The Columbia College Student Council held its first 2011-2012 academic year meeting on Sunday, Sept 11, 2011 at 8 PM in Lerner’s Satow Room. As a reminder, all CCSC meetings are open to the student body! As a part of our push this year to make the council more accessible, here’s a quick and friendly recap of what went down:

Jasmine Senior, VP Campus Life, introduced a few big events that the Campus Life Committee will be producing this semester, including Passport to Columbia on Saturday, Sept 17, as well as Basketball Mania and the Tree Lighting Ceremony. There is an Athletics meeting on Thursday at 4 PM in the Lou Gehrig Lounge in Dodge Fitness Center; council members must attend if they will be involved with the Homecoming event planning.

Kevin Zhai, VP Funding, spoke about his ‘four goals‘:

1) fast, reliable, and fair funding;
2) formal regulations for Council spending;
3) collaboration with the other councils; and
4) a restructuring of F@CU.

Currently, Funding Committee projects include

1) allocations to other council committees;
2) recurring council co-sponsorships;
3) individual student project grants; and
4) a restructuring of F@CU.

Kevin said that there were three options for recurring council co-sponsorships: to 1) discontinue funding completely; 2) provide a lump sum to governing boards\; or 3) evaluate each individual co-sponsorship request. A straw poll found a majority of members in favor of distributing a lump sum to governing boards.

Aki Terasaki, President, spoke briefly on behalf of VP Communications Virat Gupta (absent) about new Communications Committee initiatives, including the introduction of the new Your CCSC website (the thing you’re reading right now!); the desire for better CCSC branding; and the opening of CCSC “office hours” for students to come to CCSC with questions, thoughts, or concerns.

Lastly, CCSC discussed the general council direction for 2011-2012. Important issues identified so far include the resignation of Dean-Moody Adams, financial aid, and student representation on committees.

Look forward to more meeting recaps in the future!