Open Forum on Gender Neutral Housing

Hosted by Student Government and Inter-House Council

Wednesday, May 28th

7:30 PM in McCormick Tribune

Student Government and Inter-House Council will host Vice-President/Dean of Students Kim Goff-Crews and the Director of University Housing, Katie Callow-Wright, and members of Inter-House Council’s Gender Neutral Housing Committee.

Come and show your support for Gender Neutral Housing and to learn about how the Housing Office would implement its proposal.

Come and Show you Support!

Maroon coverage about the delay here and about the likely approval here.

I’d like to take a moment and thank the members of SGFC for staying true to the spirit of Scav Hunt when they heard the budget for Scav Air this spring. Their silence made it possible for the Scav Judges to fly eight unsuspecting Scav Warriors to Las Vegas.

By all accounts (Maroon, Scav Blog) it was an excellent addition to this year’s festivities. I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge the committee for its role in making this possible.

I’d also like to lay out the SGFC request which was for $4,686.97, which was not included in the official minutes. This is the first time we’ve ever had a ’secret’ budget and it only really worked due to this year’s SGFC surplus.

The $4,686.97 went to fly 11 students, eight warriors and three judges, to Las Vegas and then put them up in Hotels for the adventure. Scav does not normally receive any SGFC or Annual Allocations funds.

I’m pleased to announce the arrival of five new picnic tables, brought to you by the Executive Slate working in conjunction with College Council and Campus Services Committee. Funding was provided thanks to the Student Government Finance Committee.

These tables were secured with the help of the Facilities Department and were chosen to match the main quad’s aesthetics. The five tables will be located near Kent, Ryerson, behind the C Bench, and in the Classics and Social Sciences Quad (See the map). They will probably arrive by early June.

Along with these tables, the Facilities Department has pledged to also order eight new benches which will compliment the new benches.

Enjoy! And hopefully they’ll get here before the end of the quarter.

Open Forum on Gender Neutral Housing

Hosted by College Council and Inter-House Council

Wednesday, May 14th

6:30 PM in Stuart 102

College Council and Inter-House Council will host the Director of University Housing, Katie Callow-Wright, and members of Inter-House Council’s Gender Neutral Housing Committee. Please come out to ask questions of the committee and to show your support for this initiative on campus. There will be a second forum on May 28th, hosted by IHC and CC.

Free Food

Questions? Contact benbejamin@uchicago.edu

Maroon coverage about the delay here and about the likely approval here.

College Council Meeting
May 7th, 2008
Minutes

I. Retail Committee
A. Presentation by Bill Michel
1. Right now in the process of formulating recommendations, would like to get feedback from students
2. Final recommendations will be shared with community as well
3. Initial findings: student perception of retail opportunities largely dependent on where they live – ie, students living around campus mainly stick to 55th and 57th . 55th seems to be a major dividing line. North/South and East/West divide
4. Initial findings: price sensitivity; desire for a basic clothing supplier, late-night or 24-hr food/entertainment, mix of local and national retail
-retail suggestions: Target, 24-hr diner/cafe, thrift store, on-campus convenience store
5. Need to consider space/location limitations; some things just may not be feasible to have in Hyde Park
6. Initial recommendations: more publicity/marketing to spread awareness of existing retail and amenities; a clearer connection between 53-55-57 (bus routes and a walkable corridor); cultivating an independent/alternative character to the neighborhood retail offerings
7. Contact committee members with any thoughts or ideas

B. Discussion / comments
1. Students living in east Hyde Park probably wouldn’t object to a retail center further west, since they have to go that way to campus
2. Changes due to closing of the Shoreland and opening of new dorm?
3. Students with car access tend to just leave Hyde Park completely
4. Also depends on season – people won’t want to walk as far in winter
5. Other ‘satellite dorms’ may be affected once the Shoreland is closed
6. Few people cut through Nichols Park to get to 53rd, due to safety concerns
-would it be feasible to just put a patrol car there and an emergency light?
7. Students will still live in the Shoreland area even after the dorm itself closes
8. Price sensitivity varies widely across individuals
9. Treasure Island is perceived as pretty much the same as the Co-op for prices, though it’s nicer/cleaner
10. A 24-hr place should be within reasonable walking distance – maybe on 55th
11. In regards to national/local mix, bookstores here are a good example: Borders as well as the Seminary Co-op and Powell’s, so all niches are filled
12. The type of store is important in deciding between local vs. national – ie a local coffee shop but national electronics chain
13. Bookstore and Bart-Mart are pretty good for convenience store type needs
14. A movie theater in Hyde Park – not necessarily a megaplex, but something that will show new releases
-administration has been trying to make a deal with movie theaters unsuccessfully for years
-there was once a movie theater, but it wasn’t popular with the neighborhood and eventually shut down
15. What connections are there between retail and security committees?
-they are working independently, but integrated as part of an overall investigation of quality of life
16. Distance is a very limiting factor when walking to/from grocery stores
17. Should keep in mind that there are always students who won’t take advantage of pedestrian culture and prefer to leave Hyde Park for retail

