Student Senate

Finance Guidelines proposed changes

—

by

Kevin Seitz

The following Finance Guidelines (part of the Student Senate By-laws) are being considered by the Student Senate this next Monday, December 14. Students are welcome to attend.

[Insert: Student] Senate will only fund organizations that sponsor at least one event or activity per semester on campus that is open and well advertised to non-members. Advertising must be present in the Campus Center and on GACspot.com.

[Insert: Student] Senate will only fund organizations that sponsor at least one event or activity per semester on campus that is open and well advertised to non-members. Advertising must be present in the Campus Center and on GACspot.com.

[Insert: Student] Senate will not fund coaches or instructors.

ADD: 12) Student Senate will not allocate funds to groups for the purpose of raising money, whether for student organizations or charitable causes.

ADD: 13) Student Senate will not fund direct monetary, charitable contributions.

ADD: 14) Student Senate will not allocate funds for non-designated Bookmark charges.

ADD: Section 4: Block Allocations
1) Groups receiving block allocations which re-allocate Student Senate funds must have a copy of their allocating guidelines on file with Student Senate.
2) Groups receiving money from block allocations do so with the knowledge that they cannot come to Student Senate for budget requests. They must do so through the group controlling their specific block.
3) If a block allocation requests extra mid-year funding, they must show the Finance Committee their current budget breakdown and invoices cataloguing all expenses.

If an organization fails to comply with the requirements of to hold of [STRIKE: open social events] (Section 1, Subsection 3 of the Finance Guidelines), the Finance Chair will recommend at the next full Senate meeting that the organization’s Senate allocation be frozen for a duration determined by the floor.

Comments

12 responses to “Finance Guidelines proposed changes”

  1. Chris Duhaime Avatar
    Chris Duhaime

    Just so I am clear… are these proposed changes, or changes that ARE happening?

    If there could be a little more description, I would appreciate it.

    Thanks.

    Reply
  2. Kevin Seitz Avatar
    Kevin Seitz

    The Senate voted to consider these at the next meeting, so they will be discussed at that point and voted upon. So, at the next meeting, these can be officially added to the Finance Guidelines upon approval by the Senate. Nothing has actually changed yet.

    Reply
  3. Tom Lany Avatar
    Tom Lany

    How do you expect groups to advertise their events on gacspot.com when the website is not currently functional? I agree the groups should be required to advertise their events, but would a broader definition of advertising methods be more appropriate?

    Reply
  4. Kevin Seitz Avatar
    Kevin Seitz

    We aren’t adding the requirement that advertisements be placed on GACspot… the rule is only being changed grammatically. The advertisement rule has been in place for a while, but we have been unable to enforce it for technical reasons, so the requirement is being temporarily ignored. We’ll start enforcing this spring when the GACspot construction is done.

    Reply
  5. Joe Lencioni Avatar
    Joe Lencioni

    @Tom Lany: I think you raise good questions. Regarding advertising, why not require events to be listed on the official College Calendar?

    Reply
  6. Chris Duhaime Avatar
    Chris Duhaime

    I am going to rephrase Tom’s last comment: How do you expect organizations to effectively “advertise” events on GACspot? Via a Blog, or a ad column on the side?

    How is that whole process going to work, and is it going to be easy and convenient for organizations to use GACspot?

    Reply
  7. Kevin Seitz Avatar
    Kevin Seitz

    @Joe Lencioni: I believe there are some events that the College would not allow to be posted on the calendar or otherwise advertised, an example being the breast cancer fundraiser that was at Patrick’s earlier this semester supported by some student organization. At least that is our understanding. Plus, we would like to have a place where you find all the events for student organizations, but not have them mixed in with other College events you might not be looking for at the moment. GACspot will have one advantage over the College calendar: it is more like Twitter, so events can be posted as well as general news.

    @Chris Duhaime: Posting to GACspot will be extremely easy. As I just mentioned, it will be a combination of Twitter and an events calendar that any organization will be able to post to. We also plan to have support for polls, so any organization can create their own poll for students to vote on. Various other little features are planned as well that will give it a little edge over existing alternatives.

    Reply
  8. Christopher Duhaime Avatar
    Christopher Duhaime

    @Kevin Seitz: Not to beat the bush any more, but I am just curious: I would like to speak as the publicity executive of CAB now… what is nice about our new webpage is the fact that is a truly a one stop shop for all things CAB. It pulls from our Twitter, Facebook, blog, and the Gustavus Online Calendar. What is nice, is we only have to update three out of those four things:

    – Facebook – pushes content to twitter.
    – Blog pushes content to facebook.
    – Calendar, Twitter, and Blog all push content to our website.

    Are you suggesting that GACspot would be completely separate from the Gustavus Webpage meaning that I as the publicity executive would also have create content on GACspot as well? So does this mean, I have to create calendar submissions on both the GAC online calendar and the GACspot calendar, Do I have to create two blogs?

    I want to be clear here… I think what GACspot will be providing for organizations is truly fantastic. I am truly amazed at all the cool features that you are suggesting, and things such as the polls are probably things I would love to CAB to be able to use. I am just curious if the two sites aren’t working collaboratively, could it cause a lot of extra work for larger Organizations such as CAB?

