[HSU-CoordBoardInternal] Town Meeting

Sun Nov 17 15:33:48 EST 2013

As someone who helped write the document you attached, I want to explain to you that this was a guide not rules. We wrote that document the week after the first ever town meeting, and therefore did not know the realities of how the HSU works in relation to planning future town meetings. In addition, I would go as far as to say that at least 80% of the work outlined in that document was done by a staff member, Nelson Hernandez, whose sole job was to do work for the SGA. Since then it was understood that this was an ideal timeline but not mandatory, because even when we had Nelson to help with the next two Town Meetings, they still did not meet these expectations. As a result, Coordinating Board has attempted to live up to these guidelines, but frankly between all the other things coordboard has on its plate, like communication between scope groups, issues of purview and purpose, and a consistent stream of inbox proposals and concerns, I believe that it is unrealistic to ask us to be bound to this guide. 

Also, I assume you got that document out of the red binder and I would also like to point out that the binder is not our bible nor our constitution. The intent for that binder was to document the history of the HSU creation process from its inception till the present, and was meant for Josiah Litant's records. It only was decided to make them for HSU members once we realized that it was important for people to know the work that was put into the creation process. If you look at the first three or so sections, you will notice an immense amount of contradictions, paradoxes, and much of what is in that binder consists of brainstorming, research and suggestions rather than actual HSU foundation. 

In addition, Coordboard has had a variety of other issues it has been grappling with, and in order to plan a quality town meeting, these issues needed to be addressed first. I apologize that advertisement has not begun yet, but we as a body are struggling with a lot of things, and I ask that accountability board be understanding in regards to the fact that this is a new student government structure, that we are still in the process of figuring out. CoordBoard was understanding when a request was submitted to Accountability Board (what was called at the time Committee of 10) from a community member about an issue of accountability and ethics  in regards to a specific scope group and Accountability Board was unable to resolve it because the board did not have structures in place how accountability operates in the HSU. I request that you do the same for us when we are not successful in our endeavors.

We, just as you are too, are in the process of piloting the Coordinating Board and the larger HSU structure. This semester there have been many revelations as to how what we had envisioned last year, did not function in the way we wanted and we needed to adjust, therefore creating contradictions with the red binder. Town Meeting is just one example of that. Another example might be the changing the status of FundCom to a scope group rather than being some weird combination of sub-committee and money distributor.

The last thing I want to mention is that I do not appreciate the way accountability board has been conducting itself. Every time I have an interaction with the board I feel frustrated and disrespected. Your emails sound condescending, and ill informed as to what is actually happening in the Hampshire Student Union, and your visits to various bodies are similar. I respect the work that you do and recognize how important it is. I know that I have not been the perfect scope group coordinator or coordinating board member but, it seems to me that the board does not take into account the work that we are doing in what is a long process of governance. I have had experiences with the board where they seem to be of the mindset that they are above, better than, and superior to the rest of the Hampshire Student Union. In addition, accountability board was one of the very last structures created for the HSU, and it was never clear what kinds of powers were invested in it. However, I do know that the power to put a hold town meeting is NOT anywhere in the purview of Accountability Board. There needs to be a discussion had about how the accountability board keeps people accountable, because as of right now, whatever process you are using is unclear, hurtful and unproductive. This kind of discussion was never had with anyone, just like discussions surrounding purview and the workings of Coordboard was never discussed. I hope we can have a discussion about this soon.

I hope that we can all come together soon to discuss these issues as one large group. At this point the HSU is standing on its last legs because of inner conflict, unclear purview, and a lack of understanding among its members. There needs to be something done to address this. There have been a few attempts to create an HSU revisiting group, which have been met with skepticism and bureaucracy. I suggest that we need to move forward with some incarnation of this idea soon regardless of the current debates surrounding it.

--Mitch Krieger

On Nov 17, 2013, at 2:06 PM, committee10 at hampshire.edu wrote:

> 
> Coordinating Board -
> 
> It has come to our attention that you are planning a Town Meeting for this coming Tuesday, November 19, 2013. According to the Coordinating Board internal list serve, you were not planning on advertising for Town Meeting until Monday afternoon.  This is in violation of the guide for how to organize a Town Meeting (see attached).
> 
> A date, time and location should be announced three weeks prior to the meeting, the agenda should be made public by implementing advertising two weeks prior to the meeting, and there should at least be some type of advertising on social media at least one week prior to the proposed Meeting date.
> 
> We have not seen any of the above.  Please make sure that in addition to flyering for this week's Town Meeting that you also make it a public event on Facebook that is inclusive to the Hampshire Community.  In the same way, make sure that you have a clear agenda announced in your advertisements. For instance, "food, Diana Fernandez, Tavern Proposal by Wesley Evans, Jlash Mystery Time" is not a clear agenda. Please elaborate and provide more details about what will be discussed during each of these times.
> 
> Please also send us a copy of this.
> 
> If this lack of significant planning happens again in the future, we will put a hold on Town Meeting until these guidelines are followed.
> 
> Thank you,
> <o> Accountability Board
> <Town Meeting .pdf>------
> This is the INTERNAL mailing list for Coordboard. For the sake of transparency, all internal communications via email must go through this listserv, where they are publicly archived. If there are any changes to meeting times or locations, then those emails must still be sent out to the Coordboard MAIN listserv (HSU-CoordinatingBoard at lists.hampshire.edu) so that the meetings can be open to all members of the Hampshire community. Listservs are not a secure method of communication and any sensitive info such as passwords or classified infomation should not be sent via listserv.
> _______________________________________________
> HSU-CoordBoardInfo mailing list
> HSU-CoordBoardInfo at lists.hampshire.edu
> https://lists.hampshire.edu/mailman/listinfo/hsu-coordboardinfo

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