APPROVED
The Associated Students of Las Positas College
Senate Meeting
February 27th, 2015
1:00 pm – Adjournment
I. Call to Order
II. Roll Call
III. Adoption of the Agenda
IV. Approval of the Minutes
V. Officer Reports
A. President
B. Vice President
C. Director of Legislation
D. Director of Communications
E. Director of Events
F. ICC Chair
G. Senators
H. Committee Reports
I. ASLPC Advisor
J. Student Trustee
VI. Guest Speakers
VII. Public Forum
VIII. Old Business
A. Tennessee Promise
B. Parliamentary Procedure
C. Club Day Debrief
D. Charrette Debrief
IX. New Business
A. Group 5
B. Group 6
C. Letters and Resolutions
D. Budget Update
X. Announcements
XI. Adjournment
APPROVED
The Associated Students of Las Positas College
Senate Meeting
February 27th, 2015
1:00 pm – Adjournment
I.
Mr. Ansari called the meeting to order at 1:07 p.m.
II.
Roll Call
Officers:
Rafi Ansari
Paulina Reynoso
Olga Salgado
Ashley Landicho
Stephanie Plascencia
Eric Pineda
Senators:
Alejandra Garcia
Alexander Ivanov
Alexandre Nguyen
Antonio Aguilar
Brandon Byrne
Ciera Soliz
Claire Huestis
Eric Bolin
Fatima Elgarguri
Jasmine Guraya
Jose Gutierrez (EXCUSED ABSENT)
Lauren Hughes
Luis Perez
Nancy Kang
Omar Elgarguri
Robyn Miller
III. Adoption of the Agenda
 Mr. Elgarguri moved to approve the agenda for February 27th, 2015 with the following
changes:
o Add F. Charrette Debrief / D. Budget Update
o Strike B. Org Sync / C. CBRC
 Mr. Byrne seconded.
 Motion passed unanimously.
IV. Approval of the Minutes
 Ms. Miller moved to approve the minutes from February 20th, 2015.
 Ms. Huestis seconded.
 Motion passed with 2 abstentions.
APPROVED
V. Officer Reports
A. President
Mr. Ansari gave a campus tour to 14 students from Kimball High School and
gave them a full tour of the CDC. He also gave classroom visits for March-inMarch. He had a budget meeting with Ms. Huestis and breakfast with Dr. Russell.
There was a misconception with advisors. He’s working on an alumni project on
Facebook and will be under facebook.com/groups/laspositas/alumni. Ted Kaye is
going to help run it. He took the 5”x8” flyer resolution up to college council and
they didn’t like it; they want the freedom to take down flyers.
B. Vice President
Ms. Reynoso hosted Roundtable, went to Club Day, helped out with CBRC, and
did her office hour.
C. Director of Legislation
Ms. Salgado is taking care of things for March-in-March. She bought spirit
supplies, contacted Catherine Baker, sat with the VP of student services to talk
about legislative priorities, worked on the virtual campus tour, and went to her
committee meeting today.
D. Director of Communications
Ms. Landicho went to her committee meeting a few weeks ago. She and her team
met up to discuss their cafeteria project and will be discussing it later. The pants
drive was successful. She talked to Mr. Pineda about asking clubs for suggestions
on guest speakers for the Ted Talk conference next year.
E. Director of Events
Ms. Plascencia has been busy with Club Day. She is getting in sync with the food,
and she worked with Mr. Pineda in accounting the scores for the clubs. She
mentioned having a possible Food Truck day for students.
F. ICC Chair
Mr. Pineda helped out with Club Day and thanked everyone for helping out. He
worked with CBRC. There will be lots of clubs starting out, including spiritual
club and fencing club. There will be an ICC Dodgeball event soon. He wiped
down tables too.
G. Senators
Ms. Reynoso said that senators did their office hours, cleaned the office, did
classroom visits, attended Club day, helped out with finance report and tailgate,
worked on CBRC, mission statements, and the open gym project.
H. Committee Reports
 Ms. Salgado attended Distance Education, where they discussed OEI and the
Distance Education award was given to a student who received a
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recommendation from his CSI class. They’re updating online culture at
ASLPC. Our retention rate was 77% and success rate was 55%. They talked
about online tutoring and had a campus demo, switching from Blackboard to
Canvas.
