112th SGA Senate Meeting 7

JHU Student Government Association

Senate Meeting #7

September 24, 2024 / 07:00 PM / Hackerman B17

AGENDA

1. Call to Order and Attendance (1 min)

   1. Absentees:

      1. Excused: Tim Huang, Sean Kao, Anisha Rasamsetty, Tyler Turner
      2. Present:

2. Convening Business (20 mins)

3. Amendment and Approval of the Agenda (1 min)

4. Public Input (3 min)

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5. Reports (10 min)

2. Cabinet Reports (4 min)

   1. Executive Team- Exec

   2. Advisor Report (2 min) - Jessica Snell

6. Non-Legislative Business (15 min)

1. Updates from Stone- President Stone Meng
2. Transportation Survey Discussion- President Stone Meng
3. SGA Social Event- Senator Jenny Tang Cabrera
4. Sept. 25th Tabling Prep- President Nasreen Naqvi

7. Cohort Time (10 min)

8. First Reading

1. 2024 Hispanic Heritage Month Latine Caucus Tabling Funding Bill- Senator Cynthia Sanchez Hidalgo

9. Second Reading

1. October Tabling- Senator Nayshawn Ferebee
2. SGA Leadership Workshop- Senator Jazzlyn Fernandez
3. Apples and Honey Funding Bill- Senator Zachary Bahar & Senator Moe Frumkin

10. Prospective Legislation & Announcements (5 min)

11. 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 (10:00 PM over the summer) and SGA members are expected to remain in the Senate chamber until official adjournment by motion, whether before or after the adjournment estimate.

JHU Student Government Association

Senate Meeting #7

September 24, 2024 / 07:00 PM / Hackerman B17

MINUTES

1. Call to Order and Attendance (1 min)

   1. Absentees:
      1. Excused: Tim Huang, Sean Kao, Anisha Rasamsetty, Tyler Turner
   2. Present:

2. Convening Business (20 mins)

   1. Motion to start the meeting and discharging Apples and Honey Funding to second reading has passed.

3. Amendment and Approval of the Agenda (1 min)

   1. Motion to approve the agenda has passed.

4. Public Input (3 min)

5. Reports (10 min)

   1. Cabinet Reports (4 min)
      1. Vice President Amy Li informed all SGA members that our Fall Retreat will take place this Saturday at the Imagine Center. Weber’s Farm trip will be from 2 to 5 PM, but it is optional. Around 40 people are coming. Dress code is professional wear preferably due to photos.
      2. Chief Justice Luc Mazzanobile said that Freshman Information Sessions happened last week and campaigning started this week. Results will be announced next week.
      3. Secretary Buse Koldas asked for two volunteers to help her with coding the attendance sheet. Those who volunteer will get an attendance incentive. Sophomore Class Senator Tarini Basireddy and Hispanic/Latinx Caucus Senator Cynthia Sanchez Hidalgo volunteered.
      4. President of the Senate Nasreen Naqvi said that she can’t guarantee that she will be able to change the committee assignments of everyone who asks so. Naqvi asked people who want to change their committee assignment to send her their availability and a list of every committee they can make. The deadline to do so is today.
   2. Advisor Report (2 min) - Jessica Snell
      1. No significant updates from Advisor Jessica Snell.
   3. Hidalgo’s friend wanted her to share that the Sigma Sigma Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. will be organizing the Adekunle Fagbenle Oratorical Competition. The application can be accessed through here.

