Sunday, June 29, 2014
General SBA Board Meeting
1:00 pm – Getting situated
Quick round of introductions in case anyone doesn’t know someone on the board, why did you want to join SBA, review of summer plan for July and August.
Physically present: Nav, Kate, Megan, Stephen, Lexi, Ernesto
Digitally present: Aparna, Neil, Dustin, Shoeb
Not present: Anthony
1:15 pm – Mentorship program proposal (Ernesto’s project)
Ernesto is dedicating 80% of his SBA time to this. He believes it will help SBA be more responsive. He is working with other law schools and learning about the student-to-student programs. He spoke with the CDO about the alumni mentorship network. The program would provide mentorship through clubs. The difference between the alumni mentorship and this program would be its first impression dynamic versus job seeking dynamic. Ernesto’s program is modeled on Davis which it is opt-in led by the SBA. Ernesto would like to work with presidents of student orgs to gain recruitment, law review/globe mentors, etc. This could be 1:1 or more per mentor. He would like to advertise before orientation and make sure to get evening students involved. Possibilities for beginning of the year advertising: cocktail hour/mixer, speed networking within student classes, fund each mentor and mentee for lunch… We need to recruit the first two weeks of school. (Ernesto, Kate, Nav, = planning committee) second week event- 22nd, 23rd, 29th??? *follow up with committee
Orientation:
Can we push the whole day back to make a cross-over for evening and day students?
How can we catch the students to mix them up/get them to know each other? Join evening and day student classes.
1:40 pm – SBA Committees
Questions for discussion –
How does SBA maintain better coordination with SBA Committees?
Do we need 9 committees with a shrinking student body (meaning are they each serving a substantive purpose and did they in fact serve that purpose)? For example, our school isn’t able to maintain intramural sports outside of basketball, should we combine intramural with wellness (mental and physical wellness as the concept)?
How do we improve recruitment to the SBA Committees?
Does a Chair and Vice Chair structure work as opposed to a Co-Chair structure? Should we have that decision made in stone in advance of knowing who our applicants are?
Ernesto- the board is not connected or aware of committee actions, how do we fix it?
Can we each have a committee appointment to keep the board involved?
*Mentorship committee- Ernesto would like to make it his pet project and choose a smaller group to do hands-on work for the program- 4 or 5 students in the work group
*PR Committee- on the lower end of things we need to keep (Nav). This could be more efficient in a different form. Can we create a point person/seat in the other committees as the PR person?
*Elections Committee- we need people who are interested in running an election and yes, it is necessary. We could also make it digital. We need online voting by the end of the year.
*IM Sports- general problem with participation. This probably needs to be more pick-up style due to low numbers. Can we merge it with Wellness Committee? There is an evening student interested in a“fitness McGeorge” club or committee. Can we make IM a subheading to Wellness Committee? New name? NOT “FITNESS,” this has negative connotations.
*Barristers Committee- how do we get new students involved? Can we get the second year class interested again? We need fiscal checks. Ernesto suggests Aparna be the point person. Ernesto and Neil will be oversight officers for the Barristers committee.
*Diversity Committee- keep it to avoid politics. Should we try to get one person from each diversity-related club on the committee? What is “diversity”?
*Sustainability Committee- keep it, the garden was good.
*Wellness Committee- give them some objectives then flexibility.
*Career Development Committee- professional development class focus. This can give CDO feedback and communications as the student arm of CDO and the professional development class. Can we suggest making it a first year assignment to attend professional networking event? Come up with criteria of what a professional networking event is (by December).
We have to be flexible for student committees that have no applicants, etc. VPs will make a timeline for due date for apps etc.
2:10 pm – Funding policies
Neil Cacali will provide a summary of last year and our current status this year.
Funding Proposal and Evaluation by Niel Cacali:
Funding proposal by SBA Treasurer Neil Cacali can be found here.
2014-2015 projections can be found here.
Open questions for discussion –
We had $8,000 remaining from the previous fiscal year (more than 10% or 80 students SBA fees), should we be looking for ways to get more student money deployed?
Does the clawback provision serve its purpose or is it a detriment to asking for SBA support (examples: Women’s Caucus auction is disproportionately affected by the clawback provision because they hold a large auction for charity. Lamda doesn’t even bother asking forSBA support because it would negatively impact their ability to do LGBT scholarships)?
Neil wants to create co-sponsorships between clubs. He has three different types of funding ideas: event basis (two week notice to receive 50%), beginning of the year requests and pre-payments, or matching program.
We need better communication on the request formats and startup fund requests. Deadline for decisions on funding requests before the first Orientation meeting on July 26
2:30 pm – Open discussion on anything.
Ernesto would like to be funded for an ABA conference in Boston. He argues that two representatives of McGeorge should be present. The funding would pay for flight, room and board. The total cost for both he and the McGeorge ABA representative, Mirwais Haider. Ernesto notes that past presidents have used their president stipend to pay for this conference. A funding request will be sent out by Ernesto tonight for a vote.
Request for ABA Conference funding can be found here.
Votes on preliminary ABA Conference funding can be found here.
Meeting adjourned 1500 6/29/14.
Follow-up by email on meeting and funding request (Ernesto):
July 8, 2014
ABA Conference Funding updates, school sponsorship funds
I went to Dean Mootz and he has agreed to move $1,000 from the general fund for the ABA Conference and Mirwais and myself are likely to be reimbursed $150 each from the CDO Conference Fund. As I mentioned earlier, I will keep the request limited to $2,000 and absorb the rest out of pocket ($1372 (flight ticket prices went up in addition to taxes)+$212+$212+$212 (hotel room without taxes). Mirwais and I will fly out on a red eye to reduce the number of nights we need to stay in Boston to 3 from 4 saving another $200+. That means SBA funding request will be reduced from $2,000 to only $700. It is my hope that this meets the conditions of the Board.
Funding Policy discussion
Please take the time this weekend to get your thoughts in on funding policy changes before we go to amendments and votes after Monday. The funding policy page is here. If you do not add comments, I am going to assume you have nothing you wish to amend (though we will all vote on amendments). The goal is to finish this document by the 20th so I can familiarize myself with changes to present to the student clubs on the 26th.
Orientation Week
Today I met with Rebekah to go over the shape of orientation. It does not look like we have a time gap for the scavenger hunt to work with (it will be 3 pm till 5:00ish pm) on Thursday. We had a very productive conversation. I will report more as I go.
So plan B was to have a welcome back BBQ/picnic on Thursday at 5 pm. I have submitted the event request form and Aparna will be the lead on this event.
As for the mentorship dinner, the event request is submitted for that to be the 2nd week on a Friday from 6 pm till 8 pm as of this moment. Kate Casey and Navdeep Singh will be the leads in setting up the event.
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