Interhouse Committee
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November 5, 2003

Meeting with Margo and Mariam Feldblum Everyone here 1. House Renovation (Margo)
Have a plan by Jan 15' one or many plans
Can we take money from endowment, grants, etc.
Bound issue for how much without hurting institute
Lay down what is possible

Meeting with alum that can be helping for 2 months

Feldblum putting together a group from President's side to get support of faculty as well
No real renovation can happen without faculty's approval
David Goodwin (faculty board head): have a faculty-student board to deal with issues troubling alum and trustees (again to meet the Jan 15 deadline)
Feldblum made a chart for it for our approval
Bring this to faculty board as soon as possible, don't know if new committee or old one



2. Draft for Changes for a Faculty-Student Committee
Concern with the current student-faculty committee deciding this
Need some more importance placed on this committee ' SFC wasn't
Having only two students given input wouldn't be representative of houses or students
Margo: Maybe write it in the chart that IHC (house presidents) are the students involved

Draft sounds very ambitious ' how can all this (within a committee) be done by Jan 15?
TURLY committee had a year to make decisions and made some VERY bad ones
Margo: we realize this, but we need to work towards some results right now
We just need some recommendations right now, give our best shots
Us: decisions in some committees made by such wishy-washy reasons and that's not good enough for something this important
Feldblum: we can read reports of TURLY there is some research from before
Some of it is culture, we have to see what Caltech culture requires as well
We have all the minutes from the town hall meetings so can review those
Margo: we can only do the best we can but need to get from here to there ASAP
Us: we have the power to talk to the entirety of our houses and get feedback
Make arbitrary decisions and announce to house and see what the response is
Work on an iterative process
Margo: trustees that meet for grounds and such meet a week after Jan. 15 ' need to give a proposal to them about where the money coming from etc to them by them or will have to wait another 6 months
We're using $87 million for our figure ' don't have time to redo that number Labor intensive process esp. for the Committee: must work through questions with feedback of students from the Houses
Any other questions to ask?
Whether Houses would be accessible to disabled people? ' will have to be made by law Difficult with the South houses (no room for elevator or ramps) ' South houses it's a bit easier to figure out one room per house
Preserve ability of student's to interact with houses (murals some room renovation)
Another concern by Committee: because it's called Student-Faculty committee does it fall under their bylaws so that only 1/3 can be student?
Not good because at least ½ should be student
Margo: let's not call it committee ' working group
Say in the chart that the committee should be 50% student
Reasonable time schedule for getting this committee going
Faculty Committee meeting is on Monday
If it can be put on Monday's agenda have IHC show up to talk to them (Jeremy will invite himself to that meeting)
Running out of weeks before Christmas, and students won't be back until Jan 5
Margo: understand voice of reason, but need to get something to trustees soon
Don't even have the commitment at this point, need to stage that soon
Why is this more urgent now?
Only fairly recently that realized that we haven't raised a dollar
But doesn't mean that we don't have to do this
The houses becoming uninhabitable (too many infrastructure problems)
Takes a long time to get things going (trying to jump start the process again)
We realized that we need to get something going and do something about this before the next trustee meeting
Want to answer some peripheral questions so that we can go forward with the plans
Chart doesn't reflect that all the damage isn't coming from students, that institute hasn't kept up with deferred maintenance
Say that institute will maintain the buildings
"Damage and deterioration" that has been caused by their age and such
Faculty work in old buildings, but is different to live than to work
House Presidents agree that they are willing to do the work and be on it
These are the student members (IHC) and appoint the faculty that you want to
Maybe we can give some names of Profs that we would like to see on the committee
Have Mannion, Tim Chang, or Valdespino that would be good to also have on Committee
Any more names email Margo or Mariam
How to gather info about suites and such in Houses (all have implications in cost, so important)



3. Moore Fund
Committee knows that original summary of info disclosed isn't good enough
Are discussing over email what more can be said
Let info to IHC and ASCIT?
Anyone can email them with concerns and such


Maintained by Elise Kleeman
Last modified 03-05-03