FiCom Meetings, Fall 2008 Minutes

Fall 2008
Note: Minutes are taken by the office manager Alex Reese - email me at aar06@hampshire.edu

December 1, 2008

 * Funding cycle is from January 21st to the 24th. Applications for funding will go online sometime tomorrow.

November 24, 2008

 * Next semester Ananda will shadow Jose as the Chair with the purpose of stepping into the position next year.

November 19, 2008

 * Visitors


 * Kendal and Wes came in on behalf of Climax to request more money to print an extra issue for the Climax. They are going to put the extra issue through the the Reader account which has sufficient funds to cover the expenditure.


 * Budget Requests


 * FiCom responded to signers from the Mental Health Awareness Group, Hampshire Quize Bowl, QCA, SJP, HUA regarding funding requests for activities that already happened to see if they still need the funding.
 * HALA: Requesting $3,500 through Building_Awareness_Across_Bars to obtain records of daily animal care sheets from UMASS and six animal use protocols. FiCom sent an e-mail to the signers to see if they still needed the funds.
 * AMC: Requested an additional $650 to bring a performer to campus. FiCom denied the request since the AMC durrently has in excess of $7,000 in their account.
 * Mixed_Nuts: Requested $180 for a new register. FiCom approved $120 and suggested they go to Staples to order a register as they can get the same, or better, quality register for less.
 * EPEC: Requested $600 for equipment to build something. FiCom asked them to clarify their proposal and what they are going to build.
 * HUA: Approved $200 to pay a speaker from Food Not Bombs.

November 17, 2008
Endowment Guidelines

The quasi-endowment consists of approximately $50,000 that originated from a collection for long term activities in the 1990s and approximately $250,000 of surplus Student Activities Fee (SAF) funds that were transferred into the endowment last year. All money is earmarked to fund projects that fall under its original purpose. The aforementioned $50,000 and any interest accrued off this amount may go to any approved projects brought forth by students and approved by members of the student body through the below stated guidelines. The $250,000 originating from the SAF must go to projects initiated and carried out by members of student groups. All proposals for access to funds out of either portion of the quasi-endowment must be submitted to the Financial Committee (FiCom) for approval. FiCom will review the proposal to ensure that it meets the necessary requirements. A committee consisting of student group representatives will convene to discuss the proposal and carry-out an All Community Vote. The vote will serve as a recommendation to the Board of Trustees who will make a final decision.

Stipend Guidelines

The Financial Committee will not support the receipt of stipends by Community Council officers or officers of any subcommittee of Community Council including, but not limited to: the Financial Committee, The Committee on Community Activities, the Safety Committee and the Committee on Community Development. The issuance of stipends violates the Student Activities Fee guidelines which clearly state that no student shall receive payment in the form of a salary, honorarium or stipend for services rendered at the college. Students fulfilling any officer role are eligible to receive community service credit through the college, if they do not receive a stipend, as well as have access to the offices of Community Council and its subcommittees. We firmly believe that these perks are sufficient enough to compensate officers of Community Council and its subcommittees for their hard work. The receipt of stipends provides a further ethical dilemma in that, within the current system, students determine their own stipends. We find that this is unethical both in theory and in practice, particularly in reference to a recent proposal made by the Stipend Task Force in which stipends for Community Council officers were increased arbitrarily while the stipends of the officers from each of the subcommittees were decreased arbitrarily. Furthermore, we believe that stipends create a hierarchical relationship within committees and Community Council that are unnecessary and harmful to the overall functioning of the bodies. Finally, we believe that the elimination of stipends would pave the path for Community Council and the subcommittees of Council to forge a stronger relationship with the members of the student body.


 * Meeting with COCA


 * COCA will go over event funding for the first month when FiCom does their January funding.
 * COCA will also fund events by semester with exceptions for groups who need advanced notice of approval.


 * Institutionalized funding for the Cultural Center


 * The funding will be given to the Cultural Center student group. The funding may only be accessed for student initiatived activities.  Student groups or individual students will be able to request access to the funds through Melissa.  She will be responsible for determinign if the funding is acceptable and the amount to which to fund each project.
 * At the end of each semester the Cultural Center will provide a budget outline which will be made public and any unspent money will be absorbed back into the SAF.
 * The goal of the funding is to support the student groups. The office will serve as the facillitator to enable those funds to be accessed and spent properly.


 * Hoodies will be designed and produced by Wendel, the same person who produced last year's.
 * The signer dinner will be posponed until next semester when the Red Barn is available.

November 12, 2008

 * Formal endowment fund guidlines will be drafted by Alex and presented at next Monday's meeting.
 * Alex will schedule the Red Barn for the Signer dinner ideally for the weekend after Thanksgiving break.
 * FiCom formally reccomending that students do not recieve stipends. Alex will draft up a proposal explaining the opinion.


