With many thanks to Kabren, Juliet, and Jeff, the website is now up and running for all to see. Something that I’m sure countless folks are now doing, especially considering that I’ve yet to tell anyone.
There are still some kinks to be worked out, but everything appears to be largely operational.
I decided today to add links to other Bard student organization websites in the sidebar. I came up with five. Only one of which has been updated recently. Speaking of which, nice site, JSO! I understand that Kabren Levinson, now a member of the EPC, is responsible for that one.
If anyone has any Bard related links that I should add, email me. However, next semester Student Government and the Student Activities Office will be making a push to give every club a web presence. We will work together to assemble a group of students that will be subsequently be known as SPARC, or the Student Publicity and Activities Resources Center. So though the list is small and unreflective of the number and range of Bard’s student clubs and organizations, I expect it to grow very soon.
We will be having a meeting about SPARC in August, so I’ll update the site with more information then.
I’ve been putting off this post for a while. I’ve been telling myself that the reason is that I’m still waiting to receive exact figures from Kim Henschel, but it’s largely because I’m not looking forward to writing it.
So here’s the situation. The Student Association is in debt. Kinda heavily. To the tune of somewhere between $20,000 and $30,000 dollars.
I’ll let that one sink in for a moment. When it does, join me after the jump.
A sneak preview of the coming semester
No, not a real picture of the culprit
In the time since everyone left for the summer, there have been a spate of burglaries around campus. Most notably, someone stole a number of flatscreen TVs from Woods Studio, and two large Bose subwoofers in the Chapel disappeared on the same day, their security chains severed.
But this week, I learned of a new set of thefts – this time from the Student Association.
The first is from Soundcrew, the organization that runs audio for events organized by student clubs, which apparently left some quantity of gear in an unlocked closet in Manor at the end of the semester. The semi-valuable equipment waited around for about two weeks, before wandering off in the hands of some opportunistic thief. Missing gear includes two mixing boards, leaving Soundcrew with only one tiny mixer and a dead, large one. Also lost were five microphones, two speakers, and the various bits and pieces used to hook it all up. This leaves Soundcrew crippled, without enough equipment to run many of the events that clubs will want to throw.
I’m currently working with AV to inventory Soundcrew’s remaining gear, an unfortunately large chunk of which is broken. I’m also looking into ways to acquire the bare essentials now to get Soundcrew through the first several weeks of the semester.
On a side note, Soundcrew needs a head – preferably a responsible and organized person to ensure that this sort of thing doesn’t happen. Got audio experience? Let me know!
Soundcrew’s loss was not the only blow to fall this summer. I learned last Wednesday that SMOG had also been broken into. Someone broke the two rear windows, pushed in the grates, and proceeded to make off with SMOG’s mixing board, potentially along with other gear that had not been properly inventoried. There is now a severe shortage of mixers on campus. On the upside, a complete and working, albeit vintage, system was recently given to the college. Perhaps this gear will find a home at SMOG.
As for the people responsible, campus gossip pins a group of Aramark employees. However, our chances of recovering the gear look slim.
This is a report that was written to condense the results of a survey fielded by the EPC in November 2008. The report was presented at a meeting with Leon Botstein, President of the College, Jim Brudvig, Vice President for Administration, and Erin Cannan, Dean of Students, on November 21, 2008.
A Bard student hard at work
This will be the very first ‘issue’ post on the website. I hope that over the coming months, me and my colleagues in Student Government will publish many such posts. The goal is to explore and explain the progress (or lack thereof) that has been made on a particular issue. If we can keep up with it, the result will be a rich historical resource, both for all of you and for our successors in the semi-distant future.
One of the greatest problems we face in Student Government is the rapid turnover; for obvious reasons, most of us only spend four years at Bard, and few dedicate all four of those years to the SAG. I only started in my Junior year. In many cases, we don’t get the hang of it until about a week before we graduate. This could be prevented, but too little information is passed from one class to the next. Last Spring, I was tasked with appealing to the Board of Trustees to ask them to increase the Student Activities Fee. The result was almost a word-for-word replay of an identical appeal by a student named Nina DiNatale in 1990. ‘Those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them’ is a cliche, but we have lived it too often to ignore it any longer.
So for this first attempt to change that, I have chosen an issue that I’ve interacted with extensively during my time in Student Government: student employment. The first part is a recap of the events of the last year, so those who were there may prefer to skip down to the section highlighted in bold, where I’ll discuss some developments from this last week.
Coding of the website is now complete, and as this felt like such a momentous moment, it necessitated a blog post.
Unfortunately, the website still resides on my personal computer, so unless you’re one of the select few who have my IP address, there’s no way to read this. Stay tuned…
Published in the May issue of the Free Press:
In the last year, the size of Student Government has swelled, as has its complexity. At the same time, interest in its activities has continued to decrease. The combination of these two factors has led to a higher barrier to entry, and fewer students are willing to undertake the efforts needed to understand its intricacies and allow their voice to be heard.
So I’m going to simplify it. Here’s the basics, in five hundred words.
These are the Bylaws of the Student Association Government of Bard College. Please also see the Student Association Constitution.
This is the Constitution of the Student Association of Bard College. Please also see the Student Government Bylaws.
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