Attendance: AJ, Nikki, Jordan, Bahar, Chanel, Brittany, Crystal, Jess, Derek, Courtney, Tyler, Keegan, Mary
Absence: None
Meeting Minutes 1. 24.16
Approve Agenda
Brittany motion to approve
Nicole Second
Unanimous
Approve Last Meeting Minutes 1/10/16
Jess Motion to approve
Derek Second
Unanimous
Next Meeting
AJ: January 31st will be our next meeting on Superbowl Sunday as no one objects to being there.
Half Way There
AJ: How did it go?
Courtney: It went really well.
AJ: I think all the students enjoyed it.
Courtney: People expressed that they enjoyed it.
AJ: Is there anything oyu suggest for next year?
Derek: It’s just hard to tally for an actual number and balancing food, drinks and venue size. Try to figure out ahead of time so you can really get that down.
Bahar: How’d you do with the budget?
Derek: Right on
Mary: Within $20
AJ: So the venue and dj have been paid?
Derek: Yes
AJ: Okay anything else on Halfway there?
Courtney: The DJ is an approved vendor in case anyone needs to use him. The DJ and the photobooth were together. He threw in his original website and he advertises that he has lights for an additional fee but he brought them even though we didn’t pay for them so that was nice. He’d been to the space before so he knew how to light it up.
AJ: Since there are no questions we will move on to the next thing on the agenda.
Timing of Grades Release:
AJ: It’s been brought to my attention by an LLM student that grades were released very late. It’s something we could bring to administration but it’s a precarious topic because it’s half professors and students. So I’ll leave this up to the board.
Chanel: Well it did suck having grades come out after the semester started.
AJ: My experience in the past few years has been that grades were all released before the semester started so this was an outlier year.
Jordan: I just don’t want to frame it as a graduating students problem if it’s a problem for everyone.
AJ: I can draft a letter and upon board approval hand it over to the right people.
Jess: There is something we can do right?
AJ: We can just advise them to be more sensitive to students. I’ll draft a letter and send it to everyone before next meeting. Any questions on that?
Smoke-Free Initiative
Maralfarsi: This last year I went to graduate school and I have a personal and professional long time history of not being a fan of tobacco in public places. I’m really proud to be on this campus and I think one of the first things I noticed on campus is that there is always a cloud of smoke around it. I can’t walk through the area without being uncomfortable. I know there’s smoke shaming walking through the cloud and coughing but I don’tw ant to do that. I brought this issue up when I had a meeting with the dean and I said it shocks me that in this progressive of a city and campus that smoking is dead in the middle of campus. This should be in a place where its not such a high traffic zone. I also brought it up to the health club. The main campus is working on developing a no smoking policy. That’s what brings us here today is the timing of all of this and ask to see where you guys are on this. We want to see if SBA will support some sort of resolution
Tom Cruz: I believe in everything that was said, the 4E’s can remember a time where there was smoking all over campus and now they enforce the 20 feet from the building policy. It kind of went to sleep for a while but there is still concern that people are not adhering to that area. It depends on the time of year. People with respiratory issues, smoking can cause a pretty strong attack and our campus is not that big. It was raised at the Health Certificate meeting to see if we could move it away from campus. The deans email was sent out late November to academic deans. Since SF is all indoors may be that way already. I didn’t know that the letter was going out and the Dean was on top of it. I applaud him on that but you’re our elected body so we would like your help. In that draft it goes over the different risks of environmental tobacco smoke or secondhand smoke. There is no known safe level. But because there is no safe environmental smoke the document asks to respect individual liberties and weighs peoples freedoms versus freedom from harm. It asks for a smoke free possibility. It also includes issues such as snuff smokeless tobacco and that addresses third hand smoke. That addresses whether we should ban chewing tobaccos. Also e-cigarettes could not only be loaded with nicotine solution and also with THC and there’s no way to really check it. So that’s something that people should be involuntarily harmed. We hope for your support on the issue.
Maralfarsi: There are already 48 schools that have ban and UC system has adopted non-smoking policy. I don’t know if you guys are going to have a discussion or how this will proceed I would welcome people who are interested in creating a committee or body to help. We have pulled many students to be in a group to try and start a student discussion.
Jordan: I’m kind of confused as to what you are asking for SBA
Maralfarsi: To adopt this in some form since you represent the entire LLM and JD body.
Jess: So this resolution will be sent to the president and it would go from there?
Tom: Yes, I’m all ears on what you guys would suggest.
AJ: I think the best course of action is to review this resolution and see how we would like to solicit feedback from the students. It would be good if we could test that ourselves and at the next meeting review this and determine if textually there needs to be any changes and go from there. If you guys wouldn’t mind coming back next Sunday to go over any edits and concerns with the text of the resolution.