Ms. Reynoso attended Nike Funds and said that her committee was
confidential.
Mr. Elgarguri switched to Facilities.
Ms. Soliz attended Staff Development. There were lot of introductions and
talked about how the staff – student ratio has been upped. They’re trying to
work on forms for staff development and they talked about how all the
professors here need to have a certain amount of hours.
Mr. Byrne attended Basic Skills. They had an update about tutoring from the
tutorial center about requesting other subjects. There was a math request
breakdown and a chancellor report.
Ms. Hughes attended Academic Senate, where they discussed how to improve
summer courses. One of the things they were thinking of adding was basic
skills. They talked about trying to improve enrollment and how to better
market summer classes.
Mr. Aguilar attended Staff Development as well.
Mr. Ansari attended College Council and Integrated Planning committee,
where they talked about linear model showing what they do with what
information. Greg Johns is now in charge of the part of the website that Sheri
had. He will be going to Facilities to talk about possible game room locations.
I. ASLPC Advisor
Mr. Miner was not present at this time.
J. Student Trustee
Mr. Bolin had a trustees meeting at Las Positas. They got a new trustee on the
Board, who talked about community college and seemed soft-spoken. Cynthia
Ross tried out for the position but didn’t get it. The trustee members are also
going on a retreat next week.
VI. Guest Speakers
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Mr. Elgarguri moved to suspend the orders of the day at 1:21 pm.
Ms. Miller seconded.
Motion passed unanimously.
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Andi Schreibman talked about the scholarship program. Every year, we have this
program but this year the foundation gave us the funds so it’s a lot nicer for people to
apply. The software’s called the star software and it opened up 2 weeks ago. It’s to
improve number of applicants. They usually get 100-120 applicants, which is really small
compared to the whole school. Fewer students who apply have a better chance. If you
click on scholarships in financial aid in LasPositasCollege.edu, they have a web printout
which has pages of information, whereas transcript is condensed on one page. You must
APPROVED
submit an unofficial transcript, request LPC transcripts from admissions, write a personal
statement and upload that. You can go to the computer center 803 if you have any
problems scanning. In alphabetical order, go down the list under scholarships. There a
few glitches in the program that we’re working out. We will make sure that won’t affect
your chances. They’re trying to get at least 120 people to start the application. We’re
going to make sure your GPA’s are right. It will interfere with being recommended
scholarships. Make sure in the end to look at all scholarships presented, not just
recommended, to see if you qualify or not. The review committee looks seriously at
personal statements. There’s been a problem with the GPA and recommendation form. If
you have a question, you can come to our desk and ask. Some scholarships have free
form essays. You might want to put the college you want to attend and are most likely to
attend. You won’t know since you won’t be getting your letters in a month or so. Make
sure your email address is typed in correctly. It should say “save”, not “send”. Tell
recommender something about yourself, not just your name, for your letter of
recommendation. You want to do it immediately to give faculty time to respond. It’s due
in two weeks so you would want to do it today. The other thing to know about
recommendations; if you have a scholarship that requires a recommendation, all other
scholarships you apply for will be able to see that recommendation. I have flyers to pass
out and we could use your help to spread awareness about this. You should include
everything on one letter, one personal statement that covers all your scholarships and
everything you want them to know about you. I have to give log-on access to everyone
who will review it. I’ll need a list of names and email addresses to review. You need to
get it in by midnight by Friday, March 13th. We try to balance it so no one walks away
with $5,000. Some of these require as little as a 2.0 GPA. We don’t have any men’s or
women’s scholarships at Las Positas College. We update this every week. These are the
ones that we think will be of interest to our students. Randy Taylor selects the Student of
the Year scholarship.
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Ms. Hughes moved to reinstate the orders of the day at 1:37 pm.
Mr. Pineda seconded.
Motion passed unanimously.
VII. Public Forum
 NONE
VIII. Old Business
A. Tennessee Promise
 Ms. Salgado and Ms. Landicho presented on the Tennessee promise, a resolution
that would cover tuition and fees that aren’t currently covered by Pell grant,
HOPE scholarship, or TSAA funds.
 Ms. Salgado: The program diverts funding from the Tennessee lottery, and
various taxes. Critics argue that this provides a federal monopoly on decisions
that states should be able to make.
