USG Senate Meeting

12/09/12

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Senate Meeting

December 02, 2012

 

Mr. Stolzenberg: We’re going to start the meeting- we have a full agenda, so let’s get things moving. Please get your project updates to Greg!

 

Mr. Easop: Welcome to our first meeting since Thanksgiving Break. We have a long meeting tonight, so I’ll spare you a long introduction and just mention that the one vote we have tonight is on Dean’s Date funding. Other than that, we can have a motion to approve the minutes.

 

The motion passes.

 

Cameron Henneberg is standing in for Charissa Shen.

 

Greg Smith is standing in for Gavin Gook.

 

Our guests are Sasha Lieberman, Zack Ogle, Matt Saunders, and freshman and sophomore class councils.

 

Buses to Yale/Bonfire

 

Mr. Easop: We’re evaluating a whole series of events that were all about Princeton events and athletics, which is why I also invited the class council today. Okay, so, I briefly spoke about the Buses to Yale previously so I won’t go into too much detail. But there were 453 students who actually came on the buses, a total of 585 tickets were sold, and we also had 70 people at the Frist viewing party on campus. So, I’ll start with the buses and focus on discussion questions. The two main questions I had were about communication and organization the day of. What information can be clarified in the future? One thing was the policy about alcohol on the buses. Is there anything else about the communication that can simplify it or get additional information from?

 

Mr. Okuda-Lim: There was a conversation about buying a ticket for a one-way journey.

 

Mr. Ackerman: We should announce earlier if there are open seats the day-of the game. There were students who could’ve freed up their schedules to come.

 

Mr. Easop: Following up on the one-way ticket option, does anyone have any feedback? It was bit of a complicating factor.

 

Ms. Byrne: Did we sell tickets just to the game and not the bus seats? Was that an option?

 

Mr. Easop: Yes.

 

Mr. Wagstaff: I don’t think making a one-way list is too complicated. I think it’s something you should offer, especially considering that the people who went up to Yale beforehand were doing things to amp the environment up there. Those people were probably a little unhappy, so we should consider this for this and for thanksgiving buses (which is related.)

 

Mr. Ackerman: It’s important to sell those tickets, but then we should have a different bus. Because it would be too complicated to give a bus captain that sort of responsibility (to determine who goes where, etc.)

 

Mr. Wagstaff: I think it’s logistically more straightforward then we imagine. We’d use the last bus, etc.

 

Mr. Smith: But how many people are going to purchase one-way tickets? I think it’ll add to a lot more work to the bus-captain job. Also, the tablet screen turned off.

 

Mr. Ackerman: Greg- I think that’s what I thought initially, but if you have a separate empty bus and it has all of the returners, it’d work. We have a lot of interest, and maybe we could have people buy tickets there.

 

Mr. Rajagopalan: Having been a bus captain, it’s not that difficult.

 

Mr. Easop: Now I’m going to move over to the organization question. The two questions are: 1) do you have any recommendations to streamline the boarding of the buses? 2) What is the role of the bus captain?

 

Ms. Davoudiasl: When people got on buses, they got on random buses. Instead of filling up 1 full bus, they would get on random ones so we had random empty seats. We should have a strict line to fill up each bus numerically.

 

Mr. Ackerman: I think getting the lunches took the longest. The best thing going forward is if the lunch was automatic (not optional) and they were just waiting on the buses already.

 

Mr. Easop: The lunches were technically the swipe of a meal plan.

 

Mr. Ackerman: Why don’t we just include it in the initial costs?

 

Mr. Wagstaff: Great point. Also, Deana did a fantastic job dealing with drunk people on her bus. Some kind of guidelines to assist in that situation would be great for bus captains.

 

Ms. Javier: In response to Deana, there were those “class buses” but they weren’t labeled. But maybe a sign-system would be useful?

 

Mr. Ackerman: Even as a bus captain, I didn’t know which bus I was returning to.

 

Mr. Kugelmass: I’d like to hear more from the class governments.

 

Ms. Orillac: There were two different group buses. The 2016 bus overflowed into a second bus that was sort of 2016. Getting people on the bus was fairly easy, because we were standing right where they were getting their lunches.

 

Molly: We did make posters to direct people to the buses, which may not have been obvious to everyone. I thought it worked well.

 

Mr. Easop: How did you advertise the group bus?

 

Molly: We spammed the Facebook and emailed our listserv.

 

Mr. Easop: Nice job Class of 2016! You really nailed it. Any other last questions on the buses? Okay, then let’s move on to the Bonfire. As you can see, this was a collaborative effort. Huge thank you to everyone on USG, especially Adi, Deana, Charissa, Benny, Steven, and also ODUS, Campus Life, Athletics Department. Some of the differences from the 2006 Bonfire—we held this on Saturday instead of Friday. Was this good? Publicity and advertising was also very comprehensive- the Facebook event, the Twitter account, etc. We hit all the social media, which was great to get the word out under a week. In the morning building-sessions, we convinced people to get up! Class government sponsored bagels and coffee. Thanks guys! During the event itself, there were a few additions to the content of the event to increase visibility and sound: to class banners, speakers, a live webcast, etc. As you can see from the numbers, there were over 4000 visits to the ODUS webcast, including 10 people from Bulgaria. The website itself had over 4000 unique visitors. Some of the last information is the budget of the event. The bold numbers are exact, the un-bold are still being finalized. The overall budget was approximately $20,048. As you can see, some of the things that changed were the Public Safety costs since we were holding it on a Saturday night. There was some addition in the production costs of actually building a bonfire itself. And there were some additional items like the sound and live webcasts. So, that’s an overall review of a ton of numbers involved in this event. So I have a few discussion questions related to the event itself. So first is the date itself. The alumni office had great feedback, but there were some alumni who questioned why it wasn’t held on Friday as a pep-rally. So there are people on both sides of the issue, so I want to open it to the floor.

 

Ms. Wiley: One of the major complaints was the date change because they had made other plans. And, I think Saturday is more convenient to Alums since they don’t have to take Friday off for this. The idea of a pep rally is bizarre, because the night before you should be in your room and not stress your bonfire. Walking around at a bonfire the night before a race would not be a good idea. In terms of respecting the athletes, they should not be out the night before. That’s something that people don’t entirely understand.

 

Mr. Wagstaff: I think those are all valid points. Considering a lot of the Football team was at the Hoodie Allen show, it may not have been as big of a concern as we thought. We need to ask if it was worth the extra cost and who should’ve been paying the extra cost. We covered it, but maybe the Football Team or Alumni office should cover the difference. But if they think it was worth it, we should continue to propose that it be on a Saturday, but we should speak to the team and the coach about whether it had an effect on the loss on Saturday, etc. A followup discussion would be interesting.

 

Mr. Zhang: At the Hoodie Allen show, a women from the basketball team had a great dougie on the stage, but she had a career-low game the next day. Something to consider.

 

Mr. Okuda-Lim: I think moving forward, we should have a serious discussion about the costs and benefits about Friday versus Saturday. I think we really have to look at where the money is going.

 

Mr. Sharp: Money is a concern. Money is great and can be used for lots of things. But why did we put it on Saturday? It’s because the football team wanted it, so we should continue to do it on Saturday, but maybe look to other resources.

 

Mr. Ackerman: I think just knowing that it’ll be on Saturday in the future, if this is an event that happens in the future, we should plan for it earlier. I know that’s hard, but we should say “this is what we’ll do if we have a bonfire.” If we have the process planned out, it’ll be a lot smoother.

 

Mr. Easop: We couldn’t plan for it before…

 

Mr. Rajagopalan: This is a very effective in terms of class-participation event. The change to Saturday substantially changes the event- many more alumni come back, and many more athletes can be there. As a very effective event with a very small change in marginal cost per student, the enhancement to the event is very important. It’s a very high-cost event, but we’re doing fine budget wise.

 

Mr. Easop: The last question is: should we celebrate events that are lower-cost? Are there other ways we could emphasize other events so that we appreciate a broader range of contributions?

 

Ms. Kim: For academic accomplishment, we have Fullbright, Rose-Mitchell, etc. We should do something small, maybe not a big bonfire.

 

SGRC

 

Mr. Ackerman: Hi! So there are two groups. The first one is Maracatu Princeton, which is a Brazilian style of drumming. They’ve had some meetings and a faculty advisor, and they want recognition to get funding because it’s not easy to get a Brazilian drum. The second one is a unique group called the Beginning, Uniting, and Fueling Fitness (BUFF)—they were doing this without recognition the previous couple of years—they have a lot of knowledge about planning fitness programs. They want to help students plan their own workouts regardless of if you want to get buff, sleep more, or feel better, etc. They incorporate this into a model so that more people can run the program in coming years. I definitely recommend both of these groups.

Elections Debrief

 

Mr. Dean: We got a pretty turnout to the bonfire. Next year, let’s get that many to the USG debate! The first thing is the winner of the elections. Next, you guys saw the Prince article about uncontested elections. Is this a problem? Then, we should start a discussion about whether we should change the elections rules. We won’t finish this discussion, but we should begin it. So yeah, the winners are: Shawon and Carmina as President and VP. There was only one candidate for five of the other races. Is this problematic? I surveyed the people who went to open houses who chose not to run. They had two reasons they didn’t run was 1) invisible primary, 2) didn’t want to do the job. We should structure the question in three parts. Is this a problem? What should do different? Is it a fluke?

 

Mr. Sharp: I’d like to think that I ran uncontested because everyone thinks I’m great, but I think this is a huge problem. I think the more people you have running for a position, it gets more publicity and discussion about how USG functions, etc. It’s not that terrible and I don’t think this year was a reflection on what happened in the past year—it’s a fluke. I think we made a conscious effort in the past year. I don’t think we did anything wrong.

