Pomona juniors and seniors: please vote here in the Pomona College Wig Awards! Vote for your favorite professors and write nice comments about them! Voting closes April 24th.
Elections have concluded, and ASPC has a new Senate for 2012-2013!
President: Sarah Appelbaum
VP Finance: Faye Wang
VP Campus Activities: Joseph Reynolds
Commissioner of Academic Affairs: Quinn Lester
Commissioner of Clubs and Sports: Emma Wolfarth
Commissioner of Communications: Jesse Pollak
Commissioner of Community Relations: Darrell Jones III
Commissioner of Environmental Affairs: Lena Connor
Commissioner of Off Campus Relations: Ryan Dodson
Senior Class President: Emily Ujifusa
Junior Class President: Tommy Conkling
Additionally, Emi Young was elected as the At-Large Student on the Trustee Student Affairs Committee, Diane Northern was elected as the At-Large Student on the Trustee Academic Affairs Committee, and Ian Gallogly was elected as the At-Large Student on the Trustee Finance Committee.
The First Year Class President, Sophomore Class President, and North and South Campus Representatives will be elected in the fall.
You can read more about the positions and duties of ASPC Senators here.
Between Monday (4/2) at 9pm and Tuesday (4/3) at 9pm, you can cast your ballot at the elections site. There will also be a candidates forum at Frank Dining Hall at 6pm on Monday and a Presidential Debate at 7:30pm in Rose Hills Theatre.
Please note that the ASPC elections use a preferential voting system. To vote, simply rank the candidates for each position according to your preferences (#1 for your first choice, #2 for your second choice, and so on). You are not required to rank all candidates.
If no candidate initially receives a majority of the vote, candidates will be eliminated based on the fewest number of first-preference votes, and their votes will be redistributed to the next highest preference listed on each ballot (i.e. #2 becomes #1, #3 becomes #2, etc.) until one candidate has received a majority of the vote.
Ranking candidates after your first-preference candidate does not hurt the chances of your first-preference candidate; it instead allows your second-preference candidate to receive your vote in the event your first-preference candidate is eliminated, and so on.
Candidate statements can be found here!
Candidates - Sarah Appelbaum and Rishi Sangani
Candidates - Gaby Baum, Andrew Cha, and Faye Wang
Candidates - Joseph Reynolds and Carter Ruff
Candidates - Chris Bergeron and Quinn Lester
Candidates - Courtney Hamilton and Emma Wolfarth
Candidates - Jesse Pollak and Tracy Zhao
Candidates - Julia Austenfeld, Darrell Jones III, and Eric Martinez
Candidates - Lena Connor and Wesley Quevedo
Candidates - Ryan Dodson and Trevor Smith
Candidates - Drew DiPalma, Blessing Havana, and Emily Ujifusa
Candidates - Tommy Conkling
Candidates - Emi Young
Candidates - Diane Northern
Candidates - Ian Gallogly and Jerry Jiang
Dear Students,
This year’s Annual Budget Hearings are almost here! Budget Hearings is a way for clubs and organizations to apply to the 5C student governments for funding for the 2012-2013 fiscal year. If you are involved in a club or organization, talk to your club president and treasurer about filling out the appropriate forms.
Budget Hearings for the 2012-2013 fiscal year will be April 13-15. The afternoon of Friday, April 13 will be for Pomona only clubs and all 5C clubs will take place during the days of April 14 and April 15.
To apply for funding you must do the following:
Be an approved and registered organization on CollegiateLink. (See instructions below on how to log into CollegiateLink)
Fill out the annual Budget Hearing form located on CollegiateLink by 11:59pm on Friday, April 6th. There will be a link on the main CollegiateLink home page.
Sign up for a time to present your request at Budget Hearing in the ASPC Office (SCC 244) between Monday, April 9 – Thursday, April 12. Presentations will consist of a 5 minute presentation and 5 minutes for questions.
If you have any questions in the coming weeks, please feel free to email me. I strongly encourage you to not leave these requests until the last moment. Requests cannot be submitted after 11:59pm on Friday, April 6th.
Best,
Leslie
Resolution of the Senate of the Associated Students of Pomona College
March 5, 2012
WHEREAS a complaint to the Chair of the Board of Trustees prompted an investigation into the work authorization papers of all college employees that led to the termination of seventeen employees; and
WHEREAS the process by which the Board of Trustees leadership dealt with the complaint and subsequent investigation is still unclear to students; and
WHEREAS the Board of Trustees is currently writing a report on the details of how the Board of Trustees leadership dealt with the complaint; and
WHEREAS students respect the need for whistleblower complaints to be kept anonymous;
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Senate of the Associated Students of Pomona College, on behalf of the student body, calls on the Board of Trustees to release to the college community the internal report on the events surrounding the worker terminations as soon as it is completed. We call on the Board of Trustees to release the report in full, with the exception of details that identify the person who made the complaint.
