Rese Fox 4 MSA

In attendance:

Chris Flack—Students for PIRGIM, LSA
Bretlan Fletcher—MSA Engin. Rep
Rese Fox—Chair, MSA LSA rep, Students for PIRGIM
Daniel Taylor-Cohart—Student at Large, LSA
Tim Wiggins—MSA LSA rep
Audrey Vesota—Students for PIRGIM, LSA

AMU Conference:

AMU stands for Association of Michigan Universities (www.amuweb.org). There is a meeting at Central Michigan University on the weekend of February 19-20^th. MSA will sponsor 2-4 students to attend. ERC will determine who will attend through interviews. We will send out a short e-mail to MSA introducing AMU, its goals, and the time of the interviews. Here are our potential questions for the interview:

Why are you interested in going to the AMU conference?

Explain what you plan to do/your plan of action.

What issues are important to you?

Would you be interested in going to the DC Summit (see below)?

What's the most important issue facing UM students? Michigan students? Students in general?

How can a group like AMU help you in accomplishing your goals?

What do you plan to do after attending this conference/what do you hope to bring back?

DC Summit

The DC Summit (www.dcsummit.org) is sponsored by the Minnesota State University Student Association (MSUSA), Minnesota's equivalent of AMU (see above). MSUSA is much more active than AMU because it employs 10 full-time, professional staff and works on student issues at the campus, city, state, and national levels. The conference is aimed at increasing and protecting higher education funding and creating and strengthening state student associations like AMU.

The DC Summit Agenda Includes

·        Federal Financial Aid Lobbying Training

·        Reauthorization of the Higher Education Act Lobbying Training

·        Campaign skills workshop

·        Creating or building your state student association workshop

·        Issue Briefings, Strategy Sessions, and Case Studies

·        Job Fair

·        Organizational Booths

The DC Summit runs from March 11^th-14^th. There is an $85 registration fee not including lodging. The George Washington Inn is 2 blocks from the conference center. A regular double costs $170/night, and a deluxe which lodges four people costs $186.

We will want some more information before drafting a resolution.

Housing and City Government

Students for PIRGIM is working on a campaign to increase density downtown. ERC should address tenants' issues and options because MSA does not sponsor AATU (Ann Arbor Tenants Union) anymore. We also need to work on sending more students to City Council and Planning Commission meetings because there is not a lot of voice on student issues and we don't want students to be vilified.  Students for PIRGIM also wants to work with neighborhoods.

Bretlan mentioned that some properties might not be updated as much as hoped to due grandfather clauses. He asked about profit rates, which we thought was around 15%. Bretlan suggested that perhaps taxes are too high for landlords to make all of the updates necessary and that the city should give a tax break for academic housing. We should also look at what other colleges and universities are offering for off-campus housing and what programs they have in place. We were also wondering which landlords were registered with the off-campus housing program.
 
The next City Council meeting is Monday, February 7^th.
Planning Commission meetings are the second Tuesday of every month, so the meeting is expected to be on Tuesday, February 8^th.

Audrey and Chris suggested we provide information to students about what issues to pay attention to at these meetings. We should include information on increasing downtown density and issues that indirectly affect student housing.  

Public Relations

Tim Wiggins is waiting to hear from the Daily on including a succinct MSA update like Crime Notes. If you like this idea, please e-mail the Daily at news@michigandaily.com

We are also waiting for Judy, MSA's webmaster, to update the MSA website. Her e-mail is judyyu@umich.edu, but Amy McGovern just sent out an e-mail asking that requests for the website be sent to her: asmcg@umich.edu.  

Regents/Administrators Open House

This open house would provide basic information about what the Regents and administrators do. We would ask them to be prepared to talk about their job responsibilities. We would publicize this event a lot and have an interesting tag line like "Meet the people who are raising your tuition!" We would also think about posting fun facts. We could encourage students to ask the Regents on their view on having a student regent. We would plan on having the event after the Regents meeting on February 17^th.
 
MSA's AA Housing Review Site

Right now people are just beginning to use MSA's AA Housing Review website (http://www.msa.umich.edu/housing). We want to work on having more publicity around strategic times of the year and evaluate in February if more publicity is needed.

