JP Reps Meeting Agenda

April 25th, 2022 @ 9:30am

1. Steinbach scholar (Lukas, 10mins)
   1. At-large: …
   2. PO: LuAnne Thompson (UW, climate dynamics) visits from July 11-13; official invite letter has been sent through Meg and invitation has been accepted; LuAnne Thompson is the 2020 PO Steinbach (2-yr deferral due to covid)
      1. Planned seminars:
         1. General: Monday afternoon (prospective) w/ bbq afterwards
         2. Department: PO seminar 3.05pm (scheduled)
         3. Student lunch: either Tuesday or Wednesday
      2. Other meeting opportunities:
         1. Personal meetings
         2. Smaller lunch and/or one dinner
   3. Financial aspects: 
      1. Proposal: Recommend to APO to increase the Steinbach Social Budget to 1400 USD based on previous spending data and inflation.
      2. Memo draft (not agreed on) to revisit Steinbach Social budget: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KBl_a-Vv71k4Tt9IUfEBDIbMixEU-dhaWicqa3WI5Rg/edit?usp=sharing
   4. LL: I started by looking at money. There is a budget of $1000 of social events for the scholars. Budgets for old events have gone over or pretty much come to the line. I am worried, given inflation since 2014, we will be unable to fund these events properly. I made a memo to advocate for the increase in costs. 
   5. LF: I think this is reasonable. I think we can update it to $1400-1500. I can talk to Christine. 
   6. LL: Oh perfect. I asked for $1400.
   7. CD: We’ll take an action item to (within 48 hours) give a thumbs up to the memo in slack.
   8. LF: Are you going to have her be the speaker for the PO seminar?
   9. LL: Yes.
   10. LF: Let’s work together to pick dates for the institution-wide seminar.
   11. MJ: Michael took over, but I haven’t heard a lot of updates.
   12. CD: I will reach out to him.
   13. LF: If he sends the list I can get them approved by APO.
   14. MJ: I will take an action item to send you the nominations after the meeting.
2. Housing follow-up (Ciara D., 5mins)
   1. Winter meeting comments
   2. Scheduling with APO
      1. CD: Do you have updates on when we can schedule this meeting to follow up?
      2. LF: We have a JP meeting on Wed. to get Tatianna in the loop.
      3. CD: The reps are working on putting together a housing memo with all the info to prepare for the meeting. I want to make sure we have this to you.
      4. LF: It will take at least a week before we can get a meeting together.
      5. SB: Do we want to have a small working group for this?
      6. CD: I could take an action item to put all the notes together and we could talk about it on slack.
      7. SB: Let me know if you need support.
      8. MJ: Do you know if we will receive an answer to our questions in the email we sent to Tatianna? We agreed a long time ago we would wait until we received these answers to finish the memo to make sure we weren’t misrepresenting the housing policies.
      9. LF: It is on Meg and Ann’s radar.
      10. MJ: Can you get us an idea of when we will receive a reply?
      11. CD: Yeah, I think it would be really helpful to receive these answers before we finish our memo.
      12. Iulia: Are there updates about card access?
      13. TN: We are working on this behind the scenes. We are working with them to get the software done behind the scenes because this is not something built into the “gatekeeping” software.
      14. Iulia: But nothing has changed.
      15. TN: I understand your frustration. We are working on this. It looks like creating cards that separate people can check out.
      16. Iulia: I don’t know what this looks like behind the scenes, but I don’t understand why this is hard.
      17. TN: I promise I am working on this and I know it is frustrating. I will let you know about the progress.
3. Spring retreat (Shawn, 5mins)
   1. SW: We have about 43 responses. Argos and wahoos are especially interested. The only thing we need to make progress on is the date. Second years have general exams in the spring and summer which makes this tricky. We can either send a survey about availability or we can just pick a date.
   2. CD: I think we might be limited in terms of places we might be able to rent.
   3. SW: Normally we rent in the winter, so I’m worried about trying to get it in the summer.
   4. CD: I’m sure there are more people interested then even expressed in the survey.
   5. MJ: I’m worried we don’t even have enough time to make this happen in the dates we suggested.
   6. SW: I will take an action item to look at all the generals dates.
   7. CD: Don’t even worry about engineering, they all set their own dates.
   8. SW: The issue with the summer is everyone has fieldwork and everyone is traveling.
   9. CD: I think June is better than July. Check if there are available dates in June.
   10. SW: I can report back about this.
4. Constitution convention (Ciara D., 5mins)
   1. CD: No date worked for everyone. Ciara said she could write her comments so we can maybe pick the weekend she can’t do?
   2. CW: I’ll be out of the country for a month.
   3. CD: Cool. I’ll move forward with scheduling.
5. Student selection for committees' best practices (Lukas, 5mins)
   1. Link to Best Practices document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zAx8A6tFFxeZqcoSeRWK4swxq7QiKkWToTQtpzvuZCY/edit?usp=sharing
   2. Thanks for commenting. Proposal: Let’s talk about the remaining two comments and adopt the document thereafter. 
   3. LL: I reviewed everyone’s comments and I’m hoping we can adopt it after we address a few comments.
   4. MJ: In JP ASK we add the problem of being able to compare people based on the length of the replies.
   5. SW: Yeah it was a problem.
   6. LL: Great, I will add this. The next comments were on part 4b, which is about when we deviate. Max asked for more specifics.
