This month's Student Activities Commission (SAC) General Assembly (GA) meeting, which took place in the Glass Pavilion Monday evening, lasted 18 minutes and had close to perfect attendance of its 250 members, according to SAC Chair Elise Roecker.
"I think the meeting was very organized and effective," said Roecker.
Newly elected freshman President Crystal Ng was pleasantly surprised at the efficiency of her first GA meeting.
"I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but it was short and to the point--and very productive because I got a lot of useful information," said Ng.
The meeting focused on the new postering policy, which has been put into effect this school year. Every student group is allowed one poster per bulletin board to ensure equal representation. In addition, a list was provided at the meeting of over 50 different locales that were deemed acceptable postering designations. This, Roecker said, was done in order to show the commitment and cooperation of the SAC in this new policy.
"We do understand the difficulties in postering this year because of all the new restrictions and because recent construction has limited the number of locations available," said Roecker.
It took Roecker and three of her colleagues several hours to scout out the different bulletin boards, which covered areas such as the Mattin Center, Hodson, Shaffer, Maryland Hall, Latrobe Hall, Levering, Gilman, Ames, Krieger, MSE Library, Remsen, Mergenthaler, Jenkins, Mudd and Bloomberg. Advertising in residence halls is still in accordance to the different hall RA's and in general must be approved and stamped by the Office of Residential Life in either McCoy or AMR II.
The penalties for postering violations are as follows: with the first offence, the particular student group's account is frozen until a letter of request is sent to the SAC to unfreeze the account, after which a hearing and vote is made at one of the two weekly SAC board member meetings. The second offence is the same as the first, with an additional $100 fine, and the third offence requires the group in question to be placed on probation for the rest of the semester and must meet with the SAC Executive Board to discuss further action.
Several groups have already faced the penalties of this new policy, including such organizations as the Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium, the College Democrats and the Barnstormers. The president of the College Democrats, David Klein, talked about his club's hearing, which took place in September.
"Although our accounts were already frozen, we tried to file a case to have this violation not count as the first strike, because we weren't really aware of all the implications and restrictions," said Klein.
MSE Co-chair Meera Popat said that she could understand the need for such a policy, and that the listing of exact locations would be a great help in clarifying the situation.
While Roecker claims that the freezing of accounts cannot be the "make or break" of a student group, members of the Barnstormers recalled how their account was frozen the weekend of their Freshman One Acts. The group had to wait until the Tuesday after to deposit $1,000 of proceeds. While this is not detrimental to the group's functionality, it does raise a concern of security.
More groups are being frozen as a result of this new postering policy, though it is rare to have more than three accounts unfrozen in a meeting, according to Roecker.
"While we understand the legitimate complaints, if the penalties are not detrimental, then there would be no consequence or order," said Roecker.
Other topics of discussion at the GA meeting were the funding policy and introduction of a new arts certification. Roecker reiterated the Commission's stance on retroactivity, a key policy for the SAC, which requires a group to first obtain approval before allocating funds for a speaker or a director.
Roecker also talked about ways groups can minimize traveling costs and find the lowest prices available. When asked about the MSE's white stretch limousine that is reserved for its speakers, Roecker said that it was actually a requirement.
"That is going to have to stay because it turns out that it is a university liability to have a student driver take around a hired speaker."
The arts certificate, which will be applicable to the class of 2004, is an attempt to recognize students who have taken a significant amount of coursework in and have demonstrated a serious commitment to the arts at JHU. It will be, according to Sara Marten, who presented the idea at the meeting, comparable to the arts minors found at several other universities. The five different areas include Dance, Digital Media, Fine/Visual Arts, Music and Theater.