 America’s College Promise: Not much is known yet, but this would give an
opportunity to educate American citizens by having the federal government
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covering 75% of tuition cost and having the individual states that decide to
participate cover the remaining 25%. It would take $60 billion in funding over 10
years and could potentially cover 9 million students. Another concern is that
tuition in California is already very low, so tuition costs are not a large problem
here, but they’re thinking on a larger scope that would cover housing, food, and
transportation. Full time community college students would save an average of
$3,800 per year.
Ms. Salgado: This will probably not pass into law while Obama remains
president, but the idea is still worth looking into and should be supported as much
as possible. One problem is that although 9 million students attend community
college, only one third of that number actually meets the federal criteria to be
eligible for this aid.
University of the People: an online university that is available to over 150
countries and offers associates and bachelor’s degree programs in two fields,
Business administration and Computer Science. Its president, Shai Reshef
suggests that students covered under America’s College Promise should have to
invest monetarily into their own education by paying for a percentage of their
schooling, regardless of the aid that would otherwise be awarded.
Expanding Pell Grant: making it accessible year-round and providing more
funding to support the maximum award. Improving Cal Grant: since it is based on
student fees, which is small share in comparison to the total educational cost,
upon only receiving 6%.
Discussion: Mr. Ansari noted that the University of the People only offers two
subjects; Business Administration and Computer Science.
B. Parliamentary Procedure
 Mr. Ivanov presented on Parliamentary Procedure:
o Agenda
 The meeting is structured through agenda’s.
 Sent out 72 Hours prior to the meeting per the Brown Act
 Any changes must be presented before the body before passage
o Basics
 In order to pass anything a motion needs to be made
 The chair can only entertain motions as he/she must be impartial
o Amendments
 Wish to amend the main motion, make one small change
o Limits
 can’t put silly additions or subtractions
o Additional Amendments
 can make a motion to “amend the amendment”, no more
o Refer to a Committee
 when a motion needs more research so it’s referred to a committee
 reports back at next meeting
o Postponement
 for a motion or an agenda item
 when a motion’s on the table and has been seconded, only be postponed at
latest to the next meeting
APPROVED
o Postponing indefinitely
 Polite way of killing a motion
 No limit on times you can postpone motions
o More minor common motions
 Motion to extend time can be done as many times as people are willing
 A point of privilege is when a member feels uncomfortable and alerts the
chair to step out
o Abstention
 Your vote isn’t counted
o If you had 27 people, 17 said aye, 9 abstentions, and 1 said nay, then that motion
does pass.
C. Club Day Debrief
 Ms. Plascencia said that Club Day was great.
 She expressed her disappointment with the people who didn’t sign up. On the last
2 hours of Club Day, only her and Mr. Ansari were serving food. People were
coming from her subcommittee who already did their hour. That doesn’t mean we
should do more just because some people didn’t do their hour at all. Food table
was important because they need more hands. If you don’t work at food table, it
would be a failure of task. They weren’t even signed up.
 When we bring things in for clean-up, it’s not her responsibility for her to pick up
basketball hoops. The office is everybody’s, so we are all responsible for cleaning
up what we take out.
 Ms. Miller said if we see garbage near tables, just go and pick it up and she knows
people from our senate just walked off.
 Mr. Perez showed the pictures from Club Day.
 Ms. Reynoso said that we have to be stricter leaders.
 Ms. Plascencia has names of the people who haven’t done their tasks, who will be
possibly getting a failure of task.
 Ms. Soliz was the one getting their food carts. She asked students what food they
liked, and they liked Mexican food. It was a good idea to advertise our social
media.
 Mr. Nguyen wants to have a whole picture of everyone who showed up to Club
Day next time.
 The winners were:
o 1st: E-Sports
o 2nd: Public Safety
o 3rd: Biology Club
D. Charrette Debrief
 Mr. Aguilar: Last Friday from 8 am to 4:30 pm, the Chancellors set up a meeting
between Chabot and Las Positas and invited people from staff, faculty, classified
senate, trustees and got some invites from Chabot. 4 of us went from LPC, and 1
went from Chabot. They presented a 5-year plan, a vision for both campuses.
