This week’s meeting was pretty vanilla, just like this gorgeous cone

ESC met, as they always do, yesterday night. Bwog’s Esc-ellent ESC reporter, Keenan Albee was there.

ESC convened with a full house this Monday in the wake of student council elections and appointments. Sitting alongside the Class of 2017 Council (snazzily dressed may I add) were the new 3-2 and General Studies reps who came prepared with ideas of their own. The meeting was pretty vanilla, but with some new machinations clearly brewing after ESC’s retreat this past week. Here’s the breakdown:

• Members met with the Vice President of Student and Administrative Services to get an okay on the installation of water fountains in all residence halls and to put up broken machine reporting signs in laundry rooms.
• As reported previously , the commuter swipe access snafu will likely go unchanged after an ESC/CCSC follow-up. ESC may take action to attempt to push the changes to next year, but there seems to be little ground to gain with administrators.
• Feasibility analysis (i.e. cost) of having WiFi set up in the law library is underway.
• Discussions on the SEAS honor code with EGSC are ongoing. Peer schools’ codes (MIT, Princeton, etc.) are being referred to in its development. A rough draft should be arriving in late October, with a formal vote expected by the end of November.
• ESC is working on shiny new branding starting with a fancy-schmancy email generator. It looks like LionLink is preferred by admins over ESC’s own site however—y’know, to consolidate clubs and stuff.
• Homecoming Weekend is around the corner. 10/17 (that’s next Thursday) is Spirit Day, followed on 10/18 by a Pep Rally.

Updates from Usenate rang loud and clear. Of worthy note, the government shutdown will wreak financial havoc on Columbia if things persist, and enforcement of a new smoking policy is in the works. There were also a few gripes over grammatical and formatting issues in a proposed ESC amendment, but who writes nowadays anyway?

Talks over funding soaked up a majority of meeting time. TedxColumbiaEngineering proposed a budget which included a mid-presentation correction and some questions about expenses. Not to be left unmentioned was the inclusion of alcoholic beverage expenses for all attendees of a networking event—including underage students. ESC approved their portion of funding for the event with a recommendation for a two-tiered ticket and wristband system. Some engineering student groups also had some of that sweet, sweet funding approved for travel use. Aid for the ESC Competitions in Math also popped up on the agenda, but decisions were held off until the event was more developed.

As usual, ESC holds meetings at 9:30 PM each and every Monday in the Lerner Satow Room.

Icy deliciousness via Shutterstock