Next meeting: Thursday, February 3rd, 6:30 PM, MSA Office, 3rd floor of the Union

Guest Speakers

Student Health Insurance

We had a really long presentation on student health insurance through UHS and provided by the Chickering Group <http://www.chickering.com>. In all honesty, I did not pay a lot of attention to it, but they did provide us with an information packet. The presenters said that they tried to make their insurance the most comprehensive at a reasonable price. Chickering's customers include Stanford, Northwestern, University of Chicago, University of Oregon, University of Louisville, Boston University, Oregon State University, Michigan State, Cal Tech, Columbia, NYU, American University, Emory, Penn, Indiana, and the University of Iowa. Brian Hull, MSA's treasurer, brought up that they did not cover sex reassignment surgery even though research shows these operations are necessary for mental health. The insurance agent said that this would be too expensive to cover currently but they did work to expand new treatments like acupuncture (hopefully she didn't mean these eastern techniques cure transexualism).

M Rec Sports: Outdoor Adventures

This was pretty basic; Outdoor Adventures offers some really fun activities to check out:

<http://www.recsports.umich.edu/outdooradv>. There would be a meeting at noon on Friday to discuss Outdoor Adventures at Atlanta Bread.

Officer Reports

Because I'm writing this report up a few days after the MSA meeting, I can't remember who said what, but here are some important announcements

Southworth Presentation & Next Week's Meeting Starts at 6:30

MSA will host other student governments on campus (UAC, LSA-SG, Rackham, etc) for dinner and then we will have a presentation on the Southworth case on determining student group funding.

MSA Retreat 1.30.05

The MSA retreat is this Sunday, and Steering Committee will take place at the retreat. FYI: Steering is the meeting in which MSA execs and committee and commission chairs look over what is going to happen at the coming Tuesday's meeting.

SOAR (Student Organization and Recognition Advisory Committee)

Some reps this week would be discussing the non-discrimination clause and housing desegregation, or a plan to reverse the trend that many minorities are living on North Campus. I can't quite figure out how the acronym SOAR was determined from the title of this committee.

MSA's Account

Elliot Wells-Reid, the Chief of Staff, let us know at Sunday's Steering meeting that we need to talk to our Treasurer, Brian Hull, before introducing expensive resolutions. Right now we have about $50,000 in discretionary funds and should get about $33,000 back from Michael Moore tickets and $41,000 back from DC bus tickets. Next week's resolutions will cost about $8,300 and we are hoping to get Wesley Clarke to speak at the International Relations kick-off, which will set MSA back about $10,000.

Committee Reports

I volunteered to be the MSA rep for the Provost Council, but I am waiting on hearing from the Campus Governance Committee Chair Matt Baum for more information.

Old Business

Motion to Form an Investigative Committee

This commission was meant to investigate an e-mail sent out on the DC buses. Although the vote to not even consider the question failed, the motion to approve the commission failed.

New Business (Voted on at MSA meeting 2.2.05)

Funding for LGBT Commission Club Fab-Queer Soiree

This resolution is to create a safe, supportive environment for the LGBT community and allies whom often experience ridicule at traditional Valentine's Day events. The cost will be $933 for room rental, security detail, music, decorations, and publicity.

Education the Campus Community on Hate Crimes

The Minority Affairs Commission wants to address recent hate crimes by publicizing information on hate crimes, the University's policy on hate crimes, and the current process for reporting hate crimes. They hope to receive $2,500 for ads, advertisements, posters, and a forum.

Fund Molly Secours Speaking Event

The Peace and Justice Commission wants to bring Molly Secours to campus for V-Day, the global movement to stop violence against women and girls, for $2,300. Molly Secours is a writer/speaker/filmmaker/activist and has been called an "uncompromising fighter for racial equity and social justice." 

Fund Tim Wise Speaking Event

Tim Wise is the Director of the Association for White Anti-Racist Education (AWARE) and was the featured lecturer for the UM 2004 MLK Symposium. The Peace and Justice Commission hopes to secure $2,500 for this event.

That's it for this meeting. If you have any more questions, please let me know!

