Amherst College Student Athlete Advisory Committee

Amherst College Student-Athlete Advisory Committee Meeting
April 13, 2008

• Welcome new SAAC members
• What SAAC is and what SAAC does
• New member duties
• NESCAC SAAC
• February meeting cancelled
• Conference call at the end of February
• Cashing in against cancer
• Change drive
• $3,000 collected across NESCAC
• We didn’t collect very much
• Need to be more accountable as SAAC representatives
• How could we do it better next year?
• More advertising
• We did it as an afterthought
• We need to coordinate which teams are in/out of season
• Let’s plan for it next year—make a schedule for it at the big meeting prior to the event
• Need to have more accountability for being a SAAC member
• Regulation for involvement in SAAC?
• Certain teams need to be in charge of certain events
• We need to involve our teams more
• Let’s get everything planned at the first meeting
• Assign certain events to certain teams instead of asking for volunteers
• Should everyone be required to put in a certain number of hours in a year?
• Or we could just keep track for each team?
• If a team doesn’t complete a certain number of hours, change of representative?
• NCAA Postgraduate Scholarships (May 15 deadline for spring sports)
• Need Catherine Sanderson (faculty-athletics liaison) to sign off
• Discussion groups sponsored by the Dean of Students
• Creating dialogues across different sections of campus
• Meet with CCE members
• Meet with AAS
• We’re a big group—would this fall under one subcommittee’s duties?
• New mascot?
• Would have to jump through so many hoops—is it worth it?
• Do we need to get a better understanding of Lord Jeffrey Amherst in the first place?
• A lot of the negatives are about ‘supposed’ happenings
• It’s a vestige of an all-male school
• How do we even begin to think about tackling this?
• What would we change it to? What degree of change are we talking about?
• We need to do research!
• Josh Glasser (one of the named mascots) would be really helpful—very interested in Amherst history and tradition
• Publicity sub-committee can look into this with the help of others who are interested
• Long term project:  3-5 years at other schools who have changed their mascot
• Sub-committee updates
• Community Relations
• Have not met since the last big SAAC meeting
• National Student Athlete Day was last Sunday—never organized anything for it
• Nominating student athletes from each season
• Community Service
• Habitat for Humanity
• House will probably be finished in a year
• Woodside Day Care
• Every Monday morning they meet
• Get in touch with the CCE to make it more publicized
• Bulletin board in the gym
• To post what athletes are doing in community service
• Talk to Tony and Amanda (CCE liaisons)
• Publicity
• Haven’t met recently
• We should take more about the buddy system—has it been working during the spring season?
• Send each team their buddy team’s schedule to facilitate this
• One or two games to jumpstart the idea of buddy teams for next year
• Tickers
• Need to start bothering people about this
• Lord Jeff Payment
• Sportsmanship
• Be Loud/Be Proud/Be Positive t-shirts
• Thanks to athletic department we did get the t-shirts, they were handed out the weekend before National Sportsmanship Day
• We can do other things to create better spirit at athletic events
• Information Session with entire campus?
• Most of campus doesn’t know what we’ve done as a group on campus
• Try to get more ideas for future events from entire student body
• We could honor student athletes at this event
• It would be good to get our name out
• Around 8pm, plentiful food
• Will require some planning—chairs of each subcommittee will need to prepare to speak about what each sub-committee does
• Having it during the day, in Val, might potentially draw faculty and staff
• AAS will probably sponsor food for this ($50-$200 budget)
• Would people show up with the year winding down?
• Maybe we should open the year up with this next year when people have more time
• Could we coerce someone in the student newspaper to write an article about us to get the message out
• But the SAAC is going to be completely new next year—would the new members be able to speak about SAAC’s accomplishments
• Spirit Week sponsored by SAAC?
• Consensus: definitely in the fall
• Date of first meeting
• Constitution says the first Sunday of October
• Should we push it up? The beginning of October is halfway through the fall seasons
• We should do the second week of September—need to change this in the Constitution
• Fall 2008  Budget
• Will find out about proposed budget from AAS soon
• Fundraising?
• Need to give ourselves adequate time in planning to make it worthwhile
• In conjunction with our first meeting next year
• Make a community relations gig out of it?
• A day of athletic instruction?
• Leaf raking—faculty
• Calendar of sports schedule with advertising like lacrosse
• Let’s talk about this in the fall—fundraising committee
• Why don’t we have a tent at the homecoming game
• Alums can donate to SAAC
• Friends of Amherst Athletics Executive Committee members
• 2 current SAAC members can join this 18-20 member committee
• New officer election timeline
• Those interested in running submit name and 100 words why you are interested by April 20
• Vote via e-mail by April 27
• Offices available: President, Vice President, Secretary, treasurer, NESCAC SAAC female (must be member of a varsity sport)
• Current members are only ones allowed to vote and run (one vote per team)
• Big President shoes to fill—