 

Mr. Rajagopalan: It’s funny because I’ve never run against anyone… I think it’s much harder to win freshmen senator than any of the Chair positions, which is really weird to me. Freshmen only run for senator positions or class council. A lot of what we should do is to apply to other positions in which they can accomplish more. Maybe it’s not good to have freshmen apply to these positions. For example, his freshmen year, Steven Rosen was a freshman chair.

 

Mr. Dean: I had a freshman ask me if they could run for those positions, and they felt they weren’t “entry-level” positions.

 

Mr. Wagstaff: My comments come from race for the social. Definitely there was a lot of discussion about it within the committee. I think everyone discussed who’d be the strongest candidate. I think the issue is that the outsiders didn’t want to participate. I think partly it’s my fault, because looking at the number we’ve rejected from the social committee (90% of applicants), are people who could still be interested. I wonder if the selection for the committee itself impact them, etc. Perhaps encouraging people from other relevant groups should be considered.

 

Ms. Cartwright: The advertisement needs to be a lot larger. If there are Facebook events, personalized committees, etc. it would good. Also, there was a lot of talk about who should run for what within USG. I think this is a bad idea, because it makes it seem like you need to be involved in USG.

 

Mr. Kugelmass: Because we had very few appointed positions, we should avoid situations when we lose two people with experiences. I don’t think this is a message that got across in the Prince. It is relatively easy to get in on the ground floor.

 

Mr. Sharp: I think Benny’s point is that invisible primary is that it’s the outside people who aren’t given enough information which should be the focus.

 

Ms. Kim: One of the first thing candidates do is see the USG profile and assess what the USG actually does. USG needs to be seen as an accessible organization.

 

Mr. Dean: We will have a separate working group to work on elections rules. Two key questions: Do we ditch the rules completely? Or do we just tweak? Let’s rethink negative campaigning/libel/slander, and early campaigning.

 

Mr. Saunders: Let me establish why I’m here. I really enjoy working on campus with candidates who run for office. I’ve seen some discrepancies in the rules, and Julian, I went to a meeting last year, and the reason I didn’t run because I saw flaws within the rules. I think election rules need to be precise, because then you get questions of illegitimacy. The worst thing that can happen is to have illegitimacy in a USG race. In terms of negative campaigning, it is very hard to define what is “negative.” The comparison that came up was negative campaigning. Whoever posted the chart wanted to show one person in a good light and the other in a bad light. That’s not either good or bad. But you can either define what is negative and/or add what fallacious campaigning is. Attack ads, Advocacy Ads, and Contrast Ads. Attacks ads say that “Deana bullied kids in high school.” Advocacy ads only talks about why we shouldn’t attack someone. Contrast ads actually have candidates compare each other. The last thing is to ban fallacious campaigning because what is true and false really does have an impact. I think you should make specific comments about libel and slander. The best option is to allow for contrast, because then candidates can debate policy. This helps run against incumbents (for example, I can never run against Jon Ma by saying he didn’t give me good toilet). Then, what’s the distinction between supporters and campaign staff? Let’s say I was helping a candidate and I made a mistake, then it should effect the candidate. Finally, we should think about whether $50 is enough to reach 5,400 students in an election that has very serious consequences.

 

Tiger Ride Update

 

Mr. Kugelmass: What I would like to open for discussion is whether or not we should try to aim for a lower price point. I think we can do it. Whether we feel comfortable doing it, I think it’s low-risk. Also, I think we should think about bumping up the schedule. The morning of bus launch was really chaotic. I was the only one managing four buses.

 

Ms. Davoudiasl: I know there was USGforum discussion, but we should send out a survey to gage student interest in other breaks.

 

Mr. Stolzenberg: I don’t think it’ll work well with other breaks because you can do well with other buses.

 

Mr. Rajagopalan: You can get a $1 bus for Christmas because it’s not a big deal when we leave. Thanksgiving is when it’s most expensive.

 

Mr. Kugelmass: The prices will be different next year since the school’s contract with the bus service is ending this year.

 

Mr. Easop: I have some questions about the stop. As planning in the future, is there a model for communicating with the people who signed up.

 

Mr. Kugelmass: I found out the day before the buses that we’d only get names and not netids. I gave every bus a talk about what was going on. The Newton’s stop was a half-mile from where we said it’d be. It wasn’t possible to email or text everyone. Last year, Stephen had more lead-time.

 

Ms. Davoudiasl: I’ve worked with ticketing. It’s super easy.

 

Taste of Prospect

 

Ms. Byrne: Taste of Prospect is now Taste of Princeton, because we included the Coops. The primary objective is to give freshmen a more comprehensive view of upperclassmen eating options. We didn’t include residential colleges or independent students, because those options are already pretty understandable. All of the eating clubs and all of the coops will be participating. President Tilghman has graciously offered to fund the entire project, despite the larger cost this time than in the past.

 

Ms. Bui: Sign-ups went out Friday morning, and right now we have a little over 500 responses. Also, they were really interested in recruiting sophomores- should we have them sign up too?

 

Mr. Kugelmass: I can’t speak for the coops, we were all surprised when we found out that sophomores wouldn’t come. We actually allow sophomores to join if they want to, but we’re really eager to get in touch with students who are switching their dining options.

 

Mr. Riley: Let’s say I wanted to eat in Quad because I want to be in Quad, but I was eating at Tower, isn’t that bad?

 

Ms. Byrne: Including sophomores is only for coops. Eating clubs have their own sophomore events.

 

Mr. Rajagopalan: Are we making sure officers structure something?

 

Ms. Joseph: I think it’s pretty understood. The presidents understand they should do something.

 

Ms. Byrne: I’d encourage freshmen to mix in with the members.

 

Mr. Easop: In terms of communication and how we sent the survey out, it didn’t just come from an email from me. But DSL’s also got RCA’s to send it out to freshmen. Class of 2016 class government also sent it out. We should think about how to communicate through multiple avenues.

 

Hoodie Allen

 

Mr. Wagstaff: We had an event that sold 727 tickets. We had about 56% students attending, and 43% public. It was near 50-50, which was a big question we didn’t know how to deal with. We ripped slightly less tickets the night of- 668 people showed up, and they seemed to be mostly public. But if they’re paying, I don’t care. What worked out to be the costs- artist and agent fee, sound, costs at Richardson were higher than anticipated because people were standing on chairs. For those of you that were there, it was rather exciting. It didn’t look like when you have the symphony orchestra… we were happy that overall we didn’t have any violence, drug, or alcohol problems. We didn’t have people storming the lower level. Let’s discuss what you guys think about this model. I’m sorry I didn’t think about the costs of the seats. Also, we should’ve lowered the price for the tickets for the public, just because of delayed contracts, Sandy, etc. so there was a shorter window to sell the tickets. If we’d done the $5 difference, the USG would have been 42 cents per students, and 0.0 cents for everyone overall. The questions for me are do we think we can build off this model? It needs an opportunity to have a sell-out show. Does the venue work? If not, where can we do this?

 

Ms. Aliviatsos: One of my friends talked about the thing with the public… they felt like it was very much a younger/high school/middle school turnout, which was a turnoff.

 

Mr. Wagstaff: I’d love to survey these people and see their opinions. It saved them $10, so what do they prefer?

 

Ms. Aliviatsos: I think Richardson was fine, but a lot of people thought it wouldn’t be.

 

Mr. Rajagopalan: I thought this model was very interesting. I think it’s a great model that had the potential to bring more services to the student body. It should be repeated, but with caution because we shouldn’t mess up, but it’s a great idea.

 

Mr. Kugelmass: I think the loss is pretty predictable. It was almost impossible for us to break even on this event. Can we buy insurance on damage to Richardson? I like certainty.

 

Dean Dunne shakes his head no.

 

Mr. Kugelmass: If we do ban young kids, then Princeton students have to pay more.

 

Mr. Easop: Does the act just appeal to a younger crowd? Or is that a lot of the public is just high school students?

 

Mr. Wagstaff: We used a bunch of Facebook ads to advertise this to the public, and it was super cheap. I had targeted campaigns for nearby colleges, local high school students, local Hoodie Allen fans, and local Princeton students. Rutgers, Riders, College of New Jersey, Westminster College weren’t clicking on these ads at all. Inflated prices for the public mean that those who bought tickets were probably using their parents wallets, ie high school students.

 

Dean Dunne: I think one of the interesting things about this is what we did with McCarter before. We did a Ben Folds show, a Trey Anastasio show. They were the sole initiator, which was really important about this. We weren’t waiting for programmers in McCarter to say it was of interest to students. It was initiated in the same ways as a USG show. Bruce’s point is a good one- this won’t be a free show for students, but it allows us to be a little more adventurous with the acts that come to campus. Is having young professionals sketchy?

 

Deans Date

 

Ms. Javier: So, this is already in the budget. We’ve already come to you talking about the giveaway.

 

Mr. Liberman: We like the flap-eared hats, but they’re too expensive, so we’re having beanie-hats. They’ll be about $5.99 per unit.

 

Ms. Javier: The remaining money will be spent on food. We wanted to have snack food. We have funnel cakes, hot chocolate, fried oreos, etc.

 

Mr. Sharp: Some of us have large heads, so those beanies don’t fit. So, let’s have a choice between small and large.

 

Ms. Kim: In commencement, we’re going to measure senior’s heads. Let’s measure what percentage of the student body has large heads!

 

Mr. Rajagopalan: I’ll get that data for you guys.

 

Ms. Lieberman: We haven’t ordered yet, does anyone have any ideas?

 

Mr. Easop: Do you know how many items we’ve ordered in the past?

 

Ms. Liberman: About 1,250

 

Mr. Rajagopalan: Is there any analysis about how much food is left over? I get the sense that there is a lot of food left…

 

Mr. Wagstaff: I think that’s a great point. The biggest concern regarding food is the delivery of food, and its prompt delivery and turnaround because people don’t like to wait. Last winter, Naked Pizza was doing 50 every 15 minutes. It’s all about how quickly you can have it at the 5pm time. If you look at the estimates per a thousand people, and we’re considering “snacky” items, I’m not sure that reallocating too much would be wise. If you value the hat more than the food, then it makes sense.

