SSD COUNCIL AGENDA
Friday, December 2nd, 2022 – Zoom, 4 pm to 5:30 pm PST

Attendance: Julia, Emma, Parker, Adrean, Jacob, Adam, Fillette, Bella, Hannah

  • CALL TO ORDER / WELCOME – 4:07
  • LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT – Chairperson gives acknowledgement
  • ADOPTION OF AGENDA/MINUTES
      1. Adoption of today’s agenda – Emma/Natasha – Carries
      2. Ratification of November 18th minutes – Emma/Jacob – Carries
  • REPORTS
    1. Council
      1. Chairperson: Julia 
        1. Hired an Administrative and Education Coordinator, Brooklyn, had some great ideas for education workshops. Professor accessibility form is going to be pushed out now, how accessible are your professors? 
      2. Treasurer: Hannah Brown
        1. At a senate meeting right now, the funding request from the last council meetings are still in progress. Lots of the food security forms, it has been a lot of work. 
      3. Student Liaison: Victoria – Not Present
      4. SSD Rep UVSS: Parker – No Report
      5. International Student Rep: Hannah – Not Present
      6. Graduate Student Rep: Zack – Not Present
      7. Secretary: Emma – No Report 
      8. General Members at Large: Natasha, Kate, Jacob, and Coco
        1. Jacob – started the process creating a program for mentoring autistic and neuro divergent students who are new to UVic. Exciting!
    2. Staff
      1. Adrean
        1. Currently having a ICA and SSD holiday feast. Had our first part of Bystander intervention training yesterday. Very excited for the new staff member. Has been off sick this week but is starting to feel better. Had a SEXPO panel meeting where the Reproductive Justice panel will be happening. 
      2. Bella
        1. Discord we will be making a moderator form for people to apply to be moderators. Council will approve the moderators via email motions with details from the google form. Will be creating a step-by-step workbook for moderators to know what to do when faced with difficult situations. Our first discord meeting went well, we plan to continue them monthly. Almost all plants in the space have been named and we have most of our space improvement items in! We reached 700 followers on instagram. 
  • BUSINESS

MOTION 2022/12/02: 01 – Natasha/Jacob

WHEREAS the SSD approved a total budget of $9,500 for the Fall 2022 semester for the Food Security Program on 18th November 2022; and,

WHEREAS the program applications have now closed and the SSD has seen a high demand that surpasses this budgeted amount; therefore,

BIRT the SSD approves an increased total budget of $10,000 for the Fall 2022 semester in order to support all the students who applied.

Carries

MOTION 2022/12/02: 02 – Natasha/Emma

WHEREAS the SSD strives to support students of colour and disabled students who may face significant stress during finals, as well as after the traumatic attack on the Students of Colour Collective (SOCC) space on November 17th 2022; and, 

WHEREAS SOCC has requested a donation of $250 to support their event to create end of term care packages for students of colour experiencing difficulties with their mental health; therefore,

BIRT the SSD approves a $250 donation toward SOCC for their Destress Mental Health Event.

Carries

  1. DISCUSSION
  1. Accessibility Committee – call for nominations 
    1. Julia – A lot of issues are coming up wrong with the policy and we would like to make sure we are involved. Lots of follow-up from GSS and SSD but nothing happened. However on the sidelines we were told information was completed without us. We have now been told that that is not true and there is a new accessibility committee. Julia and Emma were the UVSS reps but then were not invited to the meeting. They changed their minds about wanting two reps and now only want one. Made a point to say the A4A was not part of this committee. They have said we focus too much on student needs and should focus on the other people at UVic. Feels like things are being done for show. We do care about faculty and staff but student accommodations are important! For example UVic is still forcing students to come in person. We still think it is important to have an SSD rep on the Accessibility Committee. 
    2. Delicia and Adam will motivate for themselves and we will do an email motion. We don’t need anyone chosen until the January 11th meeting.

MOTION 2022/12/02: 03 – / 

WHEREAS UVic has requested that the SSD provide a representative to sit on their Accessibility Committee; therefore,

BIRT __________ be elected as the SSD representative on the UVic Accessibility Committee. 

  1. Meeting times
    1. Do we want another meeting in December?
    2. Do we want to send a poll out in December or in January?
      1. Lets wait till early January when everyone knows their schedule
  2. Open discussion
    1. Adrean – some students came in talking about a racist incident that happened a long time ago. What can we do to make the space more open and make people more comfortable? Can we ask how we could support them? Do an anti-racist campaign to make students of colour to feel more comfortable to enter the space. From conversations with OSL we need to be anti-racist at the Policy level, we should revamp our policy to see what can be done.
      1. We have things that should have been changed a long time ago. We should work at changing our policy. We should be getting feedback from others. We want everyone to feel comfortable using our space. 
      2. We have had spaces in slack that were a closed channel for specific communities. Can we move that into our discord? Having facilitators in that community. 
    2. Adrean – we are talking about upgrading the lighting in the SSD, generally we don’t use the lights. Should we use pot lights? It will cost around $2000-$3000.
      1. We can ask students what we would like to prioritize our money on.
    3. A student is struggling to receive accommodations. Has also been having issues with an instructor, wanting to seek some clarity on how staff and CAL could support this student. How could this fit in with other advocacy work the council is already doing. Would like to move forward with a collective lens rather than just one person. Running into challenges with accommodations around in-person attendance and getting extensions on assignments. A first-time instructor has not been accommodating needs. Many people in the classrooms are not masked and it felt uncomfortable but not every prof has been accommodating the discomfort of coming into the classroom. Was approved to miss class from the professor however the professor changed mind closer to the end of the semester and CAL has not been supportive. 
      1. We are happy to help support the student and find ways for accommodations to be met or negotiated. Often undue hardship is no taken into account. Policies can be super ableist and interpreted incorrectly. People shouldnt be penalised because of attendance, there are so many reasons why people can not attend. CAL needs to change this for folks, but what can we do in the short term? Concerned about leaving this situation for others. So many other students are having these needs as well. I am interested in getting clarity on all the decisions CAL have been making.How are they arriving at their definitions of the accommodations?  Let’s reach out and figure out these policies because this is a student whole problem. 
  1. IN-CAMERA – Emma/Hannah

Out of Camera – Hannah/Jacob

  1. FUTURE MEETING TIMES 

TBD

  1. ADJOURNMENT – 5:48

Thank you for coming!