Hey everyone,
Here is some important news about elections, new positions on Board of Trustees Committees, information sessions, and Board of Trustees actions.
Elections to be a 2012-2013 ASPC Senator are coming soon! Signups will run from March 21 to March 28th. Voting will take place on the ASPC website from 9pm on April 2 to 9pm on April 3. More information about signups and the open positions will be sent out soon.
As you saw from Dean Feldblum's email, there will be three new positions on the ballot this spring, and they will all be at-large student representatives on committees of the Board of the Trustees. You will have the opportunity to run for a position on the Academic Affairs Committee, the Finance Committee, or the Student Affairs Committee (not the same as the SAC of the faculty). The students on the Academic Affairs Committee and the Finance Committee would also be expected to attend and participate in the Student Affairs Committee; therefore those positions will entail slightly more work. These three positions will NOT be ASPC Senators -- students interested in both being a Senator and serving on these committees should consider running for Vice President for Finance (also sits on the BoT Finance Committee and Student Affairs Committee), the Academic Affairs Commissioner (also sits on the BoT Academic Affairs Committee and Student Affairs Committee), or President or Commissioner of Environmental Affairs (both sit on the BoT Student Affairs Committee). Because these three positions are new, their responsibilities are not yet set in stone, but they will most likely include: attending Board of Trustees committee meetings and giving student perspectives, helping organize and decide on the topics for the fall student-trustee retreat, and helping organize dinners between students and trustees.
This Tuesday (tomorrow) at 7pm in SCC 208 I will be holding an open question and answer session about the new positions and the trustee-student task force on campus communication. I know a lot of the information in #2 is new and possibly confusing, so please come if you have any questions. The week after spring break, ASPC will be holding an information session about elections.
Later this week, a list of action items that the BoT took at last week's meeting will be put up on the Dean of Students Sakai site and at http://www.pomona.edu/about/leadership/board-of-trustees.aspx
Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or comments!
All my best, Nate
The ASPC Digital Media Group and The Coop Store are pleased to announce the launch of the totally revamped Coop Store website! In the works since last October, the new Coop Store website marks the transition from a hand-coded website to a fully dynamic online store.
The new online store is powered behind the scenes by Shopify and sports an original ASPC design with a mobile-optimized version of the site for smartphone users. Customers can now search for products, get instant feedback when their payment is authorized or order is shipped, and get accurate hours of operation for the Coop Store during holidays and breaks.
The changes reach all the way to the back-end system used by Coopsters to process orders. The Coop Store staff can now more efficiently update prices on products, track the fulfillment of online orders, and keep tabs on the over 107 products and 448 SKUs that comprise the Coop Store's online offerings. The new store also includes improved data security and fraud detection, which improve our ability to process credit card transactions.
Have a look around and let us know what you think!
Joseph Long
Lead Developer, ASPC Digital Media Group
In response to the documentation checks currently occurring at Pomona, the Associated Students of Pomona College approved the following statement at our meeting on November 21, 2011:
The Associated Students of Pomona College would like to express our support for all employees of Pomona College as valued and appreciated members of our community, regardless of immigration status. We would like to echo the unanimously passed faculty resolution on November 16, 2011, in stating our "concern about the recent actions taken by the College with regard to the immigration status of dozens of faculty, staff, and students. We are concerned about the message this review of immigration status sends, particularly its effects on the College climate and our educational mission. This issue affects all of us. We call on the Board of Trustees to assert its commitment to an inclusive environment that welcomes people regardless of their race, color, creed, religion, national or ethnic origin, sex, gender, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, pregnancy, disability, medical condition, veteran's status, or immigration status."
Additional sources and reading:
Pomona Reviews Employee Documents; WFJ Protests in The Student Life
Faculty Resolve to Support Workers; Students, Staff Protest Document Checks in The Student Life
It's that time of year again! The registrar has released the course schedule for the Spring 2012 semester, and we've imported all the course data into the our pomona schedule builder tool. It's also been moved to the ASPC server, which will be its permanent home.
Let us know if you spot any inconsistencies or problems by emailing webmaster@aspc.pomona.edu!
(Also, don't forget to write reviews for your courses to help each other choose professors for next semester.)
Fall elections have concluded, and ASPC has new representatives!
Rishi Sangani is the First Year Class President, Frances Kyl is the Sophomore Class President, Nick Lawson is the South Campus Representative, and Anna Gibson is the North Campus Representative.
You can read more about their positions and duties here.
Between Monday (9/19) at 9pm and Tuesday (9/20) at 9pm, you can cast your ballot at the elections site. There will also be a candidates forum at Frank Dining Hall at 5:45pm on Sunday.
