112th Johns Hopkins Student Government Association
Senate Meeting #17
January 28, 2025 / 07:20 PM / Hackerman B17
AGENDA
Call to Order and Attendance (1 min)
- Excused Absentees: Nayshawn Ferebee, Moses Frumkin, Yashas Mallikarjun, Adithyan Neelamana
- Unexcused Absentees: Tyler Turner
Convening Business (40 min)
Amendment and Approval of the Agenda (1 min)
Public Input (3 min)
Reports (5 min)
- Cabinet Reports (4 min)
- Advisor Report (2 min)
Non-Legislative Business (15 min)
- SGA Expectations - President Nasreen Naqvi
- Committee Expectations
- Admin Invites
- SIF Tabling- President Nasreen Naqvi
- Foundational Abilities Survey- Senator Kevin Xu
- SGA Mentorship Program- Senator Tanisha Taneja & Amy Xu
First Reading
- Speed Dating Bill- Chair Tim Huang
- Date: Feb 21st
- Evening 7pm Great Hall
Second Reading
Prospective Legislation & Announcements (5 min)
Adjournment (Estimated 9:00 PM)
Time-length and adjournment estimates are provided for the benefit of guests at Senate meetings. However, SGA meetings are always slated to extend until 9:00 PM and SGA members are expected to remain in the Senate chamber until official adjournment by motion, whether before or after the adjournment estimate.
112th Johns Hopkins Student Government Association
Senate Meeting #17
January 28, 2025 / 07:20 PM / Hackerman B17
MINUTES
Call to Order and Attendance (1 min)
- Excused Absentees: Nayshawn Ferebee, Moses Frumkin, Yashas Mallikarjun, Adithyan Neelamana
- Unexcused Absentees: Tyler Turner
Convening Business (40 min)
Amendment and Approval of the Agenda (1 min)
Public Input (3 min)
Reports (5 min)
- Cabinet Reports (4 min)
- Executive President Stone Meng celebrated the Lunar New Year of SGA members. He said that the Off-Campus Housing Office reached out to ask SGA to make the students more aware of their office. On February 4th, they are planning to organize an event. Meng will meet with them and they might come to the meeting.
- Meng has been working on the classroom initiative, which involved renewing the furniture at classrooms, with Sophomore Class Senator Tarini Basirreddy. In a few GBMs, Brittani Brown will come and give more updates about the new items.
- Chair of Programming Tim Huang has been working on a couple of events. The Spring Retreat will include a dinner with SGA alumni. He’s working on this with Annie Koogle from the Alumni Association. There will be an SGA Sponsor Fundraiser; there will be more details about this in the future. For the Senator Spotlights, Huang has some rough drafts, which can be accessed through the link in the agenda. Message Huang with your achievements from this semester. He will start posting this after SIF. If you’re interested in running for the Chair of Programming, reach out to Huang.
- Advisor Report (2 min)
- Advisor Jessica Snell thanked those who signed up to go to the student government event, which includes other student councils from different universities.
- Cabinet Reports (4 min)
Non-Legislative Business (15 min)
- SGA Expectations - President Nasreen Naqvi
- Committee Expectations
- Committee leaders should let the President of the Senate Nasreen Naqvi know if their committees changed their meeting times or dates. Please update Naqvi with your work. Naqvi asked all changes to be finalized by next Tuesday.
- She added that all agenda items should be submitted by Sundays. It can be sent to her as a reply to the agenda email. If the presentation is not in the email, then you won’t be able to present it. It is important to see what will be presented before in order to screen it and see if the information is relevant and appropriate. Attendance is taken on iClicker. Email Naqvi and Secretary Buse Koldas if you won’t make it to a GBM; don’t message on Teams as they might not see it. There will be attendance incentives from LOTQ that will roll over to this semester. All policies of attendance are the same as before.
- Naqvi said that committee updates are not done during GBMs anymore. However, committees should still be sending updates. Naqvi might ask committees to share during cohort time, for example.
- Admin Invites
- Naqvi worked with Snell and Advisor Charles Norman during winter break to compile a list of admins to be invited.
- Lee Hawthorne, Elisabeth Long, Rachelle Hernandez, Brittani Brown, and Ellen Chow have been invited.
- Basirreddy asked if WSE and KSAS Deans can also be invited.
- Committee Expectations
- SIF Tabling- President Nasreen Naqvi
- Naqvi hopes that more people will sign up for tabling at SIF as it will be crowded. Those who volunteer will get attendance incentives.
- Updated Posters and Stuff
- Huang said that the posters are the same as last time. He described how he plans to organize the posters. We will include information on our goals and achievements, along with senator spotlights. Huang will print out posters and flyers. Tablecloth and banner will be brought to SIF.
- Naqvi asked the time slots to be filled out before the end of the meeting.
- Spotlights: https://www.canva.com/design/DAF6n8WLA78/_IPuCXQWMV2fwyuRbGsPrg/view?utm_content=DAF6n8WLA78&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=uniquelinks&utlId=h4e16acf671
- Foundational Abilities Survey- Senator Kevin Xu
- Freshman Class Senator Kevin Xu started drafting this in the Academic Affairs committee. There were contributions from Academic Affairs members and freshman senators. After a few rounds of editing, it was approved by Snell toward the end of last semester, yet it was postponed to this semester as there were finals. There were 380 responses already, although it was sent just last week. Students are passionate about this topic.
