Attending: shabby (cs), magdalen (b), cat (c), jhawk (j), srz (sz), 
	nygren (en), elliot (es), [late] marc (m)

Meeting started at 21:09 on 98/04/08.

shabby is appointed Secretary by acclimation (by virtue of having a
laptop) until a Chair is elected.

marc is elected Chair.

shabby is elected Secretary.

Minutes

. minutes will summarize major points that go into decision processes,
and go into detail on the decisions themselves
. minutes will be emailed to the committee for approval by
approximately 2pm the next day.  Once approval is granted, the minutes
will be stored in /afs/sipb/admin/minutes.
. The first set of minutes will be mailed out to the sipb-minutes
mailing list to announce this policy.  The remaining meetings' minutes
will not be mailed, but will be made available in AFS.

Meeting attributes are decided:

. open meetings, allowing people to observe, but not participate
. meetings will generally be around two hours long
. meetings will be every other day, more often until we have an 
    established process
. quorum is majority (4)
. discussion rules will evolve
. we reserve the right to have closed meetings if deemed necessary 

Charter

. The committee is a policy committee and will not resolve the
situation involving Carl Alexander.
. The committee will collect opinions and information from all SIPB
affiliates (including prospectives) who wish to be heard.
. The committee shall report on its findings to the SIPB.
. The committee shall work on dealing with behavioral and
interpersonal issues among affiliates.
. The committee may recommend a policy or process to the SIPB.
. The committee should try to be done in a two-week time frame.
. The committee should aim primarily to produce a report that
summarizes the feeling of the SIPB as a whole as much as possible, and
secondarily to propose a policy.
. The committee should make a serious attempt to contact
ex-prospectives as well as current prospectives.
. The committee may also attempt to foster public debate on the issues
involved in an attempt to get a deeper understanding of the SIPB's
views.

Soliciting input:

The committee will send email to the sipb soliciting opinions on these
issues.  The mail will include a survey of optional short essay
questions designed to be answerable in short form while attempting to
encourage longer answers.  Responses are expected to be primarily in
email, but responses can also be made by:

. Talking before the committee in person
. Contacting a member of the committee individually
. Phone
. Anonymous response anonymized by a single trusted member [All
members of the committee have agreed to treat requests for anonymity
as binding]
. Totally anonymous responses will also be accepted, with a grain of
salt.

Mail to the committee as a whole will be archived.  We'll set up a
private afs workspace for storing whatever everyone in the committee
could need to share [transcripts, whatever]

In general, comments received by the committee will be treated with
respect, but not necessarily with utter privacy, except upon explicit
request.  People who are interested in contributing and who want
relative anonymity should contact an individual committee member and
request the opinion to be forwarded anonymously.

Brainstormed list of problems the committee may want to touch on:

... What sorts of interpersonal issues does the committee want to
address?

... When will the SIPB take action?

... What kind of action will the SIPB take?

... How will the SIPB take action?

... rights of prospective vs. rights of a voting member vs. rights of
an associate member)

... rights of MIT student vs. an MIT alum vs. SIPB affilate
unaffiliated with MIT

... formal motions vs. quiet handling

Time Frame:

The committee is expected to have results by 4/20.  We'll try to send
out the initial mail after tomorrow's meeting.  The committee's
members may at that point also announce loose "office hours" when
they'll be present in the SIPB office, available for discussion.  Also
during these hours, committee members may promote debate between
affiliates, to get a better feel for the views involved.

The First Mailing:

Discussion then took place about the composition of the first
widespread mailing from the committee.  Points to consider included:

. no hypotheticals, people may read too much into them

. "agree or disagree" type questions lead some people to simply answer
"agree" or "disagree".  However, with some people, this is opening the
door to say "agree, but..." and explore the grey area that exists in
most of these issues.

. Giving a list of questions, and saying "answer the ones you feel
like answering" seems like a good way to go.

. We should make sure to keep the list relatively short, to make it
more likely we'll get answers from people with milder opinions as
well.

. Making the first question sufficiently generic for people to answer
briefly can be good to draw them in

. Each committee member should come up with a potential question or
two before tomorrow's meeting.

. Maybe the last question should be "Suggest a question we should have
asked.  How would you answer this question?" or "What do you think is
the most important question for the committee to address?  How would
you answer it?"

Scheduling:

Each committee member will email marc with their schedules for the
next two weeks.

The next meeting will be tomorrow from 1800 to ~2000 in 1-273.  elliot
will try to reseve the room again.  

Adjourned at ~22:55.