FRC Weekly Meeting Minutes – 3rd May

FRC Weekly Meeting
Sunday 3rd May, 8pm
Bobbie Fenner Room
Attendance
Raqeeb Bhuyan
Dylan Karunaratne
Mickey Johnson
Sean Ding
Michael Ma
Ben McColl
Caity Price
Ben Ingelbrecht
Sam Phillis
Helena Hu
Victoria Xia
Timbo Slice
Max Stenstrom
Lucie Niederer
Apologies
Ee-Faye Chong
Absent
Patrick Sparks
Ben Harris
Meeting Opens
8.06pm
Item 1. Brownies
Tim has brought brownies to the meeting.
Item 2. AGM and Extraordinary Residents’ Meeting
Dylan: I think the AGM went really well, if nothing else, there wasn’t anyone with
serious criticism or acrimony regarding what we have and haven’t done this year. It
may have gone for three and half hours, but that was more or less people’s
commitment to ensure that Max's proposal was properly discussed.
Dylan: The EGM to discuss the proposal will be held on Sunday 17th May at 7.00pm. I
will be chairing. I will not be speaking to the motion or asking questions at any point,
I'll just be ensuring that the debate is orderly and conducted well.
Dylan: We’ll just be voting upon the first motion –
Raqeeb: I think we should do all three.
Dylan: Alright we’ll do all three and move the meeting to 6.30pm. There is
maybe 90 minutes of discussion that will be needed, if it's not policed it'll just
drag on in the same sort of circles.
Dylan: Regarding the AGM, I would like to draw attention to something which put off
a lot of people, and justifiably so. The FRC appeared as a monolithic entity. We had
three FRC members come up and basically deliver very similar speeches against the
proposal.
Dylan: I think this made people generally question whether we were
presenting genuine arguments against, or whether it was simply three
institutionalised members of the FRC arguing against change to the institution.
Dylan: I would like to let as many people from the general Fenner community
to speak. I want to see this be a contest of ideas. All of you in your election
campaigns last year at some point used the words inclusivity and community.
An EGM promotes these values in the most direct possible way. I think the
most positive thing to do is to let people derive their own conclusions and
then if you feel there are any misconceptions, you can correct them then.
Dylan: Furthering this commitment to being open and democratic, voting will be
online, open to all residents for a period of three hours after the meeting. We will
have an anonymous form, and I’ll be the returning officer. You don't have to go to
the meeting to vote, and people can vote anonymously.
Dylan: I can see why you might feel that only people at the meeting should vote,
but I would like to think that everyone that uses this system to vote will be doing so
because they want to put forward their opinion.
Helena: Do you think if we open it up to people outside of the meeting, we won’t be
getting people that are fully informed voting on these changes?
Dylan: I can understand that as the intuitive objection, but the two big things
we need to consider are
A. We most likely won't get quorum if we don’t allow online voting.
This will be frustrating since we won't get a definitive outcome for the
proposal, which is why this meeting is being held in the first place.
B. I can understand it is frustrating when people skip the meeting and come
down just to vote. But if they do this, we need to recognise they have already
made up their mind and would like to exercise their vote on these community
matters. If we want to say we're committed to people being informed, then
we should also accept that we cannot dictate the manner in which people
are informed.
Max: The voting system will preclude people from being able to vote twice, yes?
Raqeeb: Yep, we'll probably use the same system that used for FRC elections.
Item 3. International Student Advocacy Circle
Dylan: I’ll post up the Duty Statement in the FRC Group for you guys to look over. I
would like to start it for Semester 2.
Tim: So where were you going to do appointments?
Dylan: We’ll do open calls three weeks before the close of Term, and speak to
them over the holidays to make sure they’re prepared.
Vicky passes the brownies to Sean
Item 4. Kate Hayes Room
Dylan: We need to clean up the Kate Hayes Room. We’ll do that after the meeting.
Yeah we did.
