCC seeks to gather a group of strong, passionate campus leaders to
help us increase transparency and work together to find solutions. Serving on a
think-tank of the most influential leaders on campus is an incredibly rewarding
experience. CLCC is definitely in its early stages but has already lead to great
conversations each month. While we are still seeking to exactly define the mission of
CLCC and how we will be most effective for students and within the administration,
CLCC has shown great promise thus far. Carolina Leader Collaboration Committee
meets on the last Thursday of every month and March will be the last meeting under
the Lambden Adminstration. Groups that have been involved in the conversations
thus far have included the Executive and Legislative Branches of Student
Government, RHA, CHISPA, BSM, Dance Marathon, PanHellenic Council, IFC, Young
Democrats, The Roosevelt Institute, and more.
There have been great discussion at the past two meetings of how to make the
group stronger next year and the leaders have had great conversations that we hope
will foster greater collaboration between the leaders and Administration next year.
Orange County Partnership to End Homelessness
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In October and February, Shelby attend the Orange County Partnership to End
Homelessness. In October, she was asked to speak along with Administrator’s Aaron
Bachenheimer and Linda Convissor who both work with the Town. They spoke on
the Campus’ perception on panhandling and homelessness and how to educate
students on these issues. She attended the meeting in February along with fellow
Student Chiraayu Gosrani, who is also interested in working with this organization,
to observe the meeting and once again provide a student response. Their hope is
that next year, an undergraduate can serve in an external appointment on the
partnership.
Officer Perspective
Looking back on the past year, I feel extremely honored and blessed to have had the
opportunity to work as an Executive Board Officer and to work with the amazing
EBO team. I am so happy to be able to work for the UNC community in the role of
Director of State and External Affairs. Coming in to the role I was very nervous.
However, I am more than happy with the my time spent in this position.
One of things that I will always remember about this position is the people that I get
to serve with. Everyone on our Executive Board is very different. We are diverse and
have a variety of backgrounds, passions, and other roles at UNC. We each bring
something new to the table and the differing experiences we have to share help to
bring new ideas to the table during our group discussion. I am constantly blown
away by the passion that our team has for putting Carolina First and for the Carolina
community. I knew when I met everyone that we would work well together but
what I did not know was how close we would all become. I know that I can count on
our team to be there for me and we are all very supportive of one another.
I have seen a side of UNC-Chapel Hill and the UNC System that I would not have
gotten to experience should I not have had this position. I am daily reminded of the
amazing people in the UNC Community and learn something new from the everyday.
The student leaders on this campus and the administrators and faculty that dedicate
their time to making UNC-Chapel House an amazing place for students to learn and
grow, inspire me.
It has been exciting to navigate through this role and determine what exactly the
role could and should be. Of course any position comes with its exciting times and
disappointments, but overall I have been very happy with the progress of our team
and our goals. It can be disappointing when things do not go as planned, when
legislation passes that we do not want to see, when budgets are cut, etc. It is difficult
sometimes to remain positive in light of the challenges that UNC- CH and the UNC
system as a whole faces. However, I think what truly matters is that we all do what
we can to make our time at the university best. Of course, we cannot accomplish
everything. We will not always be able to change policy or decisions. We cannot
prevent problems and we cannot always solve them. What we can do however is
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provide the students with a voice and do what we can to make things better. I truly
believe the Lambden Administration has done that!
Shelby
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Senior Advisor
Kevin Claybren
claybren@live.unc.edu
OVERALL RESPONSIBILITIES
The Student Government Senior Advisor serves as a primary resource for
Christy and his cabinet members in carrying out the campaign platform. We
recognizes the challenges of diversity facing the UNC student body and aim to
cultivate a respectful experience for all students, especially those who feel underrepresented in student leadership. This year, some of the 2013-2014 initiatives that
are being worked on include: the education and advocacy for the implementation of
Gender Non-Specific Housing through a UNC school system campaign; the
development of critical relationship with students, faculty and staff of diverse
backgrounds; the creation of a Food Bank; and the crafting of a proposal to collect
data on recruitment, retention and matriculation of students who identify as sexual
and gender minorities, along with various other projects. These initiative are being
spearheaded by my Executive Assistants (Roderick Gladney, Chiraayu Gosrani,
Monique LaBorde and Andrew Wood) with my guidance, support, connection to
resources and mentorship to assist them in accomplishing these goals. In addition,
since coming into office I have become a member of several committees including:
Provost's Committee on Inclusive Excellence and Diversity, 2013-2014 Martin
Luther King Celebration Committee along with assisting with the Provost
Committee on LGBTQ Life.
Food Bank - Carolina Cupboard
The mission of "Carolina Cupboard," which will be the name of this new
organization will be to provide food assistance to individuals of the Carolina
community be they student (undergraduate or graduate), staff, and/or faculty by
acquiring food and distributing it to those in need on this campus. The initiation of
Carolina Cupboard stems from the idea of supporting and providing assistance to
our community in other ways than just academics and social events before we can
be those ambassadors of social change and serve the rest of the world, we must
serve our own. And through the food bank initiative, Roderick hopes to ensure that
those in our community that are experiencing food poverty and insecurities will
have one less burden to worry about.
This organization differs from other food relief organizations on campus in
that this will be UNC’s first food bank with a key and essential element - The
Advisory Board. As a prospective organization that could potentially have
tremendous positive effects on the student body, it is in our best nature to have a
thorough and well-developed foundation. And as a result, Roderick is creating an
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October Report 2013
advisory board to provide insight and to help frame the support for this initiative,
composed of undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty members and
professors. The advisory board will serve as the arms and legs of the organization in
terms of CC getting resources on campus. In addition, by having this advisory board,
Roderick is taking the necessary steps to ensure that CC: Is on the right track in
terms of benefiting the student body and will be making progressive moves while
Roderick is at UNC and after he graduate. The list of advisory board members
List of Advisory Board members:
1. Aaron Bachenheimer – Director of the Office of Fraternity & Sorority Life and
Community Involvement
2. Shauna Rust – Co-Chair of Tarheel Table
3. Kendall Nicole-Rusin - Residence Hall Association President
4. Crystal King – Student Union Director
5. Jani Radhakrishnan and Callie Womble – Student Wellness
6. Chiraayu Gosrani – Community Empowerment Fund
7. Dr. Sibby Anderson-Thompkins – Director of Postdoctoral Affairs
8. Dawna M. Jones – Student Affairs
9. Margaret (Meg) VanDusen
10. Kate Leonard – Co-Chair of HOPE
11. Amber Kubic – Co-Chair of CHEAP
12. Preethika Sundaraha – Co-Chair of CHEAP
Non-board member Advisors:
Claire Lorch – Carolina Community Campus Gardens
Linden Thayer – Nutrition Ph.D Candidate
Dr. Jim Johnson – Director of Urban Investment Strategies Center
Roderick has spoken with a great deal of individuals from department to
department, organization, committee, and those alike to discuss this initiative.
Those listed above have agreed that this a necessity on campus, which could
potentially have a positive and uplifting contribution to this university.
The purpose of CC is multidimensional in that it seeks to provide hungerrelief as well as educating, empowering, and engaging the surrounding community
on issues related to food insecurity, poverty, and health & nutrition. The need for
this organization comes at a time when individuals in our very own community
burdened by personal economic strife thus contributing to students experiencing
food insecurities. In order to do this, it is in CC’s best interest to collaborate with
existing organizations and entities that we believe can assist us in our endeavors.
Below you will find our short-term and long-term goals of how we aim to achieve
not only our mission but the University’s mission as well:
Immediate & Long-term Goals
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-
-
To provide food assistance program for those in need that is accessible and
sustainable.
To establish an advisory board that will provide insight and help frame the
support for the organization.
Three Pillars: To educate, empower, and engage the surrounding community
on issues related to food insecurity, poverty, and health & nutrition.
To establish a partnership with surrounding/campus ministries and food
banks. For example, St. Joseph’s Church food bank, Take and Eat Food Pantry,
Interfaith Food Council, and many more.
To establish a partnership with a local food supermarket to ensure a stable
pipeline of food for the food bank.
To one day be able to serve the postgraduate and below poverty-level staff
populations of the university.
To educate, empower, and enlighten the surrounding community on issues
related to food insecurity, poverty, and health & nutrition.
To partner with current food assistant programs and organizations to
acquire the resources needed to sustain the organization.
Initial Target Population
At this very moment, the target population for Carolina Cupboard will be
undergraduate students that fall into one of the following categories: Low-Income,
First-Generation, Carolina Covenant, and/or Independent students. We hope to
contribute by educating, empowering, and engaging this campus and ultimately the
Carolina community so that we can be the initiators of social inclusion and
ambassadors of cultural awareness and competency, and then implement this on
campus. We envision our initiatives and events on campus to foster a safe setting for
students to engage in dialogue with their peers, faculty members, and
administrators about diversity issues – and in order to achieve this, we need our
outreach to be not only thoroughly planned, but holistic in approach.
Partnership to End Homelessness Ext. Appointment
This semester, Chiraayu has been working with Shelby, the Director of State
and External Relations, to create a student external appointment to the Orange
County Partnership to End Homelessness. Students represent an integral part of the
Chapel Hill – Carrboro community, and it is important that students are informed
and able to positively contribute to solutions to poverty and homelessness. Shelby
and Chiraayu have attended a few Partnership meetings, but have not been able to
schedule a meeting with the Secretary to confirm an external appointment. Students
are always welcome to attend the monthly meetings. In addition to establishing an
external appointment, Chiraayu has contacted Sgt. Megan Howard who leads public
safety trainings at UNC departments and during student orientation. Chiraayu has
passed on several resources to Sgt. Howard and expressed the need for a
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comprehensive student handbook on panhandling, homelessness, poverty so that
students are better prepared to deal with such situations.
Sexual Assault
This project within the Senior Advisor team aims to start a sexual assault
prevention partnership between the Greek communities and Student Government.
The mission is to empower Greek communities to be proactive and speak loudly
against sexual assault. Monique want to work specifically to remove the
environment of blaming Greeks and become an uplifting partnership that gives
Greeks a visible, proactive stance against rape and sexual violence culture. Monique
has developed a partnerships with the Deputy Title IX director, Office of Fraternity
and Sorority Affairs, Women’s Studies professors, the Carolina Women’s Center to
provide our base of professional, trained adults who can help steer and form this
project for a sustainable future. Her first step, beginning this semester, has been
focused on building a relationship Inter-Fraternity Counsel. Monique plans to host
one student and professional led workshop with leading members of IFC to develop
slogans, mottos and images they would be proud to use or display in their fraternity
house. In the fall, Monique will expand this “poster and slogan” aspect of the
campaign, making it more visible. She plans to continue hosting workshops in the
fall to modify slogans and images. By next spring, Monique hopes to pair Haven with
Panhellenic counsel to have discussions and develop slogans and posters around
reporting. This project will help fulfill policy number seven in Christy’s “Greek
Affairs” section of his platform as expanding Haven to Panhellenic is a long-term
goal of this project.
Monique has collaborated with Shelby Hudspeth in State and External Affairs.
As she explored her sexual assault focus, she found there is a real need for an
empowering relationship between Student Government and Greek Communities
regarding sexual assault prevention. There are many professional resources for
sexual assault prevention on campus waiting for student action. Monique hopes to
facilitate this natural flow.
LGBTQ Retention
This semester, Andrew Wood has been working on an initiative that aims to
monitor the retention and matriculation of LGBTQ identified students at UNC-CH. By
scheduling and holding meetings with university administrators and fellow student
leaders, Wood has collaborated with Kevin Claybren by pushing this project forward
so that a policy focusing on the issue can be developed and implemented sometime
in the near future. This initiative is being developed into a policy by focusing on two
points of action. The first action item is developing a means by which to monitor and
analyze student data on LGBTQ status. So far, we have established that the data will
not be attached to students by ONYEN or name, but rather by simply analyzing the
population dynamics of the entire student body. The project heavily involves Dr.
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October Report 2013
Terri Phoenix of the UNC LGBTQ Center and Chris Derickson, the University
Registrar. To date, the University Registrar and Institutional Research are on board
with the initiative and have already prepared the mechanisms for monitoring and
analyzing the data on a yearly basis. The second action item is developing the means
by which we can collect the student data in a safe and conscientious manner. Wood
is looking into methods for safely collecting data, which involves discovering the
points at which university offices collect information from students. At this point, it
seems that the Office of Admissions holds the most promising points of data
collection, so Wood is pursuing a meeting with Barbara Polk, the deputy director of
undergraduate admissions. Wood is also consulting with members of the UNC Law
School who have historically attempted an initiative with a similar set of goals and
scale. We hope that they will be able to give us guidance in this initiative and help us
to discover areas that we should address before pulling the switch and initiating the
policy. Other administrators consulted for the crafting of this policy include Cynthia
Demetriou, director of retention; April Mann, director of new student and parent
programs; Ada Wilson, director of inclusive student excellence; Lynn Williford,
assistant provost for institutional research and assessment; and Vice Chancellor
Winston Crisp. The policy has also been brought to the attention of the Provost’s
Committee on LGBTQ Life through Wood’s participation in the committee.
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CAMPUS STEERING COMMITTEE FOR THE ARTS
Sara Kathryn Mayson
mayson@live.unc.edu
Overview of Responsibilities
The purpose of the UNC Campus Steering Committee for the Arts is to enrich and
strengthen the arts community at UNC-Chapel Hill. Our objects for accomplishing
this purpose are through two overarching avenues: first, to elevate awareness of
arts groups, events opportunities, resources and publications, and second, to
increase communication and collaboration between arts groups, the campus, and
the community. We aim to achieve this vision by becoming a resource on campus
that acts as both a facilitator and liaison for the arts groups on campus and the UNC
administration, campus community, and Chapel Hill community. To accomplish this
we continue to foster dialogue and collaboration arts opportunities and events on
and off campus and addressing the needs of our arts community. The Lambden
Administration particularly seeks to increase the awareness of different art’s
programs and publications as well as emphasizing support for the pending creation
of a Dance Minor.
Platform Progress
Increasing Communication and Awareness of the Arts
The expansion of arts the awareness of arts on campus has this semester has mainly
been executed through the revamp of the Chapel Hill Arts Facebook page. This has
acted as an informal social media outlet to include arts events in and around campus
that may be posted to the wall but also added by committee members of this special
project. Increasing accessibility to information about what is happening in the arts
community is, we believe, one of the first steps in continuing to increase visibility,
communication, and life of the arts community.
The Arts Calendar that was aspired in Christy’s platform unfortunately never
became a reality. While this would be a more organized and useful source for
awareness of the Arts in and around campus, there has yet to be suitable application
that is free to set up a calendar of this caliber. As there are many different sources of
sporadic information on arts events around campus, the forces of all of these have
yet to be united.
Dance Minor
The creation of a new Dance Minor, it’s marketing and web resources, and
successful implementation was a large part of our initial work as a committee this
semester. After preliminary research and contact with members of the Dance
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October Report 2013
community at Carolina, such as the student group ModernExtension Dance
Company and Terry Rhodes, Senior Associate Dean of Fine Arts & Humanities, we
learned that the approval of the Dance Minor is still pending, due to several factors
such as community support and some questions of budget.
Although we must wait for official news on the approval of the minor to proceed
with the related platform goals, we have, in the meantime, laid much of the
groundwork necessary to accomplish our objectives. We have spoken with Charles
Streeter, of Student Affairs IT, and established a list of IT and other contacts to use in
the event that we are able to create the Dance Minor website in the future. We have
also reached out to many student dance groups, such as ModernExtension, Bhangra
Elite, Blank Canvas, Chapel Hill Chalkaa, and Misconception, about participation in a
kick-off event for the Dance Minor; several of the groups we contacted responded
with enthusiasm and indicated their willingness to contribute to the event if it
happens.
