ASA Minutes
Valentine's Day!
Attendance: Keone, Shan, Zhao, Rishi, Dylon
Time: 1-2:15

Fall recruiting rules:
Get rid of them?
Hard to enforce, advantages large groups that aren't afraid of us.
But the point of recruiting rules is to level the playing field and
help small groups
One problem is that it forces student groups to have intro events post
Midway, but Midway is the day before frat rush. On the other hand, if
student groups have events before Midway, they'll be competing with
REX.
In general, a lot of groups are unduly scared of the ASA ("are we
about to be derecognized?"), and stuff like this contributes, even if
enforcement is lax.

SAO wants someone in their office overseeing Beracah (our grad student
working on new ASA database). This is ideal for us, since SAO is good
at this sort of stuff, and they are essentially the main end users of
the product (along with CAC?)
ASA still footing the bill.

CAC:
N52: MITERS gas fume incident :(. Probably will result in more
oversight of N52 by the CAC/ASA/etc.
Purchase two more mailboxes, so that every group is forced to have a
mailbox (instead of having people sign up). That way if their box
fills up we have a legit reason to throw their mail away. Current
solution is it goes in a box in the UA, but UA doesn't want it, and
neither do we.
MITSO: Affiliated with music dept., and have funding through them for
music stuff (hiring conductor, sheet music, etc.). But they also want
finboard money for social events, since they are also a social
organization. Seems reasonable, but this is the same situation as club
sports, so we fund them and club sports or none of them. Hard to say
what to do; punt till next time.

Shan: LEF -- need more quality events! Using extra money this time
around to fund some GSC, Finboard stuff.

Zhao: Working on new recognition criteria/recruitment rules, updating
website. Would really like to have new recognition stuff in place for
next academic year.

GBM: Monday, April 6
Elections
Nice to use opportunity to get something else done, maybe aim to have
recruitment rules ready by then.

Rishi: send me your scripts stuff. Maybe I'll be less lame this time around.

Dylon: Take on annual safety inspections (run by CAC, but SAO sends
rep.). Rishi taking secondary role. This is also a good op to see
which rooms are actually being used well and which are essentially
storage lockers.

Observation from CAC: Things are moving from offices to shared space
rooms, which are being used as storage lockers and not as gathering
places. CAC interested in trying out incubator rooms, which would have
space for meetings, be a place to hang out, basically emphasize the
"gathering of people" aspect of the student center, as opposed to the
"stash your garbage" aspect of some of the current allocations.
Travel agency in basement is dead => it's turning into a trial
incubator room. Phil Walsh (head of CAC) wants it functional in 8-10
weeks. He really wants input on design and what to put in it .. if you
have ideas e-mail Phil or Keone.

Constitutions: we read them when first approved, but then they can
change it whenever they want. Jed had idea that whenever new
constitutions get uploaded, we check it. Probably, we'd force them to
use a wiki so we'd only have to look at diffs.
But:
constitutions are a lie anyway
unclear what the benefit is
would require if nothing else going through all the 400 constitutions
now, which no one wants to do


Strategery (what we want to accomplish for rest of semester):
Good recruitment and transition -- we've done a lot this year, and it
would be a shame for it to die because of poor people or communication
-- force everybody on current board to make a manual for next year.
Due date: GBM
-- make a poster (Keone). Due date: tonight
-- send mail to asa-official, have noah send mail to undergrads

Issues we could tackle:
Religious groups -- can't book room via schedules office, because
classrooms can't be used for religion (Keone will be in charge of
finding someone to take care of this). No one really interested in
dealing with this; unclear how big of a deal this actually is in
practice.

Advocating for more space -- wasted effort to do it now, given
financial situation.
Moving more groups into N52 -- also long term, eg. once MIT Museum
leaves the building

fysm, midway, etc. -- our usual stuff of course will happen

Secretary's question: What would you like to see the ASA doing over
the next 4 months?

Slique -- some Web 2.0 mail-archive+file-manager thing that hopefully
SIPB will shut out. Though I guess slique is winning now since they
will be archiving this mail, not SIPB.

-Rishi