7:04 | Council is running late due to some last-minute changes to the agenda. It will begin in five minutes, according to Vice President President for Student Life Samin Shehab ’11. The additions to the agenda are all fund allocations.

7:12 | Council members are still waiting for the meeting to begin. Meanwhile, one of the VSA’s largest audiences of the year has assembled in the back of the room. Though Council meetings are open to the entire student body, they are usually poorly attended by non-Council members.

7:17 | The meeting is beginning. VSA President Mathew Leonard ’11 opens the meeting by jokingly condemning VPrint.

7:19 | The audience is generally made up of the members of organizations who are applying for funds tonight. The Council has moved fund applications up in the agenda so as not to waste the time of the various org members in attendance.

7:20 | Allocation of $1350 to Future Waitstaff of America (FWA): FWA will be putting up a production of “Reefer Madness.” They will be working with Vassar’s Ballroom Dance club to stage the shows large, partner dance number. FWA will also be producing “The Fantasticks” later in the semester. The organization will also be hosting a cabaret show on Saturday, Feb. 19, to raise funds.

Main House President Boyd Gardner ’12 moves to amend the allocation to $1850 due to some unexpected fees to FWA. The motion passes unanimously. The fund allocation passes unanimously.

7:36 | Allocation of $970 to Vassar EMS from the Conference Fund: VCEMS will be attending a national conference for collegiate emergency medical services. President of the Class of 2014 Michael Moore ’14 moves to raise the allocation to $1,170 to account for an increase in the lodging costs. The motion passes unanimously. The allocation passes.

7:47 | Allocation of $8,000 to Hip-Hop 101 from Council Discretionary: Hip-Hop 101 will be hosting their annual Throwback Jam, which welcomes attendees from Vassar and Poughkeepsie. President of the Class of 2013 Eli Berns-Zieve ’13 moves to amend the allocation to $10,000. There are some unknown costs, such as lighting, for the event, which has led Council to consider tabling the motion, though no one has made a formal motion to table it. The amendment to the allocation passes.

President of Town Students Maya Acevedo ’11 moves to postpone the allocation. Some council members are concerned that if the amendment is postponed, Hip Hop 101 will not be able to make an offer to potential performers. As the largest unknown cost is lighting, the Council is attempting to parse the potential costs of lights so that the allocation may be passed tonight. The motion to postpone the allocation fails unanimously.

The fund allocation passes unanimously.

8:18 | Allocation of $5,000 to Asian Students Association (ASA) from the Speakers and Lecturers Fund: This year, ASA’s annual conference will focus on gender and sexuality in Asian Americans. The allocation passes unanimously.

8:30 | Allocation of $5,000 to Vassar Greens from Council Discretionary: The Greens are working on restructuring their organization completely. They have worked on a campaign to reduce the consumption of bottled water in favor of tap water. They are working on reducing waste on campus by opening a “free store,” and have been campaigning against an enlargement of the local incinerator. They are requesting funds to attend the biannual Power Shift conference in Washington, D.C. in April. President of Lathrop House Sam Garcia’13 points out that according to VSA’s bylaws, the governing body is not allowed to send more than 10 students to a conference; the Greens are planning to send 45 students.

Garcia motions to amend the allocation down to $3,800 in light of the VSA’s policy on sending students to conferences. Ferry House President Kate Dolson ’13 voices her support for the amendment, and says that it would be prudent to support it “keeping in mind that the VSA has to support other organizations as well.” VSA Vice President for Activities Tanay Tatum’12 asks the Greens if it is carrying out any amount of fundraising, to which representatives of the organizations report that they are planning to sell free-trade coffee that has been donated to them. The motion for the amendment passes.

The motion to allocate $3,800 to the Vassar Greens passes by vote of 18-3-1.

9:08| The Council has now entered a five-minute recess.

9:14| Council members have begun convening after the recess.

9:17| Executive Board Reports :

Academics Report

VSA Vice President for Academics Laura Riker ’11 informs Council that the application for mini courses has been prepared. She also reports that the Committee on Curricular Policies is reducing its size to six student members in an attempt to increase efficiency.

