From: Jonathan Wrubel
Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003
Subject: Grad Group Vision Meeting Summary

Well, I'm sorry it's been a couple of weeks, but here is the summary of the meeting. Better late than never! I have chosen to put it in paragraph form instead of bulleted list and hopefully it's more readable that way. As you will see there were quite a few different opinions expressed. If you have an opinion one way or the other then I urge to come on out and get involved! The group can become whatever we want it to be.

Attendees: Sara Barron, Rohit Fernandez, Matthew Fluet, Juan Carlos Trejo Jimenez, Theresa Miller, Kimberly Noethen, Josh Pack, Angela Roberts, Fr. Bob Smith, Nick Tracz, Jonathan Wrubel

Attendance by Proxy: (emailed opinions) Deanna Caputo, Michael Keegan, Melissa Mundo, Marc and Janee Picconi

• Activities of the Group:

  Some people enjoy the weekly readings that we have been doing this semester. This involves having a person volunteer to prepare a reading for the next week, scanning in a few pages (preferably well ahead of time), and sending it to Matthew so he can post it on the web page. This format provides more variety in the topic, but it also limits the depth of the discussion because a new topic is chosen each week. Also it involves weekly preparation and sometimes this results in a very late reminder email and little time to read before group. It would work better if topics were prepared a week ahead of time, but in the past this has been difficult to put into practice - one of the reasons books were occasionally chosen instead.

  There was significant discussion of how important discussion versus social activities are to the group. Some people feel that the social aspect is primary while others feel the discussion aspect is primary with the social aspect an outgrowth of the discussions. It's unclear how best to strike this balance. In the past, social activities always been an impromptu decision of those who attended group the week before.

  Another suggestion that would change the format significantly was to have several smaller groups with different topics or themes each semester. This allows for more choice but also requires more organizational effort.

  The importance of eating together was emphasized and is not something we have done regularly in the past (it has been done periodically). We can consider organizing more dinners together, although the exact logistics of this were not worked out.

• Location:

  The question of where to hold the meetings is a difficult one. On the one hand it might be less intimidating to newer grads to have the meetings on campus, and this provides a larger venue as well. On the other hand, we all spend a lot of time on campus and a break from campus was welcomed by some. Also, meeting in a house allows for an informality that might be impossible on campus and might be more welcoming to non-student members. In the summer there are severe time restrictions at least on Anabel Taylor Hall.

  Suggested locations were: ATH, Llenroc (where Sister Donna currently lives and where Fr. Mike used to live - across the street from West campus), Crossroads (at the corner of Stewart and Buffalo streets), or Lincoln St. - downtown (where it has been held in the past).

  No firm decision was made on this except that our first meeting of the Fall semester (technically NEXT Thursday, 9/4 at 8p.m.) will be in 314 ATH. One suggestion was that initial meetings could be held on campus and later meetings held off campus.

• Time/Scheduling:

  This is always difficult and we solicit opinion from the list every semester, although apparently this email sometimes goes unnoticed. We decided to make the scheduling email more obvious instead of tagging it on to a reminder email. When you see this email, please respond with the times/days that work best for you - grads with flexible schedules have no trouble accommodating those with more restricted ones.

  There was also some discussion about the length of grad group. Grad group typically lasts about 1.5 hours plus some time for socialization afterwards (although some people always leave immediately). The suggestion was made that shorter, less formal meetings might be more inviting. No firm decision was made, although it would probably be difficult to have a discussion of any depth in less than ~1 hour with a half hour divided between getting started and prayer at the end. Still social events could potentially be shorter.

• Welcoming:

  Fr. Bob noted that it is always surprising how few students regularly take advantage of the many programs that CCC provides. It seems that it is always difficult to get someone to overcome that initial barrier to getting involved. In my experience the only way to accomplish this is to give personal invitation and support. We are therefore going to make an additional effort (outside of our usual warm welcome at grad group meetings themselves) to personally invite the involvement of students who are infrequent participants in our community. Consider making an invitation to someone you don't know or accepting one as the case may be!

• ListServe:

  The list has been a source of more discussion recently than ever in the past - literally and in terms of discussion about the purpose of the List as well. There are currently ~130 persons who receive the emails sent to the list and it is certainly important that the relevance of emails be considered. Still we haven't had an explicit policy, so we decided to draft an etiquette policy and send it out to the list at the beginning of this semester. We will then also include it in the welcoming email upon joining the list. Decisions will be made by the list administrators as to whether a person is violating proper list etiquette and it will be up to those persons to take any action if necessary. Complaints and comments should be addressed to them and not to the list as a whole. Currently the administrators are Matthew Fluet (fluet@cs.cornell.edu) and myself (jpw22@cornell.edu). We are happy to receive any questions or comments that you may have regarding the list.

  Some persons feel that discussion in a limited form on the list is acceptable, while others feel the list should be reserved for event announcements. Some feel that there should be only one "events" email per week, while others feel this suppresses the organization of spontaneous events. For now we will not make significant changes in the use of the listserve simply because the opinions on this subject are so diverse. We take the position that abuse has been relatively infrequent and ask for some patience on the part of community members.

• Some Changes:

  While we could not come to a real consensus on many issues, we wanted to make some changes and see how they work:

  • Scheduling: Josh has taken responsibility for trying to get some kind of schedule worked out so we better know what's going to be happening this semester. Hopefully you already received this, please let him know if you have any suggestions for what we should do as a community this semester.
  • Social coordination: Angela will help organize our social activities in a more regular way, although as in the past this will likely continue to simply depend on what group members would like to do and/or are motivated to organize.
  • Meals: Kim will organize our effort to eat together on a regular basis.
  • Email List/Web Page: This isn't changing so much, but Matthew will continue being the point person for announcements, and postings on the web page. We would like to make it clear what proper list etiquette is and how to get on/off the list yearly. Matthew and I will continue to administer the email list.
  • Outreach: I will attempt to organize our efforts at outreach and welcoming of new faces.