[ASA-Official] Fall General Body Meeting 10/23/12 6pm; ASA elections information

[Rachel Keeler]

Dear Student Group Leaders,

Please take note of the following announcements:

1. Fall General Body Meeting -- Tuesday, October 23, 6pm
2. ASA Executive Board elections information
3. Constitutions required
4. Recruitment moratorium feedback

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1. Fall General Body Meeting -- Tuesday, October 23, 6pm

The Fall ASA General Body Meeting (GBM) will be on Tuesday, October 23
in 54-100. Check-in and dinner will start at 6pm; the meeting will
begin promptly at 6:30pm, so please make sure to arrive well before
6:30 to allow enough time to check in and get food.

All student groups must have at least one representative in
attendance. If a student group does not attend and check-in with the
ASA Exec Board at the meeting, that group will incur a $50 fine, and
may be suspended if this is the second consecutive GBM missed by the
group or de-recognized if more than two consecutive GBMs have been
missed in the past.

Any member may check in for a group, and a member may check in for
more than one group. However, only students listed as president,
treasurer, group admin, or GBM proxy in the group's ASA Database entry
may exercise the group's vote. Furthermore, nobody may exercise the
vote of more than one group, and each group has only one vote even if
they send multiple representatives.

Note: club sports and FSILGs are excused from this meeting as they may
be represented by their respective governing organizations; however,
these groups are eligible to receive a vote if they send a
representative.

The tentative agenda is:

1. Updates from the Board
2. Information about groups
3. Bulletin Board Allocation process announcement
4. Elections for GMAL, SMAL

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2. ASA Executive Board elections information

At the general body meeting, we will be having elections for one
graduate member-at-large and for one student member-at-large. The
graduate member-at-large must be a current MIT graduate student. The
student member-at-large must be a current MIT student, undergraduate
or graduate. For more information on responsibilities, see:
http://mit.edu/asa/about/elections.html or talk to us at our office
hours http://web.mit.edu/asa/about/office-hours.html or by email to
asa-exec at mit.edu.

Candidates may submit their names or nominations may be made by email
to asa-elect at mit.edu before the General Body Meeting. Additionally,
candidates may announce their candidacy at the meeting or may be
nominated at that time. Candidates who want to may submit an
information/platform slide to be shown at the meeting. These should be
sent to asa-elect at mit.edu before 12pm on the day of the meeting. At
the meeting, candidates will have two minutes to speak and there will
be a brief question-and-answer period.

If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail
asa-elect at mit.edu or asa-exec at mit.edu, or come talk to current Board
members during office hours
(http://mit.edu/asa/about/office-hours.html).

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3. Constitutions required

All groups have long been required to have a constitution, but the ASA
has only recently begun checking that constitution URLs actually point
at an extant constitution. We realize that in many cases groups may no
longer have a copy of their constitution, and may therefore need to
write a new constitution. All groups should ensure that the ASA
Database (https://asa.mit.edu/) contains a current, accurate
constitution URL by early IAP. If necessary, groups should write,
discuss, and approve a new constitution by then (see
http://web.mit.edu/asa/start/constitution-req.html for requirements).
If for some reason that is not feasible, please let us know --- we'd
rather have a constitution that works well for your group, than a bad
one hastily approved.

Additionally, we think group members should be able to easily find and
view their group's constitution. At the moment, constitution URLs are
considered "private" in the database and available only to the listed
President, Treasurer, or Group Admin. We're currently planning on
making constitution URLs visible to the MIT community, so that group
members can easily find their constitution. If you or your group has
concerns about this change, please let us know (asa-exec at mit.edu).

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4. Recruitment moratorium feedback

As with previous years, the ASA this year had recruitment rules that,
in short, forbade ASA-recognized groups from recruiting during the
three weeks leading up to the ASA Midway. (The full recruitment rules,
along with some potential updates for next year, are at
http://web.mit.edu/asa/rules/recruitment-rules.html.) As with the last
several years, this year we revised the rules to try to make them
clearer and easier to both understand and enforce. We would like to
get feedback from groups about these rules while moratorium is still
(relatively) fresh in your minds. Please fill out the survey at
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHA2N3l6TzRzQWdoQUVsc2dGNDViOEE6MQ,
or email us your views.

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Please feel free to email asa-exec at mit.edu with any requests,
questions, or other inquiries.

Sincerely,
The ASA Executive Board
http://web.mit.edu/asa/about/board-members.html