Dormcon General Body Meeting Minutes
Date: March 31, 2022
Location: Macgregor Game room
Time: 6:30pm
Food: indian food
UPDATES
fatima: host match emails will go out tomorrow. event schedule will go out to submitters tomorrow. to prefrosh on monday. there were a lot of duplicates on the cpw event submission form because people were trying to update events. there were some events submitted by residents without cpw chairs knowing. any suggestions to make that better.
caragay: is there a reason that we allow residents to submit events at all besides cpw chairs?
other people: they just send out the form to everyone because also student groups host events.
someone: we could make it specify that it’s requesting people to host events for your student group specifically.
caragay: make it so that you can’t select a dorm in the affiliation? and only allow authorized users to submit for living groups.
caragay: you could bring this to trinidad
shuli: this is another thing where you could bring up about the tech of the form
caragay: you can also go back to presidents and ask what would work better
shuli: this is also something you can do a post-mortem about with the cpw chairs
tina: idk how often the form gets updated but new vassar is not under the event location options.
caragay: if you guys haven’t heard dormcon is funding a bunch of air mattresses. so if you have any residents who want to get an air mattress for their kiddo we still have some spots
housing chair
zawad: one big update. we met with ofy with housing to talk about what possible changes could happen to first year moving process. tbh there’s a sort of conflict there bc housing and ofy is like “oh what if you moved some of the things during rex earlier like in the summer” and that is something the dorms would very much against and something the student body would be very much against. so we said what if they move their programming later which is something they are very much against. we sent out email asking what your dorm’s process is like specifically asking your ad. and your racs and presidents.
ashley: do you want feedback from non racs and presidents? bc macgregor has
mitali: so why doesnt housing want later move? i get why ofy
zawad: big thing is that. like with friday morning they are against it because they have events on friday that they think are very important for first years to go to. athletics start on friday. apparently some teams (we have to find out how many teams) go off campus to games.
someone: what’s wrong with the current system?
zawad: the current system is something that gives frosh what they want but its stressful for upperclassmen and also frosh because there are 12 hours between when they find out which dorm they are in and when they have to move.
someone: so why can’t we move fyre earlier?
someone else: first years are first allowed to
shuli: can zawad walk us through timeline?
zawad: frosh arrive officially on sunday. officially rex events start happening on saturday. monday and tuesday more rex. tuesday night (2am wednesday) is when frosh submit fyre placements. on wednesday the whole day housing processes the stuff at 3pm and they get sent out 5pm. so 5pm is when you start in house exploration and rooming. and housing requires that room assignments are in by 6am and moving starts at 8am.
caragay: after 5pm doesn’t matter to them so to give us more time
zawad: rex functionally starts on sunday and ends on tuesday. although you can have events outside that range
someone: there are two hours between when housing decides fyre results and results are given to frosh. what’s the reason for that, could we get that?
zawad: that might be something we could get
shuli: but that wouldn’t really change much because there are orientation events happening throughout the day so you can’t exactly start the rooming process earlier
zawad: also this is me giving the update and we have an agenda item
caragay: we can come back to this
zawad: the other updates are quick. we are making a big push on murals. we have a plan for what the murals will look like. there are these rails that work really well. housing will prepare the rails and put them up. then students can handle preparing boards to put on the rails. david is very on board of this work getting split between we are getting this ehs approved because its some sort of wood on rail so in case it might be flammable. then we will put the stuff up in new house and next house.
meghana: what are your vague timeline hopes for when this can start happening?
zawad: when murals can be put up? it depends on how fast ehs gets back to us and shipping. at worst we are trying to get these up in new house and next house by the end of the semester. then we will ask students if this is ok and then we could start the process of getting the boards up in other dorms over the summer. so everything is ready by the time fall starts. star rez has been updated with housing intent form. make sure your residents submit that
mohan: should i do the proposals? [let’s go back] ok then i have no updates
mitali: i have no risk management updates. hiring committee is going. i have to read 30 resumes this weekend :))
meghana: i will email your dining chairs this week to check in on relationships with chefs
ashley: we asked mark about new vassar vending machines. and he said yeah heads of house are working on that. dining doesn’t have to be involved at all.
tina: is it that dining signs a contract?
ashley: apparently new house organized it all by themselves. you just need to find a place to plop the machine and you don’t have to pay for it. mobile app doesn’t have it for dining. so they’re bothering is&t about it. next decided they didn’t want to get rid of breakfast for late night. mark said they couldn’t add late night without getting rid of breakfast because staffing. so no late night for next for now.