They had everybody set up groups and issues that were prevalent in both
campuses and split people up based on occupation. The whole point was to give
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input on issues and what we can do to make it better, like what the district can do
better for them. There were issues with facilities and tech, and they want to
overhaul website for Las Positas. They want to have a portal in DVC that sends
everything to everyone in one spot to make it cleaner for the students. They
wanted to automate the system for faculty.
Mr. Ivanov said the Chancellors started off with the EMC2 plan, a general outline
of what the district was going to do. They talked about how to measure student
success. They really wanted to know why students aren’t successful in school. All
they see are numbers; not faces or reasons behind what they’re doing. There was a
lot of talk about getting involved with local industry. They won’t have a culinary
arts program because it costs too much.
o Mr. Aguilar said that the big issue with CDC here is that they were really
underrepresented. All this support for it, they just don’t have the people to
use it for. They planning to bring in some disabled children to use that
facility. The whole idea just started in that committee meeting.
Ms. Reynoso said that in the student services, we already solved and fixed all
their problems that they’re having. We talked about surveying students and Scott
talked about how many you ask but the questions you ask.
Ms. Soliz said that they were talking about issues they’ve been trying to fix on
district level for so long. They’ve been talking about buses, high food prices, how
we broke into 6 groups, open gym, financial aid, talking about the middle class,
very low on an economic scale, just above financial aid line, pretty much
everything we deal with.
o Chabot has a Gladiator Day and Mega Day, which is pretty helpful.. They
give out campus tours in one day and individually sat everyone down and
helped them with their classes.
IX. New Business
A. Group 5
 Ms. Landicho, Mr. Elgarguri and Ms. Kang presented on their cafeteria project.
 Solution 1: Present cafeteria survey to Jeff Kingston, pass out to students: how often
do you buy cafeteria food, level of satisfaction with food and hours, does income
affect buying food at cafeteria, happy with quality and nutrition of food, etc.
 Cafeteria charges higher prices for healthier higher quality food.
 Mr. Ivanov said that the survey is too long.
 Mr. Elgarguri said the survey isn’t too long.
 Ms. Elgarguri asked if drink prices will also be lowered.
 Mr. Elgarguri said it is just providing cheaper alternatives.
 Ms. Landicho said the survey can be half sheet so people aren’t overwhelmed
 Solution 2: Discounted food at certain times/days, i.e. $2 Taco Tuesday or free
breakfast item with certain purchase.
 Solution 3: Alternative food options- cheaper hot foods on-the-go, i.e. rice bean
cheese burritos, cheap corndogs, combo upgrade
 Mr. Elgarguri said this is food that isn’t costly to make so it won’t be so expensive.
 They will talk to JC for feedback.
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Mr. Ansari asked if we compared prices with Chabot.
Ms. Landicho said our prices are more expensive but we have better quality food.
Ms. Miller suggested an ice cream or frozen yogurt machine.
Mr. Elgarguri said they will add a question to survey on if you could add a certain
food to the cafeteria what would it be?
Ms. Landicho said a fro-yo machine might be hard for staff to clean out every day.
Ms. Elgarguri asked if the surveys should be passed out in our classes.
Mr. Elgarguri said that him and Ms. Kang will meet to get the survey approved and
once it’s approved everyone should help get surveys filled out.
Mr. Elgarguri moved to extend time by 10 minutes.
Ms. Landicho seconded.
Motion passed with 1 opposed.
Mr. Perez said passing surveys out to people in cafeteria might be a bad sample.
Mr. Elgarguri said it would be good to ask people in cafeteria and in classes.
Ms. Elgarguri said she has some friends who never go to the cafeteria so we should
pass them out everywhere.
Mr. Perez asked if we are trying to pass out surveys evenly to students and faculty.
Mr. Elgarguri said it doesn’t have to be even, just as many surveys filled out as
possible.
Mr. Perez said he could make an online survey.
Mr. Elgarguri said he would send the approved survey to Mr. Perez so he could put it
online.
Ms. Miller said people complain about cafeteria drinks like the quality of the
Starbucks.
Ms. Landicho said that the Starbucks at our school isn’t part of the Starbucks chain.
Mr. Elgarguri said if they don’t like it they don’t have to buy it.
B. Group 6
 Mr. Nguyen, Mr. Pineda, and Ms. Garcia presented on their open gym project.
