DormCon General Body Meeting

Date: November 9, 2023
Location: McCormick Game Room

note

If you find any issues with the meeting minutes, please email dormcon-secretary@mit.edu

Amendment text: Exec Membership Clarification and Temp. Dorm Closures
Abridged Constitution text

TL;DR (will be created after the meeting)

• exec updates
• piazza is back
• elections are coming up (cpw/rex, underclassmen rep, i3, housing) so spread the word!
• b1 meltdown funding request → approved
• vote on changes to the dormcon constitution regarding exec membership and temporary dorm closures → passed
• updates from dorm presidents

Agenda

• Follow up on housing price structure
• Constitution vote
• Elections announcement
• Piazza

Full minutes

updates from exec doc: DormCon GBM Updates 11/9/23

Updates

• secretary (sunmee)

  • no updates

• housing (jordan/cameron)

  • talked to rich/david about cancellation numbers which was sad
  • spring building switch lottery happened
    • should have sent that out to dorm prezs
    • look at house sheet
    • should be roughly equal in and out but if that’s not the case let cameron know
  • revamping how undergrads get placed into grad housing
    • they were very confused
    • like what if you put it into the undergrad ranking system
      • required 10 min of explanation
      • continuing conversation
    • if you have opinions on this please let us know
      • we want to make this process better
      • undergrads are very ahead of scheduled relative to grad students placement
      • we should have flexibility in how this gets implemented
  • followup from last week’s gbm
    • thanks for everyone who was there
    • we will send a list of comments from google form to david to continue conversation and get student feedback
    • if you or anyone you know has feedback pls get that to us asap
  • will figure out where the laundry revenues should be

• tech (nate)

  • for those who were around too long dormcon had a piazza
    • was used for covid questions, currently dead
    • we think it would be nice avenue for questions
    • planning on reviving
    • still on the website on the piazza tab
    • set to private by default but if it might be relevant to others we will make it public
      • protect privacy, prevent spam
    • feel free to pub to residents
  • if you or your web chair has questions about making websites lmk and we can website you up
  • ananda: can we put faqs or something
    • all dormcon exec are instructors
    • you can def make your own questions

• underclassmen rep (hanu/geoffrey)

  • murals still going good
  • open invite to dorm prezs: if you are interested in having a real fake walls system hit us up (dormcon-uc-rep@mit.edu)
  • hanu working on poster for dormcon in the infinite
    • idk what size it is (sunmee will figure this out)

• judcomm (mateo/sara)

  • wrote amendments, voting on them later
    • at the top of the minutes
    • will come back to this later

• treasurer (melissa)

  • all transactions from apple picking/rex should have been settled
    • pls check! was wrong at first
  • we are voting for an event later

• cpw/rex (temkin/daniel)

  • we got all the early return kerbs and sent feedback form
    • for the 2 meals requirement thing
    • feedback will be looked at by tasha
    • hopefully will be going into what happens next year
    • used kerbs that dorms gave us but if we missed anyone let us know and would like
    • jordan: the people who were off campus??
  • it’s almost joever for us
    • scheduling meetings with admissions and dsl contacts to plan for the future
    • you should tell your cpw/rex chairs to run so they can organize the entire event

• dining (ananda/tyra)

  • ananda: it’s nice to be back (<3)
  • meeting this week with lots of other representatives of student groups on food insecurity
    • important for us to be on the same page
    • lot of people care about this issue but just throwing money at it will not fix
    • trying to concentrate resources to do things that are useful
  • dining form is up
    • encourage people to do that
  • trying to revamp how late night works
    • hear a lot of complaints about it
    • will reach out to dining chairs of simmons/maseeh to get input from residents on what they want from late night
    • if you have any feedback at all
      • for ex. food runs out at midnight or no protein
      • get pictures! a lot easier to communicate
  • how do we get people to know about things that are going on
    • talking with office of the first year
    • food trucks every wednesday but no communication
    • dining form
      • a lot of issues with labeling
        • someone found a bug in simmons food this week
      • keep the feedback coming!