- Demographics are in the slides. There were more KSAS students who responded than WSE students as the situation mainly affects KSAS. They stated that this decision:
- Restricts interest exploration
- Negatively affects course and career planning
- Makes double majoring more difficult.
- Students believe that:
- They are now required to take too many credits
- Some advisors are unhelpful
- There is a lack of transparency from the university as many of them learned about these requirements way too late; a quarter of them found out when they were here.
- Students said that this FA requirement would be important in their decision to come to Hopkins.
- Students ask for:
- A reduction in the number of credits
- More double counting across FAs
- Some can be double counted but FA2 cannot be double counted with other FA categories. Those that cannot be counted have the most amount of credits required, which contributes to students' frustrations.
- Streamlining labeling process, which includes labelling the courses that haven’t been labeled yet
- Modification of the requirements of majors to make them more compatible with FA credits.
- All data has been attached toward the end of the slide.
- KSAS Senator Daarian Rouhani talked to his advisor and some other admins about this. He was scared that it applied to sophomores and felt bad for freshmen. They told Rouhani that Hopkins is trying to shift from a STEM/Pre-Med school to a liberal arts school. This will affect future applications.
- Xu heard similar thoughts, and that Hopkins is trying to have a greater focus on social sciences. He believes that we should still try to tackle this as it affects a lot of people.
- KSAS Senator Jaden Garcia met with advisors for KSAS. The way they described it was that the departments are semi-independent. Hence, making majors to change their requirements will be difficult. He thinks that SGA has a better chance at targeting FAs and reducing credits for it.
- Xu will talk about reducing FA credits and prioritize this in the framework.
- Sophomore Class Senator Jazzlyn Hernandez heard that the FAs have been in the making for years. She also heard that it will be very hard to change their minds. Advisors feel like this is not fair to the incoming students as it is forcing people to take classes they don’t want to take at a college, where you were promised to specialize in an area. Overloading was also taken away from these classes. Although a well-rounded education is targeted, with these FAs and not permitting overloading, this is not fair.
- Xu will add this and think about advocating for that. He said that they were promised the distribution requirements. Xu found out about FAs during ED visit day, which had a resource fair, so he got the flyer there. The Provost’s website talks about FAs in six categories, but only in the JHU website more details exist. There is a vast majority who did not have this knowledge beforehand.
- Fernandez agrees and said that advisors feel the same way; they didn’t know either and sophomores found out the same way freshmen did.
- Sophomore Class President Vishnu Dontu asked if they talked to the admin yet, and if they did, what they said.
- Xu said that they didn’t yet as they seek to get more information.
- Basirreddy tried to bring this up many times at the time. We can bring it up now because there aren’t a lot of curriculum changes. Dontu said that they can think about potential questions and come up with responses based on what they might say. He asked everyone to support Xu and other senators working on this.
- WSE Senator Ivan-Alexander Kroumov said that this is a compelling case and that they should act fast with the admin. He asked them to combine dissatisfied and strongly dissatisfied as “students who are dissatisfied with the changes” so that it is more compelling. He advised them to emphasize the large sample size as well.
- Xu will follow this advice.
- Senior Class Senator Ryan Alezz asked about the implementation of this to the WSE. The intention is to increase competency, so that they can have a T-shaped competency and increase fluency in other departments. It is hard to change this type of decision; he’s sure that it has been delivered by a lot of committees. He believes there is a misunderstanding of the FAs. People are hearing different things about why and how. It’s not only the students; it’s also the faculty. He advised Xu to advocate for clear communication and transparency as he believes this is a failed implementation rather than a bad initiative. Realistically, FAs will not be altered, but Alezz thinks SGA can talk about the communication aspect.
- Xu agrees with the widespread confusion and lack of communication point. Training for advisors could be implemented so that they can understand better. However, he disagrees with Alezz’s other points. According to Xu, there are certain paths you can take where you are not limited. STEM and humanities double major work well. However, it doesn’t work for STEM/STEM double majors or STEM and some less interdisciplinary study area double majors.
- Naqvi asked anyone whose points were already made by other people to remove themselves from the conversation.
- There was a motion to extend the moderated caucus from the Religious and Spiritual Life Senator Zachary Bahar by 10 minutes, which passed.
- Women and Gender Minority Caucus Chair Karen Vasquez Luna said that there is still an opportunity for an open curriculum; however, she believes that the fact that there was no transparency until summer was misleading. She agrees to cancel the FA requirements, but she expressed the need to clear up FA confusions and to standardize the curriculum. She believes that if there is more structure, it will be less confusing for students and faculty. The difference is what made it hard for people.
- Xu echoes the transparency part since the website was not updated for a long time.
- KSAS Senator Tanisha Taneja congratulated Xu on collecting all of this data. Vice Dean Erin Rowe from KSAS talked about the FA requirements. According to Taneja, she seemed quite stern about these requirements. She suggested Xu to spell out how it doesn’t work out as it could be useful to emphasize. She believes that freshmen could compromise on double counting at least.