 * A discussion was had over the food budget for student group meetings. FiCom voted unanimously to limit the food budget for every student group to $12 per student in each group for the entirety of the semester. This new budget limit will go into affect next semester.
 * Before setting up a meeting with the SGCs and the director of the Cultural Center, Danny will compilee a list of questions and send them to Ria. The two groups will meet in the near future to discuss a final amount for the institutionalized funding.
 * Note for Council: The discretionary budget must be spent within the guidelines of the SAF.

November 11, 2008 (Community Council notes to discuss)

 * Present a formal opinion on honorarium proposals.
 * Solidify Signer Dinner information.
 * Discuss the stipend proposal as presented in Council.
 * Outline specific questions for the SGCs and Cultural Center and e-mail them to Ria so that they can prepare to answer them at a meeting between the Cultural Center and FiCom.

November 10, 2008

 * Discussed final number for the institutionalized funding for the Cultural Center. There were several questions brought up by members of FiCom in regards to the needs of the Cultural Center as presented in their budget proposal.  FiCom invited the SGCs to attend the next meeting.
 * Briefly went over the compost ACV proposal. Formally suggested that the preamble be revised to present an unbiased outline of the current state of the compost system.
 * Engaged in preliminary discussions regarding funding food for student groups.

November 5, 2008

 * Compost and Endowment guidelines: bring an official reccomendation to the next Council meeting including ficom's resolution and why.

November 3, 2008

 * Minutes from last meeting approved by FiCom.
 * Cultural Center funding will be institutionalized. Other identity based groups must demonstrate that they have a cohesive and clear direction before they will be considered for intitutionalized funding.


 * Report back from Danny regarding meeting with Melissa and the SGC's
 * Discussed needs of group -- focused primarily on funding for programming.
 * Creation of a budget ratio. Being that the CC has more groups and serves more students they would like their budget to reflect that in comparison to other identity groups such as the QCA which serve fewer students.
 * Discussed the transparency of fiCom.
 * Next Monday Danny has another meeting with the SGCs at 3:00 in the Cultural Center to discuss a final budget number.
 * Must ensure that the money funded by the SAF will go to events and programming directed by students.


 * Endowment Guidlines


 * Money should be earmarked.
 * Money that initiated the endowment must be used for its originally intended purpose of long-term projects.
 * The money placed into the account remaining from the SAF must be used within the guidlines of the SAF.
 * Procedure to use money
 * A committee consisting of one student from each type of student group who would be voting members and two nonvoting members from FiCom and Communtiy Council.
 * Chris will bring an evaluation of the committee to the next meeting. Tentative guidelines:
 * 1. If the proposal would require funds earmarked to follow the guidelines of the SAF, it must be brought to FiCom for approval to ensure that it meets the guidelines.
 * 2. An ACV must be initiated.
 * 3. Community Council must vote on the initiative.
 * 4. Board of Trustees.
 * There will be a meeting Friday at 5pm to discuss and finalize guidelines.


 * Compost


 * We are formally reccomending that the none of the money from the SAF nor any of the endowment fund the compost system as it is clearly an initiative by the farm center and thereby should be funded by the college. We recognize that there is a high need for the system but it should be funded entirely by the school or outside donations.

October 29, 2008

 * Members will go over the cultural center funding proposal as well as information regarding compost funding and the student activites endowment. The body will discuss each member's opinion at the next meeting with the goal of drafting a final opinion over the compost system, institutionalization of identity group funding and guidlines for the Student Activites Fee.
 * Identity Group Funding
 * Compost System


 * [[Image:Student Endowment Fund Opinion.pdf|File:Student Endowment Fund Opinion.pdf]]

October 28, 2008 (Community Council Notes to Discuss)

 * Compost


 * Discuss Mark Spiro's opinion.
 * Discuss the role an ACV may play in the final decision and formal reccomendation.
 * Discuss the possibility of a matching fund.
 * Bring an official reccomendation to the next Council meeting including ficom's resolution and why.


 * Student Activities Fee Endowment: finalize guidelines and bring them to Council for discussion.
 * Outline specific questions for the SGCs and Cultural Center and e-mail them to Ria so that they can prepare to answer them at a meeting between the Cultural Center and FiCom.

October 27, 2008

 * Visitors


 * Red_Scare: Came in to discuss paperwork that Pam rejected. Jose will take care of the issue.


 * Ficom will be changing their budget procedure. New guidlines will be announced when the recognition process begins.
 * The budget process will take place on a rolling basis.
 * Please note that if we hit our budget limit we will not be accepting any new requests. We will encourage groups to seek sponsorship from other groups who have extra money in their account.
 * Pub safety is going to begin requiring next year that student groups driving on trips must have a driver trained in defensive driving.
 * Ficom is discussing the possibility of having each member serve as a student group liason. Groups would be divided by type and/or signer experience.  This would enable signers and groups to receive more personalized attention from Ficom.