~Rese

I spoke with Amy, MSA's Office Assistant, about getting the website (www.msa.umich.edu) updated to include recent resolutions and minutes. Currently, the minutes haven't been updated since January 6th, 2004, and the resolutions look to be about a year old, as well. Amy told be that the MSA Webmaster, Judy Yu, should be updating the site within a few weeks. In the meantime, I will continue to post information I feel is relevant, but if you would like me to add something, go into more detail, or watch for something in an upcoming meeting, please add a comment to my blog with the request.

I e-mailed Judy about posting my blog next my contact information on the MSA website, as well, and she e-mailed me back today and liked the idea. She said she would add my blog when she updates the rest of the site.

Thanks to Ann Arbor is Overrated for the very nice comment on January 19th, http://www.annarborisoverrated.com/archives/2005_01.html. Also, according to pre-law advisor Joe Henderson with whom I met earlier this fall, Phil 201: Intro to Logic should provide adequate preparation for the LSAT.

McFo and I held our weekly ERC meeting on Friday because Students for PIRGIM had their mass meeting during our normal 6:30 meeting time. Tim Wiggins, an MSA rep, also attended.

DC Lobby Day for MSA

During this meeting we talked about a DC lobby day for MSA members. Specifically, we looked at different programs being held in DC for college students, comparing two programs. The first was the United States Student Association's 36th National Grassroots Legislative Conference and National Student Lobby Day from March 19th through the 22nd, http://www.usstudents.org/brochure.pdf. The second conference was the Minnesota State University Student Association's (MSUSA) DC Summit from March 11th through the 14th, http://www.dcsummit.org/. Overall, we decided that MSUSA's DC Summit was better for us because it's less expensive and includes presentations to enhance organizing skills between statewide student governments. Michigan's student governments really don't have a very strong or active network, which is really unfortunate. Hopefully, we can learn new skills to help change that.

City Council

Next, we looked into finding when the next City Council meeting was going to happen. Unfortunately, the next one is February 7th. We spent a bit of time looking online, and there is a discussion of the location of the new high school in Ann Arbor this Tuesday, but we decided that this meeting wasn't extremely relevant to students so it would not be warranted to skip our MSA meeting for it. The meeting will run on Ann Arbor's local TV station Wednesday at 10 AM, Friday at 10 PM, and Sunday at 2 PM.

Regents Meeting/Open House?

We planned on having our letter on the Frieze Building ready for Wednesday's Regents meeting. As a side note, the letter is meant to communicate to the Regents that students support having the Frieze Building converted into additional housing because there have been active community members resisting this, and it would be appropriate for MSA to voice student concerns as not a lot of students have said much yet. I actually finished up the first draft today (1.23.05). Next, we discussed holding a "Regents Open House" in MSA Chambers for students and MSA members to get to know the Regents better. We would really try to publicize the event a lot and would hopefully have food (but not the pizza from the Union, because Regent Brandon is the Chairman and CEO of Domino's). I e-mailed the MSA President, Jason Mironov, to get his thoughts on if the Regents would be interested at all in participating in something like this. I really hope at least a few of them would consider coming. Students should have more opportunities to meet with the Regents even though there is some representation by having MSA at the Regents meetings. It's important for Regents to hear from non-MSA students.

Student Lobby Day in Lansing

Finally, we discussed a campus-wide lobby day in Lansing. Although we really would like to have one, we don't want to do a bad job planning one. As it stands, we can't plan a lobby day between me, McFo,  and Tim. We thought the lobby day could focus on student voting rights, higher education funding, and maybe mercury levels. If it is possible to write legislation to decrease textbook prices from rising, we might also do a campaign on that. We talked about recruiting and training more people to work this project. McFo is going to make some quartersheets for recruitment and I'm going to write a class rap. Tim is going to contact Amy Keller from RHA (Residence Halls Association) to see about advertising in the res halls, and I am going to talk to Students for PIRGIM's textbooks campaign coordinator Mike Akresh about textbook legislation in California. McFo also contacted VP of Government Relations Cynthia Wilbanks, and we have a meeting with her this Friday at 2 PM to discuss a Lansing lobby day. Hopefully she will agree to run a training session for students. We also thought that if we learned enough skills on from the DC Summit and had enough interested students in planning a lobby day in Lansing, we might also be able to assist other campuses in Michigan and plan a statewide student lobby day in Lansing in the future.

