ASA Board Meeting 2010-03-11 Attendence: Rebecca, Zhao, Keone, Alex, Tony, Nicole, Jed, Matt >>New Group Recognition >Kendall Band Restoration Society Want to work on the sculpture in the Kendall T Stop. 6 students trained by the MBTA to work around the tracks, working with course 3 faculty advisor and people from the art department. Short term goal: get it functional. Long term goal: completely restore it and do periodic maintainence. Don't want funding from us, think can get outside funding. Expect to be on order of ~10 people. Want to have official standing, have account to which people can donate. Working on liability issues, but everything else worked out with MBTA. Decision: Approved as an sponsored student group pending getting a department to sponsor them. (We don't care which, but we'd like them to be sponsored.) >>Card Access to W20-437 The board approved termination of card access for old occupants of W20-437, and delivery of eviction notice to old occupants of W20-437 (remove stuff by 3/20 or it will be disposed of). Tony will contact Anime and the other groups still in W20-437. >>Small Activities Locker Cleanout The board approved disposal of all unclaimed items from W20-435 and W20-439. We've gotten emails from groups claiming items, but most of the stuff is unclaimed. Tony will contact CAC. >>Postering Meeting today w/ John Dunbar & Gail Gallagher about the Infinite corridor. Nothing much new; They seem particular focused on making things consistent (board sizes, lights) and sustainability. $200,000 budget for small improvements. Also looking into where digital > CAC things 1st floor - phones taken out to put in a printer Kresge Oval being closed until May 1 to resod CAC is looking into getting control of space on top floor of media lab. Taken over 10-250 and 34-101, so more accessible. Old game room now lounge, looking into putting an ATM. New Dean in early fall, no word on who that is, tlaking to people. Furniture being reused. Groups should be encouraged to use the post office, or it might go away because it's loosing money. Public spaces in W20 seem to be reserved for ~3 hours by one group each night. Restrict use of PDRs to a couple hours? Kresge more available over IAP & summer Events with outside funding - Kresge cheaper than off-campus places if you talk to CAC. Glasses store in basement expanding into sunglasses. Chalking removal - CAC has spent tons of money removing chalk, they really want groups to stop. We'll tell them again. Student Center - it's a nice space, what can we do to keep it vibrant? Jim Murphy Institute Award for a non-faculty member who contributes to student groups? >>>Policy Discussions >>Recruitment Rules >Meeting w/Panhel what they want: -publicity & recruitment before recruitment opens up because they're affliated with res life and not purely a student activity -want exception from moratorium -take student sign up at orientation (specifically Tuesday, but others as well) -poster starting during FPOPs (marketing & recruitment) -take signups on website Why do we have these policies? What do we want to change? We're allowed to grant exemptions on a case-by-case basis, at least 3 weeks in advance. Housing not relevant - don't have significant % living in sorority houses, freshmen can't move in anyway Panhel largely operates like other student groups Reason behind recruitment rules: to balance things out between small & large groups Student groups are at a disadvantage because they start the same time as FSILG rush. REX ends on Tuesday. After that is the SLOPE event. Start things on Tuesday? Problems = Grad student publicity, early returns Punt Tuesday Night Event Friday morning = CityDays and is fairly tightly compacted - CityDays, Midway, SLOPE event - moving the Midway would free up some time there We would need over 100 early returns in order to have the Midway earlier Suggestion: survey to see if groups could actually come back in time for Tuesday Midway. At least a couple groups canceled last year because there weren't enough people back. We want everyone on equal footing, we don't want lots of email spam. Opt-in system: groups say a couple things they do, prefrosh check things they're interested in, some kind of matching system. Add something to the FYSM to make it easy to join a mailing list if a prefrosh is interested? Current Policies: Recruiting Moratorium is from 3 weeks before the Midway to the Midway. Inside the Recruiting Moratorium Period, ASA-recognized groups and/or members of ASA-recognized groups may not: 1. Actively collect any information from new students 2. Hold any recruiting events of any sort 3. Place advertisements of any kind anywhere that include recruiting language Do we want to change any of this? 1 - no posters advertising website, but allow collecting info if a student goes actively looking 2 - keep this exactly as is 3 - specifying "include recruiting language" is annoying for us to enforce and hard for groups to figure out what exactly counts Removing the moratorium altogether would not work - gives 1 8.5x11 page per group per board? >>New Group Recognition Keep current policies or raise recognition standards? keeping current - we can keep the provisional status and/or derecognize groups derecognizing groups that are just technically maintaining status would open the door to new groups Categorizing groups - understand who they are, what they're doing, invite groups from specific category to events. Can we have a yearly review? 1 year check - what they've done in the past year, what their plans are So many groups & so many groups coming in and out is a large burden for SAO. We could raise the number of people needed to be a group; we could raise the percentage of MIT students in a group - it can be hard to define membership, e.g. lifetime membership, people there every week vs. involved in a couple projects Initial criteria for evaluating groups: uniqueness, sustainability Categorizing groups - some are about members, some about events; some don't need resources, don't use accounts - lots just want recognition to access reservations If groups described why they need space when they submit applications, there are places they can get just meeting room. We could even set up our own system with some rooms just for meeting. >> LEF/ARCADE meeting: Fri, Mar 19th at 5pm ASA: next Tuesday, Mar 16