Student Advisory Committee November 2016 Report

Brothers,

Below you will find an outline of what took place during the November Student Advisory Committee meeting on November 6, 2016. Kylie Wolfe and Shanon Rubin of the NED took notes for the meeting. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask. You can reach me at zac@kkpsi.org or the whole committee at StudentAdvisory@kkpsi.org.

Keep Striving!
Zac

—November SAC – Minutes 11/6/2016—

• Introduction/Attendance

  • Midwest: no representative
  • North Central: Jeric Tumang – President & Abigail Johnson – VPM
  • Northeast: Kylie Wolfe – President & Shanon Rubin – VP
  • Southeast: no representative
  • Southwest: George Ishii – President
  • Western: Si Si Ni – Secretary/Treasurer

• District Updates

  • Midwest: n/a
  • North Central: Jeric reported that their next district event takes place January 21st. The district council is currently working on the district publication, the Arpeggio. The council will be conducting a survey about what keeps brothers from attending district functions as well as what gets them to come to events. Abigail also shared that she is starting a VPM blog.
  • North East: Kylie reported that they had their first District Day-EA (get it? AEA, lol) and the theme was leadership. The goal of this program is to encourage chapters to post their activites on social media that will ultimately help form the district scrapbook. Each day will center around a different pillar of the fraternity and will help play a thematic role in district convention. Currently, the council is working on their district convention schedule. Shanon has been working with the district VPMs, setting up one-on-one video chat sessions.
  • Southeast: n/a
  • Southwest: George reported that there wasn’t really anything new to report since our previous month’s meeting had been moved so close to this one.
  • Western: Si Si reported that the joint councils had selected a location for the Western District Leadership Conference in January and that announcement is forthcoming. The officers are finishing up their presentations for that and have begun planning for district convention in Boise, ID.

• SAC Topic #1: What are the district officers looking for from the national council in planning their conventions?

  • Who’s coming to them?
    • Zac: Jack is waiting on the finalization of the dates as at the time of the meeting, the NED was still figuring their location out due to leaving convention without a host.
  • How can we use national council members?
    • Zac: they can be used as workshop presenters, committee advisors, general meet and greet type folks, reading band conductors. The national council members can be as involved or uninvolved as you want them to be. Once the assignments go outreach out to the members who are assigned and get specific with them.
  • Si Si asked about corporate donations to help cut costs for events in general. Zac shared that when he was district president, he worked out a deal with Sam Pilafian where since Sam was affiliated with Jupiter Music, they were able to cover some of the cost for him to come and do a breathing gym workshop and help out with reading band. But with donations of any kind, it is always good to check with national headquarters to make sure no one violates the fraternity’s 501c3 standing.
  • Zac shared that the only explicit requests from the national council at this time was to schedule time for the town hall and also some time for the curriculum development committee.
  • George asked about whether the national level had any plans to encourage brothers to go to national convention. Zac explained that other than the publicity materials that headquarters creates, there isn’t any actual program that does this. Zac shared so ways for the district councils to encourage their brothers to start saving for national convention in Florida and also shared some ideas, such as chartering buses like Texas A & M – Commerce did for the Lexington convention.

• National Council Updates

  • The colonies at University of Texas – El Paso and Alabama A&M are going to be installed in the coming weeks.
  • The Month of Musicianship is in full swing and people are sharing their activities on social media. The fraternity is also sharing multiple times a day a variety of posts relating to musicianship and the fraternity. Make sure to take a listen to the kickoff podcast!
  • Upcoming podcast features student award winners!

• District Feedback/Concerns

  • The Western District feels a bit stagnant in the way the host their DLC and asked for some advice on how to spice it up as it is largely an event that is predominantly attended by new members.
    • Some of the suggestions from the members in attendance:
      • Utilize social media and promote it in new ways
      • promote new ideas, come up with new formats and structures, make it fun, don’t be afraid of using gimmicks to hype it up
    • They did ask about national council participation, but due to it being the same weekend as the national council winter meeting, this was unfortunately unlikely.

• Announcements and Wrap up

  • Keep encouraging participation in the Month of Musicianship
  • The Pennsylvania higher education strike didn’t have a huge impact of chapter activities.
  • Deadlines are quickly approaching for the Fall Activity Report! (hint: it’s December 1st!)
  • Encourage your chapters to get their candidate forms and dues in within 30 days of initiation to avoid a late fees!