[CommAdvocacy] Important issue with new student government

[Melissa Scheid Frantz]

Hello everyone,
some of you may already be up to speed on the recent Student Government 
Association (SGA) planning meetings.  Below is a summary of their recent 
meeting that Josiah Litant forwarded to me, including a very important 
challenge that affects our areas directly -- read the fourth bullet 
about under-representation.

I highly encourage you all to see if anyone from your respective centers 
can attend Friday's planning meeting and/or brainstorm ideas among 
yourselves that you can always forward onto Josiah.

Thank you, Melissa
---------------------------------------------

The next SGA planning meeting is this Friday (Oct. 19) at 3:30-5:00 (or 
as long as people can stay) in the Community Council office. Here's an 
outline of the big issues that we are thinking about:

 1. The main body of the student government is an all-student meeting
    called *Town Meeting.* Town Meeting is the place for all-student
    discussions, communication, connection between groups, feedback, and
    decision-making.

  * The meeting is open to all students. There is no representational
    government; each student has the opportunity to represent (and vote)
    themselves.
  * The Town Meeting is where decision-making will take place.
  * The most important function of Town Meeting is to share information
    and gather opinion.
  * We have not developed a mechanism to deal with the issue of
    under-representation.With regard to voting, underrepresented
    populations continue to hold a minority vote on issues pertaining to
    their respective identities. It is not clear how this issue will
    manifest itself, but alternatives that were proposed had the
    potential to be tokenistic or otherwise problematic. This issue
    should probably be discussed at the Town Meeting as wemove forward.

The meeting is open to all, I hope folks can attend to help us think 
through all this!

Josiah
-------------------------------------------------------------
Josiah S. Litant
Senior Associate Dean of Students

HAMPSHIRE COLLEGE
Amherst, MA 01002
phone (413) 559-6666
fax (413) 559-5663






-- 
Melissa Scheid Frantz
Assistant Dean, Community Advocacy 
<http://www.hampshire.edu/studentlife/communityadvocacy.htm> / Director, 
Multicultural & International Student Services (MISS) 
<http://www.hampshire.edu/studentlife/MISS.htm>

Student Life | Hampshire College | 893 West St. | Amherst, MA  01002 
tel: 413.559.5415 | fax: 413.559.6668
* If you are an international student with an emergency visa issue that 
needs immediate assistance, please call the Hampshire Dispatcher at 
413.559.5424.
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