President’s Report

VSA President Mat Leonard’11 reports that the Vassar Board of Trustees will meet in February to approve the budget.He adds that he and VSA Vice President for Operations Ruby Cramer’12 will be in touch with the Governance Review Steering Committee, and will be representing student opinion on shared governance. He congratulates the Senior Class and Noyes House on the events they hosted this weekend.

Operations Report

Cramer and VSA Vice President for Student Life Samin Shehab’12 will create two new committees: one on Elections, and one on revising the VSA’s “internal structure.” The Operations Committee has been working on reviewing the VSA’s governing documents; “we have wholly-modified our constitution,” said Cramer. The Committee also aims to purge inconsistencies within the documents. Cramer and the President’s student assistants are working on a set of panels that President of the College Catharine Bond Hill will host in place of Town Halls; the topics will include financial aid, capital projects, campus dinning, academics and the relationship between Vassar and the economy. The date and times are not fixed, and are dependent on the panelists’ schedule. She announces that Mind the Gap is on Thursday, Feb. 17.

She has now asked the Class of 2011 President Moe Byrne’11 to talk about the 2011 All-School Gift. “Development and the senior class are very interested in developing a sense of philanthropy among the student body,” she added. “Our goal is to send the message that the Class of 2011 really believes in sustainability,” she said.

9:36| Open Discussion: There are 98 days left to graduation.

Garcia: “I’m a little uncomfortable with what happened with the greens. If it’s a conference, we should only send 10 people.” Riker disagrees: “It’s more than a conference; it’s also a rally.” Shehab agrees with Riker, and says the event that the Vassar Greens wanted to attend was not technically defined as a “conference.”

Noyes House President Jenna Konstantine ’13 congratulates the organizers of her event Day-Glo Today, and reports that there were no Emergency Medical Services calls to the event. Konstantine says that her House Team brought up redundancies in Council’s discussions, and Leonard responds by saying that he may impose a rule that allows students to speak only twice on issues. Finally Konstantine brings up last Sunday’s council: “I feel like the way people conducted the meeting was a little bit obnoxious. Things just didn’t happen. If getting out of the meeting is so important that you have to physically prompt people to leave, send a proxy. I appreciate the Superbowl was happening…but we didn’t talk about anything.” Leonard: “The meeting was not held as it was supposed to.”

Byrne says that the “Senior Class has had a crazy, crazy weekend.” The class hosted the Faculty-Student Basketball Game, a night at Mahoney’s and the annual 100-Nights celebration. She reports that Saftey and Security refused entry to students into the Villard Room as Aramark was late to the event. “I controlled the crowd,” which she found inappropriate as “security just sat at the door and did absolutely nothing.”

Edwards makes a motion to move $500 from the Council Discretionary Fund to the Student Seminar fund, a pilot program that allows for student-taught mini courses. The fund will roughly provide for $5 per student. The motion passes unanimously.

Class of 2012 Pamela Vogel’12 commends everybody on the lengthy budget allocations and believes that “it’s important that [organizations] see that we treat all of our constituents with equal scrutiny.”

10:08| Davison House President Michael Thottam’12 moves to adjourn the meeting. The motion passes.

Contrary to how it sounds, Williams and Walker explained that using chemical herbicides now is actually a step towards using many fewer in the future. “The college is committed to minimizing the use of chemicals, but we have learned that there are no organic products strong enough to treat the current infestation of weeds in campus lawns,” they wrote in the e-mail. “The goal is not to achieve a lawn that is 100% grass, but instead to build up turf grass populations so that weeds are not the predominant vegetation (as they are now).”

“Six years ago the college quit using any pesticides on the central campus lawns,” they wrote. “Before that time, the lawns were sprayed regularly in the Fall and Spring. Unfortunately, abandoning pesticides ‘cold turkey’ without a system or budget in place to manage the lawns organically, allowed a strong crop of weeds to grow in the lawns.”

They urged students to avoid the sprayed lawns for 24 hours after they have been sprayed. Signs will be posted to remind passers-by.

7:05 | Sustainability Forum, with special guests Director of Marketing and Sustainability Ken Oldehoff, co-Chairs of the Vassar Greens Vanessa Raditz ’12 and Laura Livingston ’12, as well as Greens member Xiaoyuan Ren ’13.