 

Bike Rack Update

 

Mr. Sharp: I have a very similar handout to what I had last year. If you exist late meal heading towards Forbes, there are a bunch of bike racks, and the fix-it station is right there. It’s almost 100% complete, but we’re waiting for bike racks right next to the stand that haven’t yet been removed. The main part is installed and working. It has all the tools you’d ever need. No one brings a bike pump to campus. I don’t have an exact amount about the money we’re spending. This might be the first permanent structure that USG is responsible for installing on campus. I’d like to talk about the future direction of the bike rack. First is publicity. Benny and I want to have a spring tune-up event. A bike safety event put on by Public safety was put off, but we’re trying to bring this back. We’re going to have Paint-your-own-helmets! You’ll get another update as we get more info, but it is just something that has to do with more bike racks. I think it’s a unique project in that it’s going be there for quite a while, unlike most of our other projects.

 

Ms. Mancenon: For publicity, we could use the new sustainability thing. Also there is a touch screen in Butler.

 

Mr. Kugelmass: So I assume this will need to be maintain? Is that our responsibility or the Office of Sustainability?

 

Mr. Sharp: We knew the bike pump would be an issue, so we looked into other options.

 

Mr. Rajagopalan: Target Forbes people and engineers because they have the most Bikes.

 

Playbook

 

Mr. McNamara: The general structure is in place. The main problem remains that people need to fill in this information. It’s hard to get people to fill out Project forms, so this will be difficult. This is a two-pronged direction. First is specific officer-manuals that provide direct perspectives about what each role passes on in a short document. We’ll work on this initiative over winter break. We’d love to one of these for each position. We’ll be able to put this out year after year. Second is a more behind-the-scenes look at projects, especially regarding the interaction between the Annual Report and the Playbook. For example, I have a lot of ALTA notes on my computer that should perhaps be given to people in the future. We have a bunch of Project tabs under the project archives. The main point is that the playbook exists and is being updated. Please cooperate.

 

Mr. Easop: One other thing to add, this isn’t a matter of coming up with new information. If you have comments, just add it in there. It’s easy because the first step is uploading documents that you’ve already created. If we can look at the life of a project, and have that information uploaded in this playbook, it means that the next time we do a similar project, we have best practices. Now that I realize it’s so easy, I do it myself. We just use existing material.

 

Mr. Wagstaff: Can we have some files available to just some positions. What if I want to give something to Carla but I don’t want the rest of the USG to see it? Is there password protection?

 

Mr. Stolzenberg: We’ll look at that.

 

Mr. Chen: I’m looking to have USG logins be password specific.

 

Ms. Davoudiasl: Is there a place where I can write down comments I wanted to make, but didn’t have time to? If I go to the secretary, if I could add my comment, that’d be awesome.

 

Agenda Setting

 

Mr. Easop:

• Mental health project
• Report on the budget
• SGRC update from Dylan—let’s also ask him why SGRC is so backed up this year.
• Update on the holiday lights project (where this is at, and the upcoming roadblocks)
• Stephen’s proposal of Constitutional Amendment (we made a change to an elections document versus the constitution)
• Holiday picture! Ms. Davoudiasl: Can Dean Dunne be Santa?
• Mr. Wagstaff: Funding request and something that doesn’t need funding

USG Senate Meeting

November 18, 2012

Introduction

 

Austin Jackson is a sophomore here representing Restaurant Week.

 

Mr. Easop: Congratulations on keeping a lot together over the past week. Looking ahead, voting starts on Monday! It was exciting to see the debate that just happened. Also, thank you to everyone who was involved at the Bonfire event—this represents so much of what makes Princeton unique, and we got to see students past and present getting together independent of social affiliations, academic goals, etc. and unite around this age-old tradition at Princeton. Thank you for your commitment to making this possible. Finally, huge congratulations to women’s field hockey for winning the national championship. Without further ado, can we get an approval of the minutes?

 

Motion passes.

 

Restaurant Week Recap

 

Ms. Mancenon: We’re going to split this up into two sections.

 

Ms. Shen: If you look at the numbers that the restaurants estimate, they aren’t exact (but we’re looking to improve this.) But we have overall wonderful feedback. The managers were really impressed with how we promoted this event. These are the metrics below.

 

Mr. Jackson: We thought the website would be a supplement, but it really shocked us because we had nearly 8000 visits, and about 4,300 unique visitors. Almost all of the undergraduates went to the website, and they spent about 3 minutes on it. It was very successful for a short-term campaign.

 

Ms. Mancenon: Some tangible feedback is continuing this week indefinitely. The Prince wrote two articles on us. In terms of efficiency, the total cost for the week was $280 in total. The GSG is governing the advertising cost. For the USG, it was about 67 cents per meal. We got almost 3000 meals. In terms of the implications, it leveled the playing field financially. It improved mental health on campus. And student activity groups had chances for social gatherings. Lastly, it gave students incentive to leave the orange bubble.

 

Ms. Aliviatsos: We do not know how much unique visitors there were to each restaurant, so we’d like to discuss having a mechanism to follow this. Also, expanding this to get both lunch and dinner would accommodate more schedules, and many restaurants wanted this. A lot of the restaurants were upset about the little amount of tips left.

 

Mr. Riley: With the gratuity issue, could we build in the tip into the price?

 

Ms. Shen: We wanted the price to encompass the tip. Next year, we may have two tiers—so we’ll have “fine dining” and then options like Thai Village.

 

Ms. Mancenon: Restaurants that were cheaper (like Mehek) typically had less attendance.

 

Mr. Stolzenberg: Can we have this every semester?

 

Ms. Shen: We’ll have to look out for timing since Princeton town has its own restaurant week.

 

Mr. Blumenfeld: It’s very possible that this is one of the most successful projects that USG has ever done. I’m very proud of everything from its goals to what its accomplished and the student response.

 

Mr. Easop: What really struck me about the Princeton opinion piece was that this was noted as a “cultural shift.” This is something we talk about at USG, but this was a really tangible change. Congratulations.

 

Ms. Mancenon: Just wanted to say the website was all Austin’s work.

 

Mr. Easop: Is there any effective way to get feedback from people who were involved in the event?

 

Mr. Wagstaff: Trap is the incoming CCA chair, and he wants to send out a survey about this.

 

Ms. Kim: I like that Restaurant Week was very impactful without being expensive. We should seek to leverage existing resources to find cheaper ways to create meaningful projects.

 

Recap of CPUC Meeting

 

Ms. Kim: I’m the U-Council chair and I’m recapping the CPUC meeting. There are two main items that were discussed. The first was the priorities committee (budget allocation) and the second was the presidential search committee town hall. The priorities committee told us they are doing very well after the 2008 crisis, and they are seeing strong Annual Given results. However, they still may not be able to accommodate all project proposals even as their budget grows. In the presidential search committee, they said they were a blank slate and wanted to hear what students wanted from a president. They were taking in all the advice that the audience members were giving. If you look at the bottom half of the page, there are really nice notes that Zhan typed up. One big take-away is that there were a lot of diverse opinions; it seems they are really interested in listening to whatever opinions exists. If you have any, please post them online.

 

Mr. Kugelmass: I think the faculty were very cool (i.e. negative) on having a President with a non-academic background. It was interesting to see the “inter-division conflicts” between faculty members from different departments. There seemed to be a range of opinion on what the next President should focus on.

Mr. Okuda-Lim: I think the big take-away was that we had faculty, U-Councilors, staff, alumni, Bruce, and Stephen were there—and the different views we all brought to the discussion.

 

Ms. Clifton: They were also really interested in specific suggestions or questions, if you have one in mind.

 

Food Committee Update

 

Ms. Kim: Hi guys! I’m presenting again. It’s my day. I’m part of the food committee with a few other members of the Senate, and I had a very in-depth discussion with Bruce to come up with three specific goals for this committee. I’ll share the goals and seek your feedback. The first is conducting a comprehensive survey of food-related activities of independent students. Very few USG-members are independent, and there isn’t a representative body/personality. This is the first time USG looks at how independent students try to eat. The second is improving late meal, which is the platform for like half of you guys who are running. It’s probably important to all of you. We want to expand location eligible for late meal, consider upperclassmen late meal, and examine the money amount allowed in late meal. The first step we’re going to take is to understand what these motivations are, but we don’t know the set of comprehensive goals the administration has in its philosophy. The third is bringing affordable fresh produce to campus. There is a farmers market in front of Firestone library, but there has been some conversation to see if there is a possibility of doing a crop share. You’d get a box and you’d get fresh produce delivered to you. It’s a good way to start exploring diversity of food access for students. If you have any experience working with any of the stakeholders involved, or if you have any feedback.

 

Ms. Shen: I really like these three specific agenda items. I would get in touch with Kaitlin Poladian ’12. Another idea is to look at it for RCA’s as a personal plug. Definitely, the sooner the better because so many of the current candidates are running on this platform.

 

Ms. Kim: I feel like Late Meal is like the PDF policy or grade deflation.

 

Ms. Aliviatsos: I think we should aim for focus groups, because within the independent student groups, there are people from Spellman, etc.

 

Mr. Sharp: I don’t really see how the Residential Colleges relate to any of these points.

 

Ms. Kim: In order for upperclassmen to get two meals, the Res Colleges fund it. In order to use these two meals for Frist, you’d have to get the input of the people who are funding it.

 

Mr. Sharp: What would allow Res Colleges to give you funding for money spent in Frist?

 

Ms. Kim: We can see if there are any compromises.

 

Mr. Easop: I think the idea was not that the Res Colleges would give up the money, but the domino effects—it makes me less likely that the upper classmen would ever eat in the Res Colleges anymore. Would there be collateral damage to the residential college community?

 

Mr. Kugelmass: I don’t’ think there is much we can do with changing the 2 meals, but I think we could try getting “Later meal.” I think there are more options.

