Archive for April, 2010

Live blogging from the VSA Elections results party

April 26th, 2010 by

7:52 | Students are beginning to file into the Retreat. The results are scheduled to be announced in eight minutes.

8:00 |”We just want to remind you all that there will be some losers tonight,” says VP for Operations Brian Farkas ’10.

Admissions and Financial Aid Committee

Sophomore Rep: David Keith

Junior Rep: Andrew Gaines

Senior Rep: Lillian Reuman

Campus Community Advisory Committee: Meghan Levine

Committee on Inclusion and Excellence: Ann-Marie Alcantara and Mellisa McClung

Master Planning Committee

Sophomore Rep: Fardeen Chowdhury

Senior Class: Ethan Fischer

Committee on Sustainability: Fardeen Chowdhury

Food Committee Chair: Rachel Kate Ringo Schorr

Committee on College Life:

Sophomore Class: Paul Weinger

Junior Class: Carrie Hojnicki

Senior Class: Sarah Wadlinger

Campus Investor Responsibility Committee: Yi “Danny” Tan and Caroline Schenkman

Committee on Curricular Policies

Arts Major Rep: Shouvik Bhattacharya

Foreign Languages and Literature: Raluca Besliu

Social Sciences: Elizabeth Packer

Natural Sciences: Kelly Fitzgerald

Independent and Multi-disciplinary Majors: Matt Rosenthal

Judicial Board

Sophomore Class reps: Alaric Chinn, Rafat Mahmood, Lane Kisonak and Rebecca Smith

Junior Class: Greg Lichtenstein, Juliana Halpert, Baba Awumbila and Tiffany Shi

Senior Class: Kwesi Sey, Raluca Besliu, and Michael J. Hirsch

Judicial Board Chair: Shouvik Bhattacharya

South Commons President: Brian Kim

Terrace Apartments President: Samantha Allen

Terrace Apartments Programming Director: Erika Betancourt

Town Houses Presidents: Sam Seymour

Town Houses Programming Director: Mike Ilardi

Main House President: Boyd Gardner

Vice President: Madeline Zappala

Treasurer: Stacy mowry

Secretary: Emily Crnic

Sophomore Rep: Adriana “Addie” Provenzano

Junior Rep: Carrie Hojnicki

Lathrop President: Samantha Garcia

Vice President: Amanda Crommett

Secretary: Natalie Allen

Treasurer: Jason Rubin

Sophomore Rep: Charlie Biers

Junior Rep: Erik Lorenzsonn

Strong President: Sophia Wasserman

Vice President: Cassidy Hollinger

Secretary: Alyssa Maldonado

Sophomore Rep: Medha Sahi

Davison President: Michael “Mookie” Thottham

Vice President: Cory Epstein

Secretary: Kara Conley

Treasurer: Shawn Davis

Junior Rep: Kathryn Bauder

Sophomore Rep: Lawrence Flicker

Raymond President: Lita Sacks

Vice President: Stephen Platz

Secretary: Julia Hanna

Treasurer: Samuel Black

Junior Rep: Andrew Billings

Sophomore Rep: Joshua Solomon

Jewett President: Mariah Minigan

Vice President: Alexander Cheung

Secretary: John Lee

Treasurer: Justin Chinn

Sophomore Rep: Jessie Kastenbaum

Josselyn President: Dan Flynn

Vice President: Michael Henrich

Secretary: Rachel Vogel

Treasurer: Sana Pierce-Wright

Sophomore Rep: Michelle Dingsun

Noyes President: Jenna Konstantine

Vice President: Jordan miller

Secretary: Frances Vhay

Treasurer: Amy Corenswet

Junior Rep: Aaron Suzuka

Cushing President: Olivia Tousignant-Pienkos

Vice President: Caroline Picher

Treasurer: Joshua Rosen

Secretary: Rose Livermore

Sophomore Rep: Amanda McCarthy

Sophomore Class President: Eli Berns-Zieve

Vice President: Shanay Williams

Secretary: Ann-Marie Alcantara

Treasurer: Graham Mayshark

Junior Class President: Pamela Vogel

Vice President: Sam Scarritt-Selman

Secretary: Tess Dernbach

Treasurer: Gabriel Kelly-Ramirez

Senior Class President: Moe Byrne

Vice President: Nick Dressler

Secretary: Alina Von Korff

Treasurer: Kate Frost

Executive Board

Vice President for Finance: Travis Edwards

Vice President for Activities: Tanay Tatum

Vice President for Academics: Laura Riker

Vice President for Student Life: Sahmin Shehab

Vice President for Operations: Ruby Cramer

President: Mathew Leonard

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Live blogging from the April 25 VSA Council meeting

April 25th, 2010 by

7:01 | Attendance.

7:04 | Report from Director of ViCE Peter Denny ’10 about the Flaming Lips concert. According to Denny, several restaurants reported excellent business on the night of the concert April 17.

ViCE “more than broke even” in ticket sales, Denny say.ViCE earned about $3000 from the concert, though they are still calculating the final amount, and ViCE still has upcoming events, which some of the money will go towards.

7:14 | Report from Vice President for Operations Brian Farkas ’10: The 2010 Endowed Scholarship Fund has reached its goal and is on route to exceed it, he says.  The senior class will be hosting a panel discussion called “Why Do We Need Financial Aid” on Thursday, April 29.

The VSA elections results party will be in the Retreat tomorrow, April 26, at 8 p.m.

