Minutes of the SIPB EC Meeting Tuesday, Feb 8, 1993 Attendence: mkgray ghudson warlord gamadrid sorokin yandros bert autumn We've had some time to think about this, and we should come to a decision. The sentiment is that the EC screwed up ghudson: Have people heard non-ec people saying that the officer elections should be retaken? autumn: yes, but I cannot name them. There was not a consitent voting scheme for the VC election. bert: were the elections ok? Are the ok? yandros: the final outcome of the VC elections matters. Was dkk right? People seem to think it was 6-4-4, not 5-4-4-1 as dkk thought. Should we accept the elections? We have chad's student status. mkgray: This is the only valid reason to invalidate the elections. The personal reasons are something for the SIPB to consider, not for the EC to invalidate the elections. yandros: There is one reason to invalidate the elections: Chad's student status and Chad's dropping out. mkgray: For officer elections: Chad's student status. Can he be running or voting? This issue was brought to my attention weeks ago before the meeting. Based on speaking to numerous people, I decided that Chad would be a student, and given past precedent, I decided Chad would be eligible. Does EC want to override this decision? yandros: Full Membership is open to all students of the MIT community. (according to the bylaws) There was a race condition of Chad's student status! Note: Chad *is* now a student according to everyone, including the registrar. Is the EC overriding this decision? mkgray: The issue that rjbarbal brought up should not have been brought up before the EC. yandros: We should talk to richard. mkgray: I spoke to richard. I am going to continue to deal with this in a personal manner. People who have objections, etc., on a personal level, not on an invalidation level. autumn: should we invalidate everything or nothing? mkgray: If we invalidate the EC election, we should invalidate all of them. sorokin: why? mkgray: 1) Chad should not have been voting? 2) Chad dropped out after the elections. yandros: Chad did not affect the officer outcome. I didn't affect the officer elections, but we *HAVE* to invalidate the EC elections. gamadrid: Its an all or nothing thing. Since one part affects all the elections, then there was a major f**kup on the elections. mkgray: Even if we rescind, say that Chad was a student, we still have to redo the EC elections. autumn: I'm against changing our decision, because of the technicality of Chad's voting status, and other reasons we've discussed. Yesterday we made a decision which we made in too much haste. Reversing that decision may cause more grief. Coming in a day later and reversing it would give the impression that we don't know what were doing. yandros: no, we are correcting our mistakes autumn: however the chaos needs to settle before we set up more chaos. You will piss off as many people either way. Let things happen. Let the vote happen next week. Why not wait until next week. sorokin: The reason why I asked for this meeting was because the secret meeting went wrong. I didnt say a lot of things because I was confused, because the first issue was the (censored). That was the issue that brought us into the machine room. These issues should have been said, but I didn't know how to say them. I was confused about how people were taking them. People kept trying to rush us, and I decided we were confused, or had that issue not been brought up, I would have acted differently. That was a screwup. Also, I've been talking to a lot of people, and they are very mad that the EC threw out this decision. The word I've heard is "betrayed". A lot of the votes were very very clear. The EC went off and said no. We shouldn't have voted that way. The chaos patterns are going to set, in really bad ways. The dust is going to settle and people are going to hate it. We should say that what we did was right or what we did was wrong. ghudson: I had things to say last night and the ballots were passed out before I could say it. yandros: I was going to say a lot of stuff, but I want to hurry things up. I've heard 6 members say that the EC betrayed them. I've heard 3 members say that the EC will override a bylaws change. srz: "No matter who wins the vote, the SIPB has lost". It is my opinion that we screwed up, and we hurt it. Some of it we can fix, some of it we cannot. We don't have to have the officer elections again. We can invalidate the whole thing for the technical reason, but if we don't change the ruling the EC will go away and the SIPB will follow it. bert: This doesnt have to do with the decision we have to make. It has to do with future elections. The major reason for everything that happened yesterday, and most of us agree it wasnt good, was that the EC was pressed for time, in a closed session while everyone else was in the office, and I felt pressed to deal as quick as possible. The EC should have time to decide on this. In the past the EC voting was just a procedural matter, but this was not the case. I don't think it should be done in the same meeting. I think this format is part of the general upheaval. ghudson: We could have made time. bert: something that has been a traditional way has been a problem. mkgray: I believe that we should approve the officer elections from the meeting. I would like to focus on that. Also, do the bylaws need significant revising? They have vague definitions, they misrepresent the powers of the EC. It doesn't make it sound like its a checks and balances system. I think the idea of pseudocoding is a precise way of defining it appropriate to this organization. ghudson: if we approve the officer elections but invalidate the officer elections, who will be the EC, and what happens to the Vote of Confidence? sorokin: yoav said: the EC is out of control. The EC needs a slap in the face. mkgray: What