 

Mr. Wagstaff: It’d be great to discuss what independent students are already doing, but also see tools we could provide them.

 

Ms. Davoudiasl: I got an email from an independent upperclassmen who wanted to know about kitchen appliances. Also, we don’t have a “union” for independents?

 

Ms. Kim: But “union” is what they’re not, versus what they are.

 

Mr. Stolzenberg: Maybe we could put a question on the survey of whether they wanted one?

 

Mr. Easop: There actually used to be one, so it’d be interesting to bring it up again.

 

Pursuit of Mappyness Update

 

Mr. Martens: A lot of you weren’t here with this project was last discussed, but this is a map integrated with the student events calander. Because it hasn’t been brought up in Senate for a while, I wanted to give you guys an update and get some feedback. Currently, it has general information about what buildings are open, etc. It gives students a one-stop-shop for knowing what resources are available to them. What we have so far is student events calendar integration, facilities integration, and room-draw guide integration.

 

Mr. Sharp: Sports games?

 

Mr. Martens: Would you guys want that?

 

Ms. Shen: Yeah—it’d be great to click on Jadwin and see that there’s a game right now.

 

Mr. Martens: We want to get students to start using the student events calendar. If you have a map, it’ll make this calendar a more valuable tool.

 

Ms. Kim: Academic department events?

 

Ms. Davoudiasl: Can someone clarify the relationship between student events calendar and POM.

 

Mr. Martens: You’d register with student events calendar, and use that information to map it on POM.

 

Mr. Wagstaff: I met with a lot of people last spring, and they called for filters, so you can see what the E-club is doing right now, or where the Basketball team is partying right now, you could. Looking at bathroom codes for girls, you could do it by having people log in. And we also want to look into booking rooms as a student groups. If you could click it on a map, it’d be awesome.

 

Mr. Martens: This would probably happen around the time that room draw tie-in would happen.

 

Mr. Easop: 1) In answer to Deana, I see it as a different format for the Student Events calendar that’s more spatially focused. I think it doesn’t replace it, but it is a different way of looking at it. 2) In booking rooms, I would talk to Amy Campbell, because they’re already working on this. 3) We have had Point and PAM that centralized information but then that died, but looking from the start of where those went and how we can combat that would be a good goal.

 

Ms. Davoudiasl: Motion to expand time by 5 minutes.

 

Motion passes.

 

Ms. Kim: I think these websites died out because they’re not useful. ICE didn’t die out, but it’s a good idea when you do a beta to see what part of the website is actually useful..

 

Ms. Sharp: I think PAM is unsuccessful because people are lazy, because eating club officers don’t care about this, and non-freshman don’t. But freshman do care!

 

Mr. Wagstaff: When we launch POM, we need to consider how the reactions are going to be. We shouldn’t launch an unfinished project; we should consider where we are, and how to continue.

 

Ms. Shen: Can you guys give us an estimated timeline? What are we looking at it.

 

Mr. Martens: We’re trying to get it by Reading Week.

 

Mr. Okuda-Lim: UHS is already working with people who do Score—maybe looking forward you can even click on McCosh to schedule an appointment.

 

Ms. Mancenon: Maybe CCA can work with you guys on this.

 

Mr. Cook: Eco-system integration, like having iCal, would be awesome.

 

Ms. Davoudiasl: God bless the IT committee, but this is a huge undertaking. But maybe the university will be willing to help us? How can we approach them for help. This is the time to approach the university and ask them to help us out.

 

Mr. Wagstaff: I agree with you, and I don’t think the tech teams should develop it, but the real interest is designing something for students, and students are going to know what they want versus an adminstration member.

 

Mr. Martens: I would rather have a high-quality product sooner, rather than having to go through more layers of bureaucracy. I think that in the long run, you’re right.

 

Mr. Stolzenberg: Have you considered having some sort of beta test?

 

Mr. Martens: I think the value of the service is the fact that there are a lot of people on it.

 

Agenda Setting

 

Ms. Shen: I have a question—what happened to student group website? Do we have a current senate member on it?

 

Mr. Kugelmass: I’ll review thanksgiving buses.

 

Ms. Bui: I’ll review Taste of Prospect.

 

Mr. Wagstaff: I’ll do Hoodie Allen!!

 

Mr. Riley: Can we do an update on the PDF? The intro-language PDF?

 

Mr. Easop: Evaluation of the bonfire/Buses to Yale.

 

Ms. Davoudiasl: I want to hear how the administration plans to use the playbook to maintain institutional knowledge (especially with a turn of administration)

 

Ms. Kim: Elections update

 

Mr. Sharp: The bike rack… Apparently the new date is sometime before Thanksgiving. Also, Benny and I may have an update for the Passport to the Arts project.

 

Mr. Easop: Mental Health Initiative?

Meeting #7

November 11, 2012

 

Introduction

 

Mr. Easop: The first thing I want to talk about is Veterans Day; often, we get caught up in the Orange Bubble, but we should be grateful to our veterans. (Round of Applause.) And also, we do have an exciting week ahead. We have USG elections, Hoodie Allen, and throughout the week, Restaurant Week. Also, the Princeton Tigers beat Yale last weekend, earning us the first bonfire since 2006! Moving forward, do we a motion to approve the minutes.

 

The motion passes.

 

Kevin Zhang standing in for Shawon Jackson.

Greg Smith standing in for Haebin Kim.

Carla Javier standing in for Deana Davoudiasl.

 

Elections Update

 

Mr. Dean: The elections are on, we’ve got candidates which I emailed out. Race for USG President, Vice President, Social Chair, and Senator. I’ve talked to you about the schedule already. The 2014 senators are unopposed. There are three people running for 2015 Senator. For 2016 Senator, there are nine candidates. Also, we should discuss whether the new freshman class referendum has a negative impact on people who run for senate. For example, if someone comes in 2^nd or 3^rd for a particular position, they think they have a chance of winning the Senate race. But if they come in 21 out of 30, then they may feel more demoralized.

 

Mr. Easop: I think when we publicize the votes, some people may be uncomfortable with public recognition of all the candidates.

 

SGRC Presentation

 

Mr. Ackerman: The first four groups are groups that will pass without much discussion. The fifth group is more complicated, because we don’t have a particular reason in our constitution that prevents us from disapproving them. But we have some reservations about them. However, unless you override their “approval,” they will be approved.

 

Mr. Easop: What are your concerns?

 

Mr. Ackerman: Yeah, the group is “FIELD” which encourages students to do field work and have a collaborative group that discusses it on campus. Our major reservation is that this is so academically-focused that most students will already get these opportunities.

 

Ms. Shen: I would show concern too for the lifetime of this group. Whatever they’re trying to foster, and I could envision myself getting a chance to discuss with this group. But once they graduate, who’s the leader because what’s their goal? I think it’s difficult to see someone really want to be a leader.

 

Mr. Kugelmass: I think we should be really flexible in letting students create groups, and hope they succeed.

 

Mr. Sharp: We may be giving them university resources and money, and if they’re just going to discontinue after this year, maybe the money would be a lost cause.

 

Mr. Kugelmass: P-Boards will only give them money if they have good proposals.

 

Mr. Ackerman: We’ve had a lot of groups go through that were passed under the philosophy of “If we don’t give them a chance, they’ll never prosper,” but we had to have a Student Groups “clean up committee.”

 

Buses to Yale Recap

 

Mr. Easop: The handout for Buses to Yale is a separate sheet, but we sold out 550 tickets to these buses, and it was great to see so much enthusiasm! On the day of, we had a total of 453 students on the buses (but I think most people bought tickets with the intention of coming home with us). In the future, should we request that people only buy tickets if they take both legs? The athletics committee helped us connect with other stakeholders, including the student events committee, to put the game on the Frist TVs. And also, Adi helped get in touch with the Princeton Club of Connecticut to publicize a tailgate. Also, in terms of publicity, we should a Facebook event, emails, and a poster. With the new USG website, we’ve started to have banners and having them posted in a central spot. And one of the cool things is that we collected pictures and videos so that we can put together a video and publicity for the bonfire. Finally, thank you to the ten bus captains who were there well before 7 AM. One number I’m waiting on is the total number of game tickets sold. Questions?

 

Mr. Ackerman: Is this something we’re looking to do in subsequent years, possibly to the Harvard game, or only when the bonfire is on the line?

 

Ms. Shen: We do want this to happen more often, but we need a mechanism to gage interest. It’s hard because we’ll get requests from sports teams and it’s so last minute, but the athletes do tend to know what the “big games” are.

 

Mr. Zhang: Typically the Harvard Basketball game sells out tickets a month in advance.

 

Mr. Ackerman: I think that it’s a bad idea that they can’t just buy a one-way ticket; for example, one of my friends met her parents there.

 

Mr. Okuda-Lim: Did we have students enquire about transportation for just one leg?

 

Mr. Easop: I think this is why it’s a useful question, because we did have a waitline for students in case there are open seats. But if those seats are filled on the return home, we’re in a bind. Not every bus was completely filled, like 52 of 55 people. And we had one bus that had 5 people. We did have an empty bus going up, but it could be filled up on return.

 

Mr. Ackerman: We also had a completely extra bus, that we weren’t charged for. We should keep that in mind.

 

Mr. Sharp: Many people were irritated that searching of items and taking away certain things (like alcohol) was unexpected, and they wanted to be aware of this.

 

Bonfire

 

Mr. Ramirez: Everyone should read the Princetonia website about the Bonfire, it has a lot of history. Like many Princeton traditions, some parts of the history are unclear, but at some point it got tied to our victories over Harvard and Yale. The last time it happened was in 2006, and before that in 1994. A neat tradition was that the freshmen used to walk around and pick up wood.

 

Ms. Wiley: [] Yale and Harvard student as offerings.