7:10 | Oldehoff on composting in the Retreat: “It started off slow, but it really has taken off,” said Oldehoff, who continued, saying that during the 2008-2009 academic year, the average weight per day of composted materials was 559 pounds throughout all dining facilities on campus. “Because of doing the composting in the Retreat, we’re up to 704 pounds,” he said.

7:17 | Oldehoff:  ”We want to research to see what the carbon footprint was in 1996, and as a goal the College is hoping to go back to that point. Last year, Sightlines came out and told us what our carbon footprint was, and we’re going to look for ways to bring it back down to about 15 years ago.”

7:30 | Oldhoff explained that recently there has been a problem with student stealing from the Retreat and with illicitly entering the All Campus Dining Center without swiping in. Town Houses encouraged all members of the Council to send an e-mail to their constituencies alerting them of the problem and discouraging it from worsening.

8:03 | Motion to allocate $8000 from the Speakers and Lecturers Fund to No Such Organization passed.

8:04 | Presentation of a letter to the Vassar College Board of Trustees drafted by Judith Nichols, Adjunct Associate Professor of English, by representatives from the Campus Solidarity Working Group. John Joyce ’12 of the group explained that the letter was not written or drafted by the Working Group; rather, the Group supports the letter and attended the VSA Council Meeting in hopes of attaining signatures from Council members. “We want members of the VSA to sign on and start having a more active voice in this process,” said Nathan Orians ’10, a member of the Working Group. Thus far, there are about ten pages of signatures in support of the letter. Three pages are compiled of faculty signatures—the remaining eight are made up of students and alumnae/i.

The letter in question can be found at the end of this post.

8:10 | Operations explained that members of the Council can sign the letter as individuals not representing their constituencies, or the entire Council can by a majority of 60 percent vote to “endorse” the letter as if it were a proposal.

8:34 | Orians urged Council to endorse the letter, saying that by signing on the VSA would be echoing the general tone of respect that the Campus Solidarity Group and various faculty have been advocating for.

8:47 | Joyce: The purpose “of this letter is to preserve the curriculum that we all came for…[and to] tell [the College] that we’re not okay with the changes that are being made.”

To read more about last night’s Council, see News Editor Jillian Scharr’s article, “By a vote of 15 to 6, VSA endorses letter criticizing 2009-2010 curriculum plans: Members of Council overlook inaccuracies in support of intended sentiment.”

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Dear Vassar Trustees,

We write you again as a large group of faculty, students, students’ parents, staff and alumnae/i who are concerned that the financial adjustments currently being implemented to protect the college’s endowment will in the long run seriously compromise the curriculum that has made Vassar a successful and respected institution of higher learning. In an October 25th article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, President Catherine Bond Hill stated that  cutting 79 positions at Vassar College is not a “paradigm shift” but rather “an adjustment to the cost structure.”  We respectfully disagree.  We fear that the academic integrity of the institution is at risk from financial policies that, in addition to eroding fair labor practices and laying off long-term employees, reduce or eliminate vital course offerings and compromise richness and breadth of the curriculum. The real crisis facing the college is not short-term financial losses, grievous as those may be, but the long-term loss of Vassar’s academic uniqueness, diversity, identity and vision.

Last year the college reduced course offerings by sixty sections. This year Vassar students are noting the ways the cuts are making admission into courses needed for majors much more difficult. Multidisciplinary courses, which in past years have allowed Vassar to maintain a cutting edge, are being seriously threatened. Damage to the dynamic curriculum will certainly limit students’ engagement in new disciplines, discourses and methodologies. We expect the erosion of the multidisciplinary programs to have a serious impact on the attraction and retention of new faculty.

One of the ways Vassar has developed dynamic multidisciplinary programs is through on-going employment of non-tenure-track faculty, many of whom teach, advise and participate in the committee work of the college. This past week, the Dean of the Faculty, Jon Chenette, announced in a faculty meeting that up to fourteen non-tenure-track faculty will be notified that their contracts will not be renewed and their positions will be terminated. “Thank you for your service,” he said to the non-tenure-track professors who will be losing their jobs or their health benefits. We are told that these reductions will be permanent, regardless of economic recovery.