Upcoming Projects
We have expanded upon Christy’s platform by planning an Arts week to be held
under the incoming administration. Like a mini Fall Fest, this would be held in the
Pit in which different groups could perform to not only show off their skills, but also
to promote their groups. The week would be divided by art forms to help expose
students to the different groups within certain art categories with informational
sheets at a table in the pit along with group performances, demonstrations,
readings, and demonstrations. Interactive games or projects will also be
implemented to allow students to expose themselves to a little art creation of their
own.
COLLABORATION
We have started collaborations with the student art groups on campus about
participating in the Arts Week for Fall Semester of 2014.
THE CO-CHAIR PERSPECTIVE
Sara Kathryn Mayson
This committee has aimed to encourage and assist arts events on campus through
social media and the future planning of an Arts Week. I am pleased with progress
that our committee has made and love the enthusiasm our members have. While
there has been continuous set backs with committee members and communication
with different parts of the University community, the implementation of an Arts
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Week on campus would be an extremely beneficial and exciting new tradition for
both the arts community and the student population.
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CAROLINA ATHLETIC PROJECTS
Michael Hardison
Mth21@live.unc.edu
Rob Jones
Rob.emory.jones@gmail.com
OVERVIEW OF RESPONSIBILITIES
The purpose of the Carolina Athletic Projects Committee (CAPS) is to be the
direct student government connection between the student body and the athletic
department. We strive to promote all of our 28 sports programs through
collaboration with other student organizations, create and implement plans
alongside the athletic department to create a unified athletic experience for the
entire Tar Heel community, and connect the student-athletes with the non-athletes
on campus.
By working directly with the representatives of students in the executive
branch and with the athletic department, our committee can formulate new policy
and event ideas, publicize new and current events, and use sports as a medium for
executive branch to connect with students. Starting in the second semester,
members also sought to highlight the positives of the student-athlete community at
Carolina. We also serve as a mechanism for members of the athletic department to
express concerns or ideas about the student experience at athletic events.
PLATFORM PROGRESS
Black-Out Themed Zero Dark Thursday Football Game
Entering into the week of Zero Dark Thursday, we worked directly with the
Athletic Department to design and create posters/stickers to post around campus to
raise awareness for the campaign. The posters and stickers highlighted the event’s
date (over fall break, which was an initial concern), the potential social experience,
and the game’s social media campaign (generated by us). Our committee went
around the week before the game and put up over 200 of the stickers and 100 of the
posters throughout campus and Franklin Street. We also spoke to several Franklin
Street vendors about hanging posters in their storefronts (which many agreed to).
We also had an immensely strong social media push, utilizing the UNC
Memes Facebook page (what is this? How many followers?) as well as the Carolina
Fever page and posting several graphics promoting the event. The posts leading up
to the event generated over 100,000 views, according to Facebook Insights, and
reached thousands of our target demographic (UNC students). Our tweets and
focused hashtags drew impressive support as well.
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While media coverage of the event was already given, committee co-chair
Michael Hardison penned an op-ed for the Chapel Hill lifestyle blog, Thrill City,
which stressed the importance of student attendance at the game. It was shared
over 200 times on Facebook and 50 times on Twitter.
Night Football Game
CAPs had the unique opportunity to help publicize UNC’s first night game in
four years. Our main goal for this game was not just to publicize it, but to create
such an atmosphere that allowed for networks to come back to Chapel Hill with an
expectation of a full and excited crowd. If we elevate the football culture of UNC with
the Zero Dark Thursday game, we can gain better traction with the media and better
improve our attendance.
Carmichael Classic
We entered early discussions with the athletic department of hosting a
basketball game in Carmichael to highlight student experience and storied tradition
of Carolina basketball. However, after initial discussions with Athletic Director
Bubba Cunningham, we’ve begun looking at alternative options for the game due to
the high potential for revenue loss.
Because of how busy the athletic department has been, there is a need to
push back discussions of the plan until later next year (for a potential 2014-2015
game). We’re also optimistic that a potential exhibition game or scrimmage could
occur in Carmichael next season that would be more appealing to the athletic
department. Discussions about such an exhibition event will be held by the future
committee co-chairs with the athletic department upon their implementation later
this spring.
Student Government Night Out
(need to put this in past tense—not talk about how it went, not how it will go)
We want to use athletics as an informal way for younger students to reach
out and connect with student government leaders. We feel that sports can act as a
great medium for students to get to know the executive branch, as it represents a
great shared experience throughout the student body.
Our first event was the UNC-Duke women’s soccer game on Halloween in
which the majority of Executive Branch Officers were in attendance. The game’s
theme was a costume-out which utilized the date on which the game is being played.
By working with members of our committee, we were able to procure a signed
football and signed soccer ball (after speaking with the compliance office) to give
out for best costumes. Christy was one of the celebrity judges, while the rest of EBO
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was there in costume. We’ve also contacted a photographer that will be there to help
publicize the event for later social media posts.
In terms of promotion, via the Facebook page and Twitter page, as well as the
Executive Branch’s social media pages and the Carolina Fever list serv, we’ve been
able to get the word out about the game. We’ve also had direct contact with the
women’s soccer team and they’ve started pubbing the costume-out via their Twitter
feed as well. We’ve spoken with the Marketing department of the athletic
department and they’ve indicated that they’re on board as well.
Ticket Policy Discussions
Both committee co-chairs have attempted to initiate discussions with the
athletic department, the Carolina Athletic Association leadership and Carolina Fever
to discuss the current ticket policy. Currently, there is a planned discussion set for
the end of March to discuss how the basketball ticket policy can be potentially
revamped to, to an extent, reward loyalty or repeated use of tickets. Such changes
would incorporate all major student organizations’ voices that are involved in
athletics. The current co-chairs are dedicated with whoever is appointed as next
year’s co-chairs to guarantee that such discussions are continued as input from both
Carolina Fever and student government is essential in crafting a more loyaltyfocused, rewarding student ticket policy.
COMMITTEE COLLABORATION
We have established a relationship with the Environmental Affairs
Committee to collaborate on the annual game day challenge event as well as to
create new initiatives at non-revenue sporting events. We’ve also coordinated with
them about their communication with the athletic department and their desire to
have direct conversations with marketing, which we hope to facilitate. After
discussions with the athletic department we’ve also helped direct them to specific
personnel that they should contact regarding certain events they wish to have.
We’ve established a new plan with the Public Relations Committee to expand
the impact of the CAPS committee both online and physically around campus to
reach out to a diverse group of students at UNC-CH. The Public Relations Committee
has been helpful in publicizing the Costume Out for the Halloween game, coming up
with graphics that CAPs, Carolina Fever, and the Women’s Soccer team have
publicized. They’ve also used the Executive Branch twitter and Facebook to
publicize the game. However, much of CAPs publicizing has been driven by our own
internal social media accounts during the spring. We plan to sit down with the
Public Relations representative who worked with us and develop a strategic plan to
be more effective and efficient for next years events.
We have created an initiative with Student Affairs Committee to streamline
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the process of recognizing faculty at sporting events by creating a uniformed
network of all awards/events that happen each with hopes of unity on this front.
Early discussions have been had with the athletic department about better
publicizing these opportunities.
THE CO-CHAIR PERSPECTIVE
Rob Jones
The CAPS Committee has had a phenomenal first year. We had high hopes
and big plans for Carolina athletics this year and although all of our tangible goals
were not met (yet) we focused on working together and improving as each week
went by. One of our biggest strengths as a committee was our team. Every member
brought a unique set of skills strung together by the same passion for making
Carolina athletics the best it can be. We were great at coming up with innovative
ideas and new ways that could bring together the Carolina family through athletics.
Fortunately we had previous ties with the Athletic Department, which make
presentations and discussion much easier. All of the events that we did
create/publicize were very successful.
How can we improve? There are so many areas that we can improve upon for
next year and years to come - we hope that each year following we find a way to get
better and find better ways and new ideas. Communication and tangible projects are
two areas that need attention. We need to create better lines of consistent
communication between Carolina Fever, Carolina Athletic Association, and the
Athletic Department (introduce SAC). We all have the same mission to make
Carolina Athletics the best it can be - we need to collaborate and combine forces for
some projects. At the end of March we are sitting down with these groups and
creating a way to establish this communication for next year. Tangibility was one of
our struggles this year. We need to have more hands on projects versus publicity
and social media campaigns. For next year we will help the next co-chairs realize the
importance of planning events very far ahead of time and pick out certain games
and weeks for next year (when schedules are released). One of our other missions
was to eliminate the gap between student athletes and non-student athletes. We are
currently working on an informal discussion based event that we hope to bring light
to recent athletic scandal allegations and show each other that athlete or not we are
one Carolina Family. Perhaps dividing the committee into specific working groups
next year will be helpful to create more tangible products and give the committee
members more leadership experience.
*See below for committee member evaluations. We asked our members to fill out
evaluations about the committee and for Michael and Rob so that we can continue to
improve and put CAPS in a great position to be successful for years to come.
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Michael Hardison
The CAPs Committee throughout the year has shown both potential and
yielded frustration given the current athletic system. Earlier in the fall, we were
able to accomplish a lot: the Student Government Night-Out and promotion for Zero
Dark Thursday were both critical successes to establish the committee’s presence.
However, as the year went on, we found that many of our ideas and student
government input were either met with delays in communication from other
outside organizations or ignored. Certain ideas presented during the committee
meetings, like the White-Out for the UK game, were communicated to outside
sources, considered, but never met with response with how CAPs could be
incorporated into the process of making such events a reality. The committee didn’t
find out that the White-Out idea had been successfully received until it was
announced publicly. In the future, committee co-chairs must do a better job of
following up with the athletic department, CAA, and Carolina Fever to make sure
discussions and presentations occur—too many times, meetings were supposed to
happen, but due to delays on both sides, fell through.
The data presented by Mary Willingham and the following news coverage
also presented some difficulty for a committee that was supposed to be focused on
athletic events and policy given the spotlight attracted to the University. Some ideas
were posed about holding a public forum to discuss such issues, but never came to
fruition. The issues that have arisen since the CNN report have been frustrating to
all students, but especially those that wanted to make policy changes to the student
experience at athletic events. However, moving forward, we don’t anticipate such
news coverage to prevent discussions regarding policy changes.
At the beginning of the year, I wanted to reassess the need for such a
committee next year by looking at our committee’s successes. While I’m frustrated
by the delays and lack of substantial progress this spring, I believe that there exists a
substantial need for an athletic committee within student government. The
Lambden Administration was stalwart in their advocacy for student-athletes
throughout the national press’s coverage of Willingham’s data and in the future,
there needs to be an organized committee response to such issues. The committee,
moving forward, must have more influence with other organizations like Carolina
Fever and the Carolina Athletic Association—only by working together can student
organizations successfully petition for changes to athletic department policies
involving students.
COMMITTEE MEMBER FEEDBACK: Improvement Suggestions
● Create tangible events for connecting athletes and non-athletes.
● Work with SAC next year
● Attend UNC sporting events together as a committee
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●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
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Continue to establish a name at Carolina
Put on a new fundraising event to give the committee a budget next year.
Need to improve committee member attendance at meetings each week.
Set a timeline early in the year for the entire year.
Collaborate with other Athletic groups to have a unified effort on
events/games.
Big event at the beginning of the year to get CAPS’s name out to campus
Work with ticketing to improve our student policy
Send out meeting agenda day before weekly meeting
Create a clear vision with tangible goals
More transparency with the actual process of turning an idea into a product
Work with student-athletes outside of athletics
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ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
Scott Cutler
scutler@live.unc.edu
Pooja Ravindran
ravindrp@live.unc.edu
Katherine Shor
kshor@live.unc.edu
Overview of Responsibilities
To collaborate with students, faculty, and staff to create a more cohesive
environmental presence on campus while promoting key environmental principles,
encouraging sustainable lifestyles, and facilitating improved cooperation between
student environmental groups and the University.
Platform Progress
Athletics
We had hoped to expand GDC to other sports- namely basketball and baseball- so
that fans see continuity in efforts to minimize waste, and that our success will
encourage the athletics higher-ups to make sustainability in games a priority.
However, this endeavor has been stymied by inefficient communication with
respective parties. Under the new administration, this subgroup will likely be
dissolved or fused into an ‘Emerging Projects’ subgroup.
Academics
This initiative has undergone several changed to its aim. We think that we are
currently on the right path, and are working on gathering information from student
focus groups to ascertain what students want, with regards to sustainability within
their courses of study. The issue is that we would like to have unbiased participation
from a variety of students, but lack funding to provide incentive for such a turnout.
We would like to see this subgroup continue next year.
Mainstreet Lenoir Composting
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With the sudden absence of the Sustainability Coordinator from Carolina Dining
Services, who was our liaison to the establishment, we have not had much of an
opportunity to expand. Under the new administration, this subgroup will likely be
dissolved or fused into an ‘Emerging Projects’ subgroup.
Green Roundtables & Outreach
No meetings have been held this semester, as it has been difficult to schedule
regular meetings with student leaders of all green groups. This is an issue that has
been voiced over and over again, and EAC is really trying to be an innovator in the
way we bring these groups together. We have applied for funds, so that we may be
able to provide more of an incentive-- in the form of food, career counseling,
speakers, etc. -- for students to make these meetings, and hope to hear back soon
from the funding sources. We would like to see this subgroup continue next year,
provided funding and real interest.
Earth Week and EarthFest
Planning is coming along nicely with the bulk of everything happening right after
spring break. We have run into some obstacles reserving the pit and maintaining
our reservation due to the three strikes EAC earned (because all student
government rooms reservations were made in EACs name). Despite these obstacles,
we are planning to meet with the union following break to work something out. We
would like to see this subgroup continue next year.
Collaboration
No collaboration has happened this semester as we are quite entrenched within our
own committee projects. It is quite difficult to collaborate on specific, long-term
projects with other committees that have their own projects to manage and do not
know much about ours.
The Co-Chair Perspective
Pooja Ravindran
This semester has been extremely satisfying for me personally as a few projects
have really gained traction and enthusiasm by EAC members. Although there were
(and still are) many hoops to jump through and organizations with whom to
maintain good relationships while stepping on their toes a little to get our projects
moving forward, I believe this is a great learning experience for myself and the
members, as it mirrors the highs and lows of being in the real world. Though the
transition of co-chairs has been tough, #Scoot greatly helped hold the leadership
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together. I am excited and hopeful for some of the current underclassmen to take on
leadership roles for the next administration, and have a great deal of advice from the
experience I have had in this position. As always, GO GREEN GO HEELS GO
AMERICA.
Scott Cutler
This semester has had many more challenges than the previous one. With the
transition from Davis to Katherine, our committee has had difficulty shifting roles
and allowing for new leadership styles, etc. My projects in particular have
encountered bureaucratic hurdles and have been marred by general disinterest
from the student groups EAC is meant to bring together. This is not to say that I
haven't enjoyed parts of this semester and I look forward to seeing earth week/fest
come together if we can work things out with the union.
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FIX MY CAMPUS
Tim Wahl
twahl@live.unc.edu
Blake Hauser
bmhauser@live.unc.edu
Overview of Responsibilities
Fix My Campus is a special project that seeks to help Student Government become
more transparent, accessible, and responsive to help determine the needs of the
UNC student body at large. Our team helps to gather student opinions, comments,
and concerns and helps to address problems across campus. Through a variety of
social media outlets including Twitter, Gmail, and Google’s anonymous data
collection service TalkBin, we are interacting with students in an effort to improve
their experience at UNC. Students can submit comments or concerns regarding any
aspect of life at UNC using any of the aforementioned forums, and we then do our
best to ensure that this feedback reaches people who have the power to act on it.
