March 2007
SGA Monthly Report
By Nancy Tran, First Year Representative

Being a part of the SGA means free beer at SAIS happy hours and immense political power, but it’s not all glitz and glamour. This month, the SGA has approved the spring semester’s clubs (including the first SAIS Pride Club), distributed club happy hours, and conferred about academic concerns since the start of the spring semester.

As you are hopefully aware, the sequel to last semester’s Dean’s Forum, “Deans Forum II,” was scheduled to be held on February 27, 2007. As always, these forums are set up as an opportunity for you to voice your questions and to familiarize yourself with Dean Einhorn, Dean Baker, Dean Harrington, Dean Rembold, and Dean Wilson. We hope that many of you took the opportunity to speak with the Deans about whatever is on your minds.
 
For our part, SGA members really do take into consideration the suggestions and concerns of our fellow classmates. Every complaint or suggestion that a student makes to an SGA member in person or via e-mail gets discussed at our weekly meetings. 
 
For example, we have already discussed how most classes seem to be scheduled at 2:15 on Tuesdays and how some sought-after classes (um, Econometrics?) are capped at only 30 students. The SGA Academic Committee brought up these questions to Dean Harrington and is working on ideas to rectify these issues. 
 
In response to criticism of the bidding system, the SGA sent out an e-mail to the student body asking for their input. The SGA President and the Academic Committee met with Deans Harrington and Wilson, Julie Hitt, and Lisa Kahn to discuss possible options for improving the bidding system. Both the student government and the administration realize that there were difficulties during this semester’s bidding period, so future meetings are being planned in hopes that a new system can be put in place for the fall.
 
Another recurring issue has been course packets. Some of you have asked why it is the students’ responsibility to make course packets, and not the professor’s. This responsibility is handed to the students because the professor has limited time to make copies, and also because of the intellectual property rights of the readings. Course packets can easily be put together among the students of the particular class. One or two students can volunteer to make copies of the readings and put them into one binding, which is then reproduced and purchased at a copy shop by the rest of the students. 
 
Students have also asked why making copies is so expensive. The toner in copy machines is a major culprit. The school is slowly replacing current copiers and printers with double-sided printers and copy machines; however, they can only be replaced when machines depreciate or break, so it has been a slow process.
 
We also are continuously addressing the problems arising from assigning club happy hours. For further insight into SGA, assigning happy hours is a tasking job, especially since no club wants the happy hour slot before spring break or finals. Take into consideration that there are only about 30 happy hour slots during the school year. However, we have 27 career and activity clubs, some departments who want happy hours, and a few SGA happy hour events.  Consequently, there are not enough happy hours to go around. We give priority to all career clubs and departments, and sometimes clubs have to double-up during a happy hour. 
 
We do make efforts to maximize your club’s profits at happy hours by pushing some of our tried-and-true best practices – hence the emphasis on 3 cases per bucket, with the ice on TOP of the beer so you don’t run out of ice by the end of the night. 
 
Fact: This year’s happy hours are 56% more profitable than happy hours last year.
 
Finally, SGA is not all work and no play. Coming up in the semester, we have the Mr. SAIS talent competition on March 30, 2007 and the SAIS formal (date tba). Mark your calendars!

You can contact the SGA at saissga@jhu.edu