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I Stream, You Stream, We All Stream for Transparency!
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Last Friday, the ASPC Senate launched a new program to broadcast their meetings online via UStream.com. Despite not advertising the first live stream, the UStream broadcast had a record high1 of four viewers, two of whom2 were at the meeting and were really just getting a kick out of seeing themselves on “TV.” Commissioner of Community Relations Darrell Jones III PO ’14, who spearheaded the idea, had high hopes for the future of live broadcasts, stating that they could give students a better idea of what actually happens during Senate meetings. Given how some of the last meetings have been going, it might be a good idea for some of the senators to tune in as well.
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1Statistics are fun.
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2Emma Wolfarth and Emma Wolfarth.
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Frankly My Dear, I Don’t Give a Dean!1
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Commissioner of Academic Affairs Quinn Lester PO ’13 gave a brief update to Senate about Pomona College’s current search for a new Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College. For the last two weeks, the college has been hosting sessions with potential candidates to give students opportunities to meet and learn about the individual candidates2. According to Lester, the discussion sessions were deemed a “success” due to the record high3 of four students who came to meet the candidates. Now for some actual statistics: There are roughly 1,600 students at Pomona College and four of them had the time/took the time to meet the candidates for a very important position of power at the college, which means about 0.25 percent of Pomona students either a) care a good deal about who runs this place or b) don’t have their mailbox settings to filter everything from President Oxtoby.4
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1Holla at Pelton Puns.
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2i.e. Their favorite color, position on labor unions, etc.
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3Not actual statistic.
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4Probably actual statistic.
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Who Says You Can’t Beat a Dead Horse?1
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After the Sisyphean effort to publish the ASPC budget online ended in a vote to publish the budget online and then ended again in another vote to clarify the first vote, ASPC President Sarah Appelbaum PO ’13 got the ball rolling in Senate last week by laying out the logistical hurdles ahead2. The ball was subsequently dropped by other senators who balked at Appelbaum’s first attempts to discuss how Senate should go about publishing its budget. After posing the most important logistical question (“Does no one care?”), Commissioner for Clubs and Sports Emma Wolfarth PO ’14 posed the radical idea that perhaps the Budget Committee could in fact be in charge of these decisions. Senate agreed this was a solid idea, but Vice President for Finance Faye Wang PO ’13 pointed out that Budget Committee is already very behind on their agenda for the year, so publishing the budget would be an issue that they would have to table.
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Some good news though: Senate voted to publish not only this year’s budget but budgets from the last two years as well. The only problem is, seeing as the Budget Committee’s plates are pretty full, it might as well be another two years before any of the budgets actually get published.
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1Tired of this idiom yet?
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2The Senate Briefs™ normally provides a lot of shade, but Appelbaum deserves some serious spotlight for at least trying to make this happen.
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#ShadyTweets
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What’s the next best thing to being at meetings? What’s the next worst thing to watching them on UStream? You guessed it. Social commentaries with 140 characters and a bit of ASPC Senate meeting updates included! Follow @NotASPCSenate on Twitter for slightly more information than the little you just read.