APPROVED
The Associated Students of Las Positas College
Senate Meeting
March 6th, 2015
1:00 pm – Adjournment
I. Call to Order
II. Roll Call
III. Adoption of the Agenda
IV. Approval of the Minutes
V. Advisor Notes
VI. Guest Speakers
VII. Public Forum
VIII. Subcommittee Meetings
IX. Subcommittee Reports
A. Programs and Services
B. Events
C. Public Relations
D. Legislation
X. Old Business
A. March-in-March Debrief
B. Org Sync
XI. New Business
A. Group 1
B. Group 2
C. Governor Budget Update
D. Online Education Initiative
XII. Announcements
XIII. Adjournment
APPROVED
The Associated Students of Las Positas College
Senate Meeting
March 6th, 2015
1:00 pm – Adjournment
I.
Mr. Ansari called the meeting to order at 1:16 p.m.
II.
Roll Call
Officers:
Rafi Ansari
Paulina Reynoso (UNEXCUSED ABSENT)
Olga Salgado
Ashley Landicho
Stephanie Plascencia
Eric Pineda
Senators:
Alejandra Garcia
Alexander Ivanov
Alexandre Nguyen
Antonio Aguilar
Brandon Byrne
Ciera Soliz (EXCUSED ABSENT)
Claire Huestis
Fatima Elgarguri
Jasmine Guraya
Jose Gutierrez
Lauren Hughes
Luis Perez
Nancy Kang
Omar Elgarguri
Robyn Miller
III. Adoption of the Agenda
 Mr. Byrne moved to approve the agenda for March 6th, 2015 with the following changes:
o Add Guest Speaker: George Cramer
 Ms. Miller seconded.
 Motion passed unanimously.
IV. Approval of the Minutes
 Ms. Hughes moved to approve the minutes from February 27th, 2015.
 Mr. Ivanov seconded.
 Motion passed unanimously.
APPROVED
V. Advisor Notes
Mr. Miner was at a Safety Pre-training class 2 weeks ago and the Charrette event last
week. Dr. Russell is looking for people who are interested in attending the Livermore
Opera next Friday at 7:00 pm. Please remind yourself that the gala’s coming up on April
25th. One other group was looking for some help for the LPC 40th Anniversary on Friday,
April 17th. We might want to change the meeting time that day so we can all attend that.
It’s going to be from 1-4 pm on Friday afternoon. An alternative is they are looking for
people to do campus tours.
VI. Guest Speakers
 George Cramer is part of the LPC Anthology class, which includes a total of 8 students
working on the project. The book is created in 1 semester and near the end of the
semester, they run into a financial crunch. They want to include as much art and
photography work as they can; the number of items they include depends on $ they have.
They have 300 photograph entries; they will select a number of them and will print as
many of them as we can. We can only survive and do this if we have help. We are hoping
you can help support the program this year. This reaches out beyond campus to writing
organizations and clubs. There are a fair number of entries outside campus; this spreads
really good publicity for the school and we’re here to ask for your continued help.
o They’re looking for as much as you can provide.
o With $500, we would be able to increase the size by 10%.
o 4 categories: prose, 5,000 words, 5 pieces per person, longest piece we had this
year was 2800 words. Majority under 1500. 28 lines per entry.
o Artwork – you can submit up to 5 pieces
o Photographs – you can submit up to 5 pieces, in the past it was 20 but it’s
impossible to work through that number
o They hope to complete the book by the first of May. There will be a ceremony in
the tutorial center. Everybody whose work is selected is invited. Food will be
provided, and faculty members are judges.
o They’ve received a number of donations from the public, rotary club, Dublin
Alliance club, and some of the teachers. If you donate you will get credit in front
of the book.
VII. Public Forum
 Ms. Jariwala went to Sex Signals and thought it was a good idea to have it. The money
put in was also put into the high schools.
VIII. Subcommittee Meetings
 Mr. Pineda moved to suspend the orders of the day at 1:30 p.m.
 Mr. Elgarguri seconded.
 Motion passed unanimously.
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Mr. Elgarguri moved to reinstate the orders of the day at 1:50 p.m.
Ms. Garcia seconded.
Motion passed unanimously.