Meanwhile, Vassar faculty have lost responsibility for the curriculum. This began last year when American Sign Language was erased from the course offerings and Arabic language courses were reduced without much consultation or dialogue. As courses disappear, so do professors who specialize in areas not covered by tenured and tenure-track faculty.

The high number of students seeking admission to Vassar and the high level of student satisfaction at the college are linked, in part, to the vitality and flexibility of the Vassar curriculum. Small class sizes and attention to students through advising have been crucial as well. It is troubling to us that the current administration seeks to save money by constricting multidisciplinary programs, shrinking departmental offerings, and reducing the number of faculty through pressuring faculty toward retirement and terminating or reducing non-tenure-track faculty contracts. This year only three of eight open tenure-track lines are being filled at Vassar. The college that helped produce Elizabeth Bishop, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Mary McCarthy, as well as many great actors, artists and musicians, seems to be reducing its willingness to support the arts.  Even as the economy improves and the recession comes to an end, Vassar is in danger of losing its brand.

The damage to our curriculum represents a serious threat to the liberal arts. The following represents but a few of the changes and cuts that departments and programs are being asked to make.

•Though student interest in computer science has jumped because of availability of employment in the tech sector, Vassar cut staffing by one third last year. Cutting of release time, failure to replace faculty and cutting of staff make it impossible to supervise student projects, adequately staff computer laboratory sessions, and administer the complex equipment and staffing of the program adequately. Majors are having trouble completing requirements for this major.

•Despite the current world situation, the Religion Department is being asked to reduce the position of  its only Islamicist to part-time. Vassar is the only the college in the top 25 liberal arts colleges not to have a  tenure-track position in Islam.

•There is increasing pressure on language departments to provide elementary language courses at the expense of advanced literary and cultural study. Raising course enrollment limits in language classes to accommodate reduced staffing and student need leads to compromises in pedagogy that Vassar faculty should not have to make. Staffing reductions also put at risk JYA programs administered through Vassar and involving faculty members of language departments. This will further impoverish the curriculum and also result in direct financial losses to the college, as our students pursuing study away options will take their tuition and financial aid money to other institutions.

*The department of Drama has a tenure track position on hold and had one adjunct not renewed.  Drama had a retirement at the end of last year and the dean allowed the department to replace him temporarily with two people to share the one position for three years. (The department will have two major retirements this year but it looks like they will be able to fully replace the courses these retirements remove from the curriculum.) It should be noted that all of these changes are in the creative side of the department—and will have a huge impact on the quantity and quality of production work, and an equally strong impact on advising and mentoring of students.

* The department of Film has a very large number of majors, yet it remains understaffed in comparison to other departments. The department will lose several courses, as well as a tenure track line next year. Courses taught in film by two faculty members from other departments will be lost next year when those two faculty members no longer teach at the college (because of retirement in one case or adjunct faculty termination in the other).  The administration has refused to authorize a tenure-track replacement for the position of a retiring faculty member, someone who supervises independent projects in screen writing and oversees numerous screenplay theses.  This position may be replaced in the future. The department of Film will not be as excellent as it has been in the past.

•The department of English has been asked to eliminate ten sections from its offerings.  The department may not be able to make the cuts without some loss of long time contributing non-tenure track faculty. The suggested reductions have been linked specifically to professors who teach creative writing and whose contracts are coming due this summer. Likewise, the central role the department has played in offering Freshmen Writing Seminars may be imperiled.

•The department of Physics and Astronomy has been affected in three major ways due to staffing constraints. Introductory physics courses next year (and in the foreseeable future) will be capped for a total enrollment of 72 each semester – current enrollment in Physics 113 is over 100. This will affect other science majors and premed students the most. For the first time in the history of Vassar, students will be closed out of this course. Participation in multidisciplinary programs or cross-listed courses with other departments is severely restricted. Finally, the number of courses for non-physics majors offered is being cut and only one course per year is likely to be offered.

We need to stop this damage before it is too late. We ask you to join us in demanding the protection of the curriculum that is the core of Vassar’s educational mission. We are seeking your help in supporting our administrators in canceling lay-offs and canceling teacher contract termination.