October 22, 2008

 * Minutes of the last meeting were approved by FiCom.
 * FiCom discussed the idea of moving the signer dinner from spring to fall semester or to give out hoodies out at signer seminar.
 * It was put to a vote and decided that there will be a signer appreciation dinner each semester and hoodies will be given out at Signer Seminar.
 * Signer appreciation dinner will be the first week of December.
 * FiCom will being reviewing funding requests for spring semester on Tuesday, January 20th at 11:00 a.m.

October 20, 2008

 * Student groups current spending vs. initial funding [[Image:Funds Available - October.pdf|Available Funds]]
 * FiCom will suspend all new requests for funding for two weeks.
 * Student groups will be divided up among the members of FiCom and be assigned as a liaison to those groups. By contacting those groups we will be able to guide unused funds to pending events.
 * FiCom will have a meeting with the Cultural Center to discuss funding on Friday (tentative)

October 15, 2008

 * FiCom formally reccomending to Community Council that COCD computers are not funding due to a conflict with the mission statement of the SAF, and that COCD is dissolved or readdresses its mission statement.
 * Please see attached document for further information [[Image:Airport Lounge Computers.pdf|File:Airport Lounge Computers.pdf]].

FiCom will present an official statement to Community Council next week.


 * FiCom formally recommending to COCA that all student group event funding be redirected to FiCom while COCA deals with the organization and execution of Halloween.
 * Budget Requests


 * Local_Foods_Initiative: Approved $4000 for the Local Foods Feast.
 * EMTs: FiCom will cover half of the uniform expenses.
 * Red_Scare: Approved a change of venue for one of the tournaments.

October 8, 2008

 * Signer Dinner


 * November 15, 2008 in the Red Barn.
 * Hoodies
 * Zip-up
 * Announcement posted online calling for design submissions
 * Food
 * Requirements: vegan friendly, local food sourced


 * Budget Applications


 * The_Climax: Approved $30 for a 1 year subscription to the Chicago Manual Style Guide.
 * Red_Scare: Requested $318.20 for hotel in Vermont for a trip that occured on  September 20, 2008.  Also approved an addition $16.47 for warm up shirts.

October 6, 2008

 * Officer Meeting


 * Account status: SAF ($-27,000.00), COCA ($27,000), COCD ($4,000), Community Council ($4,000), Contingency fund ($50,000)
 * SAF will come out of the red at the end of the semester when all unspent funds revert back into the SAF.
 * COCA
 * Currently have two fund transfers halted. $11,655 will be transferred from 601 to 611 to compensate for these expenses and allow the forms to go through.
 * Halloween
 * Last year budget: $3700 tent, $5000 fireworks, $5000 headliners, $10689 sound and lighting + pub safety and other misc expenses
 * This year COCA will keep Halloween under $32,000
 * Stipends
 * Need to have a system of checks and balances to ensure that stipends are fair and equitable


 * Budget Requests


 * Quiz Bowl: Requested $185 for a trip to the ACF tournament. FiCom requested they re-apply for the trip, cutting costs by $29 so they do not exceed the $500 budget limit for new groups.


 * Visitors


 * HUA: Rerequesting funding for conference: $300 for two plane tickets and $362 for lodging for a total of $662. FiCom will transfer the additional $143 to the account.
 * Barts_Arm: Approved $178 in nonpermanent equipment.

October 1, 2008

 * COCA


 * During the September 30, 2008 meeting, COCA funded $8000 out of their semester budget of $27000. This figure is based on the fact that they assume Halloween will be approximately $20000.  FiCom requested COCA hold AMC and Hip Hop Collective account transfers as well as any other decisions on funding until a final budget for Halloween and the semester is presented.


 * Compost Endowment


 * Alex Reese will draft up a bsic guidline for funding from the endowment and bring it to the next meeting.


 * Budget Proposals


 * HUA: Requesting $314 for fees for two people and $362 for lodging for a total of $676. FiCom will fund half of all admissions fees exceeding $50.  We approved funding for all of the lodging and half of the admissions costs for a total of $519.
 * Community_Garden: Approved $100 for bulbs for the community garden.
 * Fencing: Approved $1263 for fencing jackets and masks and equipment to build swords.

