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7:03 p.m. | Executive Report from Activities.
7:05 p.m. | Executive Report from Academics. Academics met with her Committee last week. Goals for this year include improving Course Evaluation Questionnaires, looking for Multidisciplinary programs and pushing for a Social Justice requirements of some kind. Academics will also develop a survey to go out to the Faculty on how to best deal with a cut 3.2 million dollars from the faculty budget.
7:10 p.m. | Council begins discussion of Security Point System proposal. President and Student Life explain that the proposal is a draft, rather than a final version. “The details are up for discussion,” says President. According to the proposal, “Vassar College is developing a ‘point system’ to make the student disciplinary and sanctioning process more clear, consistent, transparent, efficient, and equitable. When a student is found responsible for violating College Regulations they are assigned points according to the table below.’
7:14 p.m. | “I think this is a step in the right direction,” says Town Houses. “It helps to have a tangible number.”
7:15 p.m. | “If we want this to work, we have to make it focused on alcoholic incidents only,” says Raymond.
7:19 p.m. | According to Student Life, Hamilton and Gettysburg Colleges have similar point systems that are actually more extreme.
7:24 p.m. | “In our Board of House President’s Meeting, we didn’t necessarily want a point system,” says Main, “but we thought about creating a group of guidelines that we can publish for the House Advisors.”
7:27 p.m. | “I think we need to link consequences to actions, rather than just assigning points. Otherwise, people may not learn from their mistakes,” says Charlie Nicholson ’12, who will proxy for the 2013 position, until a freshman will be elected on Thursday, Sept. 24.
7:31 p.m. | “I know this document is highly problematic for a variety of reasons, which have all been discussed tonight. But I’d really like to discuss the overall idea of a point system,” says the President.
7:32 p.m. | 2010: “I am in favor of moving towards this system, since I think one of the biggest problems we have now is consistency. I think there are a lot of issues with the current document we’re looking at, but I am in favor of moving in this direction.”
7:40 p.m. | “Maybe we should just say that we don’t have an alcohol policy. Haverford College has something like that,” says Town Students. The President responds by explaining that if the College did not have it’s own policy, we would have to abide by New York State law, which is clearly more harsh than any College policy.
7:49 p.m. | President calls for a straw (informal) vote of whether or not Council would like to work on creating a point system. 19 vote in favor of the effort, 5 vote against. President: “A subcommittee of the Committee on College life may form to work on this.”
7:53 p.m. | Finance moves to allocate $500 from the Hudson Valley Fund to VSA organization Ice Brewed. Ice Brewed hopes to fund ice-skating lessons.
8:01 p.m. | Activities begins discussion of addition to VSA bylaws addressing “Off-Campus Representation Responsibilities.”
8:07 p.m. | By a vote of 22 to 1, this motion passes.
8:13 p.m. | Move to Open Discussion.