mitali: another thing about the hiring committee. if you have specific things you want me to look for in candidates let me know.
caragay: so what are you hiring for?
mitali: new position. a person that will be handling housing logistics stuff. so communication and organization type things. we want someone who is good at handling logistics and communicating with administrators. can send more details later. someone we’ll probably be working with directly a lot in communication
mateo: i3/rac stuff. racs had their first check in meeting of the year. i3 stuff. sent out big packet of information. has all deadlines and policies for i3 videos. for both community and tour videos. this is more of a request for dorm prez. pls look over your section on guides to residences and make sure things are updated. one suggestion from meghana that might be relevant to other dorms. instead of just having room breakdown percentage. have percentage breakdown of number of people living in each room type.
caragay: housing has all this information so we could ask them to put a column
shuli: if this is genuinely something you guys are interested in adding you don’t have to do it for each of your dorms we could just get the information from housing
leo: a tricky thing is that there were some rooms that are designated doubles but they are forced into triples. so the number of triples fluctuates based on the number of residents. that just makes this information more complicated.
shuli: i’m not sure we have a great way to address that than to say at the top that the numbers fluctuate year to year.
mateo: i think you can just have an estimate. there is one person that manages the website and they said shoot me an email everytime you want to change something. [someone: is that zach] yes.
someone: even if you have to force a double or a double becomes a single. i think the overall numbers stay about the same i don’t think there’s so significantly of a difference that it fluctuates the numbers by too much.
someone: i think housing is really only equipped to handling 11 dorms being open at one time.
zawad: we are going to meet with housing next week. housing intent form closes over the weekend. we will start making decisions next week. things cannot be finalized until we know how many frosh are committing to mit. so if there are people on the waitlist they can’t know. until may 1st.
zawad: another thing is that the housing intent form should allow people to self determine gender. but starting next year the institute on the big level is trying to implement this. if you guys are hearing about issues on this let us know.
someone: is this on websis?
zawad: yes
someone: a lot of frosh don’t really know about websis.
zawad: yeah we will get down on that
caragay: p/vp updates brief. house life survey. dorm residents give house teams feedback. hoping to run this semester but didn’t happen. but suzy wants to make it happen so probably in the fall. the other thing is training responding to bias incidents as student leaders. will send when2meet soon.
shuli: this semester it will be a pilot and then next year could be regular thing
caragay: exec elections are 2 gbms from now. start talking to your residents. something that’s nice is if they come to a gbm before that so they see what dormcon is like before they run.
madison: our treadmill broke. i think random said hrs needs to approve it?
bookbinder: hrs has certain standards for gym equipment
tina: no updates
mcc: update on mcc weight room. met with p/vp. we learned that the deal that housing gave us. they wanted to take care of half of costs for furnishings. we found out this is standard.
macg vp (sarah): i don’t think we have any updates?
alan i mean leo: hi im leo vp of relations. recently we commandeered the lobby tv content. next act is happening for cpw. next big thing is happening. funding proposal on proposal for later. finally finally got express guest list working. after much deliberation from dorm exec we are generally trusting of next house residents being able to post anonymously on the piazza and house team supports. on second floor some of the furniture has just disappeared and we are very confused has this happened to other dorms??
madison: we had a case of a missing erg machine. and the rowing team wanted us to buy a new rowing machine. so we sent out an email and people started snitching on themselves and we found out someone on the rowing team got covid and just dragged it into their room
leo: our dining hall grill is out of commission. no stirfry but bulk stirfry. next house cares particularly about the exact capacity of our building before doing upperclassmen rooming assignments. in our housing assignment process we allow people to remain in their rooms. we can’t tell people whether their room will be a double or single this year.
zawad: i don’t think we’ll get final building capacities until may.
someone: we got a new washing machine. finally in our dorm. other updates. last gbm we were trying to facilitate discussions with gras about new covid policies. lots of pushback from house team. heads of house said we don’t to hear policies anymore. we need to put things down to individual policies now.
ec prez: we are working on renovations again. workshop with architects yesterday. heard about murals. ec’s is different. ours are rails where plywood can be slides in. they said no on painting doors and inside rooms. they said they spend much money on painting over inside rooms. doors no because summer housing. see if architects listen to our proposals. having problems with constructions on green building starting really early in the morning. 5am apparently. reach out to admin to see if we can noise cancelling headphones or earphones?
shuli: i think the 5am? too early. there is a set time that is when they can start
ec prez: we can push to get breakfast or compensation or something. esf is happening in a month-ish. talking with keith about guest tap stuff. had concerns about tap for the prefrosh in the building during cpw.