 

Mr. Ramirez: The current plans we have for this year is that the construction of the bonfire is done with student volunteers, in coordination with members of the carpenters shop. Each class will send volunteers to Cannon Green. Publicize this and let your peers know about this—you’ll have an opportunity to write your name and class year on a pallet. We’ll have specific times for each class year. A lot of people have been asking about “what else happens?” Basically, there will be a stage and various leaders from the campus community to speak about this. Last time, the representatives from the team of last bonfire will pass the torch to the current team. In 2006, the football team and band gathered around the Wilson-Butler area and marched, in mass, to Cannon Green. That’s a little bit about the program. We’re trying to determine if there’ll be food vendors, but definitely encourage your fellow students and alumni to attend. Also, with the volunteering aspect, we probably can’t have 5,200 undergrads help build the fire, but it’ll be great to have people there taking part and helping construct the fire. Last time, the program ran for 15 minutes, and the burning of the fire lasted 45 minutes to an hour. I’ll pass it over to Bruce to discuss timing.

 

Mr. Easop: So, I guess I wanted to start off saying that I couldn’t be more excited. Thinking about the goals of the event and USG, we like to connect students to students. So we want to make sure that we accommodate as many people as possible, so we want to be responsive to student interests. Yesterday, the football team told me that there final season game is on Saturday, so they want to be practicing a lot on Friday. So now the bonfire will be shifting to Saturday the 17^th to 7PM. This means it will follow their Dartmouth game, and the building of the bonfire will take place before the game which can get people pumped up for the game. Then after the game, this will be a celebration of their performance over all. Also, more alumni will be able to make this game; if it were at 5:30 on a Friday night, most alumni couldn’t take time off from work. This really responds to the interests of people who really want to celebrate this. Hopefully we can make it the biggest and best event possible!

 

Mr. Wagstaff: The Saturday game is their battle for the Ivy League Championship.

 

Mr. Sharp: This is a tradition, so we should examine the reasons this was on a Friday night originally.

 

Mr. Easop: It was on Friday in 2006, but before that, it wasn’t the case. In the nineties, they actually had it at the start of Thanksgiving week, which they found had low turnout and people had already gone home. The football team said it was important to them to have it on Saturday, and we should really listen to them.

 

Mr. Sharp: It would be nice to have groups of friends to create pallets together, because a lot of friends span class years.

 

Mr. Easop: Last note, keep in mind that a funding request (online) will happen this week. Expect more info this week!

 

Hoodie Allen

 

Mr. Wagstaff: The Hoodie Allen show is on Friday night, and it’s still going to be happening. Doors will be open at 8:30 PM, and the show will start at 9:00 PM. There is a vicious rumor that tickets have been sold out, but this is not true. There are some remaining. If you take your friends’ proxes with you (up to four!) you can buy them with you. Just a shout-out to everyone who worked on this project! We are selling to the public as well!

 

Deans Date Brainstorm

 

Mr. Wagstaff: Deans Date! I think Carla should guide us through the first part.

 

Ms. Javier: We’re thinking of changing up the model from last year, so it’s more of a social experience. We were thinking of not getting food from outside vendors, and instead, doing something with dining services. Giveaways are always appreciated, so we have two separate themes. We were thinking of “wintery” things, like scarves, floppy ear hats, mittens, etc. Other things that have been suggested include an “open night” or live DJ, so we have something to do besides just eat food!

 

Ms. Clifton: Last year, Quipfire was there, and they were great.

 

Mr. Kugelmass: In terms of the giveaway, we should do an article of clothing as opposed to electronics. When we buy cheap headphones, they’re usually “throwaways”

 

Ms. Smith: For food, I think it’d be better to have outside vendors, just because of the quality of food. My experience with dining services barbeques is always pretty negative.

 

Mr. Okuda-Lim: I think good finger food is good. For the giveaways, I like the idea of winter clothes that are practical (as opposed to fleece throws).

 

Mr. Easop: One idea: if there were two or three that were within our price range, we should get student feedback on what they want.

 

Mr. Mancenon: Maybe we should get more of something cheap so more students can get one.

 

Mr. Wagstaff: If you’d like to attend any of our meetings, please do. Then, we’re trying to consider this new element, which would be the night element. We want to introduce the concept of a silent disco, and we’d want to work with alcohol initiative to offer a way for students to do something, and at least, in some way, if they have been drinking we want to offer them something to put in their stomachs to make it through the night. This would be a campus event—they would have headphones listening to the same thing so it’s quiet to the outside community, but it’s a full on party. We want cheapish but recognizable acts, and we’d like to do it in front of Nassau Hall. Otherwise, we’d do it in a contained quad. We’re looking from 9:30 PM to midnight, but it’s an idea on the table. Is this something the USG should be pursuing?

 

Mr. Sharp: I thought it was that you gave people a playlist and everyone hits go at the same time. But you’re talking about it as a radio single?

 

Mr. Wagstaff: No, we’d connect them to a performer. It’s not very expensive, but it’d be very exciting!

 

Mr. Kugelmass: Most students have Smartphones, so maybe it could be done through the internet?

 

Mr. Cook: This sounds awesome! As far as locations, have you thought about East Pyne  at all? If this is a segway to the street, it may be a better location.

 

Mr. Easop: In terms of the expense, would be just be keeping the headphones?

 

Mr. Wagstaff: It’s a rental and a production type thing. They don’t do it much in the US, but they use it for Electric Zoo. They’ll do lights and headphones, and it comes up to be around $5 per person. It’s not too terrible a deal.

 

Ms. Byrne: I would recommend if these were rentals, then we should do it in a quad so you can get them back…

 

Tiger Apps Homepage

Mr. Chen: The idea is that we have different categories of apps that make it easy to search for, and a description of each. So you can check it out. As you saw, there was an email sent out of the previous IT website, so this is something we put up today/yesterday. If you have any feedback, I’d love suggestions.

 

Ms. Shen: Does this replace the iPad?

 

Mr. Chen: Yes. I was hoping this would be more…useful.

 

Mr. Martens: I thought it was weird because if you were using it on a mobile phone, it was an iPhone inside an iPhone…

 

Mr. Chen: I kind of preserved it up there (upper right hand corner). Also we can add back the links to the “useful websites.”

 

Mr. Easop: Do you think it’ll be up and ready to send out to students this week?

 

Ms. Bui: Are they going to be different logos for each thing?

 

Budget Update

 

Ms. Cartwright: These are the expenses from October, mostly they’re small little things. Just looking ahead, we spent a lot in November, and so I guess that’s the Yale Buses, Bonfire, Dean’s Date, but we’re on track!

 

Mr. Stolzenberg: Can we talk about copier charges?

 

Ms. Cartwright: I guess we could expect another $2,000 for charges?

 

Mr. Kugelmass: Can we limit the number of color copies for student groups?

 

Mr. Easop: We want to have each student group have a code for the printer, so if any group goes over, then your group has to cover the cost. It’ll keep individual students from printing.

 

Ms. Cartwright: I think the problem is members from USG using it…

 

Mr. Kugelmass: Maybe we should ask student groups to use P-boards grant for their funding, and otherwise they get a small budget from us for it?

 

Ms. Cartwright: Projects Board doesn’t fund advertising

 

Mr. Sharp: Maybe we can be a printing service, and just start charging people, which would be cheaper for us.

 

Ms. Cartwright: I think it’s worth it to provide printing in our budget

 

Mr. Kugelmass: If we give people a code, then they can have a quota for the semester (not per event), and if they go over, we should charge them.

 

Mr. Easop: Installing the code will take some time, but we should check in.

 

Ms. Byrne: At printing clusters, you just use your netid, but each student groups have their own netid’s…

 

Mr. Easop: We were just going to use the last four numbers of the student group numbers.

 

Agenda Setting

 

Mr. Easop: We want to talk about the Thanksgiving Day focus groups, keep pumping it up with people you know!!

 

Ms. Shen: Is the main alternative to remove fall break and make thanksgiving break longer?

 

Mr. Easop: There are multiple alternatives.

 

Mr. Shen: As an RCA, we have people coming to our meetings to discuss this.

 

Mr. Easop: The USG focus groups are one component, but Dean Smith is also reaching out to Residential Colleges which the RCA are part of.

 

Mr. Easop: Haebin’s Food Committee and Holiday Lights Project would like to present.

 

Mr. Okuda-Lim: CPUC recap.

 

Mr. Kugelmass: Everyone ought to come to the CPUC meeting tomorrow.

 

Mr. Easop; Benny- recap of Hoodie Allen the week after?

 

Mr. Okuda Lim: Should we quickly recap the bonfire and discuss best practices for institutional memory?

 

Mr. Easop: Since we’re not meeting after Thanksgiving, we’ll send out another reminder if something else pops up.

Meeting Minutes

November 04, 2012

Introduction

 

Mr. Stolzenberg: Welcome back! Can everyone look at Bruce’s beard and smile?

 

Mr. Easop: Okay. I hope everyone made it through Sandy safely, with hopefully heat and food for part of the time. Welcome back to campus! So a lot of stuff is going on this week; we have an elections update since registration is happening this week. We’ll also hear about running buses up to Yale for the football game on November 10. Also, looking ahead, start spreading the word that on November 12 at the CPUC meeting the presidential search committee and priorities committee is looking for feedback.

 

Mr. Martens: We have some strangers here.

 

Mr. Stolzenberg: Please identify yourself.

 

Ms. Shen: Cameron is subbing for Elektra. Chad is the GSG President.

 

Mr. Easop: Do we have a motion to approve the minutes?

 

The motion passes.

 

Elections Update

 

Mr. Dean: Hi everyone. Just a quick hello from me, because we’re at that time of year again when a bunch of you will be running for re-election, replaced by successors, or running for different positions. Most of Ex-com and senators are up for grabs. Open houses are happening next Thursday and Friday. If any of the seniors are free to say hi to potential candidates, that’d be great. The schedule is on the back of the handout just for reference. Do you have any questions?

 

Ms. Shen: Do you have the numbers we asked for earlier?

 

Mr. Dean: Yeah, I can talk to you about that.

 

Mr. Easop: Look out for my email tomorrow around noon to get things starting.