Our committee is a service-oriented project, providing the resources for other
committees and student government as a whole to collect feedback and new ideas
for UNC. By addressing the requests and comments that we receive, we hope to
create improvements that will have a positive impact on campus for years to come.
Our committee gives the students of UNC a voice. Students cannot be expected to
understand the inner-workings of the university’s operations, but as a result of this,
they are often powerless when it comes to ensuring that those with the capacity to
make a difference hear their voices. Fix My Campus represents a central repository
for this feedback, and we ensure to utilize our affiliation with Student Government
to then distribute the comments we receive through the proper channels.
Most of the requests we have received included work orders for dorms and
maintenance requests for campus classrooms. We pass this information along to
either Fix My Room or the Facilities Department as a whole. Additionally, we
attended various executive branch committee events and received feedback, which
we gave to the appropriate committees. In this manner, students’ exact words will
reach the people responsible for this decision in an organized format. In addition,
we posted daily questions on Facebook covering a variety of topics from planning
for the future of the dining services, to biking safety, and academic advising. The
questions that were chosen for Facebook were based on discussions for the next
cabinet meeting or outside Student Government meeting where the topics were
considered.
On campus, Fix My Campus attended Student Government events in order to collect
feedback in order to allow for more student body response within student
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government.. At each event, specific questions to which the host committee would
like attendees to respond are posted on whiteboards or included in a presentation
along with our contact information. After the event, we discussed the received
feedback at the next available cabinet meeting.
Looking forward to next year, we discussed the future of Fix My Campus with
President Elect Andrew Powell we have concluded the Fix My Campus project will
become part of the Public Relations cross-section team for next year.
Platform Completion
Expansion of Presence around Campus
Our main committee objective consisted of increasing our presence on campus in
order to maximize student usage of our resources. In addition to posting flyers and
distributing business cards, we have worked towards this goal by educating RA’s
about our project so that they can spread the word to their residents. We have held
two successful Pit Sitting weeks in which we promoted our service for students in
order for them to contact Student Government. Our hope for the future are these
efforts will lead to an increase in campus-wide usage of our TalkBin, Twitter, and
Gmail accounts. TalkBin serves as a database for students to text in their responses
and feedback so that Student Government or whoever is using the TalkBin can have
all the information in one place. Fix My Campus is planning on attending all the
events hosted by student government committees.
Collecting Feedback for Student Government Committees
Fix My Campus goal to maximize the impact of project-oriented Student
Government entities by collecting feedback that these organizations can use to
direct their efforts. Fix My Campus committee members sat in on a variety of
different Student Government-sponsored events including MADO Latino Real Talk,
several Public Safety, Public Service, and Brown Bag Lunch on Service, at these
events we posed questions to which attendees responded as well as gave our
contact information to solicit general feedback. Reports were compiled and
returned to the respective committee for their use. The TalkBin account serves as an
open forum for discussion in which we collect student input in order to give
feedback or collect students’ opinions.
Establishing New Connections
During this school year we plan to make connections outside of Student Government
with Groups such as the Campus Y and Eve Carson Foundation. Working with these
groups will not only expand upon our presence on campus, but will create new
connections between student government and other groups on campus. When we
work with these groups we will use our TalkBin resources in order to receive
information and feedback from students about the programs.
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Collaboration
Public Safety - Fix My Campus has an ongoing collaboration with the Public Safety
Committee owing to the fact that many of their initiatives are directed by student
feedback regarding areas for improvement in public safety. Fix My Campus has
attended roundtable discussions and gathered feedback on specific questions of
interest for the committee so far this year and similar collaborative efforts will
continue. For every event attended and for every series of questions posed, Fix My
Campus compiles student feedback and submits individualized responses as well as
notes regarding specific comment trends to the Public Safety Committee in order to
guide their operations. After attending the Public Safety Round Table we attended
the Public Service Fair and have a table with our information. In addition, we
collected student feedback regarding potential public safety improvements on
campus using TalkBin and a large notepad on which students could record
responses and agree with those written by others. We will attend the committee’s
The Art of Empathy event in order to support and promote the event.
Multicultural Affairs and diversity Outreach (MADO)- Fix My Campus collected
feedback for the Multicultural Affairs and Diversity Outreach Committee at their
Realtalk event in order to help the committee direct future efforts in this realm.
Questions were posted around the room, and following the event, students used
TalkBin to submit their feedback. This information was compiled for the
Multicultural Affairs and Diversity Outreach Committee and submitted to them for
future consideration.
Public Service and Advocacy - Fix My Campus was invited to attend the Public
Service Fair on September 20th in the Student Union. At the Public Service Fair we
asked questions regarding Service Oriented improvements as well as questions
regarding improvement for Orientation in order to improve the information
students received. We collected this information through our TalkBin account. In
addition, we attended the First Year Focus Council Program - Brown Bag Lunch on
Service, which was a collaboration with Public Service in order to support and
promote how students can contact and participate with Student Government and
other groups on campus
Town and External Relations - We have collaborated with Town and External
Relations through various occasions by sharing ideas such as at the Public Safety
Roundtable Discussions and through their efforts to meet with the mayor of Chapel
Hill.
The Chair Perspective
Tim Wahl
Throughout the Lambden administration, Fix My Campus has made defining
progress in the role it serves in the executive branch. Having been only created two
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years ago, as a committee we we made it our goal to discover the purpose of the
special project and how to best use our service. Throughout the administration we
have attended many committee projects in order to collect feedback on how to
improve the events and on other topics the executive branch were discussing. I
believe this expansion in the role of Fix My Campus allowed for further collection of
student input and also brought the cabinet closer together because we were
supporting each other events. As a committee we worked very hard in order to
expand the presence and purpose of Fix My Campus around UNC. WE have held two
successful Pit Week in which students learned how they can contact Student
Government. The committee members of Fix My Campus are very hard working and
are intensely involved in our goals. It has been a pleasure to serve as a co-chair of
Fix My Campus. Looking forward to next year, I met with Andrew Powell in order to
continue the project of Fix My Campus, we decided to include the project under the
cross section committee of Public Relations. I am glad the resources that Fix My
Campus holds such as the Talkbin and Social Media accounts will continue to be
accessed by Student Government in the Future.
Blake Hauser
Under the Lambden Administration, Fix My Campus has continued a trend of steady
expansion following the project’s founding just a few short years ago. The
committee has worked hard over the course of this past year to increase our
notoriety on campus, and we have received a record number of student comments
as a result of this effort. We have a solid infrastructure in place for soliciting and
responding to all forms of student feedback, and I think that emphasizing this point
has increased student confidence in our commitment to making their voices heard.
Looking forward to the Powell Administration, I think Andrew’s plan to include Fix
My Campus under the cross-sectional Public Relations Committee will bring even
more support to this effort and will further increase Fix My Campus’ notoriety.
Additionally, I hope that we can incorporate the Neighborland platform into the
existing Fix My Campus framework because this year’s Student Body President
campaign showed that it has valuable potential for expanding our efforts to collect
student feedback. It is the responsibility of Student Government to ensure that every
student’s voice can be heard, and this obligation transcends the confines of
individual administrations.
Fix My Campus can be reached anytime through email at fixmycampus@gmail.com ,
tweeting at @fixmycampus, and anonymous texting at 919-299-0195. Carolina is
your campus. Make it what you want it to be and let us know your concerns!
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FIRST YEAR FOCUS COUNCIL
Joseph Lucido
jrlucido@live.unc.edu
Rachel Gogal
rgogal@live.unc.edu
OVERVIEW OF RESPONSIBILITIES
The First Year Focus Council of the Executive Branch of Student Government is
designed to welcome incoming first-year students into the Executive Branch here at
Carolina. Students on this council will have the opportunity to serve on other
cabinet committees as they work to advocate for the needs of their graduating class.
Everything done as a council is designed to broaden members’ knowledge of
Student Government and prepare them to take on a leadership role in the
organization. First Year Focus truly strives to give the best possible initiation into
student government for incoming first-years that show leadership potential and
help them to nurture this potential to effectively increase their leadership
capabilities. As a council we strive to transform the first-years of today into the
leaders of tomorrow here at Carolina. Although not explicitly mentioned in Christy’s
platform we have adapted what was a part of the last year’s Leimenstoll
administration, expanded upon certain projects, and decided against others that we
did not think were feasible. This has allowed us to focus more on collaboration with
organizations both within student government and outside of student government.
Furthermore, we have also been able to achieve a higher level of inter-committee
bonding due to a more focused agenda of platform activities. As a committee we
have proven to both Christy, and the Cabinet as a whole, the importance of reaching
to first-years and including them in executive decisions.
PLATFORM PROGRESS
Priceless Gems (Spring 2014)
Last year, FYFC launched their first Priceless Gems Speakers event in the beginning
of April. Priceless Gems is a speaker event where first-years nominate
upperclassman to speak about their experience here at Chapel Hill. More
specifically, speakers are nominated based on their impact on campus and how they
have left their own “heelprint” while at Carolina. Last year’s council members were
responsible for running the nomination process, which included peer nominations
then a final selection process also facilitated by the council members, securing the
venue for the actual event, and contacting Harris Teeter to manage catering.
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This year we will be holding the second annual Priceless Gems event with a great
hope and expectation that it will be even bigger and more successful than it was last
year! To advertise for the event we will be painting a cube, advertising in the pit for
several days, utilizing social media by using the Twitter and Facebook accounts that
were both created last year, and using the TV’s throughout the Union.
Another major difference that will take place between this year and last year’s event
is that Priceless Gems is now a Union sponsored event that is being hosted by the
First Year Focus Council. This will allow us to both utilize the resources the Union
has available to them, including funding, location, advertising, publicity, etc. while
also making the event larger on the whole. We will be using the Facebook page that
we created for the event last year, which had around 200 likes, and now has about
320 likes, in order to reach out to the UNC Community. However, we are planning a
much more aggressive social media campaign to get more people involved in the
event.
We will also be having False Profits perform at Priceless Gems, as well as the Walk
Ons and the Ukulele Ensemble perform. We will be extending an invitation to
Chancellor Folt and Chancellor Crisp, who attended last year, to attend the event
this coming year. We have booked the Great Hall for the venue this year and have
facilitated a collaboration with CUAB. Catering for the event will be provided by
either Wal-Mart or Harris Teeter and will include a large sheet cake with Priceless
Gems written on it, accompanied with numerous finger foods and appetizers. Lastly,
we will be working closely with the GAA and the NCSPP to reach a broader audience
for this event and increase the hype and attendance.
First-Year Brown Bag Lunch Series
The Brown Bag Lunch Series serves as a distinct opportunity for the First Year
Focus Council to attract their fellow first-years and facilitate a casual meeting and
conversation with some of the most prominent leaders on UNC’s campus. The first
Brown Bag Lunch that will be held this year gives the opportunity for first years to
meet, interact with, and ask questions to the Executive Branch Officers of Student
Government. Not only does this event provide a direct link for the most influential
leaders in Student Government to meet and positively influence incoming firstyears, but it also increases the accessibility of Student Government as a whole and
works to promote Student Government’s efforts to reach out to the campus. We held
our first Brown Bag Lunch in the student government suite so that those who
attended could see the EBO officers in their natural environment and feel a more
personal connection to them. Through the planning of this Brown Bag Lunch the
first-years on this council learned how to coordinate and plan an event of this type,
while simultaneously getting the chance to work directly with top leaders and entice
their peers to attend.
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After the first event, planning responsibilities are now placed almost entirely on the
council members so that they can coordinate the future lunches, up to one per
month. For the future Brown Bag Lunches our council has expressed interest in
having leaders from the Campus Y, Honor System, CUAB, and other major
organizations on campus be the guests for the lunch. This will provide the Class of
2017 the opportunity to explore what truly interests them and allow them to meet
with impactful leaders of major organizations. We have also facilitated collaboration
with Alpine Bagel to provide the catering for each Brown Bag Lunch, so as to entice
a larger number of people to attend the event.
Class of 2017 Fundraising Item
In order to create a sense of community and inclusiveness for the Class of 2017, the
council has chosen to hold a fundraiser in the form of selling an official Class of 2017
blanket, complete with the class logo provided by the General Alumni Association.
We have attached both the design of the blanket, as well as the design of the official
Class of 2017 logo. The council members found a distributor, North East Fleece, who
is extremely excited about this collaboration and gave us a bulk discount based on
how many we will blankets we will be able to sell.
In order to spread the word about the fundraiser, council members are e-mailing
and collaborating with significant organizations on campus such as the GAA, YMCA,
Granville Towers, and CUAB. They are also working with Student Government’s
PROD committee to create a colorful graphic design that will be used to advertise.
In addition, council members will paint a cube and advertise for the blankets in the
pit. During the month of November, council members will pit sit, taking orders and
money from first-years. The money is due by the beginning of December to the
North East Fleece Company who will produce the blankets and have them available
when students return from Christmas break. The proceeds earned from this
fundraiser will then go towards future events, such as Priceless Gems in the spring.
We have distributed all of the blankets and gathered all of the profits we made
through the fundraising event. We will be using these profits to fund Priceless Gems
Second Semester Programs
Other second semester programs that First Year Focus is planning on doing include:
additional Brown Bag Lunches with other major organizations on campus, Priceless
Gems which will take place on March 28th in the Great Hall, Organizing the first ever
Student Government Relay for Life Team, creating and selling a Student Government
t shirt tank for all three branches of Student Government, and finally hosting an end
of year Executive Branch Cook out to close out the year. We have also been
discussing collaboration ideas with the Environmental Affairs Committee, Fix My
Campus, University Career Services, and Speaker Series and look forward to
incorporating new ideas into our platform.
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COLLABORATION
Working with other committees is an extremely important part of the First Year
Focus Committee. By constantly participating in a dialogue with the other
committees our first-years are more aware of everything that is happening on
campus and are able to directly contribute and advocate for the first-year class.
Furthermore, they are learning what they would like to continually be involved in
throughout their time at Carolina by gaining exposure to what the other committees
in student government are apart of.
Public Relations and Outreach Development Committee
We have two PR representatives that attend each of our meetings and work
with our first years in creating graphic designs on events such as Brown Bag
Lunch, Class of 2017 Fundraiser, and Priceless Gems. They also use the
Student Government social media sites to help to advertise for our events.
Public Relations has been extremely helpful thus far this year and we have
tremendously enjoyed working with our PR reps, Christian and Timber. Both
of them attend our weekly meetings, take notes on our current projects, give
their helpful opinions in regards to our projects, and have produced
wonderful designs for us!
Our PR reps have been especially helpful with Priceless Gems and have
created some really great new graphics that we are using in our social media
platforms.
Public Service and Advocacy Committee
Within the two weeks, we have been working with PSAC to create the first
Student Government Relay for Life Team. Our first-years will be responsible
for contacting each of the different committees and collecting donations for
out team. They will also be responsible for signing up and facilitating our
representation at the actual relay. As a large organization, it is important for
Student Government to participate in community service events, giving back
to the community. Relay for Life is a perfect event in which our first years
cannot only participate in community service, but also learn value skills
through organizing walking times, booth set up, and the value of
advertisement.
Collaborations Outside of Student Government:
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General Alumni Association
After numerous meetings with representatives of the GAA, including the
President Austin Root and Chief Supervisor C. Hawkins, we have come to an
agreement to use the official Class of 2017 logo on the blankets we will be
selling. By establishing this new relationship with the GAA we will be able to
draw upon their vast network of resources, including contacts, funding, and
student outreach. Unlike last year, we are now able to use the GAA’s
resources to reach a broader audience of first years. Furthermore, using the
Class of 2017 logo, we are created a stronger, unified first year class. The
GAA will also be helping to advertise for the blanket to the Class of 2017 by
sending out class listserv emails and promoting it on their Facebook page,
Twitter page, and website.