6. Non-Legislative Business (15 min)

   1. Updates from Stone- President Stone Meng
      1. President Stone Meng said that we will have Ekiben for the retreat and there will be a SGA tabling tomorrow. Sign up sheet is shared.
      2. The executive board will have a meeting with President Ron Daniels this Monday at 8 AM. Meng asked everyone to share the agenda items they have in mind with him and other executive board members. Meng asked everyone to submit their answers to the form that was sent out.
      3. Meng recognized that there has been ongoing confusion with 25Life, the new scheduling software. To clarify how to use it, SGA will share a video explaining it.
      4. Basireddy said that the Dean’s Office informed her that the freshmen and 5th/6th year students can’t use the system. She added that the office has been hearing problems reserving rooms, so they want to know if there are any issues.
      5. Meng talked about the Classroom Infrastructure is another initiative of his. He wants to get the broken chairs and tables repaired.
   2. Transportation Survey Discussion- President Stone Meng
      1. The Transportation Survey was discussed, which was prepared by the Director of Research Jason Shumsky. Meng mentioned that there was a meeting with the Transportation Department last semester, where they brought up a lot of issues. The department said they are aware of the problems, but that they don’t have funding. We’ll collect tangible data and show it to the administration. To include any other points in the survey, let Meng know.
      2. Motion to have a three minute Q&A with one minute moderated caucus was passed. Cultural and Identity Senator Jordyn Craig-Schwartz talked about the Bayview shuttle that comes very early in the morning and very late at night. According to her knowledge, it runs between Homewood and Bayview but only from around 8-10 AM to around 3-5 PM. She mentioned that they turned off live tracking in TransLoc.
      3. Activism and Advocacy Senator Hailey Saya Tomlinson suggested that maybe students could show their ID when they get on a bus and ride for free. She suggested the SGA to ask the students what they would think about this.
      4. Hidalgo said that a lot of people are trying to go places that are not covered by TransLoc, so she suggested asking the students where they are interested in transporting to using the app.
      5. Sophomore Class Senator Omotara Tiamiyu recommended asking students how comfortable they are about using TransLoc.
      6. Meng emphasized that this is an ongoing initiative, so he asked anyone interested to join.
      7. Senior Class Senator Jennifer Tang Cabrera believes that the question that asks the students where they want to go outside of the TransLoc range shouldn’t be a broad question. She thinks that adding specific answers would be better and be more useful to extend the boundaries.
      8. Motion to extend Q&A time was passed. KSAS Senator Danial Nabizadeh asked if TransLoc is still working, because when he tried to use it earlier, it wasn’t working at all. He believes that this might be because Hopkins is transitioning away from TransLoc.
      9. Religious and Spiritual Life Senator Zachary Bahar clarified that the app will no longer show live tracking anymore and that it will only share expected arrival times.
      10. Senior Class Senator Jacquelyn Slade said that TransLoc has a specific feature that shows the schedule, so she’s guessing that’s where they’re switching to.
   3. SGA Social Event- Senator Jenny Tang Cabrera
      1. Cabrera showed the informational flyer and announced the SGA Social Event. It will take place on October 12th at 8:30 PM in the Levering Lounge. It has been put together by the Programming Council. She asked everyone to bring something to share like a snack.
      2. Naqvi endorsed the idea and thanked the members who worked on this for their initiative.
   4. Sept. 25th Tabling Prep- President Nasreen Naqvi
      1. Naqvi started this topic by discussing how we can improve the SGA tablings. She recapped the previous discussion from spring, where many members stated that they didn’t like the format as we were doing the same thing every time. She asked everyone to volunteer for the tabling and added that those who volunteer will get an attendance incentive. Those who were in SGA last year know how ineffective the current format of the tablings are, so she asked them to spend effort in keeping them interesting. Chair of Programming Tim Huang spent so much effort ordering the necessities, so she asked the volunteers to care about this tabling.
      2. In this tabling, we will encourage students to fill out the surveys we’ve recently sent out. She hopes that we will be organized.
7. Cohort Time (10 min)
   1. Naqvi asked everyone to brainstorm why the university’s surveys are not effective and how we can make sure ours are.
      1. Sophomore Class President Vishnu Dontu said that we can try to make the forms more interesting by adding humor.
      2. KSAS Senator Jaden Garcia said that we don’t add humor to our surveys intentionally as it might create bias. According to him, someone can argue that their decision is being swayed if humor is used.
      3. WSE Senator Alex Kroumov said that short term and long term incentives could encourage more respondents. He suggested the SGA to send an email thanking the respondent for filling out the survey after the survey closes. He also thinks that following through with our promises would also show that.
      4. Hidalgo said that her group agrees that incentives work, even though they are aware that the SGA is very limited budgetarily. She suggested making stickers and digital cards, which the students can collect as they fill out our surveys and then turn into a bigger incentive as they collect.
      5. Tomlinson suggested using random sampling where we can send the survey to only a certain population and get responses from them.
      6. Tiamiyu asked if there are specific guidelines for surveys. Meng clarified that all surveys that go out are read by the advisors (Snell, Charles Norman and Brittani Brown).
      7. WSE Senator Moses Frumkin believes that incentives work; however, showing the change is what’s most important. He suggested the SGA to utilize resources like The News-Letter to communicate what we have done so far.
      8. Fraternity & Sorority Life Senator Yashas Mallikarjun suggested providing cash incentives, dining dollars, and J-cash. He also added that knowing where the students accessed the survey can be helpful. In the surveys we sent out, there can be a section that asks “Where did you find this survey?”. If we know where they are sent from, we can know what to fund and decide on the incentives.
      9. Civic Engagement and Service Senator Prisha Agrawal believes in ensuring that people know the incentive has actually been provided is important. She thinks that if the incentive was given to only some people who filled out the form, this can be showed to everyone while sending out the “Thank you” email.
      10. Cabrera believes that it might be good if we try to minimize the number of questions where people type in their answers. She believes that just making them not required could work, but typing responses makes them less inclined to fill it out, but she also pointed out that not having them can make people randomly fill the form out for the incentive.
      11. Dontu thinks cash incentive is not doable for every survey as we have limited funds. He also gave an example about funny follow ups and how it might work, supporting his earlier point about adding humor to the surveys yet keeping it unbiased still.
      12. Naqvi agrees with the points that were made and believes that we should leverage the collaborations we get involved in.