Our next meeting is this Thursday, January 27th, at 6:30 PM in the MSA Office. All are welcome!

I'm also going to attend the off-campus housing advisory board meeting tomorrow  from 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM. Anita Leung, the VP of MSA, usually attends, but she can't for this meeting.

That's it for now. Have a productive week!

Rese

Yea! The resolution I co-sponsored passed unanimously: "Resolution to Support Conversion of the Frieze Building Site into Additional University Housing." McFo and I will be writing up letters to support new University housing to University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Paul N. Courant, Dean of Students Sue Eklund, and the Board of Regents. We will work on this Friday at 2 PM during the ERC meeting in the ERC office of MSA Chambers, third floor of the Union.

The "Resolution to Fund Women's Health and Fitness Day 2005" was also unanimously passed, and MSA allocated $4,300 to their event, estimated to cost $15,780 in total.

MSA also approved BPC's (Budget Priorities Committee's) Review Board Recommendations and Budget Priority Appeal Board Recommendations:

Budget Priority Review Board Recommendations

 

Sashai Alvarez

Chris Blauvelt

Abby Flora   

David Joo

Alana Kuhn

Nicole Stallings

James Waldeck                    

Robert White

Tim Wiggins

 

Budget Priority Appeal Board Recommendations

 

Riana Anderson

Denny Chan

Nathan Fink

Bretlan Fletcher

Arielle Linsky

Robbie O'Brien

Justin Paul

Robert Reznick

Raphael Schwartz

Finally, there was a "Motion to Form an Investigative Committee" because a member of the Peace and Justice Committee sent out an e-mail for the DC buses with some partisan opinions attached. The copy of the e-mail I received tonight had one comment with a definite partisan opinion, but this comment was not directly linked to the title of Peace and Justice co-chair.  Right now I am uneasy about this process, as I know that the co-chair of this committee is very dedicated, and it would be a shame to lose this person. Right now I feel it's better to have a dedicated co-chair who made a mistake but wouldn't do so again compared to a lukewarm co-chair who wouldn't make mistakes because he or she wouldn't do much at all. 

That's it for now! Take care!

Rese

I attended an Ann Arbor/University of Michigan (AAUM) Campus Neighbors, a group composed of University staff and administrators, Ann Arbor landlords, employees of the City of Ann Arbor, and students.

Housing Survey

This month's discussion focused on a potential survey created by a Ford School of Public Policy class taught by Professor Elisabeth Gerber. Students were assigned to four stakeholder groups: landlords, students, neighbors and the city. Ford School students visited with these stakeholder groups and created recommendations for the survey according to interview results. The research was only qualitiative, and suggestions for the survey were asked to be "revenue neutral changes" to city laws. The three focuses of the survery were 1) trash and litter, 2) fire and safety and 3) parking. I mentioned that the survey should include questions about pushing back lease signing dates, lease certification, cleaning fees, and having leases available ahead of signing dates.  I will e-mail Professor Gerber to see if I may have permission to post the survey questions on my website and perhaps ArborUpdate so that she can receive feedback and suggestions from more students. The survey revisions are due by the end of next week so that they may be sent out and results may be reviewed at February's AAUM Campus Neighbors meeting.

Clarifications and Laws: Leases and Cleaning Fees

Alan J. Levey, the Director of Public Affairs and Information from the Housing Information Office, let me know that currently the University has reviewed leases from about 550 landlords. As I understand it, this certification ensures that the leases do not contain illegal clauses. However, landlords may add addendums to the certified leases, which can cause problems. One landlord suggested that these addendums should also be kept in the Housing Information Office. Some landlords also explained to me that it is very helpful for students to bring their business to landlords holding affiliations to groups such as the Washtenaw Area Apartment Association. We then discussed cleaning fees. According to AAUM Campus Neighbors, cleaning fees are legal if they are non-refundable. "Prep-fees," I believe, are not. The distinction, I believe, is that cleaning fees are for future uncleaniliness when new tenants move out, while "prep fees" are illegal because they charge a new tenant for an old tenant's mess. I tried to draw a line between cleaning fees as a strategy to increase security deposits beyond their legal limits. The landlords were not too happy with that. One landlord said that cleaning fees were necessary because a landlord can't make someone pay to have a property cleaned when the tenant has already moved out, but they can't charge the new tenant, so the way she worked around this problem is she "hired" her tenants for their cleaning services, allowing her to return the cleaning fees for good tenants while not technically making the cleaning fees refundable.