II. SGFC Recommendations
A. Motion to approve: (11-0,0) PASSED

III. Other Business
A. Eve Ewing on the security committee
1. We submitted our report to President Zimmer at the end of last quarter
2. We met with President Zimmer today to discuss the report
-impressed by his willingness to implement changes, and quickly
3. Report and Zimmer’s response will be available by the end of the month
-some measures will be implemented by the end of this year, beginning of next year
B. Jarrod Wolf’s updates
-Jarrod is currently in Springfield lobbying; thinks it will be successful
-Metra discount will probably be implemented in the fall
-CCC meeting next week in the Gleacher Center
-new issue: textbook prices
C. Possible discussion with IHC about gender-neutral housing

College Council Meeting
April 30th, 2008

I. SGFC Recommendations
A. ASU Appeal
1. $640 to subsidize a trip to Korean Town
2. Held similar events in winter and fall
3. There is more to it than food – 2 hours to explore neighborhood
4. The area is not feasibly accessible by public transportation
B. Questions
1. Why sponsored by SGFC rather than a group of friends going together?
-expense + cultural nature of event
2. Funded events can’t be RSO-exclusive – are you advertising?
-word of mouth, listhost, flyers possibly
-these events usually fill up before word can get out
3. Any programming designed other than going to the restaurant?
-no, but there will be 2 hours of time to explore
4. Is unstructured wandering the best way to experience the neighborhood? What makes this different than, say, a CUSA trip to Chinatown?
-Korean town is not easily accessible by public transit
-the experience would be much more unfamiliar and new to ASU members than Chinatown might be to CUSA members
-food is an important cultural experience in itself
C Discussion
1. It still just seems like a group of friends having dinner
2. They probably won’t do outside advertising
3. UChicago students are notoriously unadventurous, need more opportunities/incentive to get off campus
4. A $10/head subsidy for 40 people is way above SGFC guidelines; have denied funding to similar events for similar reasons
5. Korean Town is pretty far and it would definitely be a cultural experience
6. Maybe we could just fund transportation, if not the dinner
7. They could charge $5 a person for transportation and use it to subsidize the dinner itself, which is what has happened at past such events
D. Motion to fund $240 for transportation costs: (7-8,0) FAILED
Motion to deny appeal and approve SGFC recommendations: (8-5,1) PASSED
Motion to reopen for discussion (requires 2/3 vote): (7-7,0) FAILED

II. Rod Edwards on the CC and GC Liaison positions
A. Discussion
1. Should there be a definition for ‘home’ and ‘host’ councils?
-home council is the one to which you are elected
2. What are the rights/privileges given to the liaisons?
-requirement to attend meetings, right to speak, etc
3. How will liaisons be chosen?
-it was left vague on purpose, to be determined by each council
4. Would a liaison serving on a host council committee have a vote?
-that would be up to the committee’s discretion
5. Is is there a rule against administrators serving on councils?
-if you pay student activity fees, you can serve
6. Are there proxy rules for the liaison position?
-same proxy rules as in each council’s bylaws
B. Motion to approve for discussion by Assembly: (14-0,0) PASSED

III. Other business
A. Chair announcements
1. Assembly meeting next Thursday
2. There will be food at the next CC meeting
B. Jarrod’s announcements
1. CCC Meeting on Friday the 9th at the Gleacher Center
2. End of year reports are due in 2 weeks
3. New initiative: to investigate how much money SGFC allocates to food, and perhaps creating a capped fund just for food so that money can be spent on more crucial things
4. New initiative: researching the expansion of the 173 as a downtown bus, to be incorporated into the 09-10 transportation budget
5. The Metra
-will try to rewrite the discount to include 10-ride passes
-come lobby on Wednesday!
C. Matt Kennedy on consulting about student activities fee
-please forward survey to as many people as possible