APPROVED
IX. Subcommittee Reports
A. Programs and Services
Mr. Gutierrez is going to have some flyers printed out and is requesting more
books for human physiology to expand TLP inventory.
B. Events
Ms. Plascencia didn’t have much to talk about since we don’t have too much
planned for this semester. She and her subcommittee chose two food trucks; they
will look it over and talk with Mr. Miner
C. Public Relations
Mr. Nguyen not present at this time. Mr. Perez needs more people on his
subcommittee. He needs a cleaner draft for the vendor form where we can put
flyers up. They also talked about the virtual tour.
D. Legislation
Ms. Salgado received email from Ted Talks in Livermore who’d like to
collaborate with us. They’re looking for a place in Livermore to host their other
event and they need volunteers so hopefully we can provide for that. We want to
create a relationship with them. Ms. Elgarguri is presenting resolution next week.
She and Ms. Landicho will be working on a campus training manual. Mr. Ivanov
has an interest group interested in visiting us. She and Mr. Ansari will sign the
formal letter requesting poll places to send to Mr. Pink. Ms. Elgarguri shared the
updated mission statement.
X. Old Business
A. March-in-March Debrief
 Ms. Salgado said that our turn out was pretty much the same as last year. The
turnout over there was scary because when we drove to the parking lot, it was
empty. They cancelled the march. No legislators spoke to us. CSU students were
meeting with legislators the day before. On the plus side, the students from our
school came and represented us very well. Mr. Elgarguri presented a motivational
speech and Mateo and Ashley from BSU and Joe Sanchez from ECD spoke. We
presented a lot of spirit. Some things were overpriced books, student debt, need
for open communication about diversity on campus, and more. It’s so important to
talk about the differences that each group has to offer. One thing one leader said is
that it’s a requirement for them to take a cultural studies class, so it’d be cool if
we could do that here. We also met with Lulu, Director of student affairs, who
had a lot of experience meeting with Legislators to present on a workshop to
come to one of our meetings. She was disappointed at first, but when she saw
groups of people for the same cause she was glad we could contribute.
 Ms. Elgarguri said that it was important that people who showed up did show up.
She’s glad people cared enough to go there. It was a positive experience and there
were a lot of things to relate to.
APPROVED
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Mr. Elgarguri said that when they were outside the community college building,
nobody had anything written from that. The people who did go were so passionate
and focused to change things for better educational rights and were happy to be
there.
Mr. Perez didn’t think the footage he had was enough to make something great. It
was a 30-sec to a minute long video. He’ll make it shorter to advertise to students
next time since last year’s video was 7 minutes long.
Mr. Elgarguri said that it wasn’t a march, which was the sole purpose of this
event, and that we need to fight for it.
Mr. Miner said that the other California Community Colleges couldn’t get permits
to close down the road and had issues with the liability.
Mr. Perez moved to extend time by 5 minutes.
Ms. Miller seconded.
Motion passed unanimously.
Mr. Miner showed the video from March-in-March.
Ms. Garcia suggested filling up the bus next time.
Mr. Ivanov suggested that we could plan it out more next time like what we want
to do before and after the March.
Next year we need to make a decision on if the money’s worth it. It was $2000 for
all those to go. In Ms. Salgado’s defense, we did try to organize things ahead of
time. We can make more impact with $2000 if we took smaller bus / fewer
people.
Mr. Miner said that everybody wants more money in college, and what really
drove the group was serious talk about cutting funding.
B. Org Sync
 Mr. Miner pulled up the same document from the day Nathan from Org Sync
presented.
 Is the Org Sync system something we want to invest $ in for us by campus Clubs
and Student Government for communication and collaboration?
 Current Quote for both campuses. The proposal driven by Arnold, the advisor
from Chabot. Split the annual subscription. Both LPC and Chabot would have an
umbrella, for purposes of economy / scale. If people took on budget module; API
and 51-100 Portals would be split.
 Authentication / Onsite training would be shared with Chabot one time.
 LPC would be paying only $1500 umbrella portal.
 Current Quote: First year $8750.