Carolina Union Activities Board
After meeting with Carly Matthews, President of CUAB, and Briana Nicole
Carter, the Forum Chair for CUAB, our first years have facilitated
collaboration with CUAB for advertising for Brown Bag Lunch and the Class
of 2017 Fundraising Item. Furthermore, CUAB has agreed to sponsor our
event Priceless Gems, which will be held in the Great Hall on March 28th.
Advertising with CUAB includes all of their social media outlets, hanging of
posters throughout the Union, and running an advertisement on the TV’s
throughout the Union.
Insomnia Cookies
We worked with Insomnia Cookies on our most recent Brown Bag Lunch that
was centered on service. We had the Insomnia logo on the flier we produced
for the event and also had packets of information on Insomnia that were
handed out during the event. This collaboration could lead to a future
collaboration with Insomnia for Priceless Gems, which we are currently
working on.
The Co-Chair Perspective
Joseph Lucido
As we reach mid-March and the end of the semester, Rachel and I are extremely
pleased with the quality of the council and the work that they have done thus far.
During the recruitment process Rachel and I worked diligently to ensure that we
could find the best potential candidates for the council who came from a wide range
of backgrounds, but we also very passionate about student government. As co-chairs
we decided to have a rigorous interview process in order to get to know them
beyond the application that they submitted. When interviews concluded we decided
to have a slightly larger committee this year than last year, 22 this year and 15 last
year, in order to expand our events and reach a broader range of first-years. As a
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October Report 2013
result of a larger committee we have been striving to create a cohesive group where
real friendships can form, which inevitably leads to more success in our collective
projects. We established a program within the council that allows our members to
meet up and have dinner once a week with a different member each week so that
everyone can get to know each other on a deeper level. This semester in particular
the council has grown much closer and this has allowed them to put themselves
even deeper into their work and push themselves even harder to achieve the goals
of the committee.
We have also already had numerous social events including dinners, trips to the
Yogurt Pump, and spending time at various social events outside of meetings. This
has led to many close friendships between council members and a wonderful
relationship between the members and us as co-chairs. Furthermore, I think that
these relationships have inspired our first-years to be even more involved in the
committee and more creative in the ideas that they bring to the table, for example
the selection of the Priceless Gems Speakers. The council chose an intriguing and
wide-ranging group of speakers that definitely speaks to and intrigues numerous
groups on campus. I am very pleased with the committee as a whole thus far and am
ecstatic to see what else they can think of and conjure up throughout the rest of the
year.
In regards to the working relationship between co-chairs, I could not have asked for
a better person to head this committee with than Rachel. She is extremely
organized, hard-working, passionate, and wonderfully engaging with our council
members. As a team, Rachel and I work wonderfully together and have had a
fantastic time running First Year Focus thus far. We both bring very different skill
sets and experiences to the table, but also are similar in many ways, which results in
us almost always being on the same page. We are both extremely passionate about
student government and I feel tremendously confident in the fact that I know Rachel
has my back and will support me as a co-chair! Everything that we do to run FYFC is
truly a team effort and our responsibilities are split almost completely 50/50 so that
neither of us is overtaxed. I think that both of our outgoing and extroverted
personalities have allowed us to truly engage with our council members and
facilitate a wonderful team dynamic on the committee. Rachel and I make an
extremely dynamic team, and I am excited to see what else we can accomplish
throughout the remainder of the year. She is a marvelous co-chair and friend!
Rachel Gogal
As members of the First Year Focus Council during the Leimenstoll Administration,
Joseph and I used our experience and knowledge as a guide in helping us establish
our main focus points for the First Year Focus Council this year. From day one, we
wanted to create a committee of strong, dedicated, and diverse leaders who could
proudly represent the Class of 2017. During recruitment, we attempted to reach out
to every first year via social media and e-mail. When selecting our committee, we
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required an application and interview to ensure that we select students who would
embody the first year class. Joseph and I are very pleased with our committee thus
far. They are hardworking individuals who meet every requirement we asked of
them. I am very pleased at the pace they work and the time they put into doing their
jobs correctly.
Although work ethic is very important, Joseph and I believed that our goals were not
achievable unless each member forms a unique bond with one another. In the
beginning of the year, we had each member go to either lunch or dinner with a
member they did not know. We also asked them to message each other on
Facebook and created a GroupMe chat and Facebook group so they could contact
each other all at once. Joseph and I also coordinated a FYFC social outing, where we
took our committee to YoPo. I am delighted on how fast they began to get along, and
now with their quick willingness to work together. I believe this committee will rise
together and face any challenge, supporting each other every step of the way. They
have already impressed me so much, and I am eager to see what more they have in
store as the year continues.
Working with Joseph has been an absolute delight thus far. He is a hardworking,
well-rounded individual with wonderful charisma. Joseph is a natural-born leader
and is highly respected by all of our first-years. I could not have asked for a better
co-chair. Since spring, Joseph and I have had many meetings and conversations to
discuss our ideas for the First Year Focus Council. We hardly ever disagree, and
often support each other’s thoughts and opinions. I believe we work very well
together and share similar leadership qualities. We both are extremely organized
and manage our time wisely so that we meet every deadline. Although we both
sometimes portray systematic/mechanical methods when leading, we also like to
blend that with our own creativity and fun. Joseph and I like to keep our meetings
energetic and exciting to increase member participation and strengthen enthusiasm.
Joseph is a very reliable and responsible co-chair. We divide our duties evenly and
provide support for one another when needed. I believe Joseph’s out-going, bubbly
attitude and strong people skills has played a large role in the success so far of the
First Year Focus Council. I am so glad to call him my good friend and my co-chair.
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ADDITIONAL
This is the flier
design that we are
using for the
Service Brown Bag
Lunch advertising.
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This is the design of the Class of 2017 blanket that we have designed with North East
Fleece and have distributed to the student body.
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These are the advertising logos we are using for the Priceless Gems Facebook Page.
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MULTICULTURAL AFFAIRS AND DIVERSITY OUTREACH COMMITTEE
Roderick “Dee” Gladney
rodeglad@live.unc.edu
Andrew Wood
andrewwa@live.unc.edu
Thomas Gooding
t.gooding@live.unc.edu
OVERVIEW OF RESPONSIBILITIES
MADO is an organization for the Student Government (oldest committee) that
fosters the principles of spreading diversity through cultural awareness and
advocacy on campus. We hope to promote cultural awareness and celebrate
diversity within the Carolina community. As one of the oldest and largest
committees within UNC Student Government, we hope to sustain the tradition of
completing platform points in innovative and exciting ways that impact a larger
portion of the student body.
We strive to create a more inclusive, accepting environment at UNC by uniting Tar
Heels of all backgrounds including, but not limited to: race/ethnicity, socioeconomic
class, religion, ability, gender, sexual orientation, and political affiliation. We
envision our initiatives and events on campus to foster a safe setting for students to
engage in dialogue with their peers, faculty members, and administrators about
diversity issues. By forming a stronger relationship with the Office of Diversity and
Multicultural Affairs, the LGBTIQA Center, and other university and student-led
diversity programs, we hope to help in further implementing and promoting their
missions and goals on a larger scale. And by being the harbingers of social inclusion
and ambassadors of cultural awareness and competence, it our duty to help others
embrace the liberality of this university. And as a committee we take pride in
bridging those gaps so that the students on this campus can live in harmony with
one another. Much more, it is our obligation to continue the mission as past MADO
Co-Chair representatives have by further creating an inclusive and welcoming social
dynamic for all those that attend this university.
PLATFORM PROGRESS
November 2013
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FaithFest 2013
The Multicultural Affairs and Diversity Outreach Committee planned and organized
“FaithFest,” a new event to encourage dialogue among diverse religious
organizations on campus and in the community. Approximately 250 students
attended “FaithFest,” which was help on November 18, 2013 from 6:00 pm – 8:00
pm. Seventeen student and community organizations participated, and seven
groups performed during the event. The purpose of “FaithFest” was to celebrate the
diversity of beliefs among UNC students and members of the Chapel Hill community
and to encourage acceptance, understanding, and unity. In addition, the event
provided students with an opportunity to learn about faiths different from their
own.
January 2014
Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Week
For the month of January, MADO collaborated with the Office of Diversity and
Multicultural Affairs for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Week. MADO works
with ODMA each year for the celebration of MLK, Jr.’s legacy. During the week of
festivities honoring and celebrating Dr. King’s legacy and many contributions, there
were a multitude of events sponsored by various organizations on campus to shed
light on the importance of Dr. King’s legacy in a 21st century setting and on a college
campus. One of the most notable and highlighted events for the annual celebration
week is the keynote speaker and this year we were successful in bringing Hill
Harper, the author of the New York Times bestseller and American Library
Association Award-winner “Letters to a Young Brother: Manifest Your Destiny.”
The celebration week not only serves as a platform to honor Dr. King's legacy and
many contributions, but to also promote cultural awareness and celebrate diversity
within the Carolina community.
March 2014
Real Talk: Part 2
Real Talk, which we collaborated with Omega Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., was an event
we hosted last semester and it ended up being a hit on campus. The event was
geared towards creating an open discussion about topics relevant to the Carolina
community. For the month of March, MADO will be co-sponsoring another event
with Omega Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., called Real Talk Part 2. We intend to recreate the
event this semester, but with a new topic! Real Talk 2 will focus on "The College
Experience...past, present and future." It will serve as a healthy medium to shine
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light on and bring awareness to the college experience. Students will hear about the
past, present and future of college and learn how other Tarheels feel about being
first generation students, how they balance their busy schedules, and how it was for
Carolina graduates to find jobs after college or get accepted into graduate schools.
We hope this event to be both insightful and educational for students.
COLLABORATION
We have collaborated with Omega Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., the University Registrar,
University Human Resources and Disability Services, CinemAbility director and cast,
Campus Y, GNH Coalition, Kevin Claybren as Senior Advisor, the Board of
Governors/General Administration, Carolina MALES (and other student groups
from other campuses working for the Minority Retention initiative), Carolina
Latina/o Collaborative, Carolina LGBTQ Center, the Carolina American Indian
Center, and (loosely) a few other organizations around campus as we discuss
potential initiatives and events for the year. Our members are increasing our
collaborations with other organizations, so we will be adding to this list as we work
towards accomplishing our greater goals and projects.
THE CO-CHAIR PERSPECTIVE
The co-chairs of MADO have been each taken up specific focuses for year as stated
back in our summer reports - Thomas focus is Holi Moli, Andrew’s Unity Dinners,
and Dee’s minority male retention. However, in addition to their focuses and
personal projects, each of the co-chairs created subcommitees for certain topics that
address diversity in different matters. As such, Dee is over the Race &
Ethnicity/International Student Affairs subcommittee, Andrew is over the Gender &
Sexuality Affairs/Ableism subcommittee, and Thomas is over the Socioeconomic/
Interfaith & Religious Affairs subcommittee.
IMPROVEMENTS
By next year, we hope to see MADO’s impact on the student body increase. This
involves promoting our initiatives more and developing a stronger and better
system of communication. By creating a better workflow for MADO, we hope to
create a system by which future Co-Chairs can empower committee-members to
accomplish set goals, as well as create their own ideas and initiatives for
progressing diversity and inclusion at Carolina. We hope to address the issues that
students face on a daily basis in the Carolina community and the global community,
such as the continuation of racial disparities, self-segregation, and/or cultural
incompetence by working more closely with other students organizations to see
more tangible effects on the student body.
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For the upcoming years, we would like to see progress on the following issues and
projects:
-
Unity Dinners
Transfer Student Transitioning
International Student Buddy System
Minority Male Retention
Status of Asian Americans
Sexual Assault
Holi Moli
Carolina Community Agreements
Expanding Participation in Diversity and Safety Training
Feminist Forums (Discontinued)
Tea Talks
RealTalk Monologues
However, as the year progressed, we saw a lack of interest within our committee
members and this could be due to the inactivity for some members, which greatly
affected what we could do on campus. By encouraging a sense of community,
accountability, and leadership within our committee, we hope that next year’s cochairs will increase membership capabilities and involvement. In addition, by
instilling the values of excellence and positivity in their committee meetings, we
hope that the future MADO representatives create a much more enjoyable and
efficient experience for committee members, as well. If the committee itself isn’t
wholesome and working as a unit, this hinders the overall of MADO but Student
Government as a whole.
Thomas, Andrew, and Dee plan to speak with the new co-chairs during the
administration transition meetings to discuss ways for improvement for the MADO
committee both internally and externally.
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PUBLIC RELATIONS, OUTREACH AND DESIGN COMMITTEE
Meira Lubkin
mlubkin01@gmail.com
JT Derian
jderian@live.unc.edu
Ben Peltzer
benpeltzer@gmail.com
OVERVIEW OF RESPONSIBILITIES
The PROD team is a dedicated multimedia, design and strategy consultant for all
student government committees and associated projects. As a results-oriented
public relations entity, the team aims to produce high quality outreach advice,
design work and multimedia support on a reasonable timetable.
PLATFORM PROGRESS
Instead of having our goals outlined in the Lambden Administration platform, PROD
has taken on the tasks of any effective public relations effort in the government
sector: accessibility, transparency and advocacy. Through our team's work this year,
PROD has moved the Executive Branch further toward these goals in our duties.
PROD has increased the accessibility of Student Government to the students of UNC
through social media and the multimedia subcommittee. All of the members of
PROD write Facebook posts and tweets about Student Government events, as well
as notable events on campus, to create an ongoing social media presence that is both
informative and engaging.
In previous administrations, transparency has been understood as publishing
committee and cabinet minutes online. While this is a great step toward making
Student Government operations available to the public, the way they are presented
leaves much to be desired. PROD has been working with the Tech & Web committee
to update the Executive Branch website in order to make an intuitive and easier
user experience, leading to an increased understanding of what Student
Government is doing.In the Lambden platform, the website is also listed under the
advocacy plank as a place for students to voice their concerns. This semester, PROD
has worked to publicize issues that involve students, namely the Defend the Drop
campaign. In order to increase awareness of the Board of Governors' decision to
decrease the add/drop period to 10 days, PROD has created social media profile
pictures and a YouTube video with links to the petition created by Student
Government.
COLLABORATION
MADO
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Our committee has worked with MADO on a number of different projects. The first
is creating a flyer for their upcoming Night of the Arts event, which will be on
October 22nd. We are also currently in the works of planning their Faith Fest,
scheduled for November 18th in the Great Hall of the Student Union. Logistics on this
event are being worked out at the moment, so we expect to work more on public
relations with MADO as soon as these details are figured out. Future projects include
the MLKJ Birthday Celebration Unity Dinner, which we plan on assisting with in
terms of Public Relations when the time comes. Our plans will be mostly publicityheavy, in terms of social media and posters.
We’ve currently been working with MADO to come up with ideas for publicizing Holi
Moli.
Speakers at Carolina
We have worked with Speakers at Carolina in terms of creating new methods of
advertising for their first speaking event, on November 7th. We have come up with
alternative ways to spread the word rather than traditional methods, i.e. standing in
the pit or painting the cube. In addition to advertising directly to the students, the
co-chairs requested that we spread the word though social media, mostly done in
the week leading up to the event.
This semester we have been helping to publicize the upcoming Chiron Award event
through twitter and facebook.
