112th Senate Committee on Civic Engagement
Date: 7 March 2024 Time: 6:00pm-7:00pm Location: CSC, Meeting Room
ATTENDANCE: Present: Chair Angela Xiong, Lucy Landry, Willow Goode (CSC Civic Life Specialist), Priya Agrawal, Mary Bruce (Assistant Director of Public Programs, SNF Agora Institute) Excused absences: Yonatanne Desta Unexcused absences: Sumire Sumi
AGENDA:
- Chair Xiong: Began with Mary Bruce’s( Assistant Director of Public Programs, SNF Agora Institute) first question from an email sent to the CE committee. We can sponsor “The First 100 Days” as a CE committee, but if Mary Bruce would like the entire SGA to sponsor it, we would need to bring it to the GBM this Tuesday
- Bruce: We are limited to 12-20 students for watch parties
- Chair Xiong: if you want a bigger turnout, a sponsorship from SGA as a whole may be helpful
- Bruce: whatever feels right
- Chair Xiong: Would you like to come to one of our SGA GBMs and speak to the Senator?
- Bruce: Would love to speak at an SGA GBM.
- Chair Xiong: GBMs are at 7:20pm, scheduling for this upcoming week might be difficult
- Bruce: 25th or after would work for me
- Chair Xiong; the 25th at 7:20pm would be best. Will reach out to the President of the Senate to schedule Bruce into the Agenda
- Willow Goode: 2nd question from email sent to CE committee. Did not know Jasmine was doing the event, but does not see an issue with CSC co-sponsoring in some way. We can put it in the Newsletter, CSC instagram. Anything else?
- Bruce: Would love for someone from the CSC to come to the event
- Goode: Ben Bells, associate director of civic engagement/learning, might be interested in going. Will check his availability. Would you like him to facilitate conversations?
- Bruce: tag-team. It’d be great if he could come to the watch party, welcome people, and help people be active participants for the first hour. In the second hour, he could help with framing questions to ask to the students and help create a dialogue.
- Bruce: sent the committee the RSVP link to share for “he Executive Abroad: Presidential Power and the U.S. Role in the World” on March 25th
- Chair Xiong: Anymore information can be helpful that we can share with the RSVP form
- Chair Xiong: CE committee is proposing a new event. Focused on recent research funding pauses and freezes. This is a big issue directly impacting our campus (professors, grad students, recently admitted students). This is something that would be interesting to discuss as many students feel very strongly. Will have some guest speakers that have knowledge on how this is affecting people, as well as professors and students discussing how this impacts the long-term and what next steps may be.
- Bruce: This is a very important topic and very timely. What would SNF Angora’s role be in this?
- Chair Xiong: Your support. Helping reach out to speakers and increasing awareness of the event.
- Goode: Committee members are reaching out to their personal networks to see if anyone would like to speak. Honorarium money can be requested. Be mindful of who you are inviting.
- Chair Xiong; We would like some help with identifying and finding speakers
- Goode: Maybe SNF has anyone in their personal networks. Maybe they could have a conversation with Angela to see if it's something they’d be interested in.
- Chair Xiong: Very targeted towards biology and health research. Bloomberg School of Public Health is also being affected
- Bruce: We have paused adding new events for this semester, but will run this past. May not have health policy expertise, but will think about personal networks. How policy impacts health matters a ton. Are you looking for somebody with understanding of public health impacts?
- Chair Xiong: Yes, but we need to be mindful of honorariums. Lucy, please reach out to your contact on the finance committee to see what we could do
- Lucy Landry: Will do
- Bruce: This is a very timely topic. We proposed this ourselves as a big debate topic. Please send a write-up of your topic to me and Young
- Chair Xiong: Will do
- Bruce: This question is for the CSC and CE committee. Democracy and Freedom Festival is happening October 15th-18th, alongside our building opening. Looking to engage students, this committee, and the CSC. How do we bring in community members? What are people interested in? Looking for a civic-festival feel with this event. Looking for an exciting, positive feel for it. Want to plant the seed this Spring, bring students together, and get some ideas. Also want to know what events you are thinking about for the fall. The other two things coming this fall: Alumni Weekend (Departmental Showcase) and large debates. We can schedule a meeting in the future to discuss this in more detail.
- Goode: We meet every Friday at 6pm if you want to hop on and continue this discussion.
- Chair Xiong: I can get you a space to speak at the GBM after our Spring break. I can see if I can get your upcoming event into the agenda for this week, but I don’t know if that’s possible just yet.
- Bruce: Please continue to advocate for yourself and am so excited to partner with your committee.
- Chair Xiong: We are excited to work with you as well. Thank you!
Bruce left the meeting @ 6:30pm
- Pryia Agrawal : For our event in April, do we want our speakers to be online?
- Chair Xiong: We want to have our speakers in-person
- Goode: For now, we’ll name the event. Federal Funding Cuts. Date: April 14th, 2025. 5pm-7pm. Place: Gilman 50, Homewood Campus.
- Goode: Will look into giving us access to CSC’s resource and template for flyers/posters.
Committee worked on a planning document for the remainder of the meeting.
- Goode: Should we make this a HopTalks - panel, and then conversation afterwards
- Chair Xiong: Likes the structure of an event like that. Would speakers need to do research on what we’re talking about?
- Goode: No, they’d just need to talk about what they do, and how it impacts them. CSC could help in a lot of ways if this is made into a HopTalks
- Chair Xiong: I think that is a good idea.
- Goode: Is there a mission statement for the committee? It would be a good idea to include that.
- Chair Xiong: Yes, we do have a mission statement.
- Goode: Who do we know that we could invite?
- Chair Xiong: Will reach out to her personal circles to see if anyone would like to talk, or if anyone knows someone who would like to. Professor Peter Winch might be interested. Assistant Professor Erin Cooney in the same class could have connections.
- Goode; Do we want a student perspective and professor perspective?
- Chair Xiong: Yes.
- Goode: Are we meeting next week?
- Chair Xiong: I think so. We can meet online if most people cannot meet in-person.
- Goode: I sent a Calendar invitation with the team's link embedded in it for our online meeting next week.
Meeting ended @ 7:00pm.