Item 5. Mid-year Retreat (FRC Training)
Dylan: Who has things that may clash in the Winter period? We’ll probably have the
retreat straight before semester starts
Mickey: 20th of July is when Semester II starts
Raqeeb: We can't do N-Week of Semester II since new residents will be
moving in that week.
Ben McColl: I have Eastern Uni Games in the Winter.
Lucie: I was going to go to the snow, though there’s no definite date for that.
Helena: I’d prefer as close to start of Semester as possible
Dylan: Mid-year retreat will be different this year. It’ll just be a day, mainly because
the retreat we did last year could have been fit into one day if we kept only what
we might consider to be constructive.
Dylan: I don't really particularly see the value of having O-Week style training in Bush
Week since we've already had it. This mid-year retreat will mainly be working on
committee dynamic, preparing for Semester II, and making sure none of you burn
out. It'll be a day trip and just hop around Canberra. Just team-building sort of
things.
Dylan: Mid-year retreat will be in the period to Friday 10th to Sunday 12th of July.
Keep those dates free and let me know if there’s any clashes that arise.
Helena: How compulsory is it?
Dylan: Pretty compulsory.
Mickey: We signed off on FRC nominations that we would be able to make
the mid-year training.
Helena: We can just go chill at a park and do a picnic.
Dylan: Yeah that's probably what's going to happen. It'll be something good.
Item 6. Arts Report.
Ben Ingelbrecht: First of all quick Big Night Out de-brief: Thank you for attending BNO.
From where I was standing which was backstage, it looked like a really successful
night. One thing you need remember is that although it is still a competition that
should not be the focus of this event in particular. It is a night of fun with live music.
All you need to do is look at the Woroni album and see all the photos of the great
time that was had.
Ben Ingelbrecht: Fenner came 6th, but ultimately the scores reflected 3
judges’ opinion and not the wider student body. That being the case, we
have a People's Choice award poll on the IAC Facebook page - vote
honestly as there are no Art shield points at stake - you don't have to vote for
Fenner.
Ben Ingelbrecht: The people’s choice award will be awarded at Interhall
SPARTOS at the end of the year. Do give the band as well a pat on the back
since they did a fantastic job.
Sean attempts to pat Dylan on the back
Ben Ingelbrecht: Spelling Bee – Monday night, TV Room, 6.30 to 7.30pm. I can't
imagine it'd go for longer than an hour, even so we'll have to vacate because the
TV room is booked for Game of Thrones.
Ben Ingelbrecht: I'm sure there will be some snacks left over from Big Night In,
it's really good fun and really plough the way for Interhall Spelling Bee at
Burgmann at 7pm on Wednesday. Spelling Bee is surprising event you want to
get to, it's really competitive. I've heard a lot of interest from people.
Ben Ingelbrecht: Maybe we could rustle up some IB signs, there’ll be a
sausage sizzle at Burgmann. I’m not saying there’s a free dinner but there will
be snacks and a huge lot of fun.
Ben Ingelbrecht: This Friday we have Jungle Speed at 7pm in the Kitchens. I'd
encourage people to sign up, it gives me an idea on how to factor in how many sets
of Jungle Speed we need to get etc.
Ben Ingelbrecht: Only other thing I'd want to briefly touch on is Dance Night. Main
focus. It's a tier III event, which is on the 19th of May, and a couple of days after the
EGM. I went down to the Common Rooms, and a lot of people weren't able to
make the rehearsal today for Dance Night because of other commitments, I'd like to
particularly emphasise for people to attend.
Ben Ingelbrecht: Kat and Holiday have been putting a fantastic effort in
choreography. We'll do a Dance Night preview night, the date of which we’ll
work out. Each Hall and College will only get about 20 to 30 free tickets to
distribute, which we’ll do through the office - that's the fairest system to do it.
Sean: Will we start enforcing attendance for rehearsals?