 Mr. Elgarguri said that Org Sync without the budget module isn’t something we
should invest in at all; it will track activity and form submission. Mr. Perez made
his own form submission, and it’s better to use our website we already have
 Mr. Ivanov said that we have too many services which will make it more
confusing so people might not use it. We should focus on using what we already
have instead of paying $1000 per semester and having no idea what they’re doing
anymore. We should also write down what it would benefit.
APPROVED
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Mr. Perez said that it would mostly serve clubs; he wanted to ask them if they
want this to help with their services or use ours and feels like they’d choose us
over Org Sync; he showed his form submission.
Mr. Miner said that with the form submission we have now it’s a matter of
electronically approving that or resorting to generating a paper form that will go
through everybody’s desk.
Mr. Perez showed the Fund-Raising Proposal to ICC, where administrators can
reply through there. He’s working on a free-version of the server.
Mr. Miner asked who will be taking care of that next year.
Mr. Perez said that everything he’s done will be under code to be understood by
someone later on.
The Budget module takes a while to process, and doesn’t know who ultimately
decided between schools who didn’t want it.
Mr. Miner and Arnold both agreed that they are having a tough time getting IT to
entertain anything else. They are telling us to use Zonemail. They’re getting a
tough time facing IT and talking to these people. With all the financial hacking of
people’s accounts, the college wouldn’t want to link up accounts with outside
servers. He added it costs $50,000 to have someone sit in Ms. Moore’s place.
Ms. Elgarguri feels like the whole system we have right now is ridiculous so she’s
all for Org Sync; they need a paperless version, but something more sustainable.
Ms. Garcia asked if there is any way to see the progression.
Mr. Miner replied there are tools to show usage. He added that we are the ones
that go to school, so we should be the ones who have a say since we are going to
be using it. He suggested that we could talk next week to Nathan about it too.
Last time at the Charrette event, it focused on student services and everybody
wants to go with a paperless system.
Mr. Ivanov moved to extend time by 10 minutes.
Mr. Elgarguri seconded.
Motion passed unanimously.
Mr. Elgarguri doesn’t think we should postpone this any further.
Ms. Elgarguri asked if we could do disbursement requests.
Mr. Miner said that the physical paper piece is the receipt which will take care of
it. He won’t take a check until the actual paper receipt came through.
Mr. Perez said that there are other companies that specifically abide by electronic
submissions that may cost under $1000.
Mr. Ivanov said that this would be a good way to get students involved.
Mr. Miner said that this would be really tough to manage since people are here for
maybe one or more years; how is a person 3 years from now going to manage
this?
Mr. Elgarguri said that we might as well give it a go right now; trying it out isn’t
going to kill us.
Ms. Elgarguri said that it costs $6000 every year, and it doesn’t mean we have to
stick with it.
Mr. Elgarguri moved to approve an up-to-amount of $10,000 for Org Sync.
Ms. Salgado seconded.
APPROVED
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Mr. Elgarguri said that we just spent $2000 on going to March-in-March. $8750 is
not end of the world; if we like it, we keep it. If we don’t, we’ll pass it up
Mr. Perez wants us to weigh the benefits; money can go to other resources.
Ms. Salgado moved to approve the item Org Sync be referred to another
committee.
Mr. Perez seconded.
Ms. Salgado would like to look into it with Mr. Perez, Ms. Elgarguri, and Mr.
Elgarguri. They will look into possibly having a trial period. We can look into
other avenues and compare.
Motion passed unanimously.
XI. New Business
A. Group 1
 Ms. Salgado and Mr. Byrne presented on their Explore project Update, which will
be August 7th.
o Volunteers:
 200-300 students
 20-25 volunteers needed
 8 rooms (38 students with at least 2 volunteers per room)
o Summer school continues until the August 6th. Math Jam is from the 10th
to 14th.
o Dr. Morrissey’s Feedback on College Day
 857 High School Students and Parents Attended
 Survey Results: “Open House” to the Community
 We need to meet one day in June, twice in July, and once in August
o Contact High Schools:
 Livermore
 Foothill
 Amador
 Tracy
 Granada
o Facilities Requests
 Gym / 2400 Auditorium
 2200 Building
 2400 Building
 If we don’t have student volunteers, this can’t happen. We need at least 20-25
volunteers.