In addition to the student government positions, the entire student body will vote on a change to the ASPC Constitution. The proposed change replaces gendered language in the Constitution with gender-neutral language. Currently, anyone mentioned in the Constitution is referred to as "s/he." However, this term only accommodates the gender binary, with which many students at Pomona do not identify. Therefore, if the change passes, any instance of the old language is replaced with the position title, for example, "the commissioner." The ASPC Senate has fully endorsed this change.
Please note that the ASPC elections use a preferential voting system. To vote, simply rank the candidates for each position according to your preferences (#1 for your first choice, #2 for your second choice, and so on). You are not required to rank all candidates.
If no candidate initially receives a majority of the vote, candidates will be eliminated based on the fewest number of first-preference votes, and their votes will be redistributed to the next highest preference listed on each ballot (i.e. #2 becomes #1, #3 becomes #2, etc.) until one candidate has received a majority of the vote.
Ranking candidates after your first-preference candidate does not hurt the chances of your first-preference candidate; it instead allows your second-preference candidate to receive your vote in the event your first-preference candidate is eliminated, and so on.
Here are all the candidate statements
Candidates - Anna Gibson, Jeff Levere, and Jonny Wang
Candidates - Robert Chew, Nick Lawson, Michael Maltese, Joseph Reynolds, and Sidney Rupe
Candidates - Dustin Godevais and Frances Kyl
Candidates - Tina Bencik, Emily Glass, Rob Knickerbocker Stephanie Micham, and Rishi Sangani
Welcome to the new website of the Associated Students of Pomona College! As the President of the ASPC, I’m excited to share with you some of the ASPC Senate’s ambitious agenda for the 2011-2012 year. In fact, we’ve already accomplished several of our goals, such as ending the ‘Gotcha’ program and voting to implement a sustainability project in Big Bridges Auditorium. What follows is a list, by no means exhaustive, of some of the important projects and developments on the Senate’s agenda.
One of my biggest goals is updating ASPC's web presence, and this new website is one giant leap for our web operations. Not every page of the website is finished, and the design isn’t finalized, but we decided to put up this semi-finished version in time for fall elections because it is such an improvement over the last version. This new website will include many more useful services by the end of the year.
On September 5th, the Senate unanimously voted to loan the college $75,000 to replace the lighting system in Big Bridges with state of the art LED lights. This loan will diversify ASPC’s investments, and it gives us the opportunity to give back to the Pomona community while eventually increasing the size of our reserves. We hope for future Senates to continue this program of loaning money to the college for sustainability projects.
I’m also pleased to report that Dean of Campus Life Ric Townes has confirmed that the ‘Gotcha’ program will not continue this year. The Office of Campus Life (OCL) will be considering other security awareness programs in the near future, and the Dean Townes has guaranteed that ASPC’s Residence Hall Committee will be involved in deciding on a program that is both effective and respectful of student privacy.
One issue that has just risen to the top of my agenda is Resident Advisor compensation at Pomona. RA salaries have suffered large cuts in the past few years, and the compensation package for Pomona RAs is currently the lowest of the Claremont Colleges. Given the difficulties of the job and the fact that through the first weeks of classes OCL has struggled to fill RA positions for the 2011-2012 year, I believe that cutting RA compensation is exactly the wrong thing to do during this time.
ASPC is moving ahead with the renovation of the Coop Store, to take place over winter break. The ASPC fully owns and operates the Coop Store and Coop Fountain, and we recognize that the Coop Store is in desperate need of a renovation. Last year’s Senate voted to allocate money to the renovation, and now this year’s Senate will be in charge of implementation. Student input in the design will be essential, and I’ll be sure to keep the student body involved in the process.
ASPC is also representing students on many administration-led initiatives. The college is currently looking for an outside consultancy to conduct a complete security review of the campus. ASPC’s Vice President of Finance Leslie Appleton and I are participating in these meetings and providing the student viewpoint on security measures. I want to reiterate my promise to fight against any invasive security camera presence on campus, as well as any restrictions on student mobility within the residence halls.
The college is currently undergoing a reexamination and revamping of the Career Development Office. The trustees have endorsed the creation of a structured “Four Year Plan for Personal and Career Development,” and ASPC will be providing input for the implementation of this plan. There is a push to make certain elements of the plan mandatory, such as creating a resume and a list of possible post-college jobs/positions. Because of a survey given last year, I know that the student body is divided on any compulsory plan; so, in my discussions with administrators I will try to help them strike a balance between a more structured and a more flexible plan.
Now you know what ASPC’s current priorities are for the year. If you have any questions, problems, or comments, or if you want to add to the list of priorities, please do not hesitate to email me at president@aspc.pomona.edu. I’m always eager to hear from students and to represent their concerns both within Senate and to the administration.