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 »

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 »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

7:01 p.m. | Attendance

7:03 | Special guest Associate Dean of the Faculty Marianne Begemann begins forum on recent deer-culling that occurred over the course of Winter Break. Begemann explains that the College decided to pursue a “deer management program on the preserve.” Over the course of the program, exactly 64 deer were culled—the deer provided 12-15,000 meals to the homeless. “We did the right thing in terms of the ecological preserve. People will disagree with it undoubtably from a moral perspective. It was a very difficult decision to make,” says Begemann.

7:08 | “We”ll be continuing to work with the community members,” notes Begemann. “We’ve also been working with the town and the city, and that did not come out in The Poughkeepsie Journal, because i think that officials were reluctant to be supportive because they knew there was going to be some push-back. But we’ve been working with the mayor and the town-supervisor for about six months.

The deer cull was covered throughout the break in The Poughkeepsie Journal on several occasions, and once in one of the paper’s staff editorials.

7:15 | Begemann: “The size of the herd was so large compared to what it should have been. If we had to cull only 10 or 15 deer, there would have been a lot more open to us.”

7:20 | Announcements: There will be a student-faculty basketball game on Thursday, Feb. 25, to fundraise for the Senior Class Gift. Faculty participating will include Dean of the College Chris Roellke, Professor of History Robert Brigham and Professor of English Kiese Laymon. There will be a 2$ entry fee, and President Catharine Hill will toss the first ball of the game.

7:33 | Operations introduces Constitution amendment for discussion. The amendments offer a rationale for the VSA to consider petitions and came as a result of the Nov. 22 VSA Council Meeting, during which Council was asked by the Campus Solidarity Working Group to endorse a letter written by members of the faculty. Members of Council will vote on the amendments next week.

7:36 | Noyes introduces a Bylaw amendment that mandates that after spring elections, if there is a house officer position that has not been filled, “the Appointments Committee will meet to review applications and appoint individuals to those positions,” the proposed amendment reads. “The Committee will meet several days following the elections, to allow interest applicants time to fill out the application form. If there are no applicants, or if the Committee cannot select an appropriate individual, the position will remain open until the following school year, when the process will repeat.” All vote in favor of the amendment; Noyes’ motion passes.