Tom: I can be here.
AJ: I think what our homework can be is to review this paper and if there’s anything in here that you don’t think we should support or should be changed bring it to the next meeting and hopefully next week we can come up with a decision.
Jess: This resolution does include parking lots
Jordan: Their argument against vaping didn’t seem like it passed the straight faced argument.
AJ: Okay just review and we’ll talk next week.
Honors and Awards Committee
AJ: Professor Brungess is considering changing the way academic awards are given out during the year. Presently there’s the witkin award and there’s the dean list and that’s currently at 3.10 and if you’ve had that GPA for the year you’re on the list for the year. Then there is the with disctinction which is I believe cumulatively over a 3.10 and with disctinction over 3.5. Of course valedictorian and order of the coif etc. It’s not that they want to do away with any of that but they just want to see how it’s all working. What they had Samantha do it compare data from all the other schools and see how they do it and as you can see McGeorge has a lot of awards.
Jess: Like the process of it?
AJ: Of even the need for it.
Brittany: So just witkins and deans list?
Jess: It’s something to work for so I think it’s a nice reward for somebody who works hard.
Jordan: There’s a bit of a scholarship with each witkin so that’s nice.
Courtney: I know UC Davis does witkin but they don’t publish it so only the person who gets witkin would know. I think that’s a good idea.
Jess: I do like that
Courtney: I like that they do that so that it’s not so competitive.
Jordan: I think it’s nice to publish it, it’s parto f the award. So much about McGeorge is less cut throat than other schools.
Nikki: It gives you an opportunity to be proud of each other and our classmates. I don’t think there should be a reason to concede to those people who have a negative attitude about it and be out for others. We should be proud of those who are doing well and that’s the type of comradery that we need at McGeorge.
Courtney: I like that but don’t think that everyone feels that way.
AJ: Ideally that is how we like to think.
Jess: Rankings are private so that’s good.
Nikki: So what’s the general thing?
AJ: They’re keeping the witkins but are concerned with the deans list and the graduation awards.
Keegan: The distinction line here does fall lower than other schools..
AJ: Last meeting we discussed raising it to 3.3. We would be grandfathered in but next years 1Ls will fall within that GPA requirement.
Brittany: I think 3.33 sounds good.
Nikki: Yes it sounds more fair.
Tyler: I’d like to see it change from distinction to latin like cum laude. That way when you put it on your resume it would make more sense to employers.
Derek: When you have to use the latin to explain what it is it’s better to just use that from the beginning.
Nikki: So what can we do?
AJ: Professor Brungess just wants us to give our opinion on what we think about how it is now. Probably the best thing right now is clarification on what some of these awards are. Maybe condensing some of the awards and clarification on others would be the best way to service students who are seeking these awards.
Nikki: Maybe she could come into another meeting if she wants to know more of our opinions. She would be able to answer all our questions.
AJ: Okay any questions, comments or concerns to the honors system as it presently is at McGeorge.
Barrister’s Ball
AJ: Let’s get an update on how planning is going. Which room in Capitol Plaza will the event be in?
Brittany: The Grand room.
AJ: What committee’s are you going to want or need so that way we can know if there’s anything you guys need help with.
Nikki: Planning wise I think we’re good it’s just more the day of we will need help with set up. Keegan and Rachel are on it with Brittany and me so we are going to talk about how many people we want. We’re going to offer it to McGeorge students first and then spouses after that to help. We have another meeting about tabling and will want some help with that. We just finalized the menu, Brittany was there to help out with last years issues to make sure we didn’t have the same ones. The venue has a lot of decorations they are going to let us use. We are going to use the same DJ as half way there and tickets will be $50. Megan just finished the Facebook page and ticket designs.
Brittany: The purpose of tabling is for people who want to sit together.
Nikki: We’re encouraging people to buy tickets beforehand because we have 15 days to tell the vendor our count. They will go on sale next week, tomorrow they will start.
Bahar: Are you selling at the door?
Nikki: I don’t know if we are going to do that. Tickets at the door we’re going to say no because it’s too hard to estimate who is going to show up last minutes as far as cost.
Brittany: We talked about the after party at the Park to try and only let people who go to Barrister’s to come to the after party.
AJ: We could try but the venue but maybe not. Lauryn and I will get back to you next week.
Nikki: Are there any other questions?
AJ: No that about covers it. Just Bahar if you could let us know exactly how much we spent last year. What’s our budget for Barristers?
Nikki: We spent about that much and we’re anticipating about $6,000 in ticket sales. The event will start at 6, cocktails at 6:30 and 7 is dinner.
AJ: Things to do for next meeting is look over the resolution.
AdJourn
Chanel: Motion to adjourn
Bahar: Second
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