September 29, 2008

 * Visitors


 * EMTs: Came in to check the status of their budget and accounts. They need POs immediately for their equipment.  FiCom sent an e-mail to the CLA asking them to expedite the forms.  Requested $500 for a laptop, $60 for a lazer printer, $100 for a 32-gig system back-up for a total of $660 in additional funding for the purposes of record keeping.  All funding approved.
 * Blacksmiths_Collective: Responded to FiCom's email asking for more ifnormation regarding their misc. funding request. Requested $24 for hot rolled steel and $25 for a 40lb tank per meeting for a total of 14 meetings and a total of $686.  Also requested $1099.50 for additional equipment.  All funding approved.
 * Kanya came in to discuss funding for a publication not affiliated with a group. FiCom asked her to reapply through a group.
 * Comics_Collective: Requested $288 in additional funding for an extra car to travel to a conference.


 * Budget Applications


 * Epicures_of_Hampshire_College: Approved $400 in additional meeting expenses and $149 for gas for a tirp to several farms in the NE for a total of $549.
 * HUA: Requested the group reapply for funding for a conference.

September 24, 2008

 * Visitors


 * Yurt: Emma came in to discuss funding. Funding approved for the semester.


 * Budget Applications


 * CA$H_Back: Approved $467 for meeting expenses.
 * Red_Scare: Redirecting Sports Co-Op funding through the Red Scare.

September 22, 2008
FiCom office hours are changing to 6-7pm Monday and Wednesday beginning September 29, 2008.


 * Visitors


 * Organization for Peer Education Now: Approved $200 for meeting expenses.


 * Budget Applications


 * Climbers Coalition: Denied request for $6000 for mats for the RCC as it is permanent equipment for the RCC. Requested they speak to Bob in regards to possible funding from the RCC.
 * Friends of Fermentation: Approved $200 for meeting expenses for the semester and $150 for equipment expenses for a total of $350.
 * Greenhouse: Approved $80 for painting materials.
 * Comics Collective: Approved $800 for the purchase of new comic books. The comics will be donated to the library at the end of the semester.
 * QCA: Approved $3960 for meeting expenses.

September 17, 2008

 * Visitors


 * Comics Collective: Came in to discuss their semester budget. The signers will resubmit a budget request for a lower amount of funding for comic books.


 * Budget Applications


 * Organization for Peer Education Now: Requested they come in to speak about their budget proposal.
 * Blacksmiths Collective: Declined $900 for Design Conspiracy meetings due to the fact that it is hosted by the Lemelson Center and we do not fund academic endevors.  Requested more information in reqards to funding for misceleneous supplies.
 * SJP: Approved $400 for conference.
 * Climbers Coalition: Approved $580 for a trip to NH and $200 for local climbing excursions for a total of $780.
 * FiCom declined funding for Day in the Lab due to the fact that it is sponsored by the school of NS and the SAF cannot fund academic expenditures.

September 15, 2008

 * Updated fall budget pages for the following groups: Dandelion Den, STAZ, Word of Mouth, Alternative Sexuality Club, Anti-Racist Club, Valley Linguistics Society, Short Straw Productions, Laughter Club.
 * Visitors


 * Rerad: Came in to discuss trip funding. Approved $600 to pay for half the cost of three tickets.
 * Shamanism Studies: Discussed fund transfers.


 * Budget Applications


 * Asian Media: Approved $27 for a Netflix account.
 * Magic_Draft: Approved $697 for Magic cards.
 * Sports_Co-op: Approved $1500 for transportation to Portland, ME.
 * Comics_Collective: Requested they come in to speak about their budget proposal. Link to proposal: https://hampedia.org/wiki/File:Fall_08_Comics_Collective_Funding_Request.pdf
 * New Leaf: Approved $660 for food and $40 for art supplies for a total of $700.

September 10, 2008

 * Budget Applications


 * Bridge to Cuba: Approved $450 for food, $5 for advertising and $5 for magic board for a total of $460.

September 8, 2008

 * Visitors


 * Climbers_Coalition: Clarifying budget for jan-term. The signers will return mid-November to see how much funding is available for their trip.
 * Games Club: Came in to discuss their denied budget. The signers will get in contact with the signers of the Board Games Club to discuss merging the two.
 * Radical_Philosophy_Society: Due to the $500 limitation on new groups, they will seek funding from HUA.


 * Budget Applications


 * Sports_Co-op: $2660 for referee contracts, $480 for 20 soccer balls, $300 for socks, $300 for 30 shirts and $1275 for lodging for a total of $5015 approved. Requested more information regarding transportation costs to and from games.


 * The_Omen: $420 for publication costs approved.


 * Latin American Studies Group: $420 for meeting expenses and $2.50 for advertising costs for a total of $422.50 approved.
 * STAMPS: $210 for meeting expenses, $2.50 for advertising costs, $240 for non-permanent equiptment for a total of $252.50 approved.
 * Organization for Peer Education Now:Requested to clarify mission statement.