College Council Meeting
April 23rd, 2008
Minutes

I. SGFC Recommendation
A. Motion to approve recommendations: (15-0,0) PASSED

II. Sharlene Holly on the 08-09 Student Activities Fee
A. Overview
1. 2008-2009 fee will be $70/quarter for undergrads, $47/quarter for grads
2. 100% of the undergrad fee goes to central funding
3. 48% of grad fees will go to divisions, 52% to central funding
B. Discussion
1. What sort of data is behind claim that grad students don’t access central student activities as much as undergrads?
-all anecdotal, though participation is growing
2. Does the SAF increase every year?
-yes, because of inflation and increased activities
3. Maybe the grad student fee should be reduced instead of just putting the money back in the divisions
-scholarships often do not cover fees
4. What about the possibility of a big speakers fund? Could we put more of the grad student fee in central funding for speakers?
5. Inflation is at 3-4%, higher for food – the fee has to increase just to keep up with costs
C. Questions to Consider
1. Centralized funding vs. dividing by group type (ie separate funding process for publications, cultural groups)
2. Central SG or divided by undergrad/grad?
3. Concrete data on grad student participation?
4. Graduate-only funding body?
5. Where should ‘new’ fee money be allocated?
6. Thoughts on the Uncommon Fund, big speakers fund, other new bodies?
D. Comments
1. Separate funding bodies would just complicate things more
2. SG needs to make sure people are aware of the current system – for example, grad students might not know they can go to SGFC
3. A GCFC would have unused money, at the cost of undergrad groups
4. How would you then determine who can attend funded events? It would create even more of a rift between grads/undergrads
5. The benefit of the current system is that all student groups have equal access to central funding; though it is somewhat cumbersome, subdivisions would only further reduce flexibility
6. The silo model would also discourage collaboration between RSOs
7. Finding people to sit on more committees would probably also be difficult
8. Speakers can be a waste of money – extremely expensive for a very brief event that may be the same speech given elsewhere
9. Grad Council & Slate have their own budget, but College Council doesn’t – maybe there should be money allocated to CC for projects also
-do we do a lot of our own programming, or just assist others?
-it would just be creating yet another funding body
10. Maybe we should change the name of the Uncommon Fund, which might have deterred some applicants this year
-continual name changing might cause confusion though
E. Comments on central fee budgeting
1. CAT funding is stretched very thin, could use more funding
-Model UN, Mock Trial, Debate, Quiz Bowl, Chess
-will they be able to get endowments as they’re trying to?
2. $7000 discretionary fee for CC
-would need to create an itemized budget first
3. How much money should be put into the Uncommon Fund, since there probably won’t be an extra $20,000 from ORCSA?
-it’s probably going to be even more competitive next year, so decreasing the funding amount wouldn’t be a good idea, but increasing at the cost of RSO funding isn’t good either
4. More money to Annual Allocations is always good
5. Perhaps we should have a speakers fund instead of the Uncommon Fund
6. Is summer SGFC a good use of money?
-a few events do happen over the summer, but often money goes to things that happen at the very beginning of the academic year
7. Recommended increases:
-10% for Annual Allocations/SGFC
-10% for CAT
-5% or 8-9% for CSF
-0% for GC
-10% or 0% for PCC
-$10,000 for Sport Clubs
-10% or 5% for student org resource support,
-10% for SG administration
-$10,000 for New Initiatives/Uncommon Fund

III. Announcements
1. College Council will be talking to retail committee, registrar, sustainability coordinator
2. CORSO is working on RSO awards, please join the judging committee if interested
3. Metra lobbying trip on May 7th, 7am to 10pm, let Jarrod know ASAP
4. New health insurance provider for next year: United Health
-switching to a co-pay system

Well its 2 AM and I’ve got my introduction written. Just need to get the conclusion done and I can put this BA Thesis (and myself) to bed. But why not unpack another aspect of tonight (or yesterday’s) election. So, fueled by old sushi from Bart Mart, here I go:

Record Setting Year

If you take a look at turnout(scroll down), you’ll see that this year, like the two years previously, set a record for most students voting at 2,755 voters.

One Campus also broke the record for most votes won by an Executive Slate (Outgoing Liaison Hollie Russon Gilman holds the record for most votes won by a Liaison at 1,097 votes). One Campus won by so much that they would’ve just barely lost to all of the other Slates combined votes (629+393+261= 1283). Brian Cody also garnered an enormous 1,728 votes, but I’m not going to really count this considering he was running unopposed.

There may have been some records set by College Council members, although I don’t have accurate records in front of me. Jarrod Wolf’s 241 votes must be getting close to an all time College Council record and Nicholas Rodman’s 191 vote victory blows away last year’s winner’s 99 vote victory by a fourth year (write-in Eve Ewing), and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s the all time highest voting getting fourth year (again, pending numbers)

Who Voted?

A quick analysis shows that about 2/3rd of the voters were Undergrads and 1/3rd were Grads. While I don’t have the numbers now, I feel like this is a shift away from previous elections where it was closer to a 1/2 Grad and 1/2 Undergrad split. Of the Graduates that voted, over 1/3rd came from the Humanities and Social Sciences, which probably represents the level of mobilization among those cohorts due to Grad Aid. Support was otherwise pretty mixed, with each division contributing roughly 100-50 votes.