someone: the concern was we have interior taps. separate system than exterior one.
shuli: maseeh also has elevator taps
ec prez: there will be tap access inside and outside so no prefrosh will be locked in the stairwell. also we’ve had a little bit of an issue of our floor placing algorithm being discussed in the 2026 discord. if any of you are in the 2026 discord and could shut it down. one of our floors went around exec and sent direct message to the architects about a proposal. we have been doing some messaging that anyone with a proposal should go through the dorm exec.
someone: only update. our i3 chair dropped out over spring break. it sounded like she was in the process of doing it. so hopefully going to hand off materials through transition meeting. hopefully find someone to do that asap.
shuli: in the meantime do any of you guys get the maseeh emails? if you have a mailing list that you want to be added let us know and we can do that
macg vp: does macg get emails? can you add me to the i3 mailing list?
shuli: we can work this out later but if you want to be added to any dormcon mailing lists let us know.
ec prez: one more update sry. got new rac recently. don’t have rac integrated into ec govt structure. if you could send to ec president how rac is integrated into your exec. we have a president and vp who is also a rac. so now we have a second rac. we have comms which are a separate thing. equivalent to chair. we think rac has more responsibility than chairs.
mohan: in simmons every position is just exec.
someone: how many chairs do you have? [mohan: 20]
madison: baker has 5 or 6 racs and they don’t participate in exec. but the internal president is on rac.
someone: so your group of racs just put people into places and don’t get input from the floors
meghana: in next they are on exec. housing chair.
ashley: macgregor they are on exec but don’t really come to meetings for anything
mccormick: mcc also like baker. appointed position. they do their own thing don’t come to our meetings.
caragay: agenda items. budget things
mohan: first thing is next big thing. there is brief description on exec updates. anyone have any thoughts? [discussion about pergola] anyone reject?
someone: motion to white ballot! [seconded] [yay]
mohan: next up we have fredfest. another brief description 7500 total. asking 1500. thoughts? (shuli: fredfest is a concert that happens in the east campus courtyard. we typically fund fredfest but not sure what amount)
ec people: we haven’t really gotten information about fredfest other than when it’s happening.
someone: is this fredfest this semester [yes]
caragay: let’s vote
mohan: motion to white ballot [seconded] great
mohan: third one. east side festival. asking 2500. (zawad: east side festival is celebration for alumni specifically for
motion to white ballot. seconded. any objects? great.
shuli: come back to issue of first year placement timeline.
zawad: right now the plan we had is we will be pushing for the move getting moved to friday. justification is one big thing. thursday night you can send out information earlier so dorms can make sure first years are ready to move on friday morning. make this process less stressful for everyone involved. decrease work for house managers and ads. first step is getting input from all dorms including ads and house managers. what are thoughts on specific proposal. proposal is moves happen friday morning but rooms are finalized thursday evening.
shuli: are you proposing that orientation things get moved to later?
zawad: no. orientation things will still happen.
meghana: would the proposal include that floor rush will happen at a different time?
zawad: so floor rush still happens that night but you have more time to finalize rooms later.
ec people: we would still be moving hall rush at the same time. but just have more time to figure it out. lots of people were staying up and a lot of time the upperclassmen up all night doing the assignments are the people that help people move around. we had two classes moving and only two classes of upperclassmen.
[insert some concerns]
- frosh still don’t really know where they are living for a whole day. versus currently you go to bed and the next morning you have your assignment.
- in the before times it was a bit better. but maybe stockholm syndrome because staying up til 3 am is not any better
zawad: would things be worse for you guys with this proposal?
- if frosh get stressed they are able to squat.
- we do have days after where there are no classes so people can settle into their environments
- we have racs do a lot of stuff and offload individual room placements into hall chairs. and a lot of our hall chairs are also associate advisors. having to track down hall chairs to get room placements during the day would be hard.
- talking about proposal to make freshmen squat before room placement so they
squat because of stress and not because they like the community they get
placed into.
- if we could get support from other dorms.
- probably still need to have an exception in case frosh get very stressed after the room placement
- night of hall rush we try to make it that you talk to our ad.
shuli: if you want to just change this for your dorm you could bring this up to housing but if you want this to happen for multiple dorms this is something we could bring up at a later meeting.
zawad: anyone have any last strong concerns
shuli: and maybe have a poll of how you feel about the proposal? generally when you think about your dorm’s process. if moving happened friday morning and rooming assignments final by thursday evening would this be a positive change, have no change, or be a negative change?
shuli: ok seems we need to discuss further in the future.
ashley: i think there needs to be more discussion about the logistics aspect of the move