 

Restaurant Week Update

 

Ms. Mancenon: So, the USG CCA committee has been working with the GSG to introduce Resterauant Week. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been reaching out to students.

 

Mr. Maisel: I’m the GSG President, and I’m a second-year. I grew up in Princeton and was always shocked that students rarely went into town for food. So I’m really interested in Resteraunt Week, and we’ve been meeting a lot and planning, and hopefully we are launching tomorrow.

 

Ms. Shen: Next week, starting Sunday evening at dinner, you can show up with your Prox at one of 10 restaurants (and they are higher end). For $25, you can get an appetizer, entre, and dessert. They are limiting spots for students, but you should call in ahead to reserve a spot. Do you have any questions about reservations? If not, we’d like to show you the website.

 

Ms. Mancenon: Austin Jackson has been working on this website, which students can check out and see our Youtube, Facebook, everything. Each restaurant has provided us with menu list, and then there is also information about how to make reservations. This website really consolidates all the information about the week.

 

Ms. Shen: It’s resterauntweekprinceton.com because there is already a Princeton Restaurant Week. But we get to say that this is the first ever one!!

 

Ms. Davoudiasl: Are you limited to just one day?

 

Ms. Shen: No, every night is an option!

 

Mr. Blumenfeld: Why are you only announcing this tomorrow? Wouldn’t people be interested in planning in advance?

 

Ms. Mancenon: We did think about this, but it’s difficult to coordinate a lot of the restaurants.

 

Mr. Blumenfeld: What, if any kind of data, are you going to be collecting on this?

 

Ms. Mancenon: We’ll follow up with each of the restaurants; some of them even have a specific reservation link, so we can look at those numbers.

 

Ms. Shen: In the future, we want to have a system of reserving tables so we can put in all the demographics we want.

 

Princeton 2017 Update

 

Mr. Blumenfeld: So I’m here to give you an update on where we are so far. We have enough ideas so we can get your feedback, but we’re not committed enough to not be able to adapt accordingly. We’ve thought about going through this in 3 different ways. The first is any updates to the current site. The second is any additional features we want to add that are new (for example, some new content areas like student groups, mentorship, dining options after first year, etc. and a vlog with accompanying testimonials). And the last is publicity, maybe through a Facebook group, links on other relevant pages, and a launch at Preview with the event.

 

Mr. Rajagopalan: Who’s going to continue this project?

 

Mr. Blumenfeld: We’re in the process of brainstorming this.

 

Ms. Shen: Does this include getting the freshman senators on board?

 

Mr. Blumenfeld: Yes!

 

Ms. Shen: Lily and I tried really hard to push the group  at the activities fair and the usg open house event (we had these little squares of paper with the address that we handed out to everyone we saw), but that was far less effective than the emails that were sent out by admissions/Bruce. Probably because people are already sitting down at their computer and have time to check it out when they see that email, whereas if you get a slip of paper at preview it’ll just get lost in your bag and forgotten about.

 

Mr. Easop: In terms of the Q&As, if you’re looking to do them live, then you should vyou.com—people can type in a question and people can answer it through video.

 

Mr. Stolzenberg: This has to be funneled through you, Katherine, and Paul.

 

Buses to Yale

 

Mr. Wagstaff: So Deana and I have been asked to talk about this, but many USG members have been working on this. There is a game coming up at Yale, and if we win, we get a bonfire! It’s probably the first and last time this will happen…judging by the track record. The question is how to make this easy and accessible to students. The bus system put in place originally cost $35 for students, but thanks to the generosity of many people (including hopefully us), it should be $10. The package includes the ticket, the bus, and a t-shirt.

 

Ms. Davoudiasl: Right now we have 10 buses reserved. I think Joe Ramirez worked out a mass purchased with Yale. ODUS took care of the t-shirts. We’re proposing that the USG contribute $3000

 

Mr. Rajagopalan: Last time we did this, we contributed $2750.

 

Mr. Wagstaff: We should thank everyone who has contributed to this process.

 

Ms. Davoudiasl: Because of the upcoming Orgo exam, there are quiet buses, and we’re even looking to bringing an Orgo TA on the bus!!

 

Mr. Easop: One of the questions that class governments had is if there was a way to have a class specific bus. This makes it difficult in terms of tickets—so we suggested that the class governments send an email to their class asking them to meet and board at a certain time.

 

Mr. Sharp: Was the goal class camaraderie?

 

Mr. Easop: I think that was the goal, but at the same time, we want this to be efficient at 7AM.  One last thing is comparing this with past events. Last time this happened was in 2006, and the athletics department is a new source of funding, so there is strong support for this event. I think it’d be great to show support.

 

Mr. Kugelmass: What happens if we get fewer than 550 students?

 

Mr. Rajagopalan: Buses, and game tickets are a flexible cost. Only t-shirts are the cost.

 

Ms. Shen: You can’t buy a t-shirt and ticket, and no bus?

 

Mr. Easop: No, it’s a package.

 

Ms. Shen: Everyone should read the tradition of the bonfire—it’s really cool.

 

Ms. Davoudiasl moves to approve the funding. The motion passes 23 For, 0 against, 0 abstentions.

 

Sexual Culture Awareness Initiative

 

Mr. Cook: We’re SCAI, aka Scai, aaka Sky. My fellow sky-divers are Andrew, Sarah, and Charissa. Think Harvard Yale Sex-Week but not about Sex…and also, not a week. Let me explain. The handout is pretty detailed so I’m going to highlight certain things. We want to start in a week or two and culminate on Valentine’s Day. It’s going to happen everywhere. It’s not a week of speakers events, but very organic and meshes well with life. Check out this list of ideas. I want to stress that this is a partial and tentative list, but I want to emphasize the video series and the last item on the list: we want to revive the discussion about a social honor code. It’s a ton of little fun awareness campaigns with a few serious issues. We just want to send a message of respect. Tagline: You can hold hands with someone and still be mean about it. Our main goal is to make people question what they do with their bodies—we want to get a conversation going. We do not want to spend a lot of money—we want it to be as high-impact, low-budget as possible.

 

Ms. Davoudiasl: What was the motivation? Did you see the need for this?

 

Mr. Cook: This came out talks I had with the administrative head of SHARE.

 

Mr. Okuda-Lim: If the goal is conversation about sexual culture, how would you measure success?

 

Mr. Cook: Feedback mechanics are up in the air, but we can all gage buzz on campus, so we’ll notice. We’re also thinking of having a suggestion box.

 

Ms. Shen: There would be feedback on the website; if we do activities on tanks, etc. But this is mostly to encourage conservation.

 

Mr. Jackson: How do you plan to maintain this over break?

 

Ms. Wiley: Have sex.

 

Ms. Shen: The timeline is still up in the air. But we have time from now until Valentine’s Day.

 

Mr. Cook: We have the whole video series—why not do that over Thanksgiving?

 

Ms. Kim: I think this is a wonderful project, but I’m having difficultly connecting the actions with the goals. This seems to be like “discussion of a means of getting somewhere” but what is the goal of discussion? Because  “discussion” isn’t a concrete goal.

 

Mr. Cook: We think this discussion hasn’t occurred and needs to occur.

 

Ms. Shen: Normally you discuss something to have an end result—but the beauty of this project is that discussion IS the end result. We are giving people a framework of this, for example, conveying respect through the posters and videos. But we’re encourage people to get to that point themselves.

 

Mr. Stolzenberg: What’s the social honor code?

 

Mr. Cook: I’ve talked to Amy Campbell about this, but need more information.

 

Mr. Stolzenberg: Look it up

 

Agenda Setting

 

Mr. Okuda-Lim: Follow up after the CPUC meeting.

 

Mr. Sharp: The bike rack was supposed to be installed over fall break, but seeing as the sky was falling it had to be postponed. I’ll get you an update by next week. ”

 

Ms. Davoudiasl: Can we do a recap of the buses?

 

Mr. Easop: I’m not sure we’ll have the numbers by then…

 

Mr. Easop: One question for John and Steven—Do you think having an update on ALTA is possible?

 

Mr. Rosen: We’ll do that in Executive Session.

 

Ms. Kim: Lights on McCosh walk.

 

Mr. Wagstaff: A small thing on the thing we’re announcing tomorrow.

 

Ms. Davoudaisl: Has Julian talked about how to improve voter turnout, etc? Or has the boat sailed.

 

Mr. Martens: The ship.

 

Mr. Easop: Haebin- can you do an update on the food committee? And Elan- have you heard from VP Davies? Benny- do you want to talk about Deans Date?

Mr. Stolzenberg: We’re going to start the meeting now. Can everyone keep their laptop shut? Guests, please introduce yourselves.

I’m Brian Bernard, I’m standing in for Yifan Zhu.

 

I’m Kevin Zhang, I’m part of the Varsity Student Athlete Committee (last week, Jack Berger was here)

 

Mr. Easop: Welcome everyone. First up, let’s give a  huge congratulations to the Football team and other sports teams for dominating Harvard this weekend! So real quick, the first thing on our agenda is a brainstorm session for career services. We’re going to see if John can project some notes on the board as we’re talking, to keep track of the notes. Following up, we’ll talk about TigerRides, Month of Service, and some Elections Packet changes, because believe it or not, registration is starting after Fall Break. Does anyone have a motion to approve the minutes?

 

The motion passes.

 

Career Services

 

Mr. Jackson: The Career Services had a meeting with the director of Career Services, who told us about a mentorship program they’re looking to advance. Right now there is an alumni mentorship program, but it’s hard to find, and the director is looking to start a one-to-one program that lasts the whole year. She wants some student input to figure out logistics. I posed some questions at the end of the handout, and I’d like to discuss each one for a minute each. The first question: what do students want to get out this relationship with alumni?

 

Ms. Davoudiasl: Would it just be related to jobs or other post-graduate paths?

 

Mr. Jackson: Yes, other things, including grad-school.

