Lexington (MA) High School Senate

LEXINGTON HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT-FACULTY SENATE

2001-2002

Moderator Ilana Kessler, Assistant Moderator Michael Fiveash, Secretary Sara Enders

<http://lhs.lexingtonma.org/senate>

Agenda

For the April 10, 2003 meeting

1. Announcements

2. Committee Reports

3. Electronic Listening Bill

4. New Business

Minutes

>From the April 3, 2003 meeting:

[Quorum reached, 7:50 AM]

[Minutes Approved, 7:50 AM]

[Agenda Approved, 7:50 AM]

Announcements

[No Announcements]

Committee Reports

Bogart: This is not so much a report as a request that everyone on the Climate Committee meet next week. We all have to try to meet next Thursday to work out CRUD Day. It shall be done after vacation rather than before.

Vachani: The Social Action Committee met and approved one community service form.

Rehman: The Oversight Committee met. We discussed the possibility of problems in the outside eating areas. There are ample trashcans and no problems.

Student Announcements Bill

Wong: I move to call the question [on Senator Kafrissen's amendment to Senator Harper's amendment].

[Question is called]

[Amendment passes, 13-11]

Wong: I move to call the question [on Senator Harper's amendment.]

[Question is called]

[Amendment passes, 16-13]

Bogart: Um, tch, uy, I cannot vote for this bill anymore. It is a waste of paper, a waste of

bureaucracy, and a matter of timing. Who is. Who is going to type them up? Will there be a deadline? That means that on Tuesday and Thursday mornings there needs to be a deadline for announcements. Teachers can just make their homerooms listen. This is part of our job and is not an issue.

Buttaro: I think there needs to be a way for the general announcements to be read but the specific grade announcements read only to the grade. That should be up to specific departments. It would be their responsibility to stuff the folders.

Rehman: Part of the problem is not just that they cannot take care of their classes, as they clearly can, but in some homerooms the teachers find themselves with their ear to the PA system, reiterating the announcements to their classes. I think we should instead make a website. If students missed homeroom, they could still find out what is going on. Maybe one could even have a daily copy, as well as just scanning a list of announcements, off of the Senate website; it would just be another link.

Gingrande: In response to what Senator Bogart said, I was originally not in favor of the waste of hard paper, and I am still against that idea, but what swayed me the other way is that hard copies do not need to take the form of sheets of paper. This does not explicitly say that pieces of paper will be given to each homeroom, but perhaps for certain classes that cannot hear them. This bill allows us to manipulate what would be a hard copy, picking where necessary. It will not be a huge disaster.

Enders: My only concern is that I have really enjoyed hearing the announcements of the other grades. I know what is going on in the reast of the school, and I feel connected to the school.

Catsouphes: Senator Enders got one of the main points across; if we are trying to build community, why segregate the school into grades and groups of interest? I like knowing what other people are doing. I do not understand why we would want to [only read announcements directly relevant to a given homeroom.] Vis the volume of the announcements and not being able to do anything about it, there are classes where they are audible, but there are, as in the Science building, places where they are inaudible. This should be looked into.

Bogart: I really like the website idea. Why can't we just put them on the website? I do not think that we should do the hard copy of paper. Who is going to determine what is read and not read? What gets stuff, what gets announced? Vis the audibilty issue, the construction has caused many problems; for example, the lighting system is dying. Do we accept that and do plays without lights? Can you move to strike an amendment?

David: A move to reconsider is possible.

Vogelzang: There is a rational point about it being useless. We should make sure that we are not just doing this to fill time. There are a lot of reasons to do this anyway. This could be a more important point.

[Clarified that this rationale point is no longer in the bill]

Kafrissen: I am disappointed that Senator Harper is not here. I would have liked to have heard the rationale behind his amendment, although in discussion many expressed an interest in it due to students coming in late, and the PA not working. I added that clause about the amendment, and if we find that it would be tremendously burdensome, we will still be able to go ahead with the bill. Another practical bill could be doing it in some other way. I do have to say that it is always a good idea round this place to have something written down, as lots of policy is instituted and then forgotten. I am not saying that that would be true of announcements. As far as the paper argument goes, that is 240 pieces of paper a week; I would say that 240 copies are made every twenty minutes from what I personally perceive. That is not a cornerstone issue. The bill still has a great deal of merit, and if it turns out not be feasible [the amendment] should not stand in the way! Communications is now the worst it has been in the twenty-five years that I have been here, and I am amazed at how little people know. This is only for the better.

