Session Of January 23rd, 2020

Minutes Recorded by: McKenzie Craycraft, Secretary

Visitors: Judy Willis, Alexander Wildmain, Jonathan Lockridge, Miguel Gonzalez, Alan Clipperton, Don Egle

Call to Order at 11:00 AM

Senator Worrell prays

Roll Called

Approval of Minutes

Minutes approved at 11:05 AM

Officer Reports

PPT Murphy: Senator Ward is appointed student life committee and PR&R committee

Committee Reports

Senator Welch: For elections, elections are here, people are applying. Please keep on informing people to fill out the application.

Senator LaQuey: Student life committee, we have discussed different ideas for our project. We will start deciding soon.

Special Business

Swearing in Jonathan Lockridge

PPT Murphy: Appointing senator Lockridge to the constitution committee and PR&R committee.

Senator McClain: Who do you represent?

Senator Lockridge: Alpha Omega.

Speaker Egle: I commend you for what you are doing here on campus. We are happy to be here. We are here to discuss how we can represent and celebrate the students from different countries.

Speaker Clipperton: We represent 40 different countries.

Speaker Egle: For the last several months you have been discussing how to celebrate our international students. This is centered around representing all of the different flags. It is important to have context for this discussion. It is important that people know how to engage with this kind of display. There are two items we are going to discuss. First is how we can celebrate international students during GO week. We want to find how can we find a way to use technology to celebrate the different students. There are TVs everywhere in ASC. There is a TV that goes through artwork. The marketing team put each of the flags on the stages in the Belcher center and took video of them. We want to put that video of all the flags onto that TV. We will put text on it to celebrate every nation and every workplace. Long-term we want to celebrate each student. We are going to create an event where we can profile as many international students as we can and learn their major and home country and add their pictures into the rotation with the flags. There is no timetable on a video like this. We can keep that for an extended period of time. Visitors can see and enjoy this. This is a quick overview of our plan for the next 30 days. This plan provides context for campus and still meets what you would like.

Speaker Clippton: Our international student population is 13% of our student body. Nearly every school has something to recognize their international students, but it lacks context. There are very few C.C.U. schools that have an international student body that makes up 13% of their student body. We send a lot of students. This is a big deal to us. When a family comes onto the campus, we want them to see that we are about international things with global influence. This is why we want to do more than just flags and maybe a landscape. It is important to provide people with context. Our purpose in coming here today, is to clarify our plans and inquire if you had other ideas that would be better for the students you represent. Speaker Elge: The delivery platform on the TV can be used in other places. It can be in the social media, in the print marketing work, and it allows us to engage in the international conversation. It is not contained to one area, but to can also engage others. We think this is consistent with what you would like.

Speaker Clippton: Any questions?

Senator Worrell: As the person who has run point on this, it was brought to my attention that the international students wanted better recognition. I was originally not super excited to be a part of this group, but I have grown to really enjoy this group. They really desire representation because they feel like they were removed. To resolve that we put time into creating a Power Point with landscape photos, flags and the name of the countries which were represented. Rebekah Browning who was in charge at one point suggested not to put faces in the presentation. In the end we decided to just go with the landscapes and the flags. This was sent in in August. By the end of August, I finally found the right person and since then, I haven’t heard anything back. What happened with this issue?

Speaker Elge: Someone initially sent an email around thanksgiving that we received. President Lunsford contacted us about that time. Once we received this we reached out to senate.

Speaker Clipperton: Organizationally speaking, sometimes things just fall through. To your point, this did not move in the way it should have. This is part of why we are here. This has not have been a smooth process. We have spoken with Dr. Lunsford; he wants to celebrate our students. We are here to say that the hand-offs need to stop and make sure the next steps are what you would like. We want to fix these issues. Once we feel good about our next steps we are prepared to move quickly and get this done. I am sorry that this was a frustrating situation.

Senator Worrell: We would send follow up emails and we got responses saying that they were working on it, but nothing else. I was emailed about another international student recently. I will make another slide that we could put up. My second question is in talking with the international students, they were hurt because their representation was removed and not explained.

Speaker Clipperton: It is a little complicated. I can assure you that the decision to take the flags down was a surface level, environment, in the look decision of how the flags looked in the library. I cannot speak to the process of making that decision. But it had nothing to do with taking something away from the international students. We have more international students than we have had in our history. The flags were taken down, their decision was not to make the international students feel unwelcomed. I don’t want to get into the specifics and point fingers. But their desire was not to create an unwelcoming environment.

Speaker Egle: These renovations happen while students are gone, there are things we can do early to reinforce that this was not to hurt the international students. More broadly speaking, the international students are a major part of the university. A lot of this success is attributed to Dr. Clipperton’s efforts.

Senator Worrell: I know I am not in the place to make recommendations, but I think it is important to let administration know, students feel hurt when they are not included in making a decision. For example, no more fall graduation. I know this has nothing to do with you guys, but a decision was made without consulting the people involved.

Speaker Egle: Universities involve many different people. I hear you and I hear your points. We will pass this on so that these perspectives are represented.

Senator Worrell: Senate is here to be a voice for the students. Let us know of issues or decisions that need to be made.

Senator McClain: Along with the profile idea, would it be possible to include students from other parts of the school. That way we can be untied.

Speaker Egle: I think we can come back around to continue to elevate and recognize all of the students.

Senator McClain: I like keeping the pictures of the school in there.

Speaker Egle: That space is mainly just pictures. We are always looking for different students to always be ready to share their stories. If you would like to participate or have ideas send us email at marketing@letu.edu. I want to be clear, the event that we have referenced to will probably not be ready by Go Week. It will take time to finish this. Is that fair? I don’t want to create any false expectation.

Speaker Alan: We would like to use the video screen and instead of using the Power Point, use the video of the flags from Belcher. The first interaction would go up next week.

Speaker Egle: We hope to have that up and running by the end of the day.

Speaker Clipperton: This will be different from the Power Points. The video we create will be used through the rest of the semester.

Speaker Egle: The whole look has changed because we have stopped using Power Point and now it is connected to our website content management system. Power Point is not as usable.

PPT Murphy: Thank you for coming, it is nice to have our voices heard and the work that you are doing. To the point of the longer idea, if you talk to individual students there are many who are willing to participate in this idea.

Speaker Egle: Do y’all fill good about this?

Senator McClain: I know at the Impact meeting, they talked about a new position called multicultural ambassadors. You may want to coordinate with this group.

Senator Worrell: Motion to add Avent to the roll.

Approved

Senator Gowing: Since you are here, I have heard a lot of people talking about the multi-cultural ambassadors, many people are excited about this position.

Speaker Clipperton: We are grateful for your support. I get paid to advocate for international students and I am glad to see you supporting as well.

Senator Wang: Thank you for coming, is the specific idea of returning the flags somewhere on the table at all?

Speaker Clipperton: I am not sure on that, I have ideas, but nothing is concreate yet. We have landed on the temporary idea in the student center.

Speaker Egle: Physical flags and digital representations are very different. But the digital representation allows us to edit the flags. We can continue to keep this up to date.

VP Reid: Thank you for coming, we appreciate your time.

Old Business

None

New Business

None

Announcements

Senator LaQuey: Senate ice cream will be in ASC at 3:45.

VP Reid: We spoke with Kristy Morgan about how many people on this campus haven’t been to the airport. We could have senate ice cream at the airport. We can bus students over to the airport to let them see it.

Open Forum

None

Senator Gowing motions to adjourn.

Senator Wang seconds.

Meeting Adjourned at 11:48 AM