 

Ms. Shen: I like hearing about alumni’s paths, versus just hearing them talk. Depending on the context of this relationship, it is important to wonder “Can they give me a job?”

 

Mr. Okuda-Lim: Two things I’m interested in: what professors the alumni suggest taking classes from, and also, what internships they’d advise getting.

 

Mr. Kugelmass: How to link this with Princetonships

 

Ms. Kim: Right now, it’s difficult to find the employer and company name because there are so many different names. If they can improve the search function, it’d be awesome.

 

Mr. Cook: It’d be cool to see a re-vamping of the “five year timeline” of where you are after five years? It’d be great to get profiles of smaller departments of where graduates end up 10, 20, 30 years down the line.

 

Mr. Easop: One suggestion to career services, it’d be a good idea to send out “best practices” to anyone who agrees to be a mentor. If we have a good idea of what students want to hear, then alumni should hear it.

 

Mr. Wagstaff: Let’s get some student feedback, maybe some surveys.

 

Ms. Kim: A lot of time, the mentoring programs are very long in horizon. I’d like to have key information from the website that gives me the time-horizon that this mentor is looking for. Will they get back to me in a week to give me information? Or will it be a longer mentorship?

 

Mr. Shawon: The second question is about pairing. They want to make a one-to-one program. What traits should be prioritized about the mentors?

 

Mr. Martens: I think it’s important to have people from similar backgrounds to be paired together. Like a trust-fund kid can’t be paired with a mentor from the inner-city. I’m talking about the socio-economic status.

 

Mr. Wagstaff: We should use the “OK-Cupid” website technique that matches people based on their personalities. I think personalities count just as much as career goals.

 

Ms. Davoudiasl: Is this something that mandatory or voluntary?

 

Mr. Jackson: I’ll talk about this later.

 

Mr. Sharp: I think extracurriculars are an important starting point. Eating clubs, dance groups.

 

Ms. Aliviatsos: I would be wary of including eating clubs, since you can already get those networks from an eating clubs.

 

Mr. Easop: For Princeton Preview, they have a section that asks you what you’d like, like “I want to be with someone who is a WWS major,” so they should include that.

 

Mr. Cook: I think a great thing would be a departmental connection, but I think undergraduates want different criteria. Why don’t we have a survey?

 

Mr. Shawon: The last major question is that they’re open about what the requirement would be, which would be anything from a one-time interaction to four times a semester. Anything about frequency of communication?

 

Mr. Kugelmass: I think it should be tailored to how much the alumni want to be involved?

 

Ms. Davoudiasl: I feel like if this is an institutionalized mentoring thing, then we should get alumni who want to come to campus.

 

Ms. Kim: I’ve been on a lot of mentorship programs, and it’s so easy to sign up and then so hard to send out emails to the alumni. We should come up with an incentive program to prod the undergraduates to reach out to alumni.

 

TigerRides

 

Mr. Kugelmass: Mr. Kugelmass: We’re looking to provide cheap transportation for Thanksgiving, which is an expensive time to travel. We’re definitely running buses to Washington and Boston again this year. Tickets will be online through University Ticketing. I’m letting you all know that this isn’t a funding request, but USG is floating the contract until students pay back the money. I’m wondering whether we should offer incentives for bus captains? I’m wondering whether we should return profits to students. And I’m also wondering what are additional destinations for winter break. Last year we had $2500 surplus.

 

Mr. Wagstaff: [Need rephrasing of this—something about raising prices for seats.]

 

Month of Service

 

Ms. Davoudiasl: USG is going to have another Month of Service, and we’re having it early in the year. Stephen met with the PCCV and we’re also going to have Residential Colleges, we’re going to have SVC promote Weekly service projects, class service projects, and a cool idea by Shirley Gao was to have Breakout trip post-trip activities so the whole student body can benefit.

 

Mr. Jackson: This will happen during the month of November. Last year we got money form the College Community Fund. We have $500, which is money enough for pizza and a trophy for the winning college. Two questions we want to hone in on: how can we promote sustainable civic engagement? And what ideas do you have for class-specific service projects?

 

Mr. Easop: I’m pretty sure Class of 2013 is doing a Support the Troops week for November, so I’m sure they will do something.

 

Mr. Blumenfeld: How many students logged their hours?

 

Mr. Jackson: I don’t know the number off the top of my head. I can look and email you.

 

Mr. Kugelmass: How much do you think this is going to cost beyond the $500 we have left over last year?

 

Mr. Jackson: On USG’s end, I don’t forsee anything else being used.

 

Ms. Kim: Can you give out the t-shirts as incentives?

 

Ms. Davoudiasl: We want to move away from it because there was a lot of confusion last year. We’ll give them to the top-winners, but we want to kill the t-shirts because they’re not sustainable in that way.

 

Mr. Easop: One thing I think is important, since this month is early in the year, I think we should have an action plan about how we’re going to follow up. We should do a community service showcase that highlights different Pace Center initiatives, and every month is a different theme. Is there any value in this?

 

Mr. Okuda-Lim: I like that. I also think a relationship between the USG and the Pace Center is really important.

 

Mr. Blumenfeld: I’m not a huge fan of this project, and I frankly think that Bruce’s idea is a much better one. When we already have so many service-oriented organizations, it seems contrived that we have this “one” month of service.

 

Mr. Stolzenberg: Is there a way to project your message?

 

Mr. Blumenfeld: I think Bruce’s suggestion is a great one.

 

Elections Packet Update

 

Mr. Dean: Thanks guys for having me back. I’m just here to propose three simple changes. First, I want to create internal hyperlinks to increase ease of navigations. Second, I want to amend section 8.4 add “campaign spending must not violate any pre-existing contracts and agreements with other or external parties.” My third proposal is about the discretion of the elections manager. If there is an explicit rule with an explicit penalty, I give the penalty. If there is an explicit rule without an explicit penalty violation. The manager cannot penalize something that isn’t explicitly mention

 

Mr. Blumenfeld: Why don’t you just go through and assess each penalty?

 

Mr. Dean: It’d be arbitrary since there isn’t any precedence for that. But that’s a discussion we should have. I think that’s simpler.

 

Mr. Dean: If in the future, something dodgy comes up but isn’t explicitly banned, I can’t penalize it.

 

Ms. Davoudiasl: What happens if something makes up some weird thing?

 

Mr. Kugelmass: This is good because this stops elections manager from making post-hoc decisions.

 

Mr. Blumenfeld: I’d like to move to approve all the changes together.

 

The motion passes.

 

Agenda Setting

 

Mr. Easop: Elan- do you have any sense of VP Davies of when she’s interested in setting up “testing”? Let’s talk about that something in the next two senate meetings.

 

Mr. Wagstaff: I can do presentation on Deans Date if you want to discuss.

 

Ms. Mancenon: I’d like to do a presentation on Resterauant Weeks.

 

Mr. Blumenfeld: We can do a feedback on Project 2017.

 

Mr. Riley: Do we want to talk about a trip to Yale?

 

Dean Dunne: Last time we did this was in 2006. I don’t know how it was paid for, but we can have that information. We have to figure out if it’s completely free or partially paid for by participants. Also, we need to ensure that people who pay for buses actually go.

 

Ms. Wiley: I think Shirley should subsidize it. I mean, it’s her last year, she should be feeling pretty YOLO right now.

 

Mr. Rajagopalan: It’s a pretty easy weekend for people to go though.

 

Mr. Wagstaff: I think we should have a minimal reservation fee.

 

Mr. Kugelmass: Our goal should be to make it free for all students. We should have deposits that are refunded.

 

Mr. Rajagopalan: Class governments are also looking into it.

 

Dean Dunne: We could also communicate with Yale to see if there is anything we should tailgate-wise?

 

Ms. Shen: Could we do two options? People who want to go to tailgates and people who don’t.

 

Dean Dunne: Last time, we had a silent study bus. Last time, we struggled with popularity, and so we wonder where to roll in with 11 buses…

 

Mr. Easop: We need to do a funding request for the Sunday after Fall Break.

 

Mr. Easop: I may have a couple of funding requests.

 

Kevin: Let’s give out white boards to spell out a word.

 

Ms. Wiley: I want to present on my Career Services letter.

 

Mr. Cook: SCAI, for real this time.

 

 

Mr. Easop: First of all, we have some new members of the USG family, with 5 newly elected members of the freshman class. They’re not here right now, but they exist. Next week we’ll be inviting them. One other note is that Madhu sent out a request for bios for the USG website; if you could please get it in by tonight, it’d be great. I also wanted to welcome Vice Provost Davies to talk about the Student Activities Funding Engine. And finally, is there a motion to approve the minutes? The motion passes.

SAFE

Mr. Kugelmass: As Bruce said, Vice Provost Davies is here to give us an overview of SAFE.