Housing Review Website

I also mentioned that ERC would be working to publicize MSA's Ann Arbor Housing Review website http://www.msa.umich.edu/housing/, but landlords thought that these were extremely unfair. In their experiences, the worst tenants who broke something or did something wrong would always be upset with them, but good tenants would leave thank you notes and were pleased with their experiences. They thought that students using the review site would only be the bad tenants venting and not the good tenants with positive feedback. It's important for MSA and the ERC to keep this in mind, as it would not be worth much to only identify the bad landlords; I think it would be more useful to know the good ones. : )

Zoning and Occupancy

After this discussion on Professor Gerber's survey, we began to focus on zoning and occupancy laws. As I understand it, neighborhoods are zoned according to the relationships and number of occupants. "Family" neighborhoods are numbered R1, R2, and R3. People related by blood, marriage, or adoption or households holding less than four occupants may live in a R1, R2, or R3 neighborhood. "Student" neighborhoods are zoned R4, allowing up to six occupants, only allowing for special exemption use for very large households like co-ops, fraternities, and sororities. Some attendants suggested that very large houses such as those located on Michigan (Ave, St?) should be allowed to hold more occupants, as they can have 8 or 10 bedrooms and wondered if zoning could be on a site by site instead of neighborhood basis. However, a woman from the zoning board mentioned that this is hard to pull off logistically, because people could add additions to their homes and neighborhoods would not support these changes.

Fire Safety

We expanded on this topic by talking about fire safety and students who live in attics and basements, exceeding zoning occupancy limits and endangering their lives. Student neighborhoods hold older houses more succeptible to fire. Further, because the living situation in student houses and apartments is not like an integrated family it's harder for individual tenants to know the activities going on in the house and the whereabouts of roommates, making it more difficult to prevent fire and know whether other housemates have escaped burning houses or if they were not at home at all. I let AAUM Campus Neighbors know that many students hold the perception that occupancy restrictions were imposed by landlords so that they could make more money, but if more students knew that the 6-person limit was due to fire safety and codes set by the city rather than the landlords, there might be more compliance. Overall, I personally feel that we should not condone students living in attics, basements, or windowless rooms to save on rent: the life of a student is worth much more than whatever is being saved on rent. That's not to say that we should be working to make rent more affordable, but we shouldn't be doing that by endangering student tenants' lives.

I had to leave the meeting a hair before 6 to attend MSA's open house, but I plan to set up an appointment with Alan Levey.

I'll keep you posted on the survey. If there are any comments, let me know. Zoning and planning are new arenas for me, so I would appreciate any constructive feedback or clarification of laws and code.

Rese

Hi!

Yesterday Pam Baker from PIRGIM and I attended a meeting that the University held at the Alumni Center to address concerns with the proposed North Quad plans and demolition of the Frieze Building. You can read the Daily's article on the meeting here: <http://www.michigandaily.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/01/14/41e7ab8b8e728>.

Overall, I think the meeting went very well. The University was very upfront in letting those in attendance know that they planned to move ahead with the construction. Citizens accepted this but hoped that the University would conserve the Carnegie Library and the facade of the building. Business owners from the State Street district supported the new construction, as did many local churches. Pam and I were particularly frustrated with the Old Fourth Ward Association Chairperson, Christine Crockett. She had greeted us at the door quite pleasantly when she thought we were students of a professor in historic preservation, but when she spoke at the meeting she said that students were causing "erosion" in Ann Arbor neighborhoods. She told the State Street businesses that they should be weary of the development because it might become a "clone" of South University: once a "charming" district of town, but with the influence of students had become "tawdry." She was very disrespectful to students, but she did acknowledge that any parking problems in her neighborhoods were due to professors and staff, not students.

