Knowing The Community Council 'Minutes' Policy

Unlike the agenda, which indicates what will be, the minutes indicate what was. Typically at meetings the secretary takes the minutes, although the Community Council Operating Procedures do outline an order of responsibilities if any officers are not present. The minutes are at worst and impartial narrative, and at best are a full picture of what occurred during the meeting. They can and do include: * The Date, time, and place of the meeting. * The type of meeting (ex. regular, emergency, special) * The names of all members present * All Motions * Seconds to Motions * Blocks to Motions * The resolution of Motions. Including the Vote Count in an up/down vote situation. (Yes, No, and Abstentions) * All Points of order * Points of Contention (especially when approving previous minutes) * All appeals * The time the meeting was officially adjourned. * The Secretary's signature on the approved copy. Typically minutes are sent out at the end of a meeting (after grammatical and spelling errors are adjusted). The Council has the week to look over the minutes and make sure all members of Council are properly represented. After a meeting called to order the previous minutes are typically approved.

Minutes are currently taken at all Community Council Meetings (excluding the beginning and end of the year dinners), FiCom Meetings, COCA meetings, and more liberally at SafeCom meetings. In the future there may be an attempt at standardization but for right now it is at the discretion of the Officers of each committee.

All minutes that have been approved are to be kept on file to be archived at the end of the semester or after any change in officership. The documents are to be archived after printing at duplications in the Hampshire College Library.

An example of minutes could look as follows:

= March 31st 2009 =

Recorded By Leanna Pohevitz

Meeting Commenced: 7:02pm

Attendance: Leanna Pohevitz, Sam Light, Kalei Sabaratnam, Bobby Farrell, Peter Modest, Amelia Anderson, Ella Wind

Reasons for the Meeting: Approval of Minutes, Event Requests, Spring Jam - April 18th, USELESS

First: Approvals of Minutes


 * March 24th 2009 – LP motions to approve minutes.
 * BF seconds.
 * No Blocks. Unanimous. Motion Passes.

Second: Movie Votes


 * Counted and added to list.

Third: Guests


 * Deedee Desir dmd08@hampshire.edu
 * Rea Sen rs07@hampshire.edu
 * Sister’s Coffee House – Event
 * Community Artist – acts and performances by Hampshire College students. Hosted by :*Badi M, a local hip-hop artist who will also be performing.
 * Attendance: 60 People
 * When: Thursday April 9th – 6:30pm
 * Where: Prescott House Office
 * Budget Breakdown:
 * Honorarium:$500.00
 * Advertising: $10.00
 * Food Budget: $60.00
 * Total Budget: $570.00


 * LP discusses cutting the money for the food strictly based on the fact that we have been doing $4.00 per person

''SL Motions to approve in full. KS seconds. LP abstains. Motion passes.''

MS and CL enter at 7:15pm

Fourth: SJP Event Request


 * Discussion about the $108.00 extra fee.
 * This is why we sent it back to them in the first place. We cannot keep up this precedence of student groups coming back to us.
 * There is a system.
 * They did do exactly what we told them to. If we give it to him there absolutely must be a letter attached explaining that this is NOT ok especially for events that are so far in advance.
 * You cannot put COCA in a bind. We are authorized to fund all events on campus. :*They have to know better by now what an event requires.
 * There is at least $150,000.00 of liquidity in other student groups and all they have to do is sign over money from another student group.
 * I feel like with there knowledge about events they should have spoken to Ray before the original.
 * LP – Karen Couture, was on leave so it is feasible that they just found out now that they needed more security.
 * PM – I would feel better funding it and then sending the letter.
 * KS – But the original projected attendance was 2000 people. What conversation did they have with pub safety originally that said you only need two event monitors???
 * Also the event is on Monday, and we got this two minutes before the meeting. :*Typically we don’t even look at requests like this.
 * Brought to a vote automatically due to tensions in the room

Regardless stipulation is that an e-mail will be sent explaining 3 For approval. 6 Against. Motion denied.

Fifth: Beer Garden


 * Nate at R and P – Hours of Operation
 * 1:00pm to 5:00pm.
 * Worked last year well.
 * Sodexo doesn’t really want us to have it open while dinner is being served.
 * $1.00 a beer. - R and P sets the price.

Sixth: Financial Matters


 * FiCom Money
 * We need about $15,000.00 more to keep the operations of COCA going.
 * To get the $15,000 they will need to dip into the contingency fund below $35,000 which means that Community Council will need a fund transfer for us.
 * They still owe us the additional $10,000 from before (as approved in their minutes).
 * We need to request an additional $5000.00 based on the budget we gave them for Spring Jam.
 * In actuality to operate efficiently we need that $15,000.00 to $35,000 for the rest of the year.

Seventh: The COCA Logo


 * BF is making a COCA Logo, the Brady Bunch but with the members of COCA as the members of the family. For T-Shirts
 * Leanna = Mom
 * Sam = Dad
 * Bobby = Bobby
 * Peter = Peter
 * Chris = Greg
 * Kalei = Marsha
 * Marian = Jan
 * Amelia = Cindy

Eighth: Headliner Posters


 * We Shall release the headliner tomorrow!!!!
 * Contracts for Elephantom and Hadoken.

Meeting Adjourned: 9:08pm

The minutes of the Community Council are the permanent record that an action has been taken. They should be clear and descriptive enough so that anyone who might read them will be able to understand the decisions made. They are to be posted on Hampedia once they are approved to help with transparency to the greater Hampshire College community.

Since the accuracy of the minutes is so important, completed minutes must be distributed to the membership as soon as possible after a meeting so that peopl will be able to consider them while their recollection of the meeting is clear.

THE MINUTES ARE NOT FINAL AND MUST BE VOTED ON BY COUNCIL. They shall be disputed if any discrepancies arise amongst all the members of the Council. They are not to be archived or distributed to the public in anyway until AFTER they have been approved by Community Council.