First Year Focus Council
We have met with the FYFC co-chairs and established a PR plan that would allow
our relationship with them to work efficiently over the course of the year. We have
been given the responsibility of designing flyers for the Brown Bag Lunch event for
FYFC. We plan to do the same for FYFC’s Priceless Gem’s event as well as promoting
the sale of the class of 2017’s class item. We are now working on promoting the
Priceless Gems event through twitter, and we have designed a facebook cover photo
for the brown bag lunch sponsored by insomnia cookies.
Environmental Affairs Committee
We are currently working on a series of design projects for EAC. These consist of the
Dorm Composting program that will be available to dorms that show the most
interest, along with the Game Day Challenge, which is meant to bring awareness for
composting and recycling at the football game. For the Dorm Composting program,
we have created flyers, an informational email, and logos for the composting bins.
For the Game Day Challenge, we have worked on producing advertisement
materials to get information about the event as well as to rope in volunteers.
University Services
We have worked with University Services to crate and implement a plan to
advertise the airport shuttles for fall break. This plan includes creating a logo,
making a Facebook event, emailing an online flier to Community Directors, sharing
the event on the Student Government Facebook, and sending the information to
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various listservs. This was a success, as all shuttles were filled. This process will be
repeated in November for Thanksgiving Break. We also expect to start working on a
plan to publicize this committee’s upcoming Swipes for Charity event in the next few
weeks.
This semester, we have created a logo for the thanksgivspring dinner, along with
collaborating on the launch of the UNC mobile app.
Academic Affairs
We have assisted in advertising for all projects and events held by this committee.
We are currently working on the One State, One Rate campaign and the debate
about shortening the add drop period. We have also worked on promoting a micro
grant known as Another Way of Learning. This promotion has included creating a
flyer for the grant, which is currently being forwarded to hundreds of professors on
campus.
PSAC
We are developing a tentative plan for publicizing this committee’s upcoming event,
SERV-UNC in November. This route includes publicizing on Facebook and Twitter.
We plan to brainstorm more creative ways to get the word out as soon as this
committee decides on the speaker they will use. In addition to this, PSAC will be
holding another Public Service Fair in the spring, so we are currently in the process
of thinking of ideas to begin a PR campaign for this fair, hopefully to be started at the
end of this semester. The committee has asked us to assist in assembling a full list of
service opportunities to be accessible to students. This will be done in an effort to
make service more accessible to the student body. We will be figuring out how to
reach out to all of the organizations on campus and those in the community that are
associated with on-campus organizations. We also worked on a new logo for P-SAC
in the fall semester.
Carolina Athletics Project
We have had a little contact with CAP, where they have asked us to assist in the
promotion and publicity of their costume-out women’s soccer game on Halloween
against Duke. While getting in contact with this committee has been a little difficult,
we have done our best to begin brainstorming and coming up with ideas about this
event.
Public Safety
We have worked with Public Safety mainly in terms of their Safetober Fest. We have
strategized with this committee in terms of the best places for them to post fliers,
along with coming up with social media campaigns to publicize the event. We have
also helped this committee encourage students to get their flu shots and stay
healthy through twitter and Facebook posts.
During the spring semester, we have helped Public Safety with publicizing personal
appreciation week.
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As a whole, we have had very positive feedback in terms of what we have done thus
far with the committees, and plan to keep these relationships strong throughout the
school year. We also hope to become even more involved in other committees’
public relations needs, with whom we have not yet had a chance speak.
THE CO-CHAIR PERSPECTIVE
JT Derian
This year our team has focused on becoming a reliable branch of student
government that will produce quality work on a consistent basis within a
reasonable time period. While this focus seems a simple goal, it is not one that the
PROD team has historically been able to accomplish. Various components go into
creating a culture of consistency, and aligning them properly is a tall order.
However, I feel that for the large majority, this year PROD has been successful in
accomplishing this goal.
Our members have maintained largely productive relationships with their
respective committees. For the very few members who have found their committee
to be a poor fit (committee unresponsive, or committee does not like liaison) we
have been able to successfully shuffle them to other committees. Unfortunately
towards the end of the year, committees begin to slow down their project output
and a result we have slowed down our help. Consequentially we have reached out to
other sources for projects (Dance Marathon, for example).
Additionally, we have produced a variety of logos and designs for our active
committees and our members have been able to successfully fulfill requests
autonomously. For the special projects that we have been assigned on a very short
time table (defend the drop video, podcasts, profile picture) we have been able to
produce quality work. The only fault as of yet from a special projects perspective
has been the podcast. However, this has largely been due to the difficulty of
coordinating various busy schedules during the past couple exam weeks. Obviously
there have been some difficulties in project completion, but rarely has there been a
severe delay.
As with any collection of people, difficulties have arisen. However I feel that we have
overall gotten along very well and have been able to work effectively. We have been
able to navigate the communication barrier successfully and this has lead to a much
improved committee leadership structure.
Finally, as we begin to move out as the co-chairs for PROD, we have begun to shift
responsibility for the smaller projects to the upcoming chairs. We feel that an
overlap in leadership is a necessary component in continuing the success of this
year’s PROD committee and should ensure that the next year is more productive
than the last.
Meira Lubkin
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As a team, PROD has stepped up and taken charge of new tasks. There has been
quite a significant learning curve in terms of how to handle these new tasks, but as a
whole, I have found that we have been able to handle anything that has been thrown
at us, for the most part. There have been times when certain tasks asked of us were
not delivered up in a timely or substantial way, but we have learned and done our
best to overcome most obstacles.
The PROD team has gone through a fairly significant transformation this year. Due
to this transformation, we as co-chairs have had to adjust accordingly, and in many
cases have hit roadblocks. Most of the time, these roadblocks form due to a
combination of new team elements along with a lack of communication. In a few
situations, when we have been faced with something unexpected, we have faltered.
This leads to a break down of communication due to the stress of an unexpected
task.
That being said, we have grown from this experience and I feel we have managed to
become better at our jobs because of it. As the months have gone on, we have each
learned one another’s strengths, and have learned to work together as a unit. This
shows in our team’s completion of a number of projects, including the improved
twitter and Facebook accounts, as well as our team representatives and their strong
handle on the committees they represent.
As a whole, the PROD team has come far, but I feel we do have a long way to go. I
believe that with Andrew’s new platform in place we will be able to better mesh
with other committees. I look forward to seeing how PROD adjusts to the newly
changing system, and look forward to seeing continued growth as the new
administration takes over.
Ben Peltzer
Leading PROD has definitely been a challenge, but we have improved so much as
leaders and as a committee that it has absolutely been worth the effort. In the first
half of the Lambden Administration, PROD has built a solid foundation that can be
built on in the second half and the years beyond.
PROD has entered uncharted territory by forming Student Government's first design
team. It's been a very demanding process, but we are constantly adapting to best
serve both the team members and Student Government's committees. We are still in
the formation period of the team so it hasn't been tested yet, but I'm very excited
about seeing the team's creativity and exploring the possibilities of what we can do
together.
We chose to interview our committee applicants, which was definitely a smart
decision. Our committee members are all excellent at what they do, and we've
formed great working relationships with them. They are all incredibly fast learners,
and I trust that they can adapt to any public relations situation thrown at them. Our
members consistently put out great work, and having full confidence in the entire
team's abilities has been a great experience.
As a chair of PROD, I have considered the sustainability of the committee. We hope
that PROD will continue to serve as an in-house relations firm for the Executive
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Branch in future administrations, and the best way for us to do that is by creating a
structure that works for everyone involved. By consistently putting out top-quality
work, we hope that other committees in cabinet can trust us as a resource, so that
future co-chairs will know to turn to PROD instead of PROD having to search for
ways to help the committees.
Addition Details
Adding design to PROD's name has proved to be useful, as we are near the
completion of Student Government's first in-house design team. There is a
streamlined design request form for committees to put information about fliers or
profile pictures that they need, and our committee members are learning Photoshop
to make a quick turnaround time for those requests. We expect the design team to
be fully operational by the start of the spring semester, and hope to use this
formation process as a guide for future administrations.
The strategy subcommittee has conducted think-tank sessions in our meetings to
get a wide range of ideas for both the website redesign and the podcasts. These
sessions have been very helpful by introducing creative approaches to our projects,
and we are considering expanding these strategic brainstorms as a resource for
other committees' new projects.
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PUBLIC SAFETY
Hayden Byrd
hbyrd@email.unc.edu
South Moore
southm@live.unc.edu
OVERVIEW OF RESPONSIBILITIES
The Public Safety Committee of the Lambden Administration strives to make both
campus and the town a safer place for Carolina Students by informing students of
the numerous resources available to them, advocating for improvements to existing
programs, and ensuring that the concerns of students about safety are heard by
administrators.
PLATFORM PROGRESS
Comprehensive Safety Website
In November, following a number of delays and roadblocks that had slowed the
website’s progress, we decided to pursue a new strategy that involved collaborating
with the Department of Public Safety to get other necessary campus departments
involved with the website. Prior to winter break, DPS agreed to not only support the
website’s creation but also to advocate for it to become its own tab on the unc.edu
webpage. Over winter break DPS circulated the content outline for the website to all
other necessary administrators who, after the incorporation of some minor
suggested changes, also agreed to support the website and its addition to the
unc.edu homepage.
In March, ITS agreed to design and create the website with the url “besafe.unc.edu.”
The website is currently being made with input from the Public Safety Committee.
All the information for the website has been put online and now the site is being
cleaned up both in terms of design and content. A campaign to publicize the
website’s launch has been started, with Carolina Creative designing the website’s
logo. Ads promoting the site have been placed on ActiveTVs and on social media,
flyers have been placed in dorms, and a letter to the Daily Tar Heel has been
published.
We recommend that the Powell Administration improve the nascent website with
improving both content and graphics.
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Safety Roundtable Discussions
The Public Safety Committee has held two Roundtable Discussions since the October
Report. The goal of these roundtable is to facilitate conversation and collaboration
between relevant student organizations, student government, and campus
administrators. The first was held on November 21 and was on the culture
surrounding sexual assault on campus. The roundtable was attended by Sheena
Osaki of Project Dinah, AJ Karon of Students Working for the Adequation of Gender,
Tyler Jacon of the Student Safety and Security Committee, Christy Lambden, Kiran
Bhardwaj, Desiree Riekenberg, Kelli Raker, and EW Quimbaya Winship. Being
cognizant of the extensive work being done on sexual assault policy, we chose to
focus on what could be done after the policy was completed.
Three ideas proposed were a comprehensive media plan to educate students on the
completed sexual assault policy, a new messaging strategy centered on social
priming (i.e. using statistics to show that working to prevent sexual assault is a
social norm), and making trainings for sexual assault prevention more convenient
for students to get and designing graduate student and faculty appropriate
trainings. Because the sexual assault policy has not been finalized, we will be
passing these suggestions onto the Powell administration’s Public Safety Committee.
Our third (second since the October report) discussion was held on Monday, Feb. 10
at 7:00 p.m. in the Union Room 3209. Public safety co-chairs, as well as the mental
and emotional health subcommittee of the public safety committee organized the
roundtable. Taylor Swankie, of ReThink Psychiatric Illness met with the committee
members to establish appropriate discuss questions for the event, as well as a list of
invitees.
The roundtable was attended by Dr. Theresa Raphael-Grimm, Faculty of School of
Nursing and Medicine; Kimberlee Nelson, UNC department of advising; Dean
Blackburn, Dean of Student Wellness; Shruti Patel, Active Minds; Taylor Swankie
and Viviana Bonilla, ReThink Psychiatric Illness; Shelby Hudspeth, Executive Branch
Director of State and External Affairs; Jonathan Sauls, Dean of Students; Amy
Guathier, UNC Department of Housing; Matt Farley, Student Body Treasurer.
Discussion was abundant, with topics including increased training for
administrators, faculty, and advisors regarding how to manage emotional health
issues appropriately, how to better counsel and provide information for all student
returning to campus following a leave of absence, and how to overcome the
normalization of stress on the college campus. From the discussion, the public safety
committee has decided to host a event, entitled the Art of Empathy, to raise
awareness for mental and emotional well-being at UNC.
Improving Alert Carolina
Efforts to implement desktop alerts are ongoing and can be found in the Tech & Web
section of the March Report.
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After researching the results of implementing a scrolling “bottom line” of emergency
notifications on the campus cable package, we decided not to pursue it as a method
of emergency notification at UNC as we did not find it to be the most effective way of
reaching students.
Promoting Existing Safety Resources
This semester, we have chosen to focus on promoting transportation options,
particularly late night transportation options, to students. This was one of the idea
proposed at the off campus safety roundtable discussion in the fall. Our committee
researched various transportation options, including Buzz Rides, Safe Ride, P2P and
the town’s flat rate taxi ordinance. After compiling this information, we submitted it
to the Public Relations, Outreach, and Design committee to design the flyer. In the
meantime we spoke with numerous businesses on Franklin Street who have agreed
to display the flyer. The flyers will also be placed in residence halls. We requested
and received funding from the Student Safety and Security Committee to print the
flyers.
Promoting Flu Shots
In the months immediately following the October Report we continued to promote
the availability of flu shots on campus, employing more creative methods to reach a
greater number of students. In November we made a video featuring Vice
Chancellor Crisp, Director of Student Wellness Dean Blackburn, Christy Lambden,
and Rameses that encouraged students to get their flu shot. Our committee gathered
the footage and the video was compiled and edited by the Public Relations, Outreach,
and Design Committee.
We also created a “meme” that was shared by our committee members and the
Executive Branch of Student Government account on Facebook and twitter. Finally,
we painted a cube promoting the dates where students could get foul shots in the
Union.
Advocating for Crosswalk at Longview Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd
The public safety committee previously identified a need for a crosswalk at
Longview Street and Mill Creek Condos on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd due to the
high volume of traffic and high number of students needing to safely cross the road.
Kumar Neppalli of the Town of Chapel hill previously informed co-chairs of the
public safety committee that a crosswalk was under design for this area. Upon a lack
of updates regarding the crosswalk’s progress, co-chairs contacted Chief Chris Blue
of Chapel Hill Police Department regarding his knowledge. Chief Blue contacted
Kumar Neppalli and informed the public safety committee that Martin Luther King
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Jr. Blvd is a DOT road and the crosswalk is currently under review by the DOT. No
further progress on the crosswalk will be made prior to DOT approval.
The public safety committee plans to maintain contact with both Kumar Neppalli
and Chief Blue for updates regarding the crosswalk’s progression and development.
Sexual Assault Policy
Sexual Assault Policy reform was handled by the Student Body President, for more
information, please see his contribution to the March Report.
The Art of Empathy
The public safety committee decided to incorporate a mental and emotional wellbeing aspect to this semester’s projects. We identified mental and emotional wellbeing as an area of safety for students and felt that the topic was underrepresented
on campus. Our hope for this semester was to facilitate conversations through our
roundtable discussion on the topic as well as advocate for increased knowledge and
representation throughout campus.
As a result of our roundtable discussion on Feb. 10 regarding mental and emotional
health, our committee developed an event to promote awareness of mental and
emotional health on UNC’s campus. The event is entitled “Art of Empathy” and will
be held Wednesday, Mar. 19 at 6:00 p.m. in the Union Auditorium. The event will
feature performances by Carolina Vibe, Cadence acappella group, Wordsmiths, and
the Achordants acappella group, as well as a speech from Taylor Swankie of ReThink
Psychiatric Illness. Shelby Hudspeth, Executive Branch Director of State and
External Affairs, will host. There will be a reception following the event in the Union
auditorium lobby, which will feature artwork from Brushes with Life, a UNC
Hospital art therapy program.
From this event we hope to inspire campus unity among the issue of mental and
emotional distress as well as raise awareness of resources available throughout the
UNC system for support.
