The Student Government Association (SGA) held its third general body meeting (GBM) of the 111th session on August 29, 2023.
Cabinet Reports
Student Body President Ryan Chou outlined what had been accomplished over the recent summer, which consisted of SGA infrastructure changes, transition tasks, and finance updates on budget allocations for student orgs.
Confirmations and the '11 for 111' Administration Plan
SGA officially filled all senator positions with the confirmation of RSO Media Senator Jam Navarro. The Senate also confirmed Nubaira Milki, Alisa Fedotova, and Jonathan Bakhit to the Judiciary Committee on Student Elections (CSE). Additionally, Senator Angela Xiong, who aims to promote participation and advocacy in the local community, was voted as the new chair of the Civic Engagement Committee.
Student Body President Ryan Chou and Student Body Vice President Jackson Morris presented a draft of the 11 for 111 administration plan, which is projected to be finalized in the following weeks. It details the goals for SGA and administration across four categories: within SGA, undergraduate life, JHU, and Baltimore and beyond.
First Reading of the Board of Trustees Bill
As the chief governing body of Johns Hopkins University, the Board of Trustees establishes policy, provides “leadership on the university’s strategic direction,” and determines the allocation of resources. Despite these responsibilities, the Board has not updated their activities since the academic year 2018-2019, thereby making it extremely difficult to judge whether student input was taken into account. SGA proposed The Board of Trustees Resolution to call for an effective mechanism of augmenting the board of trustees with young alumni perspectives, as well as a more representative selection among graduate/professional education programs and two new spots for emeritus faculty.
First Reading of the Barbie at the Beach (BATB) Funding Bill
The Junior Class Programming Council, led by John Liu, Wubbie Taye, Isabella Gooray, Jan Haro, Resham Talwar, and Jenny Tang, presented their ideas for this 5-hour musical-festival event, including stage tents, LED stage lights, DJ strobe light projectors, and an elevated platform. The proposed budget was $2486 and the bill was passed by the majority.
By-Laws Updates and Caucus Constitution Amendment
Student Body Secretary Amy Li reintroduced the By-Laws that were presented to the Senate during their first GBM in April 2023, documenting the infrastructure change within SGA due to its unprecedented expansion this academic year, available on the SGA website. Senator Mufasa Cruz Moreno advocated for the approval of a caucus amendment to the By-Laws highlighting the need for better minority representation among caucuses. The Senate passed both the updates and the amendments. As such, rather than inactivating caucuses for low activity, caucus chairs are to be held accountable for ensuring the representation of their populations.
Listed below are individual updates from each committees this week:
- The Committee on Health, Safety, and Sustainability Committee discussed the goals, past initiatives, and logistics for the semester. They resolve to raise awareness by using a health, safety, and sustainability lens when collaborating with student organizations and departments. Additionally, they plan to organize more large-scale HSS events aside from Sex Week.
- The Committee on Academic Affairs defined the role of Academic Senators and discussed progress made on a variety of goals set over the summer, including but not limited to PILOT Support, credit transfer hassles, departmental communications, and registration. On Tuesday, September 5th, they met the Deans of WSE and Krieger and Justin Lorts from LDL to discuss "Meet the Majors." In the future, they plan on releasing a survey concerning any academic issues students are facing and ensure that SDS will attend one of the SGA GBMs.
- The Women and Gender Minorities Caucus began its transition from the break to the school year after the first week of class. The Caucus Chair seeked guidance from SGA executives to build caucus membership and gathered information for a memo on the state of gender neutral bathrooms at JHU (from both university and outside, LGBTQI+ led organizations). The Caucus Chair also interviewed gender-minority, transgender, and cisgender students on campus to have a sample of experiences and opinions on the situation surrounding all-gender/gender neutral bathrooms on campus.
- The Committee on Student Organizations decided upon a meeting time for the duration of the fall semester, which will be Sundays from 6-7 pm via Zoom. The meetings are open to the public and attendance will be required for all committee members. The first meeting was agreed to be held on Sunday, Sept 10th, during which the Vice Chair elections will be held. Members interested in running for the position will be preparing 1-2 minute speeches, after which voting will be conducted. In addition, the Chair of CSO conducted a meeting with the previous chair from 2022-2023 to go over the re-registration process on HopkinsGroups. At the present time, no registrations have reached the SGA stage of the approval process, but the Chair will be monitoring the site for upcoming changes.
- The Committee on Finance holistically evaluated and approved each student organization's budget requests for the fall semester. In total, they approved $108k to 109 clubs based on adherence to the SAC guidelines, the presence of appropriate documentation indicating rates/pricing, the amount of student organization funds, and the sheer amount of funds requested. Larger events were potentially denied for being too taxing on the smaller, semesterly budget allocation, however, this does not mean these events/endeavors will be abandoned entirely. Clubs who may not have received sufficient funding from semesterly allocation should file an event grant request for supplemental funding, though this also does not guarantee that all endeavors will be funded in their entirety or even at all if they are found to conflict with the SAC guidelines, lack appropriate documentation indicating vendor rates/item pricing, prove to be too taxing on the event grant allocation budget, or the student org demonstrates a surplus of group funds that can be utilized to fund the endeavor without SGA support. For any questions regarding the student organization’s semesterly budget allocation or any urgent requests for revision, reach out to Senator Benjamin at bbenja11@jh.edu or Treasurer Chen. at jchen326@jh.edu.