Updates from the VSA meeting of April 21, 2019
Consensus Agenda – Passed
- Allocations:
- 115/115 from Capital to VCSS for various adapters and cables
- 150/150 from Discretionary to PHOCUS for increased copies of FIX (PHOCUS’ annual publication)
- 390/390 from Discretionary to NSO for Spring Magic: The Gathering Draft
- 0/1000 from Speakers to QCVC for speaker Julia Weldon
- 0/112 from Discretionary to Chabad Jewish Community for Board Appreciation Event at Bounce
- 0/1550 from Discretionary to UnFramed for projector, projector screen, dress form, iPad tablet (used), lighting
- 7730/7730 from Discretionary to Senior Class Council as partial coverage for Senior Week
- 4225/4225 from Capital to Senior Class Council for graduation gowns for low-income students to borrow
- 295/295 from Capital to On Tap for shirts for performances and org events
VSA Elections
The second round of VSA Elections concluded last week without incident. Working with CIS, Vice President Rori Chuck ’19 was able to ensure that no malfunctions disrupted the electoral process. Final results of the new elections were made available to students on Friday.
President Tamar Ballard ’19 and Chuck met with CIS to discuss the causes of the technical difficulties experienced in the first round of elections. The voting software the VSA uses to hold elections functions by creating unique accounts for each eligible student voter. As Chuck related to Senate, CIS found two principal issues with the way this software was used in the prior election. First, voter rolls had not been fully cleared from elections last year, leaving accounts for students from previous class years in the voter pool. Second, Board of Elections and Appointments members incorrectly entered data identifying some current students, creating invalid voter accounts that could not be accessed by the intended students. Instead of clearing this data and removing the accounts, BoEA re-entered the students’ information. Chuck and CIS hypothesized that these two errors were responsible for the inflated number of students listed as eligible to vote in campus-wide elections. However, CIS confirmed that no alumni had voted in the election and that the invalid accounts were not used to vote twice.
Equity and Inclusion Committee
The committee met recently with transfer students to discuss their experiences. This meeting resulted in a document outlining possible improvements to the transfer student experience, particularly orientation. Chair of Equity and Inclusion Eloudia Odamy ’21 said she would reach out to the First-Year Experience and Dean of the College Carlos Alamo to share the document.
President
Ballard has been in conversation with Alamo to discuss ways to strengthen the VSA’s relationship with campus offices, such as CIS and Campus Activities, to ensure student leaders get the assistance they need in planning and executing events on campus.