COLLABORATION
The past six months, we have had the opportunity to collaborate with a number of
groups outside of student government. For our efforts in the area of mental and
emotional health, we have worked very closely with Rethink: Psychiatric Illness.
Rethink has guided us through our work, ensuring that we had a nuanced
understanding of the issues and connecting us with the key students and
administrators on campus who are tackling this issue. We also worked with Active
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Minds and performance groups like Cadence, Carolina Vibe, the Achordants, and
UNC Wordsmiths also helped us with our mental and emotional health efforts. We
also worked with Students for the Adequation of Gender, Project Dinah, the
Residence Hall Association, and Buzz Rides
Within Student Government, we have acted as a liaison to the Department of Public
Safety for other committees of cabinet. We fulfilled this role both with Speakers at
Carolina, as they sought a parking pass for their speaker at the Eve Carson Memorial
Lecture and for the University Services Committee as they met with DPS to expand
the break shuttles to the airport.
THE CO-CHAIR PERSPECTIVE
Hayden Byrd
As a leader of the public safety committee for the Lambden administration, I have
been given a rewarding and challenging opportunity to fulfill both the established
platform and our committee’s additional projects. I have thoroughly enjoyed my
experience and role in this committee’s success.
Our committee’s retention of members through second semester was excellent and
each committee member has continuously contributed to the tremendous success
we’ve experienced this administration. With exceptional organization,
communication, and collaboration our committee has accomplished each of our
goals. South and I continue to encourage our members’ ideas for projects and
passion for the topic of safety. As I reflect on this year’s challenges and successes I
am extremely proud of the progress we have made as a team.
Finally my experience as co-chair has been immensely enhanced by my
collaboration with South. South is tremendously invested in his work with student
government and never ceases to inspire me with his ability to balance his many
responsibilities. I feel that South and I compliment each other as a team and I am
grateful for the opportunity to work with such a great co-chair.
South Moore
Serving as Public Safety co-chair has been a tremendous honor. Our committee has
accomplished a great deal over the past twelve months, from expanding Alert
Carolina to creating a comprehensive safety website. We have brought students and
administrators together through our roundtable discussions program, made
students more aware of resources available to them through Safetoberfest,
promoting flu shots, and creating a flyer detailing late night transportation flyers,
and have advocated for greater off campus safety by working with the Town of
Chapel Hill and NCDOT to place a crosswalk at the intersection of Longview and
MLK Boulevard.
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Our success is due to the dedication of our members, who have worked incredibly
hard all year. Working with such a talented and committed group has taught me to
trust others ability to complete tasks. I grew more and more confident in giving my
committee members greater ownership as the year went on. Each time, they
responded to greater responsibilities by exceeding my expectations. Having
watched these students the past eight months, I am not surprised that they have
found success within and outside of student government. Next year, members of our
committee will serve in congress, on RHA’s executive board, and on leadership
teams of various student organizations. I expect that they will also serve as member
of cabinet, external appointments, and executive assistants in the next
administration.
While I believe our entire committee is praise worthy, one person deserves
individual recognition and that is my co-chair Hayden Byrd, who has been
fundamental to our success. Hayden has worked tirelessly throughout the year,
ensuring that our committee remains organized, focused, and on task.
However, this committee still has much work to do in the coming years. Binge
drinking, lack of resources for and campus-wide understanding of mental and
emotional health, educating the student body on the new sexual assault policy,
improving besafe.unc.edu and finding new safety resources that utilize the latest
technology are all issues that the Powell administration’s Public Safety committee
must face.
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PUBLIC SERVICE AND ADVOCACY SPECIAL PROJECT
Atima Huria
huriaa87@live.unc.edu
Mary Peeler
mepeeler@live.unc.edu
OVERVIEW OF RESPONSIBILITIES:
The focus of the Public Service and Advocacy Committee is to enhance
communication and collaboration across the various service groups on campus,
connect interested students with service opportunities, and set a tone across
campus of actively engaging in service. Carolina has always been a communitybased, service-oriented campus and we hope to foster that culture. Our goal is for
the public service environment at Carolina to continue to grow into a mutually
supportive, efficient, and effective community, capable of making an even greater
impact. Our committee works with students by emphasizing outreach, awareness,
communication, and transparency between the service organizations of UNC. We
want to maximize the existing resources already on campus by helping both
organizations and students take advantage of their full potential for service.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
PLATFORM PROGRESS:
Connecting students, providing accessibility, and encouraging involvement
Christy’s Team will bolster the efforts of Student Government in collaboration with
various public service organizations. The goal of the Public Service and Advocacy
Committee (PSAC) is to expand the accessibility of service opportunities for
students and encourage students to become involved in some type of service
organization. PSAC will work to present students with opportunities to find the right
type of service for them.
We have developed an online searchable database for different types of service so
that students can conveniently access and find an organization that fits their
passions and interests. It is called E-Serve Harmony and contains descriptions and
contact information for many service organizations on campus, although we are still
working on recruiting more organizations for the database. This was collaboration
with Student Government’s Technology and Web committee and we plan to
continue to work with them to improve and expand the page. Although the page is
fully functional, it is currently not being used or promoted because there are still
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some issues that need to be resolved. We plan to continue to work on it and
promote it as soon as any issues are resolved.
As of March 2014, we have not continued to work on this project due to not being
able to access and administer the site. The person who helped us with this last year
has not provided us with any further information. Instead of working on this, we
plan to work on creating the outline for a Cabinet Calendar that will feature the
dates, times, and descriptions of all Cabinet hosted events so that all of Cabinet will
be aware of them and will be able to help publicize them as such.
On Friday, September 20th, 2013 PSAC hosted an annual Public Service Fair
in the Union. This event used to be sponsored by the Chapel Hill Carrboro Chamber
of Commerce, but the Chamber no longer wanted to play a leading role in planning
the fair, so PSAC chose to add it to the platform in order to give students, primarily
first years, a way to get connected to service organizations in the community. We
felt this would be a great way to launch our Serving from the Start initiative, as well
as provide easier accessibility to all service opportunities for students. The fair was
originally schedules for August 21st, but it got rained out, as no rain location was
available. On September 20th, we had originally planned to have the fair in the pit,
but since it was raining it was held in Union room 3206. Because of this alternate
location and the weather, the fair was not as much of a success as it could have been
had it been held outside. In addition to this, a few of the organizations that had
signed up did not show up. A few of the organizations that did show up were: the
Campus Y, Habitat for Humanity Restore, Heavenly Groceries, and Tar Heel Table.
We are hoping to have another public service fair in the spring and hope that it will
be a bigger success than the fall fair.
Encouraging Service from the Start
It is important to involve first year students in the service community at Carolina as
early as possible. Christy’s team will work with the New Student and Carolina
Parent Programs Office as well as service organizations on campus (such as the
Campus Y) to increase service events specifically geared toward uniting new
students at the beginning of the fall semester.
This past summer during New Student Orientation, an optional service session, Stop
Hunger Now, was offered during CTOPS After Dark. The program, which was
developed by the 2011 - 2012 PSAC, has been given many positive reviews, and we
are currently partnering with the OrientationLeaders to assess the effectiveness of
the service project and how we can make this program permanent by providing
constant funding and incorporating it into the regular agenda. We hope that it
inspired first years to find other service outlets once they stepped on campus in
August.
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We are also working with the New Students and Parents Programs office to help
service organizations publicize their events through Week of Welcome activities. To
further build upon our collaborative model, we hope to partner with the First Year
Focus Council for this project. Our vision is that Serving from the Start will become
an annual service project so that every incoming Carolina student has the
opportunity to engage in service culture early on in his or her college career. Though
it has been planned since last year, last year we did not have the resources to pull off
a big enough service event. We hope that this year, with the help of Kristy
Barngrover from the New Students and Parents Programs, we can pull off, at least a
minor, service event.
As part of this initiative, we had originally planned the Public Service Fair as part of
Week of Welcome, but for weather reasons it had to be rescheduled. The Public
Service Fair is being planned as part of the Week of Welcome for the coming Fall of
2014.
Another idea regarding service from the start is to prepare a pamphlet of a kind or
detailed e-mail describing different service organizations to send out to first-years
before they arrive on campus in the fall. So far, this has only remained an idea, but
after the fall SERV-UNC conference, we can focus on this initiative much more. We
also plan to work with Kristy Barngrover at the New Students and Parents Program
with this initiative. It was an idea that originated last year and we hope to continue
working towards it. There is no further progress on this project as of March 2014.
We have been focusing more on the advocacy side of things due to the multitude of
issues being brought up on campus currently.
Student Government Service Hub
As a special project of Student Government, it is important that PSAC works to
accomplish their goals and better their reputation. One way for PSAC to improve the
Executive Board’s image and get everyone involved is to serve as a hub for public
service involvement on the board itself. We plan to do at least one large service
event for the Executive Board each semester.
One of PSAC’s newest projects is helping each committee on Student Government as
well as Executive Board as a whole become more service and community oriented.
We have heard individually from each committee and plan to help them with their
personal initiatives. For example, the Multicultural Affairs and Diversity Outreach
Committee (MADO) is planning on collaborating with PSAC to work on a project
involving Socio-economic Justice. This collaboration will culminate in April when we
host our social and economic justice week: focusing on issues such as education
reform, fair trade and workers’ rights and homelessness/hunger relief. Like this,
each committee hasa project planned out. We plan to designate each committee a
member of PSAC, which will help each committee to coordinate their personal
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service idea. One idea for all of the Executive Branch is to form a Relay for Life team
and raise money to support the cause.
Emphasizing collaboration and communication
The Lambden Administration emphasizes campus collaboration to ensure greater
outreach and sustainability among various service initiatives. To better unite
disparate service organizations and increase efficiency, PSAC will facilitate crosscampus service-based dialogue and collaboration. PSAC will provide guidance and
support while working to reduce redundancy and overlap, investing in the success
of committed organizations.
One of our major goals for the year is to serve as a hub for organizations on campus
to get in contact with one another and get support for their initiatives. The E-Serve
Harmony interface that we have worked to develop will serve as a resource for
groups so that they can connect with one another. We are currently trying to expand
the system to encourage usage and publicize its features. Our events such as the
SERV-UNC conference and the Public Service fair also act as networking activities,
which bring together service-minded individuals and allow them to meet one
another and make connections.
Helping University Services and MADO with their projects has helped us further out
goal of collaborating with other committees. These events also require
collaborations with the Campus Y, HOPE, Students for Educational Reform, and
Students for Workers’ Rights, which has also helped with communication and
outreach.
SERV-UNC
On November 11th, we will host a conference for all service-minded students with
the theme “Voice and Advocacy.” We will have a key-note speaker and a panelist
discussion with leaders both on-campus and in the Chapel Hill community talking
about their successes in advocating for their cause of choice. We also hope to make
the conference count as a Service Training for the Buckley Public Scholars Program.
We held a similar conference in the spring, which was very successful, so we hope
that we are able to replicate the success and turn the conference into a bi-annual
occurrence.
Through prominent speakers, workshops on effective publicity and
advocacy, and the opportunity to learn more about the different causes which
Carolina students are working for, we hope that this event will encourage the
participants to feel more prepared to take on their own causes and advocate for
their passions. This theme is especially relevant in the current economic climate
because it is crucial to be able to speak to the importance of your organization or
cause in order to gain donor support or even governmental changes. We feel that is
event will be a wonderful way to bring representatives of student organizations and
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interested students together to discuss a part of public service that is typically less
emphasized. We are currently searching for a keynote speaker and panelists that
will attract strong student interest, and finalizing the details for the conference.
We are planning out second SERV-UNC conference as part of our social and
economic justice week. It will focus on homelessness/hunger relief and how we as a
community can work to alleviate this. It will be hosted in April.
Social and Economic Justice Week
This April, we will host our first social and economic justice week. The purpose of
this event is to represent Student Government on important social issues and be the
voice of the executive branch by taking a stand on these issues and collaborating
with other campus and outside organizations to do so. The three issues that we will
focus on are: education reform, fair trade and workers’ rights, and
homelessness/hunger relief. We will host three different pit days/other events that
present each issue in a way that will facilitate further discussion and ideas for
action. This is a collaboration with the Multicultural Affairs and Diversity Outreach
Committee of Student Government.
thanks(giv)spring
This event will be on April 4th, 2014 between 11 AM and 2 PM at McCorkle Place
near the Old Well on UNC's Campus and it is completely free. The purposes of the
event are to foster a sense of community and celebrate it, give thanks year-round,
raise awareness of the poverty issue in Chapel Hill, and connect the local homeless
the resources that they need and students to service opportunities. Any donations
received through the event will go towards a grant for future projects that benefit
the homeless population in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. We have gathered food
donations from restaurants on Chapel Hill. This event is a collaboration with the
University Services Committee of Student Government and takes the place of their
Swipes for Charity event to provide food to the poor and create a connection
between the Chapel Hill Community and UNC students.
COLLABORATION
We have collaborated with several other committees so far this year and plan to
collaborate with more in the near future. First and foremost, one of our major
initiatives, Serving from the Start, collaborated with the New Students and Parents
Program for the Public Service Fair. We will continue to collaborate with them after
Fall Break to talk about how to encourage first - years to get involved in service. We
also are collaborating with the Technology and Web Committee to improve and
expand the E- Serve Website. We have been working with Priya Patel and Kimberly
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Yates, our Public Relations and Outreach representatives to create a logo and
Facebook page for our special project. They will also be helping us to publicize EServe Harmony once it is fixed, as well as publicize for the SERV-UNC conferences.
We have also collaborated with Tim Wahl from Fix My Campus. Fix My Campus was
present at the Public Service Fair and attempted to gather feedback on how students
want to become more involved in Public Service and what PSAC can do to help. We
have also used the resources of the Executive Board, specifically the Chief of Staff.
Not only do we interact with all of the Cabinet members under the guidance of the
Executive Board, but we are supported by each of the members. For instance, when
we needed assistance with planning and implementing the Public Service Fair, the
Executive Board helped us every step of the way. In addition, our fall SERV-UNC
conference poses an opportunity to collaborate with the Campus Y and other
affiliated organizations and speakers.
As of March, we continue to collaborate with other committees such as University
Services and MADO. This has also led to collaborating with HOPE and the Campus Y.
THE CO-CHAIR PERSPECTIVE
Atima Huria
Although I think we got off to a bit of a rocky and slow start, things are really coming
together for PSAC. Given the recent upcoming of many different social issues around
campus, Mary and I made the decision to focus a lot more on advocacy issues and
really being the voice of Student Government. One of the most popular complaints
about Student Government is that it isn’t transparent and Carolina students have no
idea what Student Government is working on. This certainly shouldn’t be the case
since Student Government is the voice of the Student Body. Therefore, we decided to
host our social and economic justice week to take a stand on some popular social
issues and reach out to the student body. We’re also incorporating our SERV-UNC
conference into the week. If we pull it off, I think it will have great impact on the
Student Body, PSAC, ad Student Government as a whole. I’m excited that PSAC has
finally found it’s niche in Student Government and am hopeful for it’s progress to
continue throughout this semester and next year.
Mary Peeler
This past year working with PSAC has been very rewarding. Though we have had to
work very hard to define the committee’s place within Student Government and
establish our role, I think that we have been very successful. Our decision to focus
on advocacy issues has really helped us find a rhythm and a strong purpose for the
committee.
We have been able to organize a number of events from the Public Service Fair to
the two SERV-UNC Conferences. This semester, I think that we have done a good job
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of reaching out to other groups within student government and the greater campus
community which has made our committee much stronger. I’m very excited for our
collaborations this semester with MADO and University Services.
