The Student Government Association (SGA) convened on Sunday, Nov. 2 and Sunday, Nov. 9 to discuss old and new resolutions. Notably, they re-introduced a discussion concerning the AAL requirement.
At the Nov. 2 meeting Treasurer Ilana Gratch ’16.5 presented the Financial Committee’s (FC) biweekly report. The FC is still processing annual budget requests. Organizations such as the Gamut Room and Middlebury Music United received substantial budgets after restructuring their original request and ideas. Gratch also announced that the FC now has office hours.
Next, a resolution that has been an ongoing discussion the past couple weeks was temporarily resolved. The MiddSafe Bystander Intervention Resolutions by Senators Naila Jahan ’15 and Kyle Gerstenschlager ’15 was put to a vote after some revisions from the initial proposal.
Because GreenDot, a program designed to recognize positive bystander intervention, is being introduced in the spring, the resolution is now designed to support the implementation of MiddSafe in Fall 2015 and GreenDot in Spring 2015. The resolution passed in a 15-0-1 vote.
Next, Senator Tiff Chang ’17 presented her resolution, Continued Legislative Support for MiddIncluded: AAL Reform. Last year, the SGA passed a similar resolution declaring support for reform of the distribution requirements, specifically the AAL cultural category.
Originally proposed by a group from the student body, MiddIncluded acknowledges that AAL is not a fair representation of areas of the world. A suggestion for change is included in the resolution. Instead of having one NOR, one EUR, one AAL and one CMP, students would be required to take one NOR, one CMP and two from the categories: Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, Middle East, Europe and Oceania.
Some senators, such as Senator Zak Fisher ’16, mentioned concern with eliminating the European requirement because a Liberal Arts education is based in a European style of learning.
Speaker Michael Brady ’17.5 also expressed concern of re-passing a resolution that is similar to the resolution that the SGA passed last year. Discussion of the resolution continued into the second meeting when representatives from MiddIncluded presented their mission and expressed their aim to put pressure on the faculty to speed the process of change. To see more information of MiddIncluded’s mission and articles concerning their findings visit, their website at go/aal.
A Bylaws Amendment for an Honor Code Committee was presented by Co-Chair of the Community Council Ben Bogin ’15 at the Nov. 9 meeting as well. It was inspired by a recommendation from the Honor Code Review to create a standing committee regarding the Honor Code.
There was a committee organized last year and Bogin proposed creating a standing one that will do research for the Senate and continue evaluating the Honor Code. He proposed that this committee is important because a large aspect of the Honor Code is that it is partially owned by the student body. Bogin suggested that the committee consist of five students and be required to meet at least six times a semester. The amendment will be put to a vote in the near future.