• advisors (lusi/amanda)

  • building switch happened
  • 21 people moved
  • cameron: bc had 4 people move out but 1 move in and people know friends that wanted to move into bc
    • might have been because of supplemental needs

• p/vp (mitali/rebecca)

  • met with helen wang, peter cummings, and david friedrich
    • helen wang = new judy, senior associate dean for residential life
    • peter cummings = director of administration
    • david friedrich = head of hrs
    • talked about dining issues at a higher level
      • fsat (food security action team)
      • csl (committee on student life)
      • currently working with contractor to evaluate dining system + help with surveying and focus groups
      • if you have ideas for focus groups let us know
        • dorm residents (dining + non-dining)
          • assumption is meal plan
        • fsilgs
        • grad students
        • people with dietary restrictions
        • first years?
    • housing rate discussions
      • how does this work if it goes forward
      • on sfs they have to go through cuafa (committee on undergrad admission and finaid) - mitali is on it
      • and dsl leadership on the hrs side
      • they are very much in the phase of considering whether they should pursue this and looking at how they would phase this in (transition over a number of years rather than immediate implementation)
      • going to collaborate with hrs to make one page on faqs
        • so that when we have discussions people can come in with as much information as they can
        • financials, timeline, explanation of the process
  • mit students instagram got shut down
    • general sentiment is that people are unhappy with reasons
    • will send another email to administrators to talk about how students are feeling with all communications and policies
    • we will touch back on this at the end

Agenda

• piazza

  • is happening

• elections

  • next gbm is last gbm of the semester
  • we will be holding elections
    • 2 cpw/rex chairs
    • 1 underclassmen rep
    • 1 i3/rac chair
    • cameron is graduating (!!) → 1 housing chair
  • will be sending out dorms@ about this. if you could pub to your residents (esp younger students)
    • underclassmen rep has to be a freshman!!
  • if any of you want to continue being involved in dormcon you could run for positions
  • we are hoping to have rebecca/mitali give pub speech at your internal house meetings because we figured that some of the people there would be interested
    • will reach out to you about this
    • if you have any thoughts on that let us know

• event funding vote

  • rundown of event
    • throwing fall campus wide b1 meltdown in the tv lounge
    • asking for half of our budget for funding ($1275)
    • budget for a lot of pub stuff, dj, food, drinks
    • budget was listed as $2450 -> can only fund up to $1275?
      • perhaps some discrepancy in this
      • it is fine
    • we will vote on $1275
  • any questions
    • where is the budget
      • Campus Wide F23 Budget
    • how are our [dormcon’s] financials going?
      • we have enough to fund this and other events
    • what is the capacity of the tv lounge
      • 75 with all the furniture
      • maybe 100 without furniture
      • if this is getting dormcon funding then maybe try to get capacity sorted out because maybe had struggles in the past with people not fitting in the tv lounge
        • trying to get a good flow of people
  • vote passed!
  • everyone should come (17th)

• constitution vote

  • 3 things to vote on (changes to constitution)
  • amendments: Dorm Closure Amendments
  • abridged constitution text: Abridged DormCon Constitution
  • [talk through 1st amendment]
    • q: why does the finish your term thing need to be there?
      • currently if you are not a resident in a dorm you are not allowed to run
      • this is in separate section
    • q: finishing your term if you moved out (second amendment)
    • we will do population vote
      • say 100% yes, 100% no, 50%/50%, etc.
      • q: can I have part of my population abstain?
        • yes but for an amendment that is effectively a no
      • if you are resident of a dorm and want to vote differently from your president let us know after we call all the dorms
      • also if you lived in ec and moved to macgregor you need to choose which dorm (cannot double count)
    • [insert population vote]
    • amendment passes!
  • 2nd amendment: who can and cannot be exec members
    • [talk through amendment, see doc above]
    • [insert population vote]
    • amendment passes!
  • 3rd amendment: created abridged version of constitution
    • not replacing constitution
    • having one that is more readable
      • amendments placed where they make sense
    • approving the abridged version and giving judcomm the ability to add changes
    • [insert population vote]
    • passes!

