Tuesday, February 19, 2019, 7:30-9:00Hopkins Hall 002

All College Council Meetings are open to the Williams Community. Anyone who wishes to speak before Council should contact Ellie or Olivia (eas6 or cot1).

Called to Order:

Guests/Proxies: Arjun and Joey for Film ClubAbsences: Olivia Tse

I. Approval of Prior Minutes

Motion to approve Rules of Order: LanceSecond: ?The Ayes have it.

Motion to approve minutes: LanceSecond: KaiThe Ayes have it.

II. Budgets Overview

Ellie: Budgets are the first thing for tonight.Jamie: I have a presentation for this. I would like to go over how things work for our funding. We raise money through the Student Activities Tax, and we use this money to fund student events. We believe that students should not have students pay out of pocket. We are not allowed to have events and student organizations that charge out of pocket fees. As a general rule of how finances work, the College’s finances are not real time. We can temporarily deficit spend…

*Nathan walks in with 4 pizzas and some other food-stuffs from Ramuntos*

Jamie: CC is responsible for closing out numerous accounts to make sure they don’t end with a deficit. Otherwise, we’d have to bail them out (the Record, for instance). Onto general rules, all spending must be pre-approved. Retroactive funding can only happen if

the money has been preapproved. The only exception to the rule of CC not being able to buy alcohol is Pub Night.

*At this time, Nathan requests the ability to distribute pizza to all present*

Jake: Can individuals request funds?

Jamie: Yes! They can, they just must have attended treasurer training.

Porter: what if people spend without us approving?

Ellie: If clubs go into large deficits, we generally create a SASC investigation.

Will: I run SASC which is the disciplinary committee. Basically, we look into the club and try to understand why what happened actually happened.

Alex: will this powerpoint be public?

Lance: I will put it into an appendix in the minutes.1

Jamie: Moving on, money should never leave CC account numbers. If it does, it becomes very difficult to manage the accounting. Going forward groups like MinCo groups will just be given a CC account number. Regarding Spring Break Out Trips, we recently passed a bylaw that allows us to spend $100 per student for spring break trips. We also cannot give funds out to groups that have expressly political or religious purposes. Hotel rooms are funded at a flat rate of $30 per person. For fundraising, we like to see things happening on Williams’ campus, and we prioritize that.

III. Budget Requests

Jamie: Alright, onto budgets

1 https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1FHYetdM_xNHBD9bYQFM8fYbNiNeTqDZgvchuTyxo32g/edit?usp=sharing

MASC requests $164.96 for 1000 stickersFinCom recommended in fullMotion to approve request: JakeSecond: ?The Ayes have it

Meditative Practice requests $127 for event suppliesFinCom recommended in fullMotion to approve request: JakeSecond: PorterThe Ayes have it

College Bowl requests $150 for nationalsFinCom recommended in fullMotion to approve request: JakeSecond: Alex Z.The Ayes have it

Pub Night requests $2610 for funding until Spring BreakFinCom didn’t vote, received too lateMotion to approve request: JakeSecond: RauriThe Ayes have it

Film Club requests $750 for 3 actors for 15 hours of work that has already been producedFinCom recommends reducing it to $520

Jamie: I’ve talked to some people on OSL, in general this seems that we can’t fund a club for members doing stuff that they normally would do as part of the club.

Joey: the actors aren’t necessarily members of Film Club, and they were doing work and deserve to be paid like everyone else. Films are expensive, and we were able to do this with a low budget. It’s not fair to cut out these people for the work they put on. In addition to the work they did, the actors also drove 3 hours to Boston and had lots of downtime. There isn’t a community where students can meet and work on films.

Arjun: This labor was above and beyond 15 hours, and these students had a lot of downtime, again. There isn’t a community or location on Williams’ campus where you can do

William: Why was the funding now requested in advance?

Joey: we submitted it with our budget at the beginning of the year, and we were told we needed to itemize it and submit it later. We haven’t completed the project, so I don’t know if it makes a difference that we haven’t finished it yet.

Max: Point of order: what is being done with the film?

Joey: we’d like to screen it at Williams and play it at film festivals. This would increase Williams’ presence and give people at Williams a chance to see a film

Solly: On FinCom, this would have been funded. If students are laboring for hours on end, they should be compensated. $520 is a fair amount.

Nate: You’re definitely going to screen on campus?

Kai: I would be down to fund props and the materials going into the film. I would like to remind everyone that last council we voted down funding students working with the Asian American studies movement to perform transcription. I don’t think it would be fair to the Asian American studies students who requested funding last council that we denied.

Nathan: Point of Information: a new Council sets a new precedence

Kai: Our budget is running very low.

Solly: Point of Order: we voted down the Asian American Studies students request because it was for a class, which is expressly against our bylaws.

Serapia: The reason that the Asian American studies movement was relying so heavily on institutional support was because of the labor required for the work.