Working with Atima has been great! She is incredibly motivated and truly cares
about the Carolina community. She and I have worked well together as co-chairs.
Our different strengths complement each other, making our committee stronger. It
will take a lot of work to finish the year successfully, but I think we are up to the
challenge.
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SPEAKERS AT CAROLINA
Emma Park
eapark@live.unc.edu
Tita González Penña
tigonzal@live.unc.edu
OVERVIEW OF RESPONSIBILITIES
Speakers at Carolina is dedicated to stimulating intellectual dialogue on campus
through
contacting unique and relevant speakers to visit the UNC-CH campus. We promote
all speaking events on campus and fund raise and plan for the appearance of
eminent speakers on campus through the Eve Marie Carson Lecture Series. We also
host the Carolina Chiron Award, a student-run teaching award in which the
professor who receives the award delivers the lecture he/she has always wanted to
give. Through the lectures given by these speakers, we hope to expose students to a
diversity of perspectives and opinions on a wide range of topics--allowing students
to challenge assumptions and reach new understandings of important issues.
PLATFORM PROGRESS
Eve Marie Carson Lecture Series
The Eve Marie Carson Lecture Series was inspired by 2007-2008 Student Body
President Eve Carson’s hopes to “create an endowment for speakers who will enrich
and challenge the entire student body.” Since its creation, the lecture series has
hosted distinguished persons such as Robert Gibbs and Jonathan Reckford. The Eve
Marie Carson Lecture Series is sponsored by the Carolina Women’s Leadership
Council and various other UNC deparmtents and student groups, including Honors
Carolina. This year, the series will be held on Thursday, November 7, with Ping Fu,
co-founder of Geomagic, a 3D softward company, as the 2013 Eve Marie Carson
Lecturer. We are continuing to prepare for Ms. Fu’s visit and have arranged for Ms.
Fu to participate in a Q&A Tea with Honors Carolina and give a guest lecture to
ECON 325, Introduction to Entrepreneurship.
Carolina Chiron Award
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The Carolina Chiron Award is a completely student-run award inspired by Randy
Pausch’s well known Last Lecture. The award is given to the educator whose
teaching goes beyond the classroom. Once chosen, the winner will give the last
lecture of his or her life. We will begin to plan for the Carolina Chiron Award after
the Eve Marie Carson Lecture Series. We will assign a student selection committee
and send out the nomination form to various student groups. Once the winner is
selected, we will publicize the lecture through various student organizations.
Website and Listserv
Through our website and listserv, we aim to centralize and publicize information
about all speaking events that happen at UNC and in the surrounding area. We have
continued to update the Speakers at Carolina website with new speaking events and
send out the schedule over our listserv.
COLLABORATION
We are working with PR&O to develop a PR strategy for the lecture series to
maximize exposure for Ping Fu on campus. Currently, the committee has been
gathering articles and videos that are relevant to Ms. Fu’s entrepreneurial work in
the field of technology. Closer to the lecture, these articles will be shared on
Facebook and linked to the Facebook event for the lecture series. We hope that
these posts will increase interest in the lecture. The benefits of this collaboration
will be seen closer to the date of the lecture, most likely one to two weeks before
November 7.
Emma Park
This year, I have decided to focus on improving both the events that Speakers at
Carolina hosts as well as the services that it offers. In regards to events, I have
focused on increasing awareness of the Eve M. Carson Lecture Series through
increased social media campaigns. After the lecture has past, I plan to focus more on
improvement of Speakers at Carolina services, including the listserv and website.
UNC has a vast number of incredibly interesting people hosting speaking events, and
I hope to help more members of the Carolina community in learning about these
events both by making both those hosting speaker events and potential attendees
aware of the listserv. Our committee has been performing very well; the members
have different skills and interests, which provides for efficient, collaborative, and
creative accomplishment of tasks. My working relationship with my co-chair has
also been great; the workload is shared equally between the two of us, and
communication is frequent to ensure that committee proceedings run smoothly.
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Tita González Peña
This year, we have decided to work on continuing and improving past Speakers at
Carolina projects. This can be seen in our new PR approach with the Lecture Series.
We have tried to publicize not just Ping Fu but also what she represents
(entrepreneurship, women in business, technology, etc.). I have been very pleased
with our committee’s performance. They are constantly engaged and eager to help
in any way possible. During our first meeting, we divided our committee into three
subcommittees (Lecture Task Force, PR, Tech & Web). Within these subcommittees,
we have given the members various tasks, including contacting various student
organizations to publicize the lecture series, designing a cube to paint in the Student
Union, and posting new speaking events to the calendar. Emma and I have worked
very well together as co-chairs and have successfully been able to coordinate our
efforts with regards to the planning of the lecture series.
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Town & External Relations
Jessica Carter
caje@live.unc.edu
Kathryn Walker
kbwalker@live.unc.edu
Overview of Responsibilities
The purpose of the Town & External Relations Special Project is to facilitate
communication and collaboration between the town of Chapel Hill and the
university. It is the goal of Town & External Relations to always keep open lines of
communication between the university and town officials. Town & External
Relations is responsible for keeping student government and the student body itself
knowledgeable of any town events and/or ordinances that could affect the
university or students. Furthermore, it is the responsibility of Town & External
Relations to assist the Student Body President in achieving any and all of his/her
platform goals that would involve cooperation with the town.
Platform Progress
This year, Town & External chose to take a hands-on approach to this goal. Kathryn,
Shelby, and myself met directly with the Mayoral Assistant at the beginning of the
school year. We felt that a personal connection and open communication would be
better achieved through face-to-face contact. We have also kept in contact with the
mayor’s office throughout the year. Furthermore, we monitor town Council
meetings on a regular basis through reading minutes recorded at each meeting.
Shortly before Winter Break, Town & External Relations, in collaboration with
Student Government, hosted a goods drive with the intent to donate the goods to a
local shelter. Town & External Relations believed that such a drive would
demonstrate to members of the town that student’s do care about the town and
people that they live in and encounter daily. Through these efforts, we have met our
goal of open communication between the town and university through Student
Government.
Committee Collaboration
Philanthropy with Fix My Campus
The Town and External Relations Committee held a donation drive in the Pit for
clothes and food to benefit the local community. By working with Fix My Campus we
were able gather goods to donate to local charities. The Town and External
Relations Committee felt that it was important to for the school to show support for
the town and express our regard for the community in which we live.
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The Town and External Relations Committee collaborated with members of the
Executive Branch to help launch the ordinance petition. We helped lend our
expertise in government proceedings, so that there was a full understanding of the
petition process. We also worked to help formulate a plan on the best way to amend
the ordinance so that it benefits both the town and the Chapel Hill community.
The Co-Chair Perspective
Kathryn Walker
I am very proud of the work Town and External Relations has done this year and the
barriers we have overcome to accomplish projects on behalf of the Lambden
administration. I am especially happy that we could help with the housing ordinance
because it is a town issue that has negatively affected a lot of students. I hope we are
able to continue working to promote the petition and expand knowledge on its
origin and purpose so that students are well informed on the matter. Town and
External will finish this administration’s term out strong and I hope we can further
impact students with the coming administration.
Jessica Carter
I truly feel that Town and External Relations has done excellent work this year. We
have embarked on meaningful projects, such as our food drive, and opened up the
lines of communication between the town and university. I believe that work with
the housing ordinance was crucial within the Lambden Administration and am
happy Town & External was able to meet needs in that regard. I plan for Town &
External to finish this year by creating plans for what we can do next year, should
Town & External Relations be vital to the next administration as well.
Committee Member Feedback: Improvement Suggestions
 If the new Student Body President has specific goals that should involve
Town & External Relations, meet with co-chairs individually to layout a clear
plan of action.
 Possibly allow Town & External Relations to write a small section in the
Student Government Business letter to let all of Student Government know
what is going on within the town that can affect students. This will hopefully
be an effective outlet to getting the word out to the student body.
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UNIVERSITY SERVICES
Meaghan Nazareth
mnazaret@live.unc.edu
Diana Dayal
ddayal@live.unc.edu
Emily Morton
ermorton@live.unc.edu
OVERVIEW OF RESPONSIBILITIES
The University Services Committee works to address the basic concerns of students
with regard to facilities, dining, parking, safety, recreation, and other similar areas.
Many initiatives at UNC can fall under the leadership of University Services, as our
goal is to improve campus services and serve the needs of students.
PLATFORM PROGRESS
Mobile Application
The Carolina Mobile App Project is a student-generated project for the creation and
sustainability of a mobile application that closes the gap for resources between what
students have and what students need on-the-go. Since the beginning of Christy’s
administration, we have worked on coding and creating the app. We are currently
finalizing our logo design, and have decided to name the app CarolinaGo. The app
was tested in a small group of students at the beginning of March, and we will
continue to do trials as we simultaneously start promotion as we work to launch our
Beta version this spring, and the final version in Fall 2014. We are still an incubator
project within Carolina Creates, and have partnered with Information Technology
Services to develop a native app.
Expanding Flex of the OneCard System
We are still working to expand the use of flex spending on the UNC OneCard to offcampus restaurants. After doing research, we have determined that the legislation
in place via the North Carolina Attorney General does not allow the use of non-debit
or non-credit cards off-campus. We spoke to Lisa Powers, from Clemson University,
to understand their off campus Tiger Card use, but realized that this is not a viable
option until the legislation is repealed. Our team evaluated that the most strategic
plan is to work with all of the other UNC System schools. We are currently drafting
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a survey to send to these schools in order to gauge their interest in assisting us with
this effort. Their responses will enable us to decide our next steps.
Airport Shuttles
University Services and the Department of Public Safety collaborate in coordinating
shuttles to the RDU Airport for students free of charge. Through the end of
February and beginning of March, we have been publicizing Spring Break Airport
Shuttles through listservs, newsletters, and social media. We collaborated with
Kristy Barngrover, the Coordinator of New Student & Carolina Parent Programs, Lee
McRae, P2P manager, and Cheryl Stout, a member of the Advisory Committee of
Transportation of the Department of Public Safety. Our committee also created the
logo for Airport Shuttles. We have spoken to the University about bringing in more
shuttles, and they are currently assessing a third-party provider that can shuttle
students to the airport as well as to destinations up to 8 hours away. The
destination service will cost a fee for students, and details are still being finalized.
Thanksgiv(spr)ing
Thanksgiv(spr)ing is a new event being held by USERV this year. It is a community
lunch meant to bring together the Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and campus communities
while raising awareness of the local homeless population. We are partnered with
the Campus Y and several committees within it, and are working to organize food
and live music. We are currently beginning to work on promotion details, as well as
to reach out to local groups to publicize the event. We will be selling tickets ahead
of time, and will also be printing event t-shirts.
COLLABORATION
Mobile Application
The Carolina Mobile App Project team includes the co-chairs of Tech and Web
committee. Furthermore, we are currently an incubator project of Carolina Creates
and are collaborating with Information Technology Services to provide us with a
domain name and to house the app permanently.
Expanding Flex of the OneCard System
We have collaborated with Student Body Vice President, Parker Rhoden, of Clemson
University to learn about their TigerOne system. We have also worked with Shelby
Hudspeth on lobbying research. We will also be working with ASG to send out our
survey and get input about this effort.
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Airport Shuttles
We collaborated with Kristy Barngrover, the Coordinator of New Student & Carolina
Parent Programs, Lee McRae, P2P manager, and Cheryl Stout, a member of the
Advisory Committee of Transportation of the Department of Public Safety.
Thanksgiv(spr)ing
We are working to form a partnership with Carolina Dining Services, and are
currently partnered with the Campus Y and several internal committees, as well as
PSAC of Student Government.
REFLECTION
Meaghan Nazareth
Coming in as a new co-chair this semester, I think that the three of us have really
been able to hit the ground running. Emily and I were able to quickly adjust into our
co-chair positions, and Diana has been an amazing resource for us to understand
our roles. We started off the semester by organizing our committee a little bit more,
forming sub-committees for each project with a committee member leading each
project. This has allowed us to become more effective in meetings, and makes it
easier for us to stay on top of our work for the projects. Our committee enjoys
meetings, and it’s been really great to see everyone excited to work. In particular,
the Thanksgiv(spr)ing project has had a lot of interest, and it’s been amazing to see
how creative everyone has been, and how we are creating an event that has
potential to more closely unite UNC with our surrounding communities.
Diana Dayal
This semester, we have been very effective at continuing our many long-term
projects to incorporate them as sustainable parts of Student Government and as
meaningful collaborations on campus. Our two focuses have been thanksgiv(spr)ing
and the Carolina GO or Mobile App project. We have tried to balance the workload
with 3 co-chairs spearheading different tasks. Our committee members are
passionate and excited about our work; through our committee structure, members
have leadership roles and meaningful ownership over projects they care
about. Working as co-chairs has been fun and enjoyable, as we are great planners,
strong communicators, and step in for each other as needed. It has been a very
rewarding experience working as a team, and we look forward to passing on our
vision to next year's co-chairs.
Emily Morton
This semester my co-chairs and I have worked together to improve students’
experience on campus in a multitude of ways. We have had fantastic
communication from the beginning of the semester. Because of our closeness and
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ability to communicate, we have been able to take on a lot of big projects this year
that will benefit the Carolina community. Our biggest project, Thanksgiv(spr)ing has
required great participation from all members of University Services, in which we
couldn’t be more excited about the amounts of dedication and enthusiasm we have
received from our members. We also have been able to divide tasks to give students
the opportunity to develop and pursue their own ideas. We have continued to work
as a cohesive force that is ready for action, as we look forward to rest of the
semester.
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TECH AND WEB
Andy Andrea
aandrea@live.unc.edu
Shashank Adepu
adepu@live.unc.edu
OVERVIEW OF RESPONSIBILITIES
The Technology and Web Services Committee strives to represent the student body
in all technical decision-making, in part by acting as liaison between students and
Information Technology Services (ITS). Tech and Web also promotes resources
available to the Carolina community in order to ensure that everyone has access to
the best equipment and services that Carolina has to offer.
PLATFORM PROGRESS
Desktop Alerts (collaboration with Public Safety)
In conjunction with the Public Safety committee, Tech and Web is working on
the creation of a Desktop Alert system, an extension to Alert Carolina that would
allow notifications of suspicious or dangerous activity to be sent directly to the
desktop of University affiliates, in addition to the current text and email
notifications. We are working with members of Carolina’s IT administration, as well
as members of IT from Virginia Tech, which has already implemented such a system.
We have had a few calls with Virginia Tech to come up with a project plan and plan
the collaboration. However, we are still in the process of recruiting students to work
on this project. We are planning on meeting with ITS to talk about the required
qualifications and then approach the Computer Science department to recruit
students to work on this project.
Carolina Mobile App (collaboration with App Team)
Since the Leimenstoll administration, a small but dedicated team of students has
been working to create an official mobile application for the University. The team
has made very considerable progress on, and finding funding to create a native
application, or one that could be downloaded directly to smartphones. A team from
the Computer Science department has worked on a viable application that
constantly requires the internet to function. Currently, we are continuing the
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conversation with several software companies to acquire a suitable platform for the
native application. However, there are plans to release the current application by
the end of the semester. We are working with UCS to plan pit sitting events to
publicize the application in the near future.
Student Government Website Redesign (collaboration with PR Team)
After the release of the redesigned Student Government Website, Tech and
Web has evaluated the website and prepared a list of errors that we have noticed
and should be changed. The list has been emailed to Emma Zarriello.