   7. CW: If it's about privacy or discretion that will be taken into account. 
   8. MJ: I only wanted to add it to improve our institutional memory. I didn’t want any confusion.
   9. SW: Yeah I think a quick sentence would be great, since it covers more cases.
   10. LL: Great, yeah. I can make it broader. Can we approve this without seeing the small changes?
   11. 5 out of 6 Reps gave a thumbs up, this is approved.
6. Integration of Bio Oce in EAPS (Ciara W., 5mins)
   1. We can pass on this one for now. Michael has been working on this. I had a very productive with APO.
7. Covid cramer cruise (Max, 5mins)
   1. MJ: Are the new students getting a cruise?
   2. LF: Yes, a 5-day cruise. There are 25 breaths, and if they aren’t full we can give them out. 
   3. MJ: Do we think this is still worth doing?
   4. LF: Have you thought about doing a camping trip?
   5. MJ: Yeah, I liked the idea of hands-on skills which is why I proposed a woodworking/roping project.
   6. CW: camping with orienteering would include skills? map/compass only, no phone GPS
   7. SW: I think its a great idea, but people are busy in the summer.
   8. LL: Well everyone is down in WH in the summer.
   9. CD: I don’t want us to assume they have a community. Let’s not let this fall off our map?
   10. MJ: We received a lot of responses who were enthusiastic.
   11. LF: Could we combine this with the winter retreat?
   12. MJ: Yeah. I will take an action item to bring a couple of different formats to the working meeting.
8. Big ideas (Max, 5mins)
   1. MJ: We have a ton of money and we should spend it. Our current system of requesting funding doesn’t seem insufficient in reducing this amount of money.   Idea: Create a “student life improvement” fund and invite students to think in particularly about BIG ideas. Let’s talk about this during the working meeting.
9. GSC Rep (Lukas, 5mins)
   1. See GSC constitution and bylaws here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_-AgDKDJBmUsJkWsMqAfaiTD4K7n6q3O4pGXGcQhL0s/edit?usp=sharing (relevant info regarding elections is marked)
   2. Bottom line: It seems more complicated than we thought and more formal than it has been handled in the past. 
   3. LL: So we have never really followed the election process that the GSC has required. The GSC officers are supposed to facilitate the election. Having reps run for this is maybe not a feasible requirement but they can choose to run. You technically get reps for every 100 people. The bylaws say we start in September.
   4. Iulia: There were no formal elections last year. I also had no idea I was supposed to regularly update you. I have never seen these bylaws. Someone contacted me to say she was interested but she is based on the cape. 
   5. LL: Can you stay on until September until the real elections?
   6. CD: I can take next week’s meeting.
   7. Iulia: I can attend more meetings if you need me to. I just don’t like it.
   8. LL: No I was just thinking you formally send proxies while “staying on”.
   9. CW: Just to summarize. GSC has rules, but they’ve never cared if we followed it.
   10. LF: there’s never been more than one student who wanted this in the JP.
   11. LL: Thinking about moving on. Iulia will formally resign at some point. CD will take as a proxy for the next week’s meeting to buy us more time. Iulia will reach out to the person interested, and based on our best practices we can give it to her since she was the only nomination we received. We can then think about how to move forward.
   12. SW: I can also be a proxy since I’m actually based in Boston.
10. Funding requests (5mins)
    1. Community Conversation: How has the pandemic affected you?
       1. CD: We let this one slip through the cracks.
       2. MJ: We actually commented on it in the slack but we never did follow up.
       3. SW: I’ll ask if she’s still interested.
    2. Buffins
       1. CD: All the buffins get eaten. We said we’d maybe consider other options.
       2. SB: Maybe less fruit more bagels?
       3. CD: Are we okay with buying lots of flavors for $15 more?
       4. CW: I think that’s fine.
       5. CD: I’m also buying more cream cheese since we were running out. Noah is the buffins fairy, so I will reach out to him.
    3. Trivia
       1. MJ: 5:30 tomorrow. How much money should we spend?
       2. CW: Based on Jordan’s old Refs budget, $150 seems good.
       3. MJ: I’ll also need a co-host.
       4. SW: I can do it.
       5. MJ: Awesome!
    4. JP Latin Dance Nights
       1. CD: I don’t have any qualms
       2. CW: You mentioned an instructor. That can get expensive. Can you speak about that?
       3. JW: I want to see commitment first. I don’t think it will be a problem.
       4. CW: So you’re okay with being the dance czar?
       5. JW: Of course.
       6. CD: I don’t think it's a big deal. People won’t forget we’ll have a dance floor.
       7. LL: What about renting a room (e.g., Falmouth Music Academy) first? Or getting a space to try to make sure we have people.
       8. JW: I’m worried it will add to activation.
       9. MJ: I am worried about the participation vs investment. Other spaces? Rentals?
       10. JW: We can buy as small as 3x3. I don’t know if any good hardwood spaces exist. I’m fine doing a trial period.
       11. MJ: If you want to propose something about a trial period to us that would be great.
       12. CW: That can just be an email, not a funding request.
    5. Library of Things: Shellfish Edition (Shavonna)
       1. SB: I have no updates.
    6. Guest Lecture: Jobs Outside of Academia in Climate Management (Shavonna)
       1. SB: I have no updates.