JHU SGAThe 114th Session
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Nov 4, 2024 Exec x Advisor Meeting

Minutes / Executive · 112th session · created November 3, 2024 · updated January 21, 2025

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This document is from a previous session and is kept for the record. It may have been amended or replaced since.

SGA Executive Board Advisor Meeting Nov 4, 2024 / 8 am EDT / Teams Virtual Meeting

Present: Stone, Buse, Brandon, Tim, Charles, Amy Unexcused Absent: Excused Absent: Nasreen Agenda

  1. Finance Report-Brandon
  2. Absent Position Applications
    1. Tim–Programming Board
    2. Buse–Assistant Secretary
    3. Stone–Judiciary
  3. Construction Email Update
  4. Affirmative Action Initiative Update
  5. Initiatives

Minutes

  1. Finance Report-Brandon
    1. We have 13,697 USD left in our discretionary budget. This budget is after considering November Tabling and Leadership Training.
    2. Our discretionary budget will be around 15,000 USD with the Ekiben refund.
  2. Absent Position Applications
    1. Tim–Programming Board
      1. One person applied to the programming council. Tim doesn’t know what to do at this point. We will nudge the class councils. Stone agrees to do this as it is their responsibility.
      2. Tim will reopen the application form.
      3. Stone believes that Tim can advertise the fact that programming members don’t need to participate in weekly meetings.
      4. Stone thinks that we should change the constitution back to where there was no distinction between programming members and senators. Brandon said that we can start on it next year. Brandon doesn’t know if the senators will like the idea as they will no longer be able to focus on advocacy.
      5. Amy said that we can propose this, but she agrees that people won’t want more work.
      6. Buse said that we can open the positions to everyone, disregarding class level, and ask SGA members to give more input to their class specific events.
      7. Amy said that there are too many positions and too many vacancies. We didn’t have this vacancy problem in the past. There were some who resigned. We focus more on attendance than ever. Senators are trying to adapt to this structural change.
      8. Brandon said that we could use this as a way to encourage class senators to recruit people if they don’t want this responsibility.
      9. Amy said that it’s up to senators as this will affect the senators more. We will talk about this in the future.
      10. Tim gave more updates. The apology is not in the document, so Tim will add it. The apology we sent to BSU will be used.
      11. Back to programming vacancies, we technically have one person from each programming council, but Tim has never seen them.
      12. Tim talked to Daar, the chair of the Internal Affairs (IA) committee, wondering if they could get impeached.
      13. Tim said that our main goal is to get more members, not getting rid of the underperforming members.
      14. Mahima was never inaugurated; Priya was. Tim will talk to them.
      15. Stone suggested asking IA to investigate this.
      16. Tim is more worried about the lack of activity. Buse suggested setting a deadline and asking them to have a meeting until that date. Tim will draft the message.
      17. IA will be told to create a formal complaint about this and investigate.
      18. Stone suggested having attendance focus on tasks. Tim wants to see them before he works with them though.
      19. Tim’s action items were determined: Recruit more programming members, send messages out, write out the formal complaint to IA and ask Daar to work on it. Sophomore Class Formal should be relatively straightforward to organize. Junior Class Formal requires more effort as there is no clear vision.
      20. Charles said that Tim should work with Oluwakemi.
      21. Buse thinks that we should be careful with our wording and make it obvious that finding programming members is not optional.
      22. Buse will help Tim in finding who is a junior in the SGA.
    2. Buse–Assistant Secretary
      1. Buse will interview the candidates; assistant secretaries will be selected by the next GBM. Buse will prioritize those who have experience in taking the minutes and might be interested in running for secretary.
    3. Stone–Judiciary
      1. Stone talked to three people. He highlighted that it is within the President’s power to appoint people. They might be voted by the senate.
  3. Construction Email Update
    1. Next steps before the President Daniels meeting were discussed.
    2. Charles said that we will need to reschedule their meeting.
    3. He said that we don’t need to inform the students that our meeting was postponed. Stone said that we should. Charles said that the original reason why we wanted to send the MSE construction resolution followup email was not because of the meeting. Stone believes that we should be transparent. Charles thinks that we should let the senate know, but the student body did not know anyways, so it is unnecessary to include in the email.
    4. Stone asked why we had to postpone our meeting. Daniels will be out of the country. Charles said that he tried to find another time to meet with President Daniels, but the earliest was in December.
    5. Stone is disappointed as we agreed on monthly meetings but Daniels now failed to make it to the first meeting.
    6. Charles said that Daniels agreed to meet every four to six weeks; Charles wishes he didn’t say that as he knew this wouldn’t happen because Daniels doesn’t have that much time.
    7. Brandon asked if we have ever told them about the town hall in the email, to which other members responded that we did not. We told that we would be meeting with Daniels in the future, but didn’t give a date. As long as we don’t say the postponed email part, Charles thinks that we should be good to go.
    8. Charles agrees that our time is important and he hates to cancel meetings too but he believes that we shouldn’t put Daniels on blast.
    9. Stone believes that this might be the University’s strategy of delaying things until nobody cares about them. Charles said that we will eventually get this meeting.
  4. Affirmative Action Initiative Update
    1. We will send out an Instagram update.
    2. The News-Letter press release has been sent.
    3. Charles met with Nayshawn and Cynthia. They went over the survey and it should be sent out by our next GBM. They are currently working on the resolution, which is 10 pages long. Hopefully it will be ready by next week.
    4. Charles asked if the Town Hall with admissions is still happening. Rachelle Hernandez is working on this, so hopefully it will happen soon. Stone asked if we should send an email; Charles thinks that we should contact Brittani Brown. Charles wants this drafted today so that it can be sent to Brown, and then David Phillips. Charles wants us to clearly state what we want in that email so that they can start working on it. Charles wants Brown and Hernandez to participate in our meetings for the purposes of recruitment and retainment.
    5. Amy said that Cynthia sent an email to Phillips a few weeks ago through the Latinx Caucus but got no response, which is why Charles wants us to do this his way.
    6. Tim asked if we should inform Cynthia; Charles said that we don’t have to, but Tim thinks that it’s a good idea. Stone said that we are rewriting their intent, so they should know.
    7. If we don’t get a response, Charles will work on this with us by talking to Brown himself and planning this out.
    8. Tim said that we should write the email and then ask Cynthia and Nayshawn what they think, and then share something on Instagram.
    9. Stone said that we have two Communities of Forum posts: delete one of them.
    10. Apology and announcement will be shared. Stone said that we can use the article sent to The News-Letter and add an apology to the last slide (similar to the last one we posted).
    11. Some specifics regarding this post were discussed.
  5. Initiatives