I personally feel that these community requests to conserve the facade and library could be honored if they would not cost the already financially-strapped University (except in terms of administrative salaries, apparently ... <http://www.michigandaily.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/01/14/41e7aea45953b>) too much money and as long as North Quad would still house a considerable amount of students. If conserving the facade would only cost 20 beds or so, it might be appropriate to honor the community's wishes, but any substantial loss in housing capacity should not be suffered in order to conserve the front of the historic but neglected building. With the State of Michigan's budget crisis and cuts to higher ed funding and financial aid, students are dedicating more and more time to jobs in order to pay for their education and have less time to deal with landlords. Student Legal Services (SLS) is far too understaffed to meet student tenant needs, as without advertising SLS average 80 cases per lawyer. Further, students no longer have the Ann Arbor Tenants Union (AATU) or similar organization to meet their needs. We must bring more students back on campus so that they can focus on their education instead of getting their deposits back from crooked landlords or worrying about how to pay for broken legs called by faulty porches when landlords refuse to take responsibility <http://www.michigandaily.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/01/22/3e2e4427a24a7?in_archive=1>.

I can't update on the ERC meeting last night, as I was at the North Quad meeting, but I will as soon as I get in contact with McFo.

Have a great weekend!

Rese

Hey, y'all,

I'm sorry I've not been updating as much as I should. Here's an update on MSA happenings:

In December I voted to support funding for a Rose Bowl tailgate for students. This resolution passed. However, it was too difficult for MSA to negotiate with the Rose Bowl Association, so we couldn't hold a tailgate and the money returned to discretionary funds.

On Tuesday, January 11th, I voted to fund buses to Washington, DC for President Bush's inauguration. Anyone could use the buses regardless of political views, and it would cost $25 roundtrip with MSA covering the rest of the costs. This resolution also passed.

Mary Fitzpatrick and Rachel Chapin wrote an MSA Resolution to support the Frieze building to be turned into dorms. I submitted it as a sponsor and McFo also co-sponsored it. We brought it up to steering and Arielle Linsky also wants to become a co-sponsor. On Tuesday during first reads, Jesse Levine (MSA General Council) let McFo know that the resolution was out of order because we didn't have an action for MSA to take, so next week we will amend the resolution to state that we will write a letter to President Mary Sue Coleman to show MSA's support of the conversion of the Frieze Building into North Quad.

External Relations Committee (ERC) is awesome! McFo is the co-chair and I am the chair. We have a really great group working with us. The people who attended last meeting were Sam Woll, former ERC Chair; Dan Taylor-Cohart, student at large and ERC contributor from last semester; Jesse Smith, student at large; Happy Wong, Engineering Rep from MSA; and Tim Wiggins, LSA Rep from MSA.

Here are our ERC issues for Winter 2005:

Student Tenant Rights/Workshops with Student Legal Services

"MSA Corner" in the Daily : Like Crime Notes, only with a student government feel. We would inform students on important policy issues like the Couch Ban debate.

Political Festifall/M-power: Like festifall, only for social activism/political student groups

Student Lobbyist/PIRGIM Pilot Chapter

Build relationships with Ann Arbor University of Michigan Campus Neighbors (AAUM Campus Neighbors)

Student Attendance and Representation at City Council Meetings

Campus-wide Student Lobby Day in Lansing

MSA Lobby Day in Washington, DC

Do any of these topics interest you? Do you have an idea for ERC? If so, come to ERC meeting tonight and every Thursday at 6:30 PM in the MSA Office--guaranteed to be done by the OC! Also, MSA is having its Open House next week Tuesday (1.18.05) at 6 PM in MSA Chambers. I will host a table on ERC.

I won't be in attendance of tonight's ERC meeting because I will be attending a forum on the North Quad/Frieze Building issue at the Alumni Center. If you want to come with me, please call at 734.576.3540. The meeting starts at 7 PM. McFo will run the ERC meeting tonight.

Well, that's it for now. I'll let you know more later, and feel free to ask questions if you want more details or feel I was too vague.

Yours,

Rese