- Basirreddy also congratulated Xu. She wants to add that her input got shut down in the meeting with Taneja. Now WSE has FAs, which include FA4 and FA5. KSAS students can’t do a minor in WSE as they have to have a WSE major. The only way would be WSE major and KSAS minor. So, it is very difficult to get rid of FA all together because every graduating class is held to graduation requirements set, even on the day of convocation. With that being said, amendment is not impossible. She suggested getting advisors on board and asking to make double counting easier. For example, having more advising support and increasing their presence at Hopkins could be a good idea. This way, students will have more opportunities to follow their goals.
- Xu thanked Taneja and Basireddy.
- Bahar talked about the issues in implementation and expressed that it is true that most people weren’t on the loop. They don’t think that completing a STEM major makes you a worse person or citizen. This is not helping this goal. It makes people think that they are forced to do something now. Departments now try to give lower level humanities classes as people feel like they can’t take higher levels. Bahar was a Teaching Assistant for Differential Equations, and one of the assignment grades was chosen as the FA grade, which he thinks was unreasonable as it doesn’t accomplish anything. For example, Columbia University has a very strict core, and now Hopkins has a slightly stricter core. One year is screwed, but it won’t be the case going forward.
- Xu thanked everybody and reiterated that transparency won’t be an issue starting from the Class of 2029. The time for this discussion has elapsed.
- Naqvi thanked everyone for the feedback and expressed that she hopes it will be useful for Xu.
- SGA Mentorship Program- Senator Tanisha Taneja & Amy Xu
- Taneja and WSE Senator Amy Xu want to start a mentorship program within SGA. It was their first year at SGA, and there were points where they felt confused. They feel like mentorship would help. They were confused about the meeting procedures, initiatives, contacting people, goals, and more.
- Taneja said that people come here with good ideas but it takes time for them to figure out how to move forward with them. To bring smoother transition, they propose this mentorship program.
- Xu said that the pairs will be based on surveys. People will input energy levels into the relationship and get matched based on that. They think that all first timers at SGA should have a mentor. Freshman senators will be helped setting their own goals and learn how to act appropriately. Bigs should have been a senator and must have been in SGA for at least a year. Participation is not mandatory. Responsibilities included will be check ins, brainstorming ideas, handling logistics, providing recommendations since not everyone comes in with public speaking skill. They hope that this will make SGA more accepting.
- Taneja will send out surveys with questions about time commitment, interests, and preferences. She asked if this should be mandatory.
- Alezz gave a motion for a 5-minute moderated caucus, which passed. He complimented the idea and asked if we have any transition work for next year’s senate.
- Huang said that last year’s executive board didn’t write any transition documents. We will try to have more this year, and try to send it on the first day.
- Dontu also loves the idea. He said that interests and what they want to change could be some criteria student matches are made.
- Sophomore Class Senator Omotara Tiamiyu suggested having a master document with resources, like a Google Drive folder. There are so many people who are new to SGA and these should be kept accessible.
- Xu agreed and said that we should work on keeping records.
- Hispanic/Latinx Caucus Chair Cynthia Hidalgo Sanchez understands the frustration. When she first came to SGA, her position was a first, so there wasn’t anyone to teach her. In the future, if we continue this initiative, maybe there could be events where prospective senators could observe the life of a senator and know what they’re getting themselves into, like a senator shadowing.
- Taneja likes the idea of making transitions more linear.
- Xu believes that senator shadowing could be done during the campaign period.
- Li likes the idea and had a similar experience to this at a different club. She said that CSE could put a requirement to attend one GBM at least and to have it used in long-term planning. She asked if this mentorship program would be extended to the Executive or Judiciary Boards.
- Taneja thinks that it can be expanded to the Judiciary, but she doesn’t know how to do it for the Executive Board.
- Li said that most executives spent at least one year as a senator, so that’s something to consider.
- Xu said that they want to see interest first. If there is a big imbalance, they might need to open it up to anyone in SGA.
- Li said that they would be more than happy to be a part of this.
*** Cohort Time
First Reading
- Speed Dating Bill- Chair Tim Huang
- The event will take place on February 21st, 2025. It is scheduled to take place at 7pm at the Great Hall.
- Room has been booked and a layout to maximize the seating has been worked on. There will be stickers to show what your intentions are (whether for friends or dates). They want to have some food.
- Alezz liked the idea and suggested advertising this event for those who want to find friends, too.
- Xu asked if we are expecting 60 people, to which Huang clarified that it is 48. Xu asked if this number has any reasoning, to which Huang said it is the maximum number of people allowed in the Great Hall.
- Rouhani expects participation higher than 48 people. Huang said that the event could be repeated if people like it.
- KSAS Senator Danial Nabizadeh emphasized the importance of making sure this is a safe space for everybody. Huang and Nabizadeh will brainstorm together after this meeting.
- Garcia’s motion to refer this bill to the Finance Committee passed.
Second Reading
Prospective Legislation & Announcements (5 min)
Adjournment (Estimated 9:00 PM)
- Motion to adjourn the meeting passed.