President updates

• simmons (ananda)

  • simmons going well
  • re: harry potter thing
    • house team stance has been we’re not going to talk about it
    • going to send out google form on whether people want to remove the things
  • hoping to organize simmons birthday
  • organizing staff appreciation day
    • if any other presidents want to coordinate lmk!

• baker (katie)

  • no updates

• new vassar (mateo)

  • started up poster policy working group
    • going to copy ec’s and tack on a couple things
      • East Campus Postering Policy
    • also discussing chalking/murals
      • trying to get conversations started
  • exchange with dining chairs
    • what are students entitled to once they tap into the dining hall?
    • a couple instances where staff refused to give more food to students
      • refused to give more ham in sandwich line
      • ananda: seems a bit unreasonable, going to reach out to mark/heather. this seems like staff/manager issue.
  • jordan: has anyone had head of house be like what’s our postering policy
    • yes
    • apparently asked all dorm heads of house
    • in context of campus-wide policy changes
  • rebecca: who is developing this?
    • mateo: 4 students

• random (sara)

  • fun little weird tension rn
    • no actual common space that’s not connected to floor
    • but one floor has four people that live there and there’s a big common space and that’s what we use for house meetings
    • residents of that floor want to spend time in that space
    • sometimes people don’t clean up in a timely manner → some heated emails but being sorted out
    • fun fact is next gbm will be in that space

• macgregor (tyler)

  • not much happening, everyone is hosed
  • they’re not going to install a kitchen anymore so that’s good
    • they were going to put a big country kitchen
    • did not want because entry kitchen structure was pretty solid

• next (sruthi)

  • had semester events
  • starting chats for residents to meet exec
  • looking at some internal projects
    • room in basement to renovate
    • brainstorming ideas
    • will be working on more internal projects
  • held pumpkin painting event and random man jumped the fence into the courtyard took the food and left

• mccormick (zitong)

  • had taylor swift thing
  • house gov election soon, going to transition

• maseeh (mark)

  • going to have elections soon too
    • am definitely going to get out of the job
  • had maseeh formal on saturday
    • resounding success except for the issues we had
    • will tell you about the issues next gbm (ruined mit museum?)

• ec (jordan)

  • had elections: bad ideas chairs, esf chairs
    • east side commons (ec + random + xi + pika) to preserve east-side culture
    • one esf chair is partially random affiliated
  • probably will elect more than one social chair so that we can actually run events
    • hard to run events when there’s no building

• bc (cameron)

  • we have a wall in bc and we have some artists, our house manager and ad don’t like that so much
  • house team invited people to come to house team meeting on mural policy
    • mostly went well
    • misconception that we are paying to have panels in bc because there is asbestos but maybe not true, will confirm
    • 30k in funding each from hrs and provost’s office, we are fundraising additional 30k to get panels installed in 60% of bc
    • someone is muraling in maintenance hallway so this is eh
    • rushing to get panels installed rn
      • david thinks that people won’t paint in hallway if there are panels everywhere
      • perhaps not true but that’s ok
    • installed very soon. thanksgiving/iap
    • jordan: they are installing panels in our stud space next week
      • geoffrey: next house has 17 panels installed
    • cameron: seems like they are moving forward and hrs is excited to get these installed in dorms
    • murals keep getting painted on a weekly basis in that back hallway
      • there were 3 murals then they painted over all of it
      • then someone did a spray paint thing
  • talked to ad to get ec people that hanu suggested to come to meeting to alleviate gra concerns
    • house team concerned with students affected by israel/gaza stuff
    • they see toptionality as a thing that can create division, so politically might not be something that can happen rn because they are focused on student support
    • trying to get people in contact
    • also hosting student forum on toptionality
      • not sure if it will be open to all students
      • helpful to have bc students give input on getting this happen within bc
      • rebecca: maybe getting other dorm presidents to come if interested but not a dormspam

we are ending official meeting here. the next 15 min ish we wanted to talk about how students are feeling about the whole israel/gaza situation. lots of animosity toward admin regarding this. if anyone has thoughts pls share!