B. Group 2
 Mr. Perez presented on internships / scholarships project update. There were only
internships for STEM, and Mr. Perez added an internships option to the website.
He added a Chegg link.
 The technology committee is on the agenda. It would allow you to access all the
services provided through blackboard account to sign up for local internships
specific to their major.
APPROVED
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Ms. Elgarguri clarified that we are adding a Chegg and internships.com link to the
website and Blackboard.
Mr. Perez is trying to talk to internships and scholarships online.
Ms. Guraya suggested offering information from other subjects.
C. Governor Budget Update
 Mr. Ivanov shared the history of the CA Master Plan for Education from the
1960’s to create cheap to free education. Since then education has been on the
decline, and CA’s K-12 education is ranked 48th in the country. There’s been talk
about repealing or replacing Prop 13.
 In response to the recession, CCC enrollment skyrocketed. However, since the
economy has been picking up, this number has declined.
 Effects have impacted the budget for colleges. The general fund has decreased.
 Increase for funds in UC in total has been 30% and CSU 20%.
 Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed a budget where the General Fund is increased,
preventing tuition hikes.
 The budget has been criticized by the Legislative Analyst’s Office for simply
focusing on keeping tuition down while not addressing the root of the problem or
tying in more realistic enrollment goals.
 UC regents proposed a simple increase.
o 1) District Office has increased enrollment projections for the next Fiscal
Year.
o 2) California is 2nd in lowest student debt.
 There’s a long process that goes through the governor, legislature, the
subcommittees, who get back to the Senate Budget committee.
 Possible Actions:
o 1) Meet with State Representatives to get more and provide insight about
the budget.
o 2) Go to committees hearings to bring input directly.
 The 1st option is more realistic; Catherine Baker wants to work with us, and the
2nd option will be hard since the committees meet over the summer.
 Mr. Miner suggested possibly having a march in Sacramento for that.
D. Online Education Initiative
 Ms. Guraya and Ms. Salgado presented on the online education initiative. It will
dramatically increase the number of CCC students who obtain college AAs and to
transfer by providing online courses and services within a statewide CC.
 2 other proposals
o Education Planning Initiative
o Common Assessment Initiative
 Future expectations: most CCC’s have been able to contribute to 12% of
enrollment due to Distance Education
 OEI has received 58 applications, only 24 have been selected
 Divided into 3 groups, with 8 colleges in each category:
o 1) Full Launch Colleges
o 2) Student Readiness Staging Groups
APPROVED
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 11 courses
o 3) Tutoring Staging Groups
 12 courses
Recommended Courses / High Demand for AA-T / AS
Foothill De-Anza community colleges has the highest number of FTES for annual
delayed DE interaction
o Connections with Google, Khan Academy, Coursera, Udacity
Common Course Management System Chosen
o BB serves 36%
o Moodle serves 31%
o Etudes serves 12%
o Desire 2 Learn serves 8%
o Canvas serves 6%
Ms. Salgado presented a video on Canvas.
Blackboard is planning to be revamped and be similar to Canvas.
Ms. Salgado moved to extend time by 5 minutes.
Ms. Hughes seconded.
College Suggestions:
o 1) Repository of course files for future use.
o 2) SLO Integration
o 3) Ability to incorporate video from home
XII. Announcements
 Mr. Pineda said that he will need ICC Dodge ball judges and to let him know if you are
interested.
 Mr. Byrne needs co-chairs for Sports task force next year.
 Ms. Garcia said that if you need to give her something, put it on Mr. Perez’s desk.
 Mr. Perez said that last week he had an AGS member come and drop off a payment, and
now it’s been lost.
 Ms. Landicho said that she will be collecting committee reports next week. If you do not
submit a committee report by next Friday, it will be a failure of task. She said also to not
touch other people’s belongings if they’re not yours since there have been incidences of
items being lost or stolen in the office. She is asking for clothing donations for another
clothes drive.
 Mr. Ivanov passed out parliamentary procedure forms.
 Mr. Ansari reminded us not to forget about applying for the scholarships that are due next
Friday.
XIII. Adjournment
 Ms. Hughes moved to adjourn the meeting at 3:32 p.m.
 Mr. Pineda seconded.
 Motion passed unanimously.