Bold. Beautiful. Benign.

In this week’s survey of Barnard’s SGA meeting, Dassi Karp discusses recent Seven Sister Conference and campus health, among other Barnard related initiatives.

So, Barnard’s Student Government Association met again. In a departure from recent excitement (mostly about Barnard Contingent Faculty/UAW dealings with the admission, which don’t seem to have advanced at all), this week’s SGA meeting returned to its normal state of pretty uneventful.

One of the main focuses of the meeting was the recent Seven Sisters Conference, which some SGA representatives attended. These members discussed their experiences and the different workshops they participated in, such as “History of Gender and Sexuality” (as it pertains to the colleges, apparently) and “Liberal Arts and Elitism” (summary: elitism exists at liberal arts colleges, and we should think about combating that). In general, it sounds like the conference provided a lot of wholesome Sister fun. Discussions that took place showed that the other schools like talking about the same issues that Barnard does, but, at least according to SGA, Barnard deals with them in better ways. They cited the closer connection Barnard students have with college administrators as compared to other schools.

The latter portion of the meeting dealt with two votes. The first was procedural: apparently, students have been confusing Barnard’s Facilities and Securities Fund with CC/SEAS/GS’s Facilities and Securities Fund. Besides for sharing the same name, the confusion seems to stem from the fact that both school’s websites say that these are one and the same. So SGA took action, moving to change the name to Barnard’s Morningside Fund, and updating the websites. That’s our bureaucracy at work further complicating attempts to understand the relation between Barnard and Columbia. Maybe we should all just stop trying.

Finally, SGA voted on the Design for America proposal for SGA’s Green Fund. DFA has refused their request to move their proposed recycled art project to a park in Harlem, because the parameters of the fund require it to be on campus. Nice try, guys.

Photo courtesy of Summer On Campus Online