will happen next week? If the vote passes, then the EC elections will stand. If the vote fails, we will have EC elections next week. If we vote to approve the officer elections. warlord: I think that most of the reason for all the problems was a result of us gagging ourselves, not giving a reason for our vote to invalidate the elections. yandros: amendment: we verify the outcome of the VC election? We should be certain that people outside this room think 6-4-4 as well. mkgray: if we approve these, then we should state that "at last night's meeting, some issues were raised. private issues, chad's student status, and chad's dropping out of the election. autumn: reads a zgram. people think that if we reverse our decision people will be happy. This is not true. Will it make things better? I don't think this is the case. The bad damage has been done, and any decision tonight will not change that. I dont think that people are upset with the invalidation; they are upset because we didn't tell them why. sorokin: thinking about the specifics made me think about the way it was stated. It made me change my mind about it. gamadrid: if one more person threatens to leave the sipb, I'm going to leave the SIPB! yandros: there is a reason I think we needs to say something soon. If we let it go to the VONC, SIPB is not going to recover for years. I've talked to 8 people who belive this. I believe that they will leave. I think that they will not be able to handle this, because the vote will happen and people will rewrite the bylaws and things will change. We made a mistake. "These nine people have gone into the room and decided and decided that your vote wasn't good enough." mkgray: issues split. sorokin: seconded motion mkgray: Second issue. What do we say in terms of reasons. We should be as frank as we should be. We should discuss this later. The last issue is, what is going to happen to the SIPB as a result of this. Comments about approving the officer elections? autumn: In approving the officer elections, we approve chad's status to vote, or we say that the elections still stand because his voting does not matter. I'm not sure what the voting is. I'm not sure what the procedure is for splitting the vote up? If there are techinical reasons, then they happened for all of it. Dr. Pepper Man? autumn: We send mail saying that the EC considers it's decision unwise, but not to change our decision. I think that overturning the invalidation is a bad idea. sorokin: I've been talking to a lot of people: People think that overturning the invalidation would be a good thing. In fact its not good enough! The EC, instead of punting into chaos, and pushing further, its helping. ghudson: I dont think there are procedural reasons to not let the Officer elections stand from Monday. gamadrid: two things. From the bylaws VI.3. If the group considers making something said in closed sessions open, its the group's decision, not individuals' mkgray: If the body of the EC decides it would be appropriate to make it public knowledge, then it is ok. gamadrid: I just wanted to clarify that. The other thing; what went through my mind last night. I was upset with the member-at-large last night, because they had been mishandled. I was upset with that, and hearing the other concerns expressed shouldn't affect my judgement, but they did. I thought the best way to fix the EC elections was voting. This was a mistake. My opinion is that I would be happy with a position the EC came up with that did not approve the EC elections, explain the reason, but did approve the officer elections. mkgray: My own thoughts. I'm sorry that I did not make it clear that ... the issue of chad's student status was brought up to me, and I decided that Chad could vote. I'm sorry that I didn't understand that this is what people thought we were voting on. We should have stated to the SIPB at large some statement. ghudson: I take a personal measure in sabotaging making a statement, since I voted no in all cases, since I didn't approve of our decision. yandros: In approving the elections, I had assumed that if people had questions about my student status, the office was crowded, I assumed that if people had questions they would raise them. mkgray: People spoke to me about his status, and someone decided that my decision wasn't liked, and brought it up. sorokin: people thought that mkgray didn't deal with the issue of student status. yandros: we have a reason for invalidating the EC elections, and I think we should. And I also think that we don't have a reason to invalidate the officer elections, and we shouldn't. mkgray: the motion: To approve the officer elections of Monday, Feb 7, 1994, to take office as of 7:30pm Monday, Feb 14, 1994, at the beginning of the meeting. passes: 5-2-2 Statement: mkgray: I've thought about what we should say a lot bert: Does anyone object to keeping the EC elections invalidated? No one objects. mkgray: It is my opinion that because we were attempting to keep the session short, and because certain issues were raised, we decided that certain aspects of the voting were wrong. Specifically, there were three issues brought up: 1) personal issues which were the reason that we did not say anything. We did not want to bring them up 2) Chad's stdent status. He was valid, this shouldnt be an issue. 3) Chad's dropping out of the EC elections, which obviously screwed them up. yandros: We should mention that chad's student status.. We should add that this was taken care of by mkgray, although people didn't know it. ghudson: Should we state the 6-4-4? No, we all agree it was 6-4-4. mkgray will reply to dkk. This should go into AFS, and should not be sent out. Are there other things that need to be decided here? No. Will will write up a full statement in the office and send it out, based upon these discussions. Minutes taken and submitted by warlord.