8. First Reading

   1. 2024 Hispanic Heritage Month Latine Caucus Tabling Funding Bill- Senator Cynthia Sanchez Hidalgo
      1. Hidalgo presented this tabling bill that targets the Latino population of Hopkins.
      2. She added that we will be supporting a local business through the paletas. Stickers will be distributed.
      3. She hopes to increase the following of their caucus’ Instagram account. She will print out the stickers in the Makerspace, so it will be free.

9. Second Reading

   1. October Tabling- Senator Nayshawn Ferebee
      1. The intention is to incentivize the people to stop by at the Breezeway and convince them to fill out our surveys.
      2. Motion to vote and pass the bill were both passed and the bill was approved unanimously.
   2. SGA Leadership Workshop- Senator Jazzlyn Fernandez
      1. Motion to vote and pass the bill were both passed and the bill was approved unanimously.
   3. Apples and Honey Funding Bill- Senator Zachary Bahar & Senator Moe Frumkin
      1. Finance was able to discuss it during cohort time, so now they will vote.
      2. Bahar explained that next week is Rosh Hashanah, so he’s hoping to give out sweet treats before the midterms and promote this holiday.
      3. Motion for 5 minute moderated caucus w 1 min speaking time was passed. Senior Class Senator Ryan Alezz asked him to explain where we will pass these out. Bahar said that it will happen in front of FFC.
      4. Tomlinson asked to what extent Hillel will cover the expenses. Bahar said that Hillel doesn’t function like that as they have donors and separate programming, so they can’t sponsor.
      5. Alezz asked if SGA has a policy about sponsoring festive events. Meng doesn’t think there is. BAhar clarified that they are not trying to do more than explaining what this holiday is.
      6. Motion to vote and pass the bill were both passed and the bill was approved unanimously.

10. Prospective Legislation & Announcements (5 min)

11. Adjournment (Estimated 9:00 PM)

    1. Motion to adjourn the meeting was passed.

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 (10:00 PM over the summer) and SGA members are expected to remain in the Senate chamber until official adjournment by motion, whether before or after the adjournment estimate.