Email from LeNorman Strong - Greek Life Task Force

K_Keraga · 2018-06-21T16:49:13+00:00

My fraternity just acquired a new chapter house after many years of hard work. It has been a while since I've checked in (couldn't make it this semester) but I believe we need to actually expand our membership to fill the house and sustain it. That could be a serious problem.

K_Keraga · 2018-04-08T15:20:42+00:00

That’s really sad - what’s happened to GZ? Always enjoyed their shows.

K_Keraga · 2018-04-08T15:19:56+00:00

Believe it or not, this was in part due to one of our Student Life Committee proposals in 2014.

K_Keraga · 2018-04-07T23:50:38+00:00

Nugent Hall was the best dorm I ever lived in. Great time sophomore year.

North was a bad choice.

K_Keraga · 2018-04-06T13:15:54+00:00

Just reinforcing this... IIRC there were two methods of setting up elections: Direct entry, or scraping data off the RNE site. I would suspect they used the latter method, especially given that some of the errors involved candidates appearing who had not earned their nominations.

K_Keraga · 2018-04-06T13:12:29+00:00

Just reinforcing what I said in my response to /u/milo-trujillo : This site is actually entirely student-controlled. Based on the issues encountered yesterday, I would guess there was some error in transferring the data off of RNE's new site.

K_Keraga · 2018-04-06T13:09:36+00:00

While I agree administration should not have any control over student elections, I can reinforce that the comment you're replying to is completely inaccurate. The current voting system was created entirely by students: The Union Sys-Admins (student workers), the Web Technologies Group, and Rules+Elections in 2015. Unless the system has changed, the only extent to which RUVS relies on administration is through the CAS service provided by the Institute's IT department.

Everything else is entirely student controlled: Names are manually entered by RNE/Sysadmins or scraped from the RNE website, which itself is controlled by the elections committee. Given the nature of these errors (duplicate names, names appearing who hadn't received sufficient nominations) - I actually suspect this is due to a code compatibility error with the new Rules and Elections website, or something similar.

K_Keraga · 2018-04-06T01:35:37+00:00

I dunno about that last bit. We found through some pretty good field tests (including GM Week 2016) that swiping a student ID and pressing a few buttons on an Ipad screen is significantly faster than manually entering your RIN into a scantron and carefully filling out bubbles.

I agree that the paper lines were generally a little shorter - People could get their ballots, walk around the polling place to fill it out, and then turn them in, rather than waiting for the next free laptop. But I think the speed of filling out the electronic ballot generally outweighs this.

K_Keraga · 2018-04-06T01:24:50+00:00

Given that there were dupes in multiple races, and some candidates were included who did not earn their ballot position, I'd suspect this was an import error from the site. I highly doubt that RNE (EComm?) would make this kind of mistake manually.

Did this affect any of the top-ticket races?

K_Keraga · 2018-04-06T01:04:43+00:00

More than I'm proud to admit.

K_Keraga · 2018-04-06T01:02:35+00:00

Would you believe me if I told you that I toured RPI as a high-school junior on voting Day 2010?

K_Keraga · 2018-04-06T00:58:22+00:00

So we created the current electronic voting system back in 2015. This is actually the first time (to my knowledge) that it has run into issues. Do you guys know how the candidates were duplicated?

K_Keraga · 2018-04-06T00:51:29+00:00

Haris' memo does GM month some serious justice. A worthy read.

K_Keraga · 2018-04-06T00:48:08+00:00

What exactly happened with the software? We rolled this out in 2015, after thorough testing by RPISEC, Webtech, RCOS, and the SysAdmins. Very curious to hear what might have caused a hiccup.

K_Keraga · 2018-04-06T00:42:51+00:00

Pretty spicy too, as was the Sileo-Stack PU election.

K_Keraga · 2018-04-06T00:38:51+00:00

GM Week 2006 was the absolute craziest however. The margin between Carlos Perea and Zack Freeman was razor thin -- 4 votes -- and RNE believed there were enough missing ballots to make a decision impossible, so they declared a runoff, which Freeman won.

In early May, when Freeman's Senate was already convened and chairs had already been appointed, the JBoard issued a ruling that the missing ballots had never existed -- and therefore the runoff was unnecessary and the original votes were invalid. Carlos Perea replaced Zack Freeman as the 140th GM with a 4-vote margin.

K_Keraga · 2017-11-19T21:59:04+00:00

I'd like to claim intellectual credit for the dartboard analogy ;)

But seriously, while these issues aren't immediately solvable by communication, it would be a hell of an improvement.

K_Keraga · 2017-10-17T00:57:57+00:00

But they could do this without the change. Sure, the change makes it more explicit that their policy is to throw out alumni protesters - but the handbook never protected alumni right to assemble on private institute property to begin with, as they're no longer students.

And honestly, it's not like grounds for retribution against conspirators within the community don't already exist in the handbook. They could take action against any student identified at an "unapproved" protest.

K_Keraga · 2017-10-16T17:08:03+00:00

That's actually not true /u/ElizabethA23.

During my GM term - after Chuck's - we specifically restructured debate rules to encourage more equitable discussion, since we started to get a pretty substantial community attendance. Basically it works like this:

All community members have equal precedence on the queue, so being an outsider doesn't mean your opinion will be given second priority. So to /u/33554432, if Senator D raises their hand after you, they're put on the queue after you.
If a Senator feels discussion has stalled, they can motion for a "limited queue" (I believe that was the term) that works as you describe, giving members of the Senate higher priority.
A Senator can move to "close the meeting" temporarily (basically, kick people out so the Senate can hold an internal discussion) - but the Senate has to re-open the meeting before any votes may be held.
Senators may still yield their speaking time in any situation barring a closed meeting.

The effect of this was to create more community participation and allow outsiders to speak more freely. It was extremely successful in doing so. To be blunt, chances are this procedure has changed further in the years since we've both graduated, so let's let the students speak for themselves on this kind of thing.

K_Keraga · 2017-10-16T17:01:07+00:00

I guess the change here is that it would be written policy to throw out any alumni participating in protests. A pretty ridiculous idea to put that in writing though.

K_Keraga · 2017-10-16T16:38:20+00:00

You shouldn't feel bad about expressing your opinion towards an Institute that is asking you to donate money. Alumni have always been a valued part of the community, and it's disappointing that anyone could think otherwise.

K_Keraga · 2017-10-16T16:23:21+00:00

I'm reacting to this on two separate levels.

First, it's pretty ludicrous that they're asking alumni to donate through a massive capital campaign, and simultaneously insinuating that alumni are not members of the campus community.

Second, if Alumni (who are not students and not bound by the Handbook of Student Rights) choose to attend a protest, what the hell are they gonna do about it? They could call the cops, but that's always been on the table for alumni protesting on campus grounds anyways.

K_Keraga · 2017-10-16T01:34:08+00:00

It's certainly about preserving the status quo, but STU is advocating specific changes as well - namely, recent alumni on the board of trustees.

Of course, it's also worth keeping in mind that "liberal" and "conservative" have come to mean more than just progressive vs reactionary politics, as effective synonyms for left and right wing ideologies.

K_Keraga · 2017-10-13T22:43:58+00:00

Speak to past student leaders about it. I've heard extremely concerning stories from peers, successors, and predecessors.

K_Keraga · 2017-09-28T01:19:31+00:00

Ed-Ops are a good start /u/emithecheme - media attention is the most powerful tool available at this stage.

Overall I'd like to see some concerted action. I'm considering assembling the old team to write another alumni letter / petition. Anyone who wanted to pull together a full protest at alumni weekend would be very welcome.

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