7:17 | Report from VSA President Caitlin Ly ’10: “The College is close to an agreement with the county bus line.” The College will no longer run the campus shuttle during the week, but the VSA will continue to fund a weekend shuttle possibly on a more limited schedule. The county bus would not run students directly to the mall or to Stop&Shop, which the weekend shuttle will do.

The Old Laundry Building will be empty next year after development moves. As of right now, the space will be swing space–mostly office space–but the President is arguing for security to move into the building to have a presence in the center of campus or for the Computer Science Department to move onto the first floor.

7:24 | Decertification of Catalyst: “More of a merger than a decertification,” says Vice President for Activities Aaron Grober  ’11. The magazine Catalyst will become the publication of the Student Activist Union.

7:25 | Decertification of the Investment Club: The Investment Club will be joining with the Entrepreneurs Club.

7:26 | Decertification of Red Panda: The Red Panda humor magazine has not published this year, and they have not indicated any plans to publish, says Grober.

7:28 | Vice President for Academics Stephanie Damon-Moore ’11 is introducing a referenda. The referenda will ask students whether they would prefer to call ‘correlate sequences’ ‘minors.’

The argument is that many employers do not recognize correlates on students’ resumes and the when students come to Vassar they don’t understand what a correlate is and how it differs from a minor at other colleges. According to Damon-Moore, minors already differ amongst colleges and universities.

The Council is debating whether to include an explanation of what a correlate is. Damon-Moore says that she wants to understand how students already understand the distinction between correlate and minor.

7:48 | Allocation of $1250 from the Conference Fund to Christian Fellowship is unanimously approved.

7:50 | Allocation of $1500 from Collaboration to Town Houses for their music event “In Da Circle.”

7:53 | Open discussion.

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Live blogging from the Executive Board Debates

April 20th, 2010 by

Miscellany News Editor in Chief Molly Turpin is introducing the debates.

8:10 | Candidate for President Mat Leonard cites his experience as Cushing President in explaining the need for input from constituents.

8:12 | Candidate for President Stephanie Damon-Moore echos Leonard’s views on student input but also underlines the importance of the President’s responsibility to moderate that conversation.

8:13 | Candidate for President Ben Reichman feels the VSA should echo the moral principles the College was founded upon.
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Live blogging from the April 18 VSA Council Meeting

April 18th, 2010 by

7:00 p.m. | Attendance

7:01 | The President introduces special guest Peter Leonard, Director of Field Work. “We have a lot of stuff going on in Field Work, but internally our project is academic field work. For the last 60 years we’ve ben doing it. We excel at it and we do it better than other schools, and we do it for structural reasons,” says Leonard.

7:05 | Leonard: “This semester we have 303 students doing field work, and that’s a lot. Throughout the year, we have over 600 students. Looking at that every year, we’ll have at least 65-70 percent of students graduating having completed some kind of field work.” Read the rest of this entry »

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Live blogging from the April 11 VSA Council Meeting

April 11th, 2010 by

7:02 p.m. | Attendance

7:04 | President introduces special guest Director of Religious and Spiritual Life (RSL) Sam Speers. “We work in three broad areas when we think about community-based learning in my office—one is the community service work study program.” When the program began, there were 15 Vassar students involved, and there are now over 50 participating.

7:20 | Academics asks about the connection between “faith” and “service” and how “that’s manifested in the RSL office.”

7:21 | Speers: “Those two categories are related. Part of the challenge here is that we want to show the link between those two things while also showing that we’re in a different moment right now than we were 25 years ago, than we were 100 years ago, than we were when the College was founded. When the College was founded it was largely a Protestant institution, and we’ve now distanced ourselves from the Protestant roots of our College. That’s an accomplishment in my eyes.”

7:27 | Academics moves to endorse the Sexual Assault Violence Prevention (SAVP) Proposal, drafted by the Sexual Assault Response Committee. The proposal encourages the College to reestablish the position of an SAVP Coordinator.

7:40 | Report from Vassar College Entertainment (ViCE): Outgoing Director of ViCE Peter Denny ’10 announces that the 2010-2011 ViCE Executive Board has been finalized. Allie St. Jules ’11 will serve as Director next year. Denny also says that the organizaiton has created two new Assistant Director positions.

7:42 | Denny says that ViCE has sold approximately  2300 tickets so far for this Saturday’s Flaming Lips concert.

7:57 | Academics moves to endorse College Sustainability Coordinator Jeffrey Walker’s Sustainability Proposal, which is a proposal to the Environmental Research Institute for support of training to perform Greenhouse Gas (GHG) inventories. As with the SAVP proposal, the Council will vote to endorse this document during next week’s meeting.

8:20 | Finance moves to allocate $1500 from the Collaboration Fund to Main for their second annual Pool Party event, which will be run in collaboration with ViCE. The party will be on Sunday, April 25, on Ballentine Field. Motion passes unanimously.

8:34 | Council adjourned.

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Live blogging from the April 4 VSA Council Meeting

April 4th, 2010 by

7:01 p.m. | Attendance

7:02 | The President introduces special guest Leslie Williams, Vassar’s Education Outreach Coordinator. “This year we’ve been trying to assess Vassar’s strenghts weaknesses, and the opportunities and threats to what we refer to authentic community engagement.” Williams works with the school district of Poughkeepsie and with Vassar After School Tutoring (VAST) and the Exploring College program, among others.

7:03 | Williams: “Most people don’t know this, but the high school graduation rate in the City of Poughkeepsie is below 50 percent.”

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