Inouye: Senator Bogart's concerns are not even relevant. Now that we have that clause, it is no longer practical. Most people will not know what we mean. The bill looks dumb. If we do reconsider it, let us make it more specific, for example stating that one hard copy should go to each homeroom. We should work on this issue outside. This is not relevant to the bill. As of now we do not have any way to actually do this. Maybe in committee we could look for other ways of dispersing stuff.

Colarusso: I want to bring the discussion back to the spirit behind the bill, related to its being student announcements and having auditions. Part of what Senator Kafrissen missed about the announcements was the spirit that used to be there. The paper cuts out the whole idea of spirit and personality. As far as the different grades, it is not as if longer announcements eat into class time now. The volume is an issue, and copies should be made available. Maybe we could amend the amendment to have it simply make copies available, leaving it broad so that we are not caught up in the minutia. We do not have copies or email

at this time; they are both potential solutions. Personality yay!

David: I will now commence a small tirade. I really like what Senators Enders and

Catsouphes said. I understand that there are concerns about [announcements] going on and on, and people ignoring debate results and the Senior Prom, but we need institutional awareness. I fully agree with Senators Enders and Catsouphes. I urge against reconsideration of the amendment. Just because we could do something doesn't mean that we have to. One can type up and send an email, and we would not need paper, though teachers could print it out. That would be perfectly legitimate, but we must ask, who will type this up? We must find some spawn of David Nedzel, a clone‚Ä¶ the alleged clone of

Nedzel could break them down. This is very easy. Let's get this done.

Rehman: I move to amend by adding a line to the last section, "Following very homeroom a copy of the announcements will be posted on the Senate or School Website." I think that, to echo Senator Kafrissen, we need written records, and we should have the website to complement the physical copies. People who cannot hear the announcements can turn to the website as an alternative. [If we sent out an email] it might be hard for all the teachers to log off, log on, set up the internet‚Ä¶ if everyone logs on at the exact same time, it might slow down the system. The spawn of Nedzel could put it on the website.

Vachani: I agree with Rehman's idea on the website or listserv, but it is too specific. We need to figure out how to do this, and find time to do this. The last sentence was sufficiently vague that we were given latitude. We could provide what they need without this amendment. It is now too specific.

Girondel: I am opposed even though it is a good idea. We need to work that out later. It is a little redundant with what we have just passed. Also, I guess we should deal with this, and try to finish it today.

Bogart: I am against this. As I recall, when we had student announcers in the past, they were colorful, entertaining announcers. Everyone was so good that students wanted to listen. That is all that we need. We do not need all this other stuff. If it was just student announcements I would vote for it, but who is going to type up everything?

Kafrissen: Once again, we are getting bogged down in implementation. We keep putting more and more into bills, and that alienates people. People then do not vote for it because they do not like some stage in the implementation. As recently as last year, teachers received a list of the announcements every day. I will discuss the process by which this was done, and report back to Senate on what was said. We might find this just too difficult. I urge that we not get caught up in the implementation. The intent of the bill was to have student announcers, not forty different ways to do this.

Wong: I move to call the question.

[Question is called]

[Amendment Fails]

Dhanani: Ideally, in my humble opinion, this bill should be scrapped an copies of the email

should be emailed out. Then there would be the option to print them and to read specific ones; the PA is superfluous. The other points about personality and hearing stuff from other grades, those two things aren't really carried through by what I think should happen. There is merit to just forgetting about the PA entirely. Then it is more localized. It is not just someone's droning voice lulling you to sleep, but someone in front of you's lulling voice.

Ludwig: I move to call the question.

[Question is called]

[Bill Passes, 21-12]

Wong: I move to adjourn.

[Senate Adjourns with the Bell]

Senate Absences, March 27, 2003 (* denotes excused)

H. Turner K. Zioto