A3CTF - last monday's meeting

A3CTF = Asian & Asian American Task Force

A3CTF Monday, April 14, 2008

Attendees: Siv, Susan, Clara, Sam, Jonathan, Dean Hubbell, Christine Forrester, Tanni, Peter, Bhavna

Documents that were passed out:

• Selected sections of AAATF from 2002 – Tanni
• Program Definition Suggestions – Prof. Wong
• A3C Committee Meeting Minutes – Christine F
• Proposed Agenda & Proposed Programming – Clara
  

• We’ll be called “A3C Student Committee”
  
• One of us students to be co-chair with Dean Hubbell – we’ll decide by next meeting
• Following the agenda we posed
• Transparency for public circulation - Christine can make the notes available by Tuesday. If everyone approves, we can circulate them by Wednesday.
• Approval by email – set a deadline: “get back to me by certain time & day”
• Implementation of an effective feedback loop – how can people get back to us on what they think? We have an A3C listserv that we can use.
• Use David Harris’ diversity website – post minutes & agenda prior to meeting
• Can students leave comments on the website?
• A3C blog to get student feedback
• Working list of programming ideas
• Proposed Programming – we had a list to jumpstart brainstorming, which Dean Hubbell had no problem with.
  
• Tanni’s job description of Assistant Dean
• Student volunteers working with paid staff – Laura Weiss is paid, but works w/ student volunteers. Support of program assistants as well.
• We should be adding student staff b/c EARS is hard to translate into A3C model
• 2002 Student Proposal for A3C said that CAPSU is hard to sustain w/ student volunteers alone – we still see this happening today
• Worry that Assistant Dean doesn’t know about intricacies that students know. E.g., how the college infrastructure works or the academic questions about profs or classes
• Visions of diff btwn program director and Assistant Dean?
• Desire for grad students to be paid staff
• Model used for frat/sor affairs – something similar can be used for A3C?
• Syracuse also looks to intern grad students to expose them to student affairs
• Can support their grad study financially and facilitate their participation
• Not a lot of Cornell grad students can get involved – Bhavna said that largest grad groups are engineering & CEEPA (sp?)
• Several models that U-Maryland has
• Advising student leaders with workshops & leadership courses
• AA cultural center with grad assistantships
• Mentoring – peer to peer – how to acclimate yourself to Cornell. Not necessarily EAR-type training required.
• Adding to someone’s job description in order to keep the mentorship alive
• Asking for Provost Martin support for AA library
• 3 full-time staff is not an extraordinary demand, considering the high population of A/AAs on campus
• Hubbell said we should have paragraphs describing the staff
• Bhavna said Thu has research on this already
• Thu can send facts about the A3Cs nationwide
• We students can edit the info down for Provost Martin to read
• Succinct comparisons – “Tufts has had a program like this for 25 yrs. [brief summary of resources made available]”
• Peer institutions to compare to, that Hubbell listed: Yale, UPenn (closest in terms of size, proportionality, selectivity), Harvard, Northwestern, Stanford, UChicago
• Making site visits to see how they’re laid out, what’s a friendlier layout to welcome students
• We would do this next semester once we have more details
• Has to be during academic year when you can view student life
• Profs who work in AASP are really overworked trying to apply for tenure as well as raising A/AA community
• Articulating optimal relationship btwn center & AASP? Maybe Shelley or someone else could write about this succinctly.
• Looking at other ethnic studies programs who could integrate social life w/ academic life
• Siv suggested looking at Midwestern univ models like Champaign & UChicago
• Looking at Part IV of Agenda
• We read aloud what Prof. Wong sent us – she was leading us toward creating a program definition
• Going over the goals of our limited proposal from last week
• 1.2 – need to include that we should work with other departments
• 2.2 – need to specifically include alumni?
• Prof. Wong's gonna write up the programming aspect or edit – we’ll decide when she is present at the meeting
• Tanni says A3C’s scope is bigger than CWRC's, which is only directed at students. A3C aims to serve all students, staff, faculty, and alumni.
• Prof. Wong’s document is like mission statement of the center – good draft for now, but it’s better to be more succinct
• Siv said there is an exclusion of the factors that brought about this center? We might want a historical piece on how AAATF & the negative AA student experiences have factored into the mission statement
• This is like the justification of the need for an A3C – simply alluding to key issues that brought about this dialogue would be fine. As an intro or conclusion would be good.
• Approval of minutes from Friday
• WSH is for students by students
• Anything we as A3C committee propose as interim A3C, WSH’s student union board would need to approve that
• Go down to ceramics studio. Used to be Green Room space
• Involves displacing the art club
• ~3,000 sq. ft. of space – we can get a floor plan
• needs diplomatic skill to make it happen
• Previously, the admin had displaced pool/billiards room – 4,000 sq. ft.
• now it’s a “baby Memorial Room” – where people dance
• Good idea to get inventory of what spaces are available – Hubbell would do it
• informal conversation w/ Student Union board
• We would speak with Rockefeller building manager who is very protective of his building. Also speak with univ architect (Gilbert Delgado)
• 2nd floor WSH had a few student orgs previously, but we arranged for them to leave space for renovation. They went peaceably.
• Obligation to look for its “highest and best use” even though it’s for the Student Union
• Elmhurst room downstairs – we’d be fighting with dining for that room
• Maybe we should use the 2 weeks to ID these spaces and see if we could use them.
• East side of WSH is important architecturally. West isn’t that important, plus it’s only a parking lot. The student groups would have a lot more spaces to use as well.
• Next agenda
• We students present what other univs are doing
• We update AAATF to see what services exist now that didn’t exist back then. – not sure who suggested this
• We come up with the student co-chair
• We continue to submit the agenda
• Tanni will dig up historical charge for AAATF
• Christine will send out minutes tomorrow. We’ll have 24 hours to approve and then Wednesday, the minutes will be completely available to rest of campus.
• Hubbell will talk to David Harris about diversity website. Also come up with locations that are possible on campus.