Ben: What I would really hope is that people will naturally just tighten their
belts a little bit. We are getting a regular group coming along, I would really
love to push it up to 25, but I'm not sure how many people are willing to put in
the time. I do understand that it is a horrible assessment time for a lot of
people. At the end of the day, we'll just decide who the troupe is from the
most committed people.
Lucie: I think we could get people to commit,
Raqeeb: Regarding the question that you got regarding the amount budgeted for
the debating dinner, what was the follow-up to that?
Ben Ingelbrecht: I would love to do something special for those guys. I'm going to
give them a figure to work with between $50 - $100 and come up with what they’d
like to cook together. I would love all those who came to training - just have a nice
evening.
Ben Ingelbrecht: As the Arts calendar ends very early this term, we are looking to do
a Great Debate at Fenner. We would get the star debaters to adjudicate, and those
who didn’t get a chance to debate in the competition can have some fun there.
Sean: As a justification for the cost, they did come first in the competition. If
you want to compare it to the Sports budget,
Ben Ingelbrecht: I can also afford to be a little bit more flexible with the Arts
budget.
Item 7. Sports Report:
Sean: It’s been business as usual for Frisbee and Basketball this week.
Sean: The guys played Burgmann in basketball. We lost but my understanding is they
performed very well. The margin was very small, and we’ve been making
improvements each week as a result of the effort being put in at trainings.
Sean: Girls basketball lost by 1 to Unilodge. Injuries happened and morale goes
down. I don’t think this is something that anyone is taking heavily upon themselves,
there is great progress being made each week.
Sean: Frisbee, we had a game against Griffin. We did manage to change the date
of the Frisbee Grand Final to the Saturday. Matches are also now an hour long
instead of 45 minutes. This was because people wanted to have longer games,
particularly since ISO moved to term-long format this year.
Sean: Soccer is something we've started up. We had the girls start last week and the
justification for keeping the trainings separate is the slight intimidation factor that is
perceived when we have the guys playing with the girls. I feel I was justified in
making this decision due to what happened at the social game of soccer that was
played this afternoon – we had three girls show up today and leave after 10 minutes.
Sean: There’s the Facebook page up, I’ve shared that to the Fenner Hall page. If
there’s anyone not on, feel free to message anyone on the Sports subcommittee
and we can add you to that.
Sean: Soccer training times are:
Monday 5pm to 6pm Guys + Girls, with the exception of tomorrow.
Friday 5pm to 6pm Guys.
Saturday: Morning - 10 to 11am Guys, Afternoon 4 to 6pm Girls.
Sean: We will be looking into bookings at Willows, this is because soccer is an
anomaly in the sense that most training times that people can make it to are either
early in the morning or in the evening after uni finishes.
Raqeeb: This will be through ANU Sport right?
Sean: Yes.
Raqeeb: Alright, let me know before – I’d like to sit down and have a meeting
with ANU Sport to make sure that any invoicing we receive from them will be
delivered to us promptly. They did respond to our complaint about their
timeliness, so hopefully this won’t be a problem.
Tim: Do you know when ANU FC books out Willows on weekends?
Sean: I don't know the exact times, but I think it might be Saturdays at Willows
Tim: I'd expect it to be mostly full on weekends.
Lucie: Can you put a photograph of the timetable on the trainings for soccer in the
Facebook group?
Sean: Yep
Max: Was that womens training 10 to 11 on Saturday?
Sean: Nah that's guys’ soccer, so it doesn’t clash with Frisbee. We’ve ensured that
there’s no overlap between any trainings.
Item 8. Social Report
Mickey: First SIC party for this year is on Thursday! This is the Scribble Party at UniPub.
You wear a white shirt to the event, there'll be sharpies provided! As of Monday
tickets they'll be going very fast - Sam and Ben and they'll be posting on the FB
where they will be and when you can get a ticket from them. It’s a very good event,
so get in quick if you want to attend.