Vice Provost Davies: The Student Activities Funding Engine has been in development for over three years now. We started working on this as an extension of the Travel Registration Database, which is pretty clunky, so we had been making a request to get funding to upgrade it. We started asking around about how much the university spends on travel, but no one could tell us. We thought that was a problem. We starting peeling away at it, and we had an issue with the way Departments and Programs give out money to undergrads for all sorts of things. I’m not including financial aid, salaries, or awards. I’m talking about the money you try to collect from different departments—study abroad, different internships, special projects, junior independent work, going to a conference, going to a club to participate in an event, doing a group service project either abroad or locally. There is no single source for undergraduates to get funding; instead they all go around to different sources. Those offices that do give out funding don’t always know what the whole picture is—no department knows what the other departments are doing. We started thinking about how we could address this issue, so we came up with the idea of a common portal that all undergraduates would go through. It would be a matching system. All the departments that give out money will go through the system with how much money they have, who they give it to, etc. Then you come along later with the information of the opportunity you have, and you go to the “SAFE” to get your money. You’ll say: “I’m doing this internship, I’m going to go to Botswana, I’m an EBB major.” You’ll put in some additional information about when it’s going to be and where it’s going to be. The system will then match you up with the possible funding opportunities that exist for you—then you’ll get all the restrictions (for example: “you can use this money for travel but not for materials.”) Then you complete an application. If recommendations are required or if an advisor needs to comment on your research, then they do that through the single portal. You’ll be able to go in and make changes to the application up until the date of the first deadline. After the fact, if it’s a funder like “dean of the college,” for which you need receipts and reports, you’ll also do that through the portal. You’ll be able to see all of the awards you’ve received. We found that there was no vendor that had anything like this, so we had to create this from scratch. There are going to be three rollout phases. The funders will start next month, students will start in January, and senior-research will start with this round. Internships off-campus starts in the summer. Special projects, junior independent work, conferences will also start in the summer. The second rollout will be groups of students doing things off campus (for example, engineers without borders). The third rollout will be groups of students looking for funding on campus, which is where Projects Board comes into play. We have a small subset of students looking at this to work out the kinks, but once it’s open to the funders in November, we’ll connect the system directly to treasurer systems. This saves the step of having to do the student vouchers. Then we’ll work on the reporting: i.e. how much money did we give out? The last thing I want to say—and this is where it gets a bit complicated—is that there is money that you go and look for and then there is money that is given to you that isn’t requested, and both types of money are going to run through the system. Everything I’ve talked about is “student initiated,” but there are also “funder initiated” programs. These are like PEI or IIP internships where they find the internship and money comes along with it. You don’t have to go asking for money that’s already been given to you, so the funders will go and put it in the system. I’d now be happy to take any questions you have!

Mr. Kugelmass: Also—as USG, we’re putting out an open application for students to be part of a larger testing team. We’ll try to get a group of fifteen people from a variety of classes, experiences, majors, programs, etc. And one of the things I hope we’ll talk about today, especially since we have Jared here, is how we see Projects Board fitting in with this.

Mr. Okuda-Lim: Vice Provost Davies, thanks for your presentation! You’d mentioned that in Phase II, you’d be looking for funding for off-campus, group service activities. How would the PACE center fall into the framework of SAFE?

Vice Provost Davies: The nice thing is that all these systems, including PACE, will be encompassed in this system.

Mr. Riley: Will students be able to gage how much funding is offered? How will they determine whether it’s worth applying?

Vice Provost Davies: Departments will have to state how much money they tend to give. The other thing is that we wanted to make it so that students weren’t punished for being proactive and thinking in advance. Even if a cycle hasn’t opened yet, you’ll be able to see the funding available and when it opens for application. And I think that in time, a lot of these funders who have been functioning in a vacuum will be able to see how they fit in the larger picture.

Mr. Kugelmass: I’m interested to hear anyone’s thoughts?

Mr. Easop: We have one minute left.

Mr. Peterson: I think it would be great to get a more cohesive funding source for student groups, and it’d make the funding seem more transparent.

Projects Board Presentation

Mr. Peterson: Hi everyone. We see about 330 events every year and we were requested $273,866.71 and we ultimately funded $143,040.66. The first item we have up for approval is first is the PDA Down Syndrome conference, for which we tried to avoid giving money that didn’t go to non-Princeton children.

Mr. Easop: How does the Venture Fund play into this?

Mr. Peterson: We wanted to originally put $200 towards PDA Down Syndrome Conference and $800 towards LGBT Awareness Week from Venture Fund, but these events were presented at the very beginning of the year and the Venture account had not yet been had funds transferred into it, which we were initially unaware of.

Mr. Easop: The PDA event has occurred in the past. But in the past, has it been funded over $1000 from USG or from Venture Fund?

Mr. Peterson: I don’t know, but their overall budget was smaller this year but they received the same amount from Projects Board. I don’t remember how it was split in the previous year.

Mr. Kugelmass: Is your constitutional requirement that you have to come to us when it’s $1000 or more, or more than $1000 dollars?

Mr. Peterson: We only are required to get Senate approval for funding approval in excess of $1000 from the USG Projects Board account.

Mr. Wagstaff: What is the breakdown of this budget? It’s not clear what the $1000 was originally, or what the $200 or $800 go towards. Are they broken up in different parts?

Mr. Peterson: Projects Board generally does not break down which parts of the budget our funding can be used to pay for, except in circumstances where there are portions of our budget that our charter prevents us from funding. The LGBT Awareness week is going on this week. They are having a fair number of speakers come and talk this week, and there will also be workshops.

Mr. Easop:  This LGBT Awareness week was last week, so I guess the money has already come out of the USG account. Was the expectation that Venture Fund would fund it and they refused?

Mr. Peterson: When the event was brought before the Board at the beginning of the year, the Venture fund did not yet have any money in it. The only money that we had at that point was in the USG funds given to Projects Board.

Mr. Easop: Are we expecting to get the money back from Venture Fund?

Mr. Peterson: No, Joe says it would be better to get the USG to approve the funding entirely from USG funds since money was transferred out of the USG PBoard account.

Mr. Kugelmass: Let me try to understand this. Venture Fund gives money to Projects Board that Projects Board allocates.

Mr. Peterson: Yes. In addition, this year they have decided not to fund events on their own in addition to the money they give Projects Board to fund events, so we are the sole provider of VPCL funds.

Ms. Davoudiasl: You’re supposed to come to us before the event occurs, right?

Mr. Peterson: Normally we’d come in before the event.

Mr. Easop: It’s not that Venture Fund declined it, but that the money came from the USG.

Mr. Peterson: It’s that there was no money in the account yet. It was a timing issue.

Mr. Ackerman moves to approve. The motion passes. The motion passes: 16 for, 5 against, and 2 abstentions.

Elections Update

Mr. Dean: Luckily I don’t have as much to say as the last two people. Five new freshmen got elected last week. 674 people voted.

Mr. Okuda-Lim: I wanted to thank you for all your hard work!

Round of applause.

Ms. Davoudiasl: Why were there no runoffs?

Mr. Dean: Because there are only five spots, and they’re all the same.

Ms. Davoudiasl: Did we make any efforts to increase voter turnout?

Mr. Easop: We decided not to do the same type of “question series” for the voters, which would’ve been tiring for voters.

SGRC

Mr. Ackerman: In our meeting on Tuesday, we approved two groups. The first is the Princeton East Asian Popular Culture conference, which is a group dedicated to foster academic discussion of East Asian culture. The second is the Alexander Hamilton society, which is a national organization focused on foreign policy that has speaker series.

Mr. Sharp: How are they different from Whig-Clio?

Mr. Ackerman: They’re not about discussing the issues as a public-speaking venture. This group has a focus on foreign policy.

Mr. Cook: Who is the professor?

Mr. Ackerman: I don’t remember.

Cane Spree

 Ms. Shen: The final score was 286 to 206 (freshman to sophomores). There was increased attendance. After they ate food, they were allowed to participate in games on the field and get tickets for t-shirts. We ordered 800 t-shirts and the freshman completely ran out and the sophomores mostly ran out, so I think about 800 people participated, which is good for the first year. The total cost was $6,148.69, so the total cost per student was $4.39 and the USG cost per student was $1.20. Campus Rec relations went really well and they are really excited to work with USG. The climbing wall gave us good feedback and club sports were pretty good, just about cooperating with us. Next year we should push it up in the year, because it was pretty cold. And afterwards, we had a video on the Princeton homepage and an article the Princeton. Lessons that we learned: contact with the athletic teams. Deana had been in touch with them over the summer, but she only heard back from three teams. Our entire event was contingent on their participation. So the approach I ended up taking was an authoritative approach in my emails to the captains (telling them what activity they were doing, etc.) We did get responses, even if some weren’t happy with my approach. I would say that a majority of varsity sports participated, but it’s difficult because fall sports are in season. Another little tidbit is that we want to move the inflatables around. There is an element of “culture change” in here.

Ms. Kim: Could you consider shortening the time?

Ms. Shen: Agreed.

Mr. Rajagopalan: Can we make it more of a mutual interest thing?

Presidential Search Committee

Mr. Easop: The reason we wanted to present on this process is because a) it was a successful process and b) it’s a good protocol for the future. So what we did: we sent out an application with twelve questions that was open to seniors. Then we selected out of those applicants, we selected twelve people to interview. For that interview process, we had two rounds. One was a group interview for 30 minutes, and then an individual 15-minute process. The group interview involved Stephen and I acting as candidates for “President.” We had resumes for the applicants to review, and then gave us 5 minutes to interview the applicant. We followed up that group interview with some individual questions; some that were consistent across applicants and some that were individual. We will find out the final two selected in the coming days. First I think this is great for a talent search-process in general. We can take applications like these and they’re useful for both USG and the administration in general.

Ms. Kim: One of your concerns was that you’d get too many applicants. Did you think that a long 2,000-word application helped narrow the field?

Mr. Easop: We had 149 people start the application, but only 48 actually completed it.

Ms. Kim: So you think this type of model is sustainable?

Mr. Rajagopalan: We have the same type of model for ULC applications, so it is self-selection. The question is—is this good self-selection. Do we only keep Woody Woo’s and people who like to write, and crowd out engineers?

Agenda Setting

Mr. Kugelmass: Stephen suggested that I present on Tiger Ride.

Ms. Kim: Can we have a discussion about expectations for the mentorship program?

Mr. Sharp: Are we having a meeting on Thanksgiving weekend?

Mr. Jackson: Month of Service!

Mr. Easop: Benny—did you want to talk about Dean’s Date in a Senate meeting? Gavin—what about the Sexual Culture Committee week? And the bike rack?

Mr. Sharp: “It’s arrived on campus, and will be installed over fall break.”

Mr. Kugelmass: Should we put people who haven’t sent Project Updates on the agenda?

Mr. Easop: If you don’t want to have a three-hour senate meeting, then you should submit something tonight.

Mr. Berger: Hi guys, I just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Jack Berger, I’m a member of VSAC, and I (or someone else) will be sitting in on Sunday Senate meetings every week to try to bring to USG a varsity athlete perspective.