7:17 PM
Moderated by Mike Paik and Ben Yoo
Meeting Minutes Collected by Sewon Chung
Present –19 people
I. Introductory Address
- Rules and regulations of the open forum
- Thanks to the presidents for caring about our community and working towards building a better council.
- We want a forum of open-conversation in a comfortable respectable matter, focusing in constructive feedback.
II. Discussion, Proposal, and Inquiry
1. What is the role and purpose of an Asian Student Council?
a. How should the council be defined? As a governing body between the six Asian-American organizations? As an active organization/executive board itself? As representatives and spokesmen for the collective Asian-American community?
b. What are its ideals, what does it represent, and what does it stand for?
- We ought to take into account what is truly feasible, given the council member’s other responsibilities as Presidents of organizations. It is a massive task to represent all six organizations because it is difficult to even fully represent one country.
- ASC ought to be an umbrella helping facilitate coordination and community amongst various Asian organizations.
- We should reexamine the constitution and clarify the purpose of ASC.
- There is flexibility in electing individuals to represent the council but the council should accept that the ASC is not a puppet council nor are the ASC officers puppets that just do what the councilors want.
- ASC has legitimacy on campus and this network can provide a voice for Asian/Asian Americans. It is not about cultural representation (dance, shows, etc.) but a way to challenge the campus to better understand the diverse experience of Asians/Asian Americans.
- ASC officials should represent the six organization
- It may be counterproductive to add more positions
- Previous ASC officers comment that it has been interesting to see the official positions increase.
- The Co-Chairperson’s direction in the past has been presenting their ideas and engaging in a dialogue with the council members about these ideas. It is their responsibility to put on events.
- Should ASC be guided by the official ideas or should it be a force that brings the organization together to support their events.
- In the past, ASC did a lot to unify the groups by working off the drive of council members.
- It is positive that the ASC officials take responsibility over event planning.
- Co-chairs should work on delegating responsibilities
- Members and councilors have noticed a marked decrease in attendance of councilors.
- For example, Yellow Rage was brought up at the meeting but only 2 councilors present.
- Councilors defend that there was an overlapping event the week of voting for Yellow Rage
- In the future, the organizations seeking ASC funding or support ought to contact ASC officials a week in advance and the ASC officials should notify the councilors
- In case of emergency funding requests, there should be a way to deal with this. Perhaps we could call emergency meetings of the councilors to vote on a decision.
- Or should we do vote through e-mail?
- There should be rules, not necessarily penalty, for absence of councilors. They should understand their duty as ASC councilors. AND everyone needs to be ON time. If they will be late, they should communicate this to the co-chairpersons.
- Rules of Voting
- 4 out of 6 organizations present
- Able to use ASC liaisons to vote
- Liaison under the President’s jurisdiction
- Liaison’s judgment? Or President’s decision?
- Regularly attending
- What counts as an attendance and an absence?
- Honoring the time of the presidents, do not schedule meetings when you know Presidents will be busy à Article VI.
- Presidents as well should submit their schedule so meetings can be scheduled accordingly.
- What about when not enough time is given? Any requests involving money should have an official appropriation.
- Must occur 10 days before the event à form?
- Two chances for meeting, must be discussed
- What about last-minute emergencies?
- Vote through email? Needs a formal procedure however.
- Usage of the corem – calling emergency meeting.
- Possible review of actions?
- Presidents should make more use of ASC Liaisons.
- Liaisons are freshman—ASC leaders should support their growth
- Liaisons are allowed to vote in place of the President
- ASC officials should take into consideration scheduling conflict and hold meetings at times when Presidents are availablel
- ASC officials should provide the councilors with a schedule of ASC events so that the Presidents are aware in advance
- Perhaps last year’s ASC leadership fractured ASC unity…
- How can we reconnect? How can we hold together these different and unique organizations?
- The formalization of ASC has perhaps hurt the cohesive nature of ASC in the past.
- Perhaps the issue at hand is the lack of trust and community support amongst the ASC community as a whole
- ASC Co-chairpersons should work harder to create ad-hoc committees and perhaps work harder to delegate responsibilities
- ASC has a membership of PRESIDENTS. Why not make use of that?
- What type of environment do we want ASC meetings to be?
- Do we want to invite the rest of the campus community or should our meetings be for the councilors?
- Perhaps some meetings should be open and some should be closed.
- How can we increase transparency?
- Perhaps ASC can have weekly meetings to continually keep in touch with ASC organizations and this would increase the circle of trust
- Perhaps we can have small intimate meetings so that people feel the responsibility of their presence
- People need to show up on time
- Alternating meetings between Councilors and Open meetings
- Majority of meetings should be a brainstorming session, to receive inputs and ideas
- ASC positions: How about Special Events Chair and Communications Chair?
- Lack of distinction amongst positions
- What is the potential of organizational presidents, ASC officials, and ASC as a council?
- How can we bring ASC to its full potential?
- Let’s get people to STEP UP.
- We should have a meeting with old and new presidents, each organization gets one vote
