[HSU-CoordBoardInternal] "Retreat" and fixing the union

[Jesse Ide]

I work two jobs and so unless we have it on a Friday night, which I'm
not against, then I can't really do a "retreat" thing with my work
schedule. I'm totally totally great with giving up a Friday night, my
Fridays are entirely free, I just doubt everyone else would be up for
that. 

Anyway, I want to preface the rest of my email from this point on by
saying that I intend this to be a calm discussion of ideas via email,
not an urgent call to action, or anything about coming to make a
decision via email. You can respond by clicking "reply all" under
webmail or by making sure your reply is going to
hsu-coordboardinfo at lists.hampshire.edu, and if it's coming from your
Hampshire email then it will be sent back out to everyone for a
consistent email thread. Get to this when you get to it, take your time,
etc. 

I do want to remind those of you from the summer work group who were in
our attempted 3 hour meeting from orientation about how that went. I
agree that we need to fix stuff and that that involves talking about
stuff, but I feel like we'd just run into all the same problems we ran
into before. 

I went to a CS School talk about "brainstorming" versus "brainswarming",
about how having everyone in one room trying to tackle a tough issue
doesn't work as well as having people go off, do their own work, and
come back together. 

I'm thinking that what might work better is if we have a bunch of
smaller, shorter meetings spread across a week or a few days. We'd work
with the Accountability Board/Committee of Ten and have say, two people
from the Accountability Board and two people from CoordBoard in each
meeting (or whatever odd number works out), and we'll sort them based on
who's schedules work well together. Then just try and talk about what we
see as problems as honestly as possible without worrying about as much
backlash, and then Committee of Ten would come back together and talk
amongst themselves about the problems we've described and would issue a
verdict to us. 

I think that since a huge issue is our inability to communicate with
each other, we can instead communicate in small groups to Committee of
Ten, who could then decide on something and issue it back to us. 

It's also just a much less stressful setting to have four people in a
room for an hour than eleven in a room for four hours, and maybe we'll
be able to better express ourselves that way. For personal health
reasons I would like to try and deal with this in as low stress a way as
possible. 

Also I remember Ethan mentioning the possibility that this "retreat"
would possibly include document writing. I think that if we try to write
documents we should try and involve the alumni who had been working on
this system for the years leading up to this. Even if they aren't in the
area like Devin Morse, we could still probably interview Sarah Gordon,
Nelson Hernandez, Mandy Theissen, or any other alumni via email or
Skype. 

I also feel strongly that it is not the purview of CoordBoard to write
those documents. Assisting with them, sure, but this is totally
something more meta and above the structure. It would probably make
sense to assemble a task force, organized by Committee of Ten and Josiah
and which would report back to Committee of Ten and Josiah, which would
do things like interviewing alumni, reviewing all the materials already
produced (I still have my big red binder collecting the entire history)
and basically trying to piece together a solid image of how things were
supposed to be. It's a big task and I don't think it should be our group
trying to do it on our own in a single day or alongside our regular
work. 

Also, in the meantime, until we have documents, we might want to try
referring to those big red binders and see if something was talked about
before in how things were supposed to be. 

So yeah, take your time rolling these ideas around in your head, talk
about them if you want to. I'm trying to think both laterally and with
continuity from last semester. 

-Jesse 

On 2013-10-18 00:03, Ethan Warshow wrote: 

> Hey CoordBoard, 
> 
> I made a doodle for the rest of the weekends in october/early november. I think we need atleast 2 hours, but it might (almost certainly will) be 4 hours. 
> 
> This is in no way binding, But I wanted it sent out ASAP and I wasn't sure if anyone else would. 
> 
> http://doodle.com/ygifk4wwcqt32ida [2] 
> 
> Ethan Warshow, At-large member 
> erw11 at hampshire.edu 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> HSU-CoordBoardInfo mailing list
> HSU-CoordBoardInfo at lists.hampshire.edu
> https://lists.hampshire.edu/mailman/listinfo/hsu-coordboardinfo [1]
 

Links:
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[1] https://lists.hampshire.edu/mailman/listinfo/hsu-coordboardinfo
[2] http://doodle.com/ygifk4wwcqt32ida
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