Linda: Point of Order: A) what is $750 / 15 (17 an hour… $520 is 12 an hour)

Alex S.: Going back to the big question: you said the actors weren’t necessarily part of the Film Club.

Joey: the dynamic presently is that we have board members that plan events and then we have people audition for shorts we plan, and then they get added onto the list serves.

I wouldn’t call anyone who comes to the events we hold active members. There is no requirement for people to show up to everything.

Jake: does 15 hours account for the travel time?

Joey: No, just shooting hours.

Jake: Hours for practicing lines? Rehearsing? Anything like that? What are the actual hours?

Arjun: it's hard to quantify. Even when we weren’t shooting scenes, they were either rehearsing lines or having downside.

Tristan: The question here isn’t hours, its about whether or not you promised money you didn’t have. This question is precedent. Should we fund something and make the precedent that we are going to fund clubs like this that ask for money and promise it when they don’t have it?

Joey: we applied for grants, and we ultimately didn’t get them… We tried to get money. It was never the idea that we would promise money and then come to CC.

Will: My question is for Jamie: tell us, what is our policy vis-a-vis paying students? My understanding is we want to be giving money to do things, not paying money to do things.

Jamie: money can go to a club, but money cannot go to an individual.

Will: I’m hesitant to give money to students for payment, I see the role of CC to give money to clubs to have things happen on campus. We should talk about this more on Council.

Long: can the actors just create a club called actors club to get the money?

Jamie: it would still go to the club, not the students

Lance: I think we should do this so long as we can possibly do this. Jamie, is there an administrative barrier to this?

Jamie: the administration disagrees with us, but it is possible.

Jake: Point of order: is there any other way for these students to get money?

Joey: We can try to make things work, but yeah I think they would still like some form of payment.

Arjun: going into this, we told them we’d like to pay them.

William: Moo-Mami regularly has students that aren’t officially part of their clubs work with them for various projects. I think the distinction here isn’t particularly well made.

Arjun: this wasn’t just a club event of us all going to boston and having fun filming at Joey’s house.

Jamie: was this the club’s project or your project?

Joey: This was the club’s project, that I have been working on for a few years now. We have been planning this for a very long time. We have been planning to have members of film club come and help film this with us.

Arjun: the film club has done a production once a year, but this was irregular because it was much larger than normal.

Porter: 2 part question: 1) in the past, has there been compensation for actors? And 2) what is the type of film

Joey: in the past, the compensation has come through the form of gift cards. The film itself is a comedy. It has to do with graduation. Jackson Barber last year at graduation said that sometimes the world crumbles and then you must rebuild, and this film kinda embodies that idea. Essentially, it’s my own story of being recruited here to run track, getting hip surgery my freshman fall, and then not being able to do it again.

Lili: I think these workers should be compensated at the same rate as other student workers. I think the same structure as other on campus workers should be followed for these students.

Jesus: I don’t think this is completely unfounded. I know that for some minco groups in the Fall we compensated makeup artists for their labor. My only question is that in the future if these members would be considered actors and if they would receive funding.

Joey: Yeah, I think that the free time being spent away from whatever you’d like to do with your free time could be covered with funding. However, the project we have planned this semester isn’t really needed to be funded.

Shane: 2 questions: 1) do cap and bells actors get paid for their labor? No? Okay. 2) I’m not necessarily opposed to student compensation, and I’m not opposed to having this discussion. I think that if we are establishing a precedent for providing funding for student employment. It does establish something that can be recreated for other clubs. If this is something we are going to do, we need to consider this.

Jamie: to be clear, this funding here would be a shift from other areas to a new area. It isn’t free money.

Alex Z.: are you all normally compensated by anyone else? Is food provided? Lodging?

Joey: Yeah, I paid for most of the food for everyone, and the lodging.

Alex Z.: Can we reimburse for the food, lodging, travel, etc? Not the actors. That would be better and less of a bad precedent.

Jamie: I would just need a new budget. If you guys can give me records of the documents, I would be for that.

Nate: I know we fund fixed rates for gas, meals, etc. Potentially, if this isn’t approved, you could receive funding and what you do with that money is up to you.

Max: my point is kinda moot now, but I do have another question. Would this film have happened if the actors didn’t know they would have received payment?

Joey: I would feel bad not funding people for their sacrificed time, especially 15 hours + extra time outside of that for nothing.

Lance: this feels like we are holding money because we can. We have a precedent of spending money in the past for student labor that is contracted by clubs.

Jamie: I’m not opposed to funding this if you can find the documents to have a reimbursement request.

Motion to table to next week: SollySecond: Will

Motion retracted.

Jake: Objection: I think we should have this tabled, but perhaps we should have a debate in here over this.

Solly: maybe a straw poll?

Ellie: just a point of procedure, we normally do straw polls to show what people’s thoughts are presently.