In this year’s College Council elections, there was a clear jump in voting participation. The Class of 2011 surpassed its record breaking Fall Election turnout numbers where over 1/3rd voted, to deliver near 50% participation. Incredible. The Class of 2010, also a high performer in terms of interest (they’ve always has a large number run for CC) had around 40% participation, which is also incredibly high.

But for me, the Cinderella story is the Class of 2009. In last year’s College Council election, only four people ran and each candidate won with around 70 or so votes (Edit from Kati). This year seven people ran and 40% of the class voted, what a shift! This performance, from the previously lackluster 2009 going into their FOURTH YEAR, is truly extraordinary. My own class of 2008 had 23% of students vote, not bad. But clearly nothing compared to the younger three classes that had active College Council races.

This data also clearly settles the question of whether we can have a successful College Council race that is concurrent to the Slate and Liaison races.

Edit:

I’m also going to go out on a limb and say we’re nearing saturation in terms of College voting patterns. I don’t think its realistic to expect more than 50% of any class to vote, and its incredibly unlikely that any outgoing class will vote higher than 25%. This would mean College votes would cap out at, roughly, 2,100 votes. That’s only 200 votes from this election, not a lot of room to grow and it wouldn’t push us over the 3,000 line.

I would say we’re not going to see growth in turnout until Graduate Students start voting in higher numbers (roughly 10% voted in this election). My guess is this wont happen till SG starts getting involved with the many Professional and Divisional Councils. Another way would be for Graduate Council to have competitive, division-wide elections which would be concurrent with these school wide elections. Until this happens, and Graduate Divisions start engaging directly with SG Elections, I doubt we will see turnout climb above 3,000.

/Edit

How They Voted

Using this sites built in hit tracking abilities, I was able to somewhat monitor voting trends. Now keep in mind, I cannot monitor the actually voting site which is hosted on ORCSA’s servers. But most candidates direct voters to sg.uchicago.edu, so I should see turnout.

As I posted via comments, we saw an influx to the website over the period when voting occurred. Traffic spiked on the main site up to nearly 5,000 hits on the 22nd, dropping to 4,000 and then 3,500 over the three days which the election was held (we get roughly 3,000-2,700 on any given weekday). The blog post telling people where to vote saw a similar pattern, spiking to 1,244 then falling to 812 and 523 over the next three days (2,588 page views all together, about 200 votes off). The statements page faired worse, accruing 1,641 page views over the course of the election (914,457, and 270).

This data tells us a couple of things:

• People tend to vote early, so campaigns should have their message well distributed by Tuesday. They also should plan to immediately start getting out the vote, lest their opponent is able to get to voters first.
• Voting drops off quickly. So if you think you can clinch the election by doing a lot on Thursday, think again. This thing was probably already over for the Slate race by then.
• A little over half of voters read the candidates statements, which means these aren’t as big of deal as one might think.
• People don’t really read All Campus emails. We sent one out on Tuesday and it arrived roughly on Wednesday (I get a lot of ‘Out of Office’ replies so this is how I’m able to time arrival). Yet despite the fact that ALL 15,000 students received the email, very few students decided to visit the SG page and vote (although we did see a spike in blog visits by about 50, which was specifically linked to from the email).

All and all it was a very record setting year.

Next: Facebook (maybe)

I’m trying to not write my political science senior thesis, which is due tomorrow. So instead I’ll digest some tidbit of tonight’s election results. I want to start with the Maroon Endorsement, which was different this year because they endorsed Liaison and College Council candidates.

Lets see if people listened to them. This year the Maroon endorsed:

• Connect Four for Executive Slate
• Louis Potok for Undergrad Liaison
• Nicholas Rodman, David Grossman, Kati Proctor, and Greg Gabrellas for CC 2009
• Aaron Goggans, Prerna Nadathur, Jarrod Wolf, and Jay Kim for CC 2010
• Frank Pucci, Julian Quintanilla, Archibald England, and Matthew Hartman for CC 2011

So how’d they do? Well, using the results we see that they were 6 for 14.

This isn’t great and would really make me question whether the Maroon’s endorsement has much of an effect at all, especially given the wide margins which their endorsed candidates were beaten by the actual winners in the Executive Slate and Liaison Categories (One Campus beat Connect Four by 600 votes and Aliza beat Louis by a little less than 500 votes).

But history tells a different story. In 2007, 2006, 2005, and 2004 the Maroon was endorsed the winning Slate three out of four years. The recent changes puts them at 3 for 5 for Executive Slate, which isn’t bad.

In terms of CC and Liaison, they didn’t do as hot. With CC they did best with the class of 2010 then 2009 then 2011. Maybe first years aren’t reading the Maroon as they only elected one of the endorsed candidates. We’ll have to see whether these endorsements take on more importance over time.

Next Section: Turnout!