April 20th, 2010 by Eric Estes, Design and Production Editor
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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April 18th, 2010 by Ruby Cramer, Editor in Chief
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 »
Tags: Live Blogging, VSA, VSA Council Meeting
April 11th, 2010 by Ruby Cramer, Editor in Chief
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.
Tags: Live Blogging, Poughkeepsie, Student Organizations, ViCE, VSA, VSA Council Meeting
April 4th, 2010 by Ruby Cramer, Editor in Chief
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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Tags: Live Blogging, Poughkeepsie, Student Organizations, VSA, VSA Council Meeting
March 28th, 2010 by Ruby Cramer, Editor in Chief
7:00 p.m. | Attendance
7:02 | Committee Report from Board of House Presidents: Raymond: “We worked on the House Officer Expectation document, which we drafted based on what we think should be the expectations of the house officers. It was approved by [the Office of] Residential Life. In terms of fall training, we’re working with Residential Life to revamp fall training and also to figure out the best way to do training and transitioning this spring.” Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Campus Activities, Live Blogging, Student Organizations, VSA, VSA Council Meeting
March 21st, 2010 by Ruby Cramer, Editor in Chief
7:01 p.m. | Attendance
7:02 | Operations announces that filing for VSA spring elections will begin on April 14.
7:04 | Operations moves to amend Section 5 of the VSA Bylaws, which outlines the rules for student campaigning. “We’re simplifying it a lot,” says Operations, “and we’re making it a lot shorter than it used to be. Basically, we reorganized the passages, and various things that are repetitive have been taken out. The major differences are that we’re allowing the use of the internet—we thought it was realistically ridiculous that we didn’t allow the use of the internet. And because we’re giving candidates the power of the Web, we’re taking away fliering—we felt that it was a waste of paper, and it’s not worth doing. Instead, we are just going to give people posters that they can put up in main spaces on campus.”
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Tags: Elections, Live Blogging, Student Organizations, VSA, VSA Council Meeting
February 28th, 2010 by Ruby Cramer, Editor in Chief
7:02 p.m. | Attendance
7:03 | The Council Meeting begins with a report from Chair of the Judicial Board Dan Salton ’10. “I was sent here on behalf odf the jud board and the daen of students office to inform you about a change in how student conduct is being done here. Traditionally, until last week, disciplinary conduct is divided into two parts: you’re either dealt with by a house advisor or by a more serious college regulations trial overseen by administrators and students. Over the last few months, we’ve been developing a new format to act as a new option—there will be student conduct panels, which are basically miniature squads formed out by the judicial board instead of the house advisors. In cases that are slightly contentious, students will be sent to a panel of three judicial board members who will act in the house advisor’s stead. They will listen to the person, take a vote and then decide on the penalty if it is decided that one is deserved.” This will “increase our student governance significantly,” says Salton. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Live Blogging, Student Organizations, VSA, VSA Council Meeting
February 14th, 2010 by Ruby Cramer, Editor in Chief
7:01 p.m. | Attendance
7:02 | Sustainability Committee Report: While no representatives from the committee were able to attend, Operations explains that the committee has been working to “putting together a common-sense guide to sustainable programming at Vassar.”
7:03 | Executive Report from the President: The President explains that she has mostly been working on a report for the Board of Trustees, who will be visiting campus on the weekend of Feb. 26. Of the topics addressed in the report, several will include “admin review of study abroad, public art in ACDC and the library, as well as the planned 24-hour study space in the Library.” Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Live Blogging, VSA, VSA Council Meeting
February 7th, 2010 by Ruby Cramer, Editor in Chief
6:11 p.m. | Attendance. VSA Council Meeting was moved to 6 p.m. this week to avoid conflicts with Super Bowl XLIV.
6:12 | Student Life announces that the Athletics Proposal endorsed by the Council this September was approved by the Committee on Curricular Policy (CCP). The proposal will next travel to the faculty before it is approved completely.
6:20 | Committee Report from CCP from Academics: “We talked about the relationship between departments and programs in the curriculum. There was a course proposal that sparked a conversation about who gets to teach what and how that’s determined.” Strong adds that there is a subcommittee working to administer Course Evaluation Questionnaires online.
6:26 | The Council discusses a resolution in support of experiential learning; the Executive Board drafted the resolution after members of the Council expressed frustration last week with the recent cancellation of Vassar summer abroad programs. A copy of the resolution can be found at the end of this blog entry.
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Tags: Live Blogging, VSA, VSA Council Meeting
January 31st, 2010 by Ruby Cramer, Editor in Chief
7:00 p.m. | Attendance
7:01 | Executive Report from Activities: Activities: “We have some organization certifications looming on the horizon. Next week you will see the Gentlemen’s Sandwich Club and the Listening Center among others.” Activities also announces that Director of Campus Activities Terry Quinn and Associate Dean of the College Raymon Parker will now be intermittently sitting in on VSA Activities Committee Meetings to “check in on how the VSA is spending our student activities fee,” says Activities.
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Tags: Academics, Live Blogging, Senior Officers, VSA, VSA Council Meeting