    Thanks for all your hard work Kevin, and talking through this with us.

    Reply
  9. Kevin Seitz Avatar
    Kevin Seitz

    @Chris Duhaime: I do appreciate the constructive criticism, and we need to to develop a good service that people will want to use. If these issues aren’t addressed, or at least brought up, we’ll have missed out on some potentially crucial details.

    I was aware that creating something like this would require some organizations to do twice as much posting, at least for events. Now that Facebook has fan pages that are in wide use, having GACspot might seem a little unnecessary, but I still can’t keep tabs on every organization using Facebook unless I’ve become a fan of them all. However, I’m wondering if I could have posts to Facebook for an org be forwarded to GACspot as well… that would be pretty cool. As far as the Gustavus calendar goes, it would make sense to have orgs post there and then click the “publish to GACspot” option, for example. That would save people a step. However, this isn’t exactly appropriate since GACspot is not affiliated with the College, which was one of the reasons GACspot was created in the first place. (We also wanted the one stop student resource, and we’re still trying to aim for that.) Overall, I understand posting to GACspot adds one extra step, but this is not time consuming; you only need to log in with your Gustavus username/password, type something in, optionally put in an event date/time, and hit go.

    As an organization, you guys have your act together and do a great job (especially with the new website stuff.) Not all organizations have this luxury. Although Facebook/Twitter will take some of the shine away, I think it is a good step for organizations that don’t have all of their eggs in one basket. (My original plan was to have all of the organizations on a WordPress multi-user blog, but it was going to require too much maintenance on my part.)

    A question for you: you’re pulling CAB events from the Gustavus Calendar and putting them on your website? I wish I could pull all student organization events from the calendar and put them on GACspot…. that’s essentially what we’re trying to do, but we have to use our own system from scratch.

    If you have any more ideas/critiques, I’d be happy to hear them.

    Reply
  10. Tom Lany Avatar
    Tom Lany

    This is a great discussion! I think that this website is big step in the right direction for senate. Previously, if I wanted Senate information, I would have to think about where the information I wanted was located to a greater degree. Some things were on GACspot, other things were on the senate website, and other things were on the GACspot blogs. By having a distributed set of web resources, I don’t feel that senate brought information to the number of people it could have. With this new blog, all of the senate resources are located in one location, things are easy to find, and I know that WordPress is easy to use, so chances are it will stay up to date even in future years. A lively discussion is already underway!

    I don’t understand the rationale for requiring people to post information to GACspot. My understanding of the situation (please let me know if I am wrong) is that senate hoped to make GACspot more popular by the fact that it information about all student organization events.

    The college calendar already fulfills most organization’s event calendaring needs. I do not understand why the wheel needs to be reinvented. The college calendar integrates with Gustavus logins, has feed export options, and sends nearly every Gustavus constituent a daily E-mail with a summary of the day’s events.

    The college calendar is already widely used and has a lot of features, both of which would be very difficult to replicate. The only feature I see missing from our discussion is the ability to advertise off-campus student events. The Alumni Office seems to be doing this already.

    Kevin, I have seen your work, and it is amazing! I don’t want to stop you from building something amazing, but I do not see what needs this application will be providing which have not already been fulfilled. Let me know if I am missing something, and thanks again for your hard work.

    Reply
  11. Kevin Seitz Avatar
    Kevin Seitz

    @Tom Lany: GACspot is more than events… it’s general news from orgs as well, and polls. Gustavus does not have one centralized polling system (although we use Survey Monkey, but not just any org can go and use that.) The Gustavus calendar has all events whereas we want to have a place for only student orgs. The orgs will be free to say whatever they want on GACspot.

    We require posting to GACspot for advertising just like we have groups post up things for events in the campus center… so people know these events are going on. (Why Senate originally picked GACspot over the Gustavus calendar could have multiple answers, some of which we have mentioned.)

    Reply
  12. : ) Respectfully and Always full of ideas, Rebecca Avatar
    : ) Respectfully and Always full of ideas, Rebecca

    Greetings, Kevin, Tom, and Chris. Thank you all for your input!

    After chatting with several members of Student Senate, my interest is peaking. Given this is my first time on this site, here are some ideas.

    The development and growth of this website is crucial to keep tabs on what the student body (clubs, organizations, Senate, etc) is doing. As an addition, however, to the campus calendar, it is VITAL that this site and also the Senate’s actions are publicized better. Whether this is for the PR committee or not, I recommend a weekly Weekly article to report the Senate’s doings. In addition, a reminder of GACSpot and the Student Senate Blog would inform the student body of helpful ways to be in the know and have input into what goes on on campus. Asking around my friends today, every one of them knew little to nothing about Senate. This should change.

    Assuming that students check their email and read the Weekly, this could be enough. However, perhaps a front and center link on the GAC website to “Student Life” to include all that applies: campus calandar events, CAB, sororities and fraternaties, special interest groups galore, etc. Once we get a grip on the cyber-community, let’s talk about the physical one too. I’ve got ambitious plans for that as well.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *