Senate Meeting Minutes

Meeting Minutes for November 18, 2012

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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 Minutes for November 11, 2012

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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 2nd or 3rd 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 17th 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 for November 04, 2012

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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?