 They met with Dyan Miller at 9 am today.
 Why an open gym?: Because it’s what the students want and we give the students
what they want
 Pros:
o bring more students to register on our campus
o provides more opportunity for students to incorporate healthy physical and
mental conditions into their lifestyle
o students have this as their current #1 desire
 Cons:
o People can break lose or damage equipment
o School may need to pay extra from their funds to fund this project
o Time of availability for the areas of interest are very limited
 Necessary tools we need:
o Open Gym schedule
o Liability form
o Rules/Regulations
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o Dress Code
o Open Gym student ID’s
Questions we should ask ourselves
o If we have an open gym, will it be separated into sections that partake
different activities: Weight room, turf field, gymnasium
Dyan Miller said:
o Can’t make it a registered class or “lab hours” for open gym / weight room
like LPC had in the past
o FTES is their budget, decide how to incorporate into their own classes
o Making Open Gym a class would take away from their FTES
o Have a staff member oversee, adviser complained that she didn’t want to
waste their time with a small number of students
o Biggest liability problem goes in this order: Pool, weight room,
gymnasium, turf
o We can have the turf but we can’t have the weights
What can we do now
o Turf idea where senate pays for our equipment
o Push for one area at this time for example, if we push for the weight room
Idea on availability
o Gym: Mon-Thurs, Before 8 am or after 5 pm
o Turf: Mon-Fri turf can be available from 1-5 pm
o Weight room: MW after 7 pm, TR after 2 pm & F Unseen
Mr. Ivanov said FTES stood for full time equivalent student.
Mr. Bolin said that was several years ago; there’s probably more of a chance people
would want to show up to this open gym because we have more students now.
If we have an open gym class, that can take away from her classes.
Ms. Garcia moved to extend time up to 5 minutes.
Ms. Salgado seconded.
Motion passed unanimously.
Ms. Soliz said nobody would want to come that early to use the gym. We don’t have
to hire someone to do it and that we can find a staff member already here who is
willing to do it.
We’d need to hire someone to be there for the open gym.
Ms. Garcia said that the person who would overlook it needs to be LPC faculty.
Mr. Nguyen asked for a consensus vote for who would be interested in continuing
this.
C. Letters and Resolutions
 Ms. Salgado presented a letter to be sent to Mr. Pink.
 Ms. Salgado moved to approve this letter to send to Mr. Pink to approve having
polling places put on site for maximum youth voter turnout.
 Ms. Kang seconded.
 It is the mission of ASLPC to advocate for student interests. Our organization would
like to garner attention for the upcoming presidential elections in 2016 by constituting
a culture of civic engagement among our youth and peers. We would like as many of
the 9,000 enrolled students to partake in this event. We would like to extend an
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invitation to the Registrar of Voters to place multiple polling places on site for
maximum youth turnout.
Mr. Elgarguri said that you can’t have them be trained at Las Positas but you can
definitely have one set up here. Don’t push for the training except at the Registrar’s
voters of Office. They have 5-hour training sessions.
Ms. Salgado changed “lack of shortfall” to “increase in manpower” in the letter.
Motion passed with 1 abstention.
D. Budget Update
 Ms. Huestis presented the budget.
 New balance:
o Student Senate: $6,742
o Student Representation: $2,431
o Student Activity: $77,715
o ICC: $18,006
 RAW Center is going to ask us for another $2,000 donation.
 Mr. Ansari said that the Student Activity Account is the savings account that is active.
Student Senate is short-term. Rep account is anytime we represent outside our school.
ICC is for all the clubs.
X. Announcements
 Mr. Nguyen said that if you guys want business cards, you have to be a confirmed senator
first before you can have one.
 Mr. Elgarguri said that we’re taking a group picture today, and do it hopefully before the
XO meeting.
 Ms. Salgado needed to meet up with the NCSL conference members.
 Dr. Russell requested those attending the opera to meet at his office at 9:30 am, March
4th.
 Mr. Nguyen said that that SF Orchestra will be on Sunday at 2 pm.
 Mr. Ansari asked for who wanted to be on the scholarship committee.
XI. Adjournment
 Mr. Aguilar moved to adjourn the meeting at 3:44 p.m.
 Mr. Nguyen seconded.
 Motion passed unanimously.