“Bacchanal is not a mystery to be solved, but a reality to be shut down”

Just as our livers have recovered and the fuzzy memories have completely left our minds, the legacy of Bacchanal still looms over our campus, and the deans get the final word. Devoted student government aficionado Joe Milholland makes last night’s CCSC meeting as clear for you as a two-lined fortune.

In a few weeks, the four deans of the undergraduate colleges will meet, according to CCSC President Peter Bailinson, to discuss what they saw during Bacchanal and how the event should proceed in the future.

On Sunday night, the Columbia College Student Council discussed and approved a proposal for their vision of Bacchanal in the future. The proposal retains the Bacchanal Committee but makes all funding decisions go through the VPs of Finance for the four undergrad councils.

The proposal says that budget decisions have to be approved by at least three of the four VPs, and the committee would have to preform mandatory check-ins and e-mail updates with the VPs. The VPs have 24 hours to approve expenditure proposals they receive from the committee, although there is no formal method of holding them accountable, and council members acknowledged that the time frame is not strict. Current VP of Finance Michael Li acknowledged it is “not very clear” what the financing process would look like.

The council spent some time debating whether the proposal would require VPs of Finance to reply to expenditure proposals in 24 or 48 hours. Bacchanal Co-President Ben Kornick said that he preferred 24 hours, noting that the Bacchanal Committee lost out on their top choice last year by 12 hours. Li noted that the if the VPs were not responsive, the committee would be able to mass-email the whole council to get them to respond.

However, GSSC President Peter Nason, in the audience that night, said that the 48-hour limit makes more sense because of the difficulties of rounding people up, especially on weekends, and he believed that GSSC would not approve the proposal with a 24 hour limit. Nason mentioned that his council initially considered “zero-funding” the Bacchanal Committee unless it adopted a Glass House Rocks model. The council voted to amend the proposal to a 24 hour limit, but Usenator Marc Heinrich noted the time limits were just “general guidelines.”

Updates:

• A Town Hall on the Rules of Conduct is on Friday. According to Heinrich, the committee has opted to move away from an external process and towards an internal process. The first level of the internal process would have a judicial board with one student, one faculty member, one admin, and 2 open spots. The appeals level would consist of “neutral deans” – deans from schools other than the person under trial.
• VP of Policy Sejal Singh said that there were some things that students could focus their input on for the Rules of Conduct proposal, such as the 2 open spots on the judicial board, how judicial proceedings can become public, and whether journalists reporting but not participating can be prosecuted. Heinrich said that while no such caveat for the media exists in the real world, it’s typically easier to identify who’s part of the press and who’s not.
• Heinrich and Balinson are reaching out to the registrar over concerns about exams next fall semester, which officially end on December 23. Balinson says that while the date is unlikely to change, they’re looking to change dates in the future.
• Singh is trying to secure easy-to-access writing center appointments for economically disadvantaged students through a process similar to appointments for international students.
• Porter noted that she has a plan to open JJ’s place to 1am on weekends but close it from 12 to 5 on two weekdays. Executive Director Vicki Dunn wants her to poll students to see if they approve in this change of hours.
• Student Services Rep Chris Godshall says that Housing has a plan to provide students with online access to the New York Times for $10 a semester.

What the four deans cracked open via Shutterstock