JHR Minutes #2

May 28, 2008

JHR Minutes #2

JHR Meeting #2: November 12, 2006

Present: Rebecca Alvy, Todd Price, Nari Corley-Wheeler, Janice Goh, Jacob Galfano

Agenda

Meetings:

The group decided that it would regularly meet on Saturdays at 11:30 am at the Solstice Café on the ‘Ave’, beginning on December 2. The group will meet on Thursday night this week, and will skip Thanksgiving weekend.

Minutes will be taken during each meeting to record and archive the decisions that the group makes.

Style: Nari suggested a forum for discussion where students would gather news stories that qualify as human rights-reporting. Todd thought there should be time set aside for introspection, essentially allowing the club to monitor itself and develop organically. These ideas synthesized into the suggestion that meetings might be themed on a monthly basis: four meetings per month would allow one meeting to be dedicated to discussion, another for project development, another for introspection, etc.

Structure: Both Todd and Nari suggested the group use a consensus-based decision-making process. This led to a discussion about official positions, with Janice supporting the idea. Nari added that these positions should be reserved for upper-division students, citing their imminent exit from the university and entrance into the professional world. Janice thinks it would be wise to consider official positions when it comes to major events like fundraising and other projects for accountability/responsibility reasons. Rebecca added that it is important for there to be these positions for decision-making and duty relegation. Todd added that time will tell who will fit into which position, citing no need to rush into it.

Club Constitution:

The constitution was read for amendment suggestions. It was decided that the club will first decide its position on officials before it makes any other decisions. The group is considering opening up positions when the club reaches 15 “active members”; if this is the case, then this stipulation will be added to the constitution.

Recruiting:

The club felt that the urgent actions to be taken include setting up a club page on the Facebook website for communication and networking reasons, as well as for the creation of an internal message board. A list serve using the Catalyst system will also be created for those without Facebook access. Todd added that the website might benefit from adding a newsfeed. Also, members will make announcements in classes, and use the provided email lists for interested students. Nari added that she will announce the club to Amnesty International at their general meeting, citing possible support and member-sharing. Finally, it was decided that email lists were a fruitful recruiting tool. Nari volunteered to come up with a list of student clubs and other organizations to regularly send JHR emails to (the club came up with a working list including the Journalism/Comm. Department, the Anthropology department; the LSJ department; the Jackson school, HRNet list serve; the African Studies department; DX Arts; the Drama department; and other Ethnic Student Groups).

The group thought it would be wise to create a list of talking points to use in these emails to appeal to individual groups as well as to students as a whole. Todd added that it would be useful to first come up with personal ‘mission statements’ and compare and contrast them with each other as well as with JHR’s mission statement to come up with a personalized statement.

Other recruiting ideas were discussed (and will be explored later) and include: fliers/posters, stickers/pens, and tabling/booths.

Faculty Advisor:

The group came up with a working list of potential advisors, and will decide which it wants to approach (while recognizing that the individual decided upon will determine their role as active or passive, as participatory or instructional, etc.). This list includes:

Cabeiri Robinson: Assistant Professor, Jackson School of International Studies

cdr33@u.washington.edu, 206 221-4210

Stephanie Camp: Associate Professor, Dept of History

stcamp@u.washington.edu, 206 616-2418

Jamie Mayerfeld: Associate Professor, Political Science

jasonm@u.washington.edu, 206 543-4717

Daniel Hart: Professor, American Indian Studies

dhart@u.washington.edu, 206 616-7752

Deborah Kaplan: Assistant Professor, Communication

dkaplan2@u.washington.edu, 206 685-2969

Nancy Kenney: Associate Professor, Women Studies

nkenney@u.washington.edu, 206 543-2563