CSSS Meeting Minutes August 20, 2008, 6PM
In attendance: Giuliana Villegas, Michele Ng, David Lowe, Amy Kwok, Elizabeth Patitsas, Presley Perswain, Jeremiah Tantongco, Christopher Head
Mission Statement
- David: should reflect our desire for encouraging volunteer opportunities (should we include the broader community, beyond the CS dept?)
- Michele: CS dept encourages student participation in department decision making and committee involvement; discuss adding this?
- David: dept would like us to encourage students to be involved in dept decision-making
- Elizabeth: most students don’t know committee opportunities exist
- Amy: the dayplanners now have a list of opportunities including committee opportunities, but we still need more ways to advertise
- Michele: dept plans to include a section on volunteer ops in the ugrad orientation
- Elizabeth: use the all-students list to e-mail volunteer ops to students (Giuliana can arrange that)
- Conclusion: draft statement is good but could add a small item on outside-department activities and volunteer ops
- W.r.t. Networking, Jeremiah has an idea for an online networking opportunity
Budget
- David: the department may not demand paid membership; if we think attracting members may be difficult then we might be able to go with unpaid membership
- Michele: might be able to have individual membership but the department make a financial contribution on a non-membership basis
- Presley: AMS minimum is $1
- Jeremiah: what do we offer members that we don’t offer nonmembers? Subsidized food sales? (would require membership checking and printed cards)
- Presley: problem: the AMS requires waivers to be signed for each membership; this was ignored in earlier years but may no longer be possible especially due to the constitution rewrite
- Elizabeth: do we need to be in the AMS? Some clubs aren’t (math club)
- Presley: would be really difficult to separate from the AMS
- Chris: there was a suggestion of including $1 of something for free with every membership
- Jeremiah: membership fees aren’t about the money, they’re about the AMS legality; can we leave everything alone for this year and make a plan for attracting members next year?
Lockers
- David: a good potential source of revenue; valuable service to students; could create a social zone near the lockers; could also advertise the CSSS… question: how much are people willing to pay? Department is willing to discuss plenty of different options for financing; CSSS should prepare a proposal. First activity, circulate a survey asking students if they’re interested in lockers and how much they’d pay? $10 per month was discussed; it was thought students might not be interested at that price.
- Presley: lockers go anywhere up to $60 per year on the rest of campus
- Nadia: Kaiser charges just $10 for a full year! But not very useful for CS students as building is locked after 6pm.
- Michele: need to decide by December else we’d have to reapply for approval from fire marshal
- Jeremiah: can we do a pilot project with a smaller number of lockers and install the rest later?
- David: we may be able to get the second half approved for installation later than December if we already have the first half
- David: we might be able to mitigate the financial risk by arranging a loan payment based on locker income so CSSS doesn’t lose money due to low demand
Second Lounge
- It’s getting crowded in the office; things have been stolen occasionally; we’ve had noise complaints from the learning centre
- Llachlan has asked (or will ask, at its next meeting) the spacecomm
- David: sounds like a good idea; one issue is noise w.r.t. adjacent labs (but that’s no worse than our current location)
- Elizabeth: advantageous because it’s beside the undergrad labs
- Presley: we’d like to lock 021 and then move TV/games/etc into 021 and keep 021 open
- David: how much use does 021 get now?
- Elizabeth: very little use currently: occasional sleeping, occasional microwave use
- David: doesn’t see any major problems but it will probably be a big discussion in spacecomm
- Nadia: re: noise: west wing has better walls than X and will attenuate noise better
Events
- Michele: do we have any planned portfolio of events yet?
- Jeremiah: was contacted about setting up talks with industry professionals
- Michele: we already have tech talks and such from many companies; risk: we’d prefer not to invite too many people who are just interested in recruiting
- David: should we move some existing talks to be co-sponsored by CSSS? We could advertise etc.
- Michele: do students want more talks? One time the dept had someone ask to present a talk who was interested in marketing a product; need to try to avoid things like that. Michele could contact companies when requested by students instead of other way around?
- Jeremiah: had the idea of a less technical, less career-oriented, and more casual event
- David: does CSSS want to co-sponsor the CS town hall (the majors/honours/etc lunches)? We could send some executives to the events and talk about ourselves, hear from students? It’s a chance for students to ask questions and make comments.
Meeting adjourned at 7:05pm.