Nate: if we reimbursed them based on what we’d normally fund a club for the costs that would come out to about $650.

Jesus: How do we know Joey will give the money to the actors?

Jamie: we would refund him for his costs, and he can choose if he takes it, allows the actors get funding vouchers, etc.

Tristan: Council doesn’t fund retroactively. We have to accept this. We should keep the doors open with regards to the treasurer, but we shouldn’t be searching for some type of loophole.

Jamie: Retroactive requests are all at my discretion.

Motion to Table to next week: WillSecond: Alex Z. The Ayes have it.

Joey: just a question about earlier discussion. I know at the start of this meeting, but you mentioned that we can pay people for work towards a club’s function?

Max: can I call a strawpoll on approving $653.71 to cover the costs incurred?

Jake: Can we do a third option including labor?

Ellie: sounds like we should 3 options.

Linda: can be abstain?

Ellie: yes

Margot: why $750 appropriate rather than the amount paid to students normally on campus?

Joey: I guess we considered the extra time spent on the drive there, time practicing, etc.

Ellie: we’ll do the straw poll

Jamie: one more budget: AASIA Heritage Month requests $9,000 from co-sponsorship. FinCom recommended $4,000 from the $4,500 we have left in cosponsorship. I think we can do some moving of the numbers around, however. I think we should use the rainy day funding (presently $20,000) as an advance to our funding so that we can cover the full cost of the AASIA request.

Jake: can you explain rollover?

Jamie: at the end of the year, any money that hasn’t been spent by clubs comes back to our general fund.

Jesus: In doing this, will we increase our recommendation from $4,000? Will this set a precedent going forward for other heritage months?

Jamie: our recommendation would increase. We actually did not have any more money to spend so we couldn’t request.

Motion to approve $9,000 to AASIA Heritage Month: SollySecond: ?The Ayes have it.

Ellie: If there is no further questions. Time for committees!

IV. CommitteesEllie: we will take 10-15 minutes to meet with our committees, and talk about when we will meet. Break time!

Olivia: Really quickly, this wasn’t on the agenda, but we are aware that mentorship roles are often kind of arbitrary. We want you to reach out to senior members of Council and they can help you out.

Ellie: We just want people to have resources to be able to learn how feasible their ideas are and to have some institutional knowledge at their grasp.

V. Projects

Ellie: Now we are going to talk about projects! Projects are rarely successful, no one holds you accountable, and it’s easy for projects to fall apart at early stages. To that end, we want to restructure how projects are done. We want to take a more group approach to projects, creating big ideas that people have, and working in groups to make sure they are enacted. We will be sending out a Google Form, and will be allowing people to respond with ideas of what they believe to be interesting and a good idea.

Olivia: we encourage you to talk to your friends about what they want to see happen by CC. Feel free to not be limited in your thoughts

Porter: More of a question, in the interest to garner broader ideas, could we send a campus-wide survey?

Solly: one interesting thing about projects, is most of your ideas come to you through complaining. The lines at Paresky, for instance, maybe have no solutions.

Lance: there was a line monitoring camera a few years back to give an ETA for snar, so the sky's the limit.

Jamie: Goodrich swipes on Sunday have been shut down several times by dining services. That would be a cool idea.

Ellie: there are projects that have been consistently tried and failed by students… like water filters in Frosh Quad… We will never have them. Its very sad.

Jesus: rollover swipes are something that would be awesome to have

Olivia: we have been talking to Steve Klass about this, and we hope to try it

Kai: this is a great project, but it’s very hard to actually accomplish. The Dining Services budget is massive and very hard to balance. I’m happy to keep fighting for this with you, and I think we may be able to if we keep trying to.

Alex Z.: Swipe equivalency on Spring Street

Long: Can we redistribute the rollover fund at the end of the year?

Jamie: no, it is returned to us at the end of the year.

Will: With that, we definitely cannot just give money to students.

Olivia: rollover is the money that clubs have not spent. CC spends down all of its money every year, we just have to have clubs spend it down.

Alex S.: Is there a way to allow clubs to update us on funds that have been spent so that they can update us on how much has been spent?

Brendan: what is the thoughts on what we should do with the ice rink space?

Ellie: People don’t want us to do anything with it.

Max: can a project be removing the rats and bats from Dodd?

Will: the job of the administration is to gut that building.

Jesus: what about free laundry?

Olivia: something to look into

Will: what came out that was it is actually extremely expensive because there is a lot of laundry done on campus. Then there is a question about athletes and laundry. Athletes do way more laundry.

Margot: the non-disposable trays are lacking in number.

Solly: what about having two doors in Whitman's?

Olivia: it’s easier to have one door with regards to swipes

Motion to Adjourn: WillSecond: ?The Ayes have it.

Meeting Adjourned 9:10

Respectfully Submitted,

Lance LedetParliamentarian, College Council