Standardization of Departmental Websites (collaboration with Academic Affairs)
Under the Leimenstoll administration, the Academic Affairs committee worked
to critique the websites of each academic department with the goal that these
critiques could then be passed on to each department so that academic websites
could become more standardized and user-friendly. Tech and Web helped to
facilitate this by getting Academic Affairs in contact with the necessary individuals
to make these changes. While this endeavor proved very fruitful, some departments
have yet to make the requested changes. We have been again contacted by the
Academic Affairs committee with a list of recommended changes that have been
made and changes that have not been made. The list has been forwarded onto the
appropriate contacts in OASIS, the technical support group for the School of Arts
and Sciences. The email has been acknowledged, however we are not aware of any
changes made.
Publicizing Free Tech Resources on Campus
An ongoing project that has lasted through at least four previous
administrations, Tech and Web plans to continue promoting the many technological
resources available to students at Carolina. Several years ago, the committee created
a flyer with the intention of doing so, but it has been fairly ineffective in years past.
The new flyer will have far less text than the previous flyer to improve readability.
In addition, we plan to remove many of the sections of the flyer that we feel are
well-known among students, such as CCI Printing. We have approached the PR team
to help us with the advertisement and we are currently working with them to
publicize this flyer.
COLLABORATION
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As mentioned previously, Tech and Web has collaborated with numerous other
groups within Student Government, including the Academic Affairs committee, the
Public Safety committee and the PR team. These collaborations have been
immensely helpful and productive, as we have gotten the chance to work on a wider
spectrum of projects, while allowing our members to get a better sense of the roles
of the various other groups with Student Government.
THE CO-CHAIR PERSPECTIVE
Andy Andrea
As the Lambden administration comes to a close, I look back on the past year with a
sense of bittersweet pride. Soon, my four years as a member of student government
will come to a close. Since starting out as a freshman, I’ve managed to have the
privilege of working with incredible individuals from members of ITS, the
administration and the student body. While there have been some bumps along the
road—occasional communication breakdowns or stalled projects—the time I spent
in student government has indeed led to some of my most rewarding experiences as
a Tar Heel. This past year, I’ve had the privilege of working with an astounding team
of Executive Branch Officers, an incredible co-chair and a phenomenal team of
committee members that I’m confident will be able to lead our committee well into
future years.
Shashank Adepu
Starting out the year with a limited perspective, I am happy with the progress that
we have made in one semester. Although the project has slowed down a little bit, I
believe Desktop Alerts, once its done will be one of the most impactful projects that
Tech and Web has ever taken up. The balance between technical and non-technical
students this year has allowed us to develop a more general perspective in terms of
what students expect and how our projects are helping the university. Working with
Andy has been a rewarding experience so far. We are able to divide the tasks up
equally amongst ourselves and we seem to have a clear idea of what is expected out
of each other. The projects that we have taken up will take some time to complete,
but we expect to continue working on these projects and release these projects by
the end of this year. I am excited to see what we can achieve by the end of our terms.
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ACADEMIC AFFAIRS
Lee Beckman
lbeckman@live.unc.edu
Overview of Responsibilities
Sustaining academic programs at Carolina is essential to future student success,
expansion of resources, and a vibrant academic experience. During a period of
budget cuts, reductions in student and departmental spending, and rapidly dropping
faculty retention rates, Academic Affairs is exploring innovative ways to increase
interaction between faculty and students, recognize superior faculty members, and
optimize academic opportunities. The Academic Affairs Committee reviews all
issues dealing with curricula, professors, student advising, the Registrar’s Office, and
the dissemination of academic information to students.
This year, the Academic Affairs Committee has significantly advanced the following:
The General Education Requirements Survey to make these requirements
more applicable and relevant to students.
 The AWOL fund, an established and self-sufficient fund that professors utilize
to provide exciting projects and experiences for their students.
________________________________________________________________________________

Platform Progress
Graduation Requirement Review
In response to student concerns and complaints that graduation requirements are not
relevant to their lives or academic experience, the Academic Affairs committee seeks to
address these concerns. The committee does not seek an overhaul of graduation
requirements but rather a review of the current courses and discussion about how to
expand options for students while maintaining the liberal arts education offered by the
university.
This project was created as a result of the Lambden Administration platform, which
was committed to reviewing and improving graduation requirements to make them
more relevant and appealing to students. The Administrative Affairs Subcommittee
met Nicholas Siedentop, Curriculum Director of the Office of Undergraduate
Curricula, to help committee members understand why the current graduation
requirements are in place and whether it is possible to expand or change these. In
addition, two Academic Affairs committee members were appointed to the
Curriculum Committee so that they could provide student input with regard to
proposals for new undergraduate courses, which comprises most of the reviews in
this committee. With the connection to the Office of Undergraduate Curricula, the
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Committee was able to move forward in producing a survey to hear the concerns of
the Carolina community.
The Academic Affairs Committee, in conjunction with the Executive Board Officers,
has created two General Education Requirements Surveys. One of these Surveys was
created for students, and the other for faculty members. The goal was to gather
student and faculty opinion regarding the general education requirements currently
in place. In the final time under the Lambden Administration, the Academic Affairs
Committee will be formally addressing the Academic Planning Steering Committee
and the Faculty Council with our recommendations, firmly based on collected data
and empirical evidence, concerning the current Requirements in place and any
Requirements that could potentially be added.
________________________________________________________________________________
Another Way of Learning (AWOL)
The Academic Affairs Committee is continuing the implementation of the Another Way
of Learning (AWOL) Program, an initiative that was piloted under the Cooper
Administration. The objective of AWOL is to promote and foster meaningful faculty
relations with students in order to preserve and enrich an environment of high
academic quality. AWOL provides professors with a small stipend to assist in funding
an out-of the classroom project or activity. These programs or activities allow students
to interact with faculty members in a small, informal setting. AWOL was independently
established in 2009 with funding support from the Graduate and Professional Student
Federation (GPSF) and the Provost’s Office, and supports one to two grantees per
month.
The Another of Learning (AWOL) Subcommittee worked with the Academic Affairs
Public Relations and Outreach Representatives to create an the initial AWOL flyer
earlier this year. Since then, the Subcommittee has emailed each department chair
at Carolina, as well as a majority of the activities and curricula deans and chairs, to
ensure that as many faculty members as possible would learn about the opportunity
presented by AWOL. There was great response, with four and then three
applications accepted in the first and second semesters, respectively.
This year, the stipend has allowed for these seven faculty members to facilitate
many excitingly untraditional, and highly educational, projects that they otherwise
would not have had the chance to experience with their classes. For example, a
biology professor hosted a dinner at her home, where students helped cook and eat
the marine animals they were learning about in class. Additionally, an Asian Studies
class learned to make Chinese dumplings and other traditional foods. Overall, the
response has been great, and faculty members are excited at the chance to apply
again next year.
________________________________________________________________________________
Promotion of the Student Academic Advising Board (SAAB)
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The Student Academic Advising Board is a committee appointed by the external
appointment process and (traditionally) chaired by a co-chairperson of Academic
Affairs. While its role is often left to the discretion of the chair, SAAB works generally
as the liaison between the student body and the Academic Advising Program.
The Student Academic Advising Board (SAAB) is a committee appointed by the
external appointment process and is currently being chaired by Ioan Bolohan and
Wilson Parker. SAAB serves as a liaison between the student body and the Academic
Advising Program. The board is currently functioning independently of the
Academic Affairs Committee. Former co-chair Brittany served as the Academic
Affairs liaison to the board.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Promotion of Undergraduate Research
The Academic Affairs Committee has had a standing commitment to Undergraduate
research at UNC, believing that more students would like to be involved in research if
only they knew how to take the first steps.
Academic Affairs has a great working relationship with the Office of Undergraduate
Research (OUR) and reached out to them to express our interest in helping publicize
and promote undergraduate research at Carolina. To this end, we co-sponsored a
research fair with OUR and look forward to working with them on other projects in
the future. The Committee members on the Campus Relations Subcommittee
worked with OUR to promote various projects that we can assist with on an annual
basis.
________________________________________________________________________________
Collaboration
Our committee has enlisted the help of several other Student Government
committees as well as external sources to carry out our mission and goals. We have
worked with the Carolina Athletics Projects committee to help recognize faculty
members at sporting events. We worked with the Tech and Web committee to help
us in reviewing departmental websites. Outside of Student Government, we have
built a relationship with the Office of Undergraduate Curricula to review the general
education requirements with them and improve ways of helping students fulfill
them. In addition, we co-sponsored the fall workshop series that the Office of
Undergraduate Research has been running this year to promote first-year research.
We are initialized a relationship with Dr. Ronald Strauss, Executive Vice Provost, to
find ways our committee can help his office in retaining faculty and examining the
increase in class sizes
________________________________________________________________________________
Platform Setbacks
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Maintaining the Length of the Drop/Add Period
Over the past couple of years, the UNC General Administration has been increasingly
making blanket policies for the whole UNC System, including decreasing the drop/add
period to 2 weeks from its current length of 8 weeks at UNC Chapel Hill. Students
would then receive a “W” on their transcript if they withdrew from a course after that
period, a statistic that alarms graduate schools when review applications.
The Academic Affairs’ UNC System subcommittee met with Student Body Vice
President, Jacob Morse, to develop a plan to bolster support around this topic. A
petition was made for students and parents to sign saying that they are against this
proposed policy, and it garnered thousands of signatures. The week of October 14th
marked the beginning of an extensive campaign in the Pit to educate students about
the problem and to obtain more signatures on the petition, which committee
members helped to staff. This was being accompanied by a social media campaign
on Facebook with specially designed profile pictures and on Twitter with the
#DefendTheDrop hashtag being used to circulate the petition via posting in these
social media outlets.
Committee members also conducted research on the drop/add periods of our peer
institutions, finding that ours is very long in relation to our peers. To approach the
argument from another angle, they worked with Jacob to formulate other ways to
counter the UNC System’s argument that all system schools’ drop/add periods
should be 2 weeks. These include that it hurts our chances of getting into graduate
schools if we withdraw from classes and that the system schools are quite different
and should be treated as such.
Although the Defend the Drop campaign was fervent, the Board of Governors
eventually made the final decision to shorten our drop period, giving us the same
length of time as our fellow UNC System schools. However, to ensure a smooth
transition, Academic Affairs was able to work with the EBO officers to add a
Grandfather Clause, essentially allowing for the current student body to have the
longer drop period during their time at Carolina. The first class to experience the
shorter drop period will be the incoming first-years of the 2014-2015 school year.
________________________________________________________________________________
Contributions to Faculty Retention
In response to an alarming number of faculty who are choosing to leave UNC for offers
at other universities, the Academic Affairs Committee is devoted to making faculty feel
valued. Although we cannot change their salaries in order to make UNC more
competitive with other universities, we believe that making faculty feel appreciated
and connected to campus can positively contribute to faculty retention.
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The Administrative Affairs sub-committee has worked hard to find ways to impact
faculty recognition on campus. They reached out to CAP in hopes of recognizing a
faculty member at several sporting events this year. However, they were informed
that there are already many faculty awards given and that our efforts may be more
impactful if they are focused on publicizing such awards and recognition
ceremonies. To that end, Administrative Affairs has reached out to various leaders
of faculty awards to see if they would like help publicizing their programs. At this
point in time, none have opted to utilize this assistance. Still, it is clear to the
committee that most faculty recognition efforts are going unnoticed by much of the
community.
We hope to continue to reach out to additional administrators in hopes of finding
other ways to alleviate this problem next year. Specifically, we would like to find a
way to fund, either through Student Congress or Academic Affairs independent
fundraising, Faculty Award dinners for students and outstanding faculty to come
together to reflect on and honor on the great work the Carolina faculty produce each
day.
Co-Chair Reflection
Lee Beckman
The Academic Affairs Committee has taken on a wide range of projects, reaching out
throughout the Carolina community. As a committee, we have continued to review
“all issues dealing with curricula, professors, student advising, the Registrar’s Office,
and the dissemination of academic information to students,” and we have done so
much more.
After working with the Executive Board Officers and focusing Academic Affairs’
goals, the Committee was able to make real change this year in important areas,
truly keeping Carolina First. The individual members of the Academic Affairs
Committee are to thank for this change. Each and every one of them arrived each
week impassioned, ready to tackle the challenging projects ahead. All members
contributed to the creation of invaluable relationships created between Academic
Affairs and numerous organizations and individuals across the Carolina campus. It
has been an absolute pleasure to watch the Academic Affairs team focus their efforts
and gain precious experience that I know they will use to make Carolina’s Student
Government even greater in the years to come.
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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Apply To Serve an External Appointment
April 8th, 2013
Are you interested in sitting on a critical University board or having a say on student
fees? Do you want to advise the next chancellor on campus issues? Would you like to be
involved in discussions about the Honor Court? Each year, the executive branch of
student government appoints students to serve on more than 50 committees and
groups across campus, and now the spring application process is open.
Serving as an external appointment provides a unique opportunity to engage with
other students, faculty and administrators on a variety of issues, including safety, our
library system, transportation and academics. The application, along with descriptions
of all open positions, is available at: http://cf.unc.edu/dsa/studentgov. Applications
are due by 5 p.m. Wednesday. Please don’t hesitate to contact us with additional
questions at: externalappts@gmail.com.
Jacob Morse ’14
Student body vice president
Lincoln Pennington ’16
Chief of staff to the student body vice president
Apply For Executive Branch Committees
August 28th, 2013
As we all settle back into the routine of things, we can’t help but notice everything
that’s changed since the tassels were turned last spring: the flood-marks on dormroom walls following a summer where kayaks occupied the Pit, the Wi-Fi network that
makes us miss UNC-1 like a long-lost friend, the familiar smells of Med Deli luring
unsuspecting procrastinators into the doors of Lenoir… But amidst the changes and
the new faces, some things about this great University have, and will always, stay the
same. And of those things, one of the most instrumental is UNC Student Government, a
collaboration amongst students compelled to give back to their community by joining
each other to solve the problems of today and set the goals for tomorrow. And if you’ve
long wanted to take part in an organization that transcends the everyday changes,
consider applying for a position on the Executive Branch this fall. The Lambden
administration is currently accepting applications for 15 committees and special
projects, external appointments, and executive assistant positions. So whether you
want to collaborate with the Chancellor on student affairs, work to make this campus
a little greener, help choose the summer reading book, or join the brand-new Executive
Branch athletics project, Student Government has something for you. Applications are
due Friday, August 30, at 5:00PM, so don’t wait to become a part of an unbreakable
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Carolina tradition. For more information, visit execbranch.web.unc.edu or contact
Emma Zarriello, Chief of Staff, at ezarrie@live.unc.edu.
Emma Zarriello ’15
Chief of Staff
The ASG Is Wasteful and Ineffective
October 14th, 2013
Students should be disappointed with the UNC Association of Student Governments.
At a time when students expect action from their student government leadership, the
association built a procedural brick wall rather than discussing a simple resolution
meant for advocating for the interests of students across the state.
Rather than voicing our opinions now, the association voted to spend a month doing
little to nothing and allowing us to lose the valuable momentum that would spur
action across our sixteen campuses.
Students deserve to know that the dollar that they pay to this organization was spent
on hotel rooms, catered meals and gasoline — yet nothing was accomplished at a
meeting that cost them around $3,000 in total.
An organization that has found itself in the midst of criticism from our institution, as
well as others, did little to alleviate the concerns we have about the ability of ASG to
serve as an effective advocacy organization.
One must wonder if a procedural maneuver will be used to avoid voicing opinion on
the UNC Board of Governors’ pending decision to change the drop-add period from
eight weeks to ten days.
Rest assured, the student government leadership at UNC will continue to advocate for
your interests. We encourage you to stand beside us.
Connor Brady ’14
Student Congress Speaker
Christy Lambden ’14
Student Body President