Mickey: On Tuesday we’ll be meeting with a potential venue for Mid-year ball and
will report back next week.
Mickey: The Bar Night with Griffin, the event request has been approved. We’ll be
leaving the creation of the poster to Griffin, so that will be up soon. It’ll be no cost to
the FRC since we already have food etc. on hand.
Mickey: Friday 29th of May - Red Frogs, Popcorn, Disney movie marathon!
Item 9. Treasurer/Secretary Report
Weekly expenditure has been attached at the end of the minutes.
Raqeeb: We’ve now received the Burgmann invoice ($55) for our contribution to the
Gender Bender Bar Night, so they will be paid promptly. Were you able to get
confirmation from B&G regarding the invoice for the Social Mixer, Mickey?
Mickey: I did talk to them and it’s only just gone through to their front office,
so we should hear more soon.
Raqeeb: Clubs & Societies: RAOK Week wrapped up and it was a fantastic week.
I’ve been talking to Wouter and we’ll be running a multicultural potluck on
Wednesday 27th May. There’s $200 allocated to it, we’ll be working out the details
but that could work in two ways:
-
-
We give a $20 subsidy to each group that cooks, where they submit the list
of ingredients they have, we collate it all together and the FRC will buy
$20 of ingredients for each group and then we ask the groups to bring
along whatever ingredients aren’t covered in that
The FRC goes out and fully subsidises whatever amount of dishes that $200
would cover, with the idea that these are dishes that will provide a base
level to feed everyone that attends.
Dylan: We could allow them to form groups, they go out and pay for their own food
and be reimbursed later.
Raqeeb: I’m not particularly fond of that idea, I think that’s prone to people
going over-budget and not being as efficient. The multicultural potluck last
year was quite complicated – this way we don’t need to process
reimbursements and instead have the FRC expenditure be centralised.
Dylan: So organise it like the O-Week potluck, but a smaller scale?
Raqeeb: Yep.
Tim: Could we get pre-paid Woolworth or Supabarn vouchers, to make things
easier?
Raqeeb: No, we would compromise financial integrity if we did that.
Raqeeb: I’ll be updating the Clubs & Societies Noticeboard this week, we’ll have
posters for each club up. I would like to ask you all to get in contact with one club
convenor, ask them what they’re planning and see if they need any advice - it’d be
good if you could report back next week.
Raqeeb: The Warren Commission will be delayed by a week, I’ve got a few people
lined up for articles but I forgot to give final reminders last Friday. So I’ll be giving
everyone another week to get their articles in.
Sean: Is there space for an article from me?
Raqeeb: Yes.
Stay tuned for Sean’s Fashion article.
Raqeeb: Huge thanks to Steph and Carly for writing the AGM minutes. They’ll be
cleaning them for typos, and the minutes should be published within the week.
Raqeeb: Storeroom is messy, we should set a date to clean it in the next couple of
weeks.
Helena: As in a stocktake?
Dylan: Nah, just cleaning the aisles.
Raqeeb: Also FRC archives – I assume you all have FRC related documents on your
computer that haven’t been backed up. We’ll collect all that onto an external hard
drive and Google Drive – so collect all this stuff together.
Dylan: You all should be using something like Google Drive or Dropbox anyway.
Raqeeb: if you aren’t using one of these systems we have the FRC Google
Drive which is already set up for everyone to use.
Raqeeb: Also FennerLife, we need to update the content for this term. Pass on all
that stuff to me, we can also stick Arts/Sports/Social posters up on there too.
Item 10. Advocacy
Dylan: We’ve had two anonymous advocacy requests in the past week. There’s one
regarding the vice-president role which says: Ben Ingelbrecht. Babe.
Ben Ingelbrecht: Oh, that’s so nice of them.
Dylan: Let it be known that Ben Ingelbrecht appreciated the compliment.
Sean: Let it be known that I would also like compliments.
Dylan: The other question was regarding the HDMI cable in the TV Room and also
where'd the TV Room remote go.
Raqeeb: The HDMI cable on the left has been broken for a while, I’ve talked
to Sammie and its fine for people to just use the HDMI cable from the DVD
player provided that they put it back. The added advantage of this is that it
lets you use the surround system!
The remote… it’s chained to the wall, so it’s always there.
Dylan: Keep in mind I won't start doing it for a while, but I'd like to add a little section
with international student issues. We may have to make an extra effort to chase
these issues because international students aren’t engaging with us. They're using
the form at least which, so that’s good.
Sean: How do you know, isn’t it anonymous?
Raqeeb: There’s an option for people to break anonymity and leave their
email address.
Dylan: We can get people to come to us, but we have to make the effort first. I'd like
some steam behind International Students knowing that the FRC is here for them
prior to the Advocacy Circle kicking off next semester.
Dylan: Any other issues?
Raqeeb: I had one person note that there was a lack of chairs in the South Library,
we’ll need to get some more up there.
Max: Wasn’t there 21 chairs in there from the past couple of days?
Raqeeb: We had to scrounge those chairs from other rooms – the study room
next to South Library is lacking chairs now.
Max: I’ve just got some comments regarding AGM and EGM. AGM was really good
thanks for running that. This year we did try to improve procedure, but if we're going
to do it, we should do it properly. We just need to tidy that up a little bit – there were
things like motions were proposed and seconded, but votes weren’t taken.
Dylan: That was more a discretionary thing, I started counting votes, given that no
one really had any objections I just keep going to speed the meeting along. The
formality of passing motions to accept reports is more to just give people the
opportunity to levy any major objections they may have regarding a report – and I
don’t think I precluded that opportunity from anyone.
Max: The other thing was that it appeared the FRC was voting as a group, I just want
to make sure that there wasn’t a forced thing?
Dylan: There were FRC members who abstained from voting and we didn’t all
vote in line. There was no discussion about how we should vote prior to the
AGM, and we didn’t organise to vote in a block. That’s also why I'm chairing
the EGM to remove myself from the debate and remove any incentive to do
as I do.
Max: Alright, that’s good to hear. There was also some suggestion made that SRs
don't do that much work. More generally, as we're all part of the Fenner Hall
leadership team – I’d like to think that we all rely on each other.
Helena: I’d like to respond to that since that question would be directed at
me. I do apologise completely any member of the Fenner Hall Leadership
team that felt like what I said a comment that devalues the work of SRs.
Rather, what I was trying to do, and evidently I tried to do ineffectively, was
validate any sort of remuneration to the Masters by comparing them to
another position that is equally as important to the Fenner community. It
wasn't an attempt to bring down the importance of SRs. I sincerely apologise
for that, and I do strongly believe that SRs are an integral part of the Fenner
community. .
Dylan: If you would like a formal response from me: I don't think it’s possible to
even compare the two.
Dylan: Any last questions?
Ben Ingelbrecht: Buy your musical tickets, its coming up soon!
Raqeeb: FennerLife calendar – there’s events for this term that aren’t on the
calendar yet, put these in!
Meeting close:
9:05pm.
Appendix A – Weekly Expenditure Report
FRC Weekly Expenditure
27th April to 3rd May
Category
Event
General FRC
AGM
Social
Tea Night
Arts
Big Night Out
Clubs & Societies
RAOK Week
Clubs & Societies
RAOK Week
Clubs & Societies
Clubs & Societies
RAOK Week
RAOK Week
Total
Description
Popcorn
Cheesecake
Band Dinner
Soup Ingredients
Tim Tams + Cake
Chocolate Milk for Movie
Night
Extra Soup Ingredients
$ 268.59
Cost
$
25.98
$
22.99
$ 103.60
$
34.57
$
54.96
$
$
10.49
16.00
Date
29/04/2015
29/04/2015
30/04/2015
29/04/2015
29/04/2015
29/04/2015
29/04/2015