Sonoma State University

Senate Meeting Minutes 09/18/23

Minutes

Sonoma State University
AS Senate Meeting
Associated Students
12:00pm- Monday, September 18, 2023
Erin Fisher Room – 2nd Floor Student Center

Minutes

  1. Call to Order & reading of the Land acknowledgement - The meeting was called to order at 12:01 pm
  2. Public Comment – pursuant to California Education Code 89306, the AS Senate provides this time for any member of the public to address the AS Senate on any item affecting higher education. Pursuant to California Education Code 89306(b), each speaker will be allowed no more than three (3) minutes to address the AS Senate.
  3. Reports
    1. University President’s designee- Representative Jones reported: water is out, rec center is open; confidentiality advocate interim can​not see students since she is not certified, so doing the certification currently; CAPS will be handling over the advocate cases; the advocate interim hopes to finish her certification by this week or next week;

    2. Academic Senate Representative- reported: passed leadership certification(3 classes) , starting hopefully next Fall; tuition increase is not in the public’s approval and also faculty along with students are not happy about the vote to approve of the increase proposal along with the email that went out after the vote, reorg updates(enrollment dips)(crises, etc), combining colleges so it will go from 5 schools to 4; nothing will be changing too much, just that your dean will probably not be in the same school as you.

    3. AS President- President Garcia reported: CSSA virtual meeting, 3 major presentations talking of debt of Bachelor’s degrees in different departments, discussing about the the Native Repiration Act where SSU had the highest incomplete collection of Native artifacts and SSU asked for an extension , attended the Board of Trustees meeting, spoke in opposition of the tuition increase, that will be further discussed later on in the meeting; met with President Lee, talking about sexual harassment, being aware of sexual harassment on campus; AMP;

    4. Executive Vice President - Psychology program, CSL appointments still being made, Academic Senate is done, CSL check in, so emails should be this week or next week; Nursing Masters Program; discussing to for students to change to SEI to state side program; all executives met with Monir Ahmed;

    5. Vice President of Finance -

    6. Senator of Diversity- appointed chair of Student of Bill of Rights Committee and looking for students in different departments to contribute for the document in the process and have a diverse mix on the Committee; looking for names by end of the week; DES, Leisel looking for students on Task Force, so let Angelina know; discussion of getting rid of SETES due to certain comments left by students; can email the chair; discussion of faculty being motivated to attend more meetings;office hours in the HUB on Thursdays from 11am-12 pm;

    7. Senator of Student Resources-

    8. Senator of Government Affairs- Senator Frickman went to City Council, discussing of different awards to going to different groups; police force training; met
      with Jeffrey Keating, the new Associate VP for Government Relations and Strategic Communications ; he is excited to talk to the students who are actively who are involved in the legislation, but also students to be aware of the policies and
      legislation and be part of the conversation; Tiffany, Alumni Association, meeting next week, CSU Foundation meeting next week; Student Affairs meeting last week; Topic Discussed: AI use; priorities: Student Bill of Rights; Seawolf Bundle, Tuition Increase, etc

    9.  

      JUMP Representative​-

    10.  

      Basic Needs Representative- reported: collab with JUMP; volunteer restocked the Pantry, working with the students who are in the process of CALFRESH,
      but there is a backup; CALFRESH outreach M-Fri 11-1pm this week; Opportunity Drive, fill a slip and get some items that we have; Class Rep for CALFRESH last week, engagement was good, but they were were all First Years; tabling and discussion of frustration and needs for CALFRESH; the funds they need are missing and haven’t came in, will be there when it all comes in; Pantry #: 804 students, food items: 20007(in Sept), 527 hygiene items; H&H week coming up on Oct.2nd-7th; challenges: first order of Sept 7th and food went gone in 2 days and seeing how much food that we should order ;

    11.  

       

      ASP Representative-
    12. Children's School Representative- reported: 40 students are working with Children’s school, for about 10-20 hrs a week; There is a potential grant to update the greenery around the school; There is a temp rate increase one time estimated at $32,000.
    13. Student Government Representative- 
    14. Executive Director- Executive Director Dickson reported that the audit statements are here and will appear in the Audit and Rules Committee soon and will be in Senate after to formally accepted; the applications for our open hourly positions have closed and moving forward to interviewing for those positions; We need more SSU students to follow our social media channels and have a new challenge that details will be more explained next week; State of CA is still offering funding for grants basis on enrollment in the future instead of attendance, but details are still being sorted out; Enrollment number is around 5867 Students; although that number is more than what was predicted, we also see have to wait and see in the upcoming Spring semester since Spring is lower than Fall and 1900 seniors and some of those will be graduating this Fall; With that number of senior graduating, it makes it a bit harder to project the long run of future and current students; 2 events in October for new students: Seawolf Saturday for Spring Admits (10/7) & Preview Day(10/21); Special thanks to BNI team to how they have handled and communicated about the CALFRESH appointment issues that the county is currently facing; Open Forum is 10/16 in the Alexander Valley Room;
  4. Business
    1. ​6% Multi-Year Tuition Increase Proposal: Moving Forward Plans (Discussion)
      1.  Discussion- Senator Sanchez discussed about the possibility of making another tuition resolution that goes into detail on what the BOD will do to help SSU students; President Garcia agreed with that, but also added that it should be probably wait until the 1st open forum to see what is the student’s feelings or opinion is on the tuition increase proposal being approved. President Garcia also added to say she will be contacting Laura Lupe to come in and present to us a breakdown of the budget to see where our funds will be allocated to and have a better understanding of where we want to see where the student’s money is going towards; Senator Frickman said that we need to understand where the money is budgeted to go before we begin to question leadership; We should also reach out to club and organization leaders to outsource on how we spread information about the tuition increase, but also what the Board of Directors are doing;
  5. Items for the Good of the Order: Reminder from Director Dickson: Dr. Lee will be coming into the next Senate meeting on next monday and take the time to figure out what questions you want to ask him in the connected topic about students and the tuition; EVP Lopez gave a shout out to President Garcia for speaking at the CSU Board of Trustees meeting;
  6. Adjournment- The meeting was adjourned at: 12:47 pm

Posted in accordance with the Gloria Romero Open Meeting Law of 2000 by: President Cassandra Garcia

The Associated Students of Sonoma State University acknowledges Indigenous Peoples as the traditional stewards of the land. Let it be acknowledged that the Associated Students and Sonoma State University is located within the traditional homelands of the indigenous peoples collectively known as Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo.