[UA] Council Meeting, Summer Updates

[Matthew J Davis]

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Dear Undergraduates,

I hope all is well.

For freshmen, welcome to MIT. I am Matthew Davis, President of the Undergraduate Association (UA), which is your undergraduate student government at MIT.

This email contains the following information:

1. Weekly Newsletter Clarification
2. Council Meeting Announcement
3. Student Group Funding Update
4. Independent Review Committee Update
6. General Announcements (Peer2Peer Support Service, Suicide Awareness Month)

Weekly Newsletter Clarification

First, I want to offer some clarification concerning the Weekly Newsletter that was sent out this morning. The email mentioned that the form, contained in the email, had the FinBoard allocations for this year. In reality, the form contained the FinBoard allocations from the summer. Applications for Fall FinBoard funding have not gone out yet, and will go out later this month. I apologize for the confusion.

Council Meeting Announcement

The next UA Council Meeting is this Wednesday, September 16, 2015 at 7:30PM in W20-400 (fourth floor of the Student Center, Room 400). The Agenda is attached. All undergraduates are welcome to attend.

Prior to the meeting, will be President's Questions from 7:00PM - 7:30PM. During this time, I will be present in the meeting room to answer any questions, on the record, that you may have. All undergraduates are welcome to come and get answers to any questions you may have.

Student Group Funding Update

You may have read recently, in The Tech<http://tech.mit.edu/V135/N21/budget.html>, that the Division of Student Life (DSL) graciously agreed to give the UA a $70,000 grant to fund student activities. This money will be going towards student groups, and will allow us to fund as much as student groups spent last year. Please note that this is different from the allocation - student groups, in the past, have spent about 50-60% of their total allocation. Accordingly, the allocation that student groups receive may be lower, but it will be in line with what we think you will actually spend.

Additional clarification on what exactly this means, will be sent out by the Financial Board Chair with the Fall Allocation Applications. In sum, what it means is that though your allocation may be lower, no student group should feel a financial squeeze this year.

Moving forward, we are working to raise more money, so that student groups not only have enough to spend in line with last year, but can also expand and grow.

Independent Review Committee Update

Earlier in the summer, I wrote to you concerning the UA's deficit, and our path moving forward. In it, I outlined a process to form an Independent Review Committee, which would be chaired by the UA Vice President and made up of faculty, staff and students.

I received lots of feedback on this committee, from students, Councillors and advisors around MIT. This feedback focused on whether the committee could truly be independent, because it was headed by the Vice President, that the process was not transparent enough, and that the timeline was too fast to develop a good process. I agreed completely. It was not conducive to our goal is to find out what really happened in an open and honest way.

Accordingly, we re-thought how we would go about the review. I took a few days off from my internship, and came to MIT to seek the advice of people around the Institute. I requested that the MIT Audit Office review our accounts, and look for any potential wrongdoing. The MIT Audit Office is an independent body within the Institute, that is charged with maintaining its integrity. Their report will be completed in October. I also asked our Dean of Student Life, Dean Colombo, to charge a committee of faculty, staff, undergraduate and graduate students to review our processes and how this situation came to be. This committee, made up of people completely outside of the organization, will be able to take an independent look at what happened and give us a report on what happened, as well as recommendations to move forward. This report will be made public to all students, and presented at a Council meeting.

More information, such as how to be involved in the Review Committee, will come out later this month.

I must also take a moment to apologize for not informing you sooner about these developments. They took a long time to coordinate and turn into reality, and just at the beginning of this month started to come together. If you have any questions or concerns about this process, or anything that is stated above, please feel free to send me an email. There is also a feedback form at the end of this email. It will also be discussed at the Council meeting on Wednesday.

General Announcements

A group of students, led by Berj Chilingirian, is working on a new initiative to increase student support resources on campus. They have been working with members of the administration, and the student body, to create a MIT portal, Peer2Peer, through 7 Cups of Tea (www.7cupsoftea.com<http://www.7cupsoftea.com/>), where students can talk anonymously with their peers for support. They are currently looking for students to become trained volunteers for the service. If you are interested, please fill out this form<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Quf5PVxvrn_vC4k6hi_G-aNFA0m58QrszEpA5JAxYD0/viewform> and they will get back to you.

Finally, as you may be aware, September is Suicide Awareness Month. Active Minds at MIT is putting on a series of events around MIT, such as a QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer) Training, which I highly encourage you to attend. You may have also seen the Yellow Flag Display near Kresge Lawn, which is a reminder of how suicide affects not only our community, but communities around the country. Attached to this email is a schedule of their events.

If you have any comments or suggestions for the UA, please share them here<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1sG-oSxBuOuZ4b5WG3t_p0Vb0vA-oB9Rf_x_TK693ebQ/viewform>. Of course, you can always email me with any thoughts of suggestions you may have.

Thank you very much for your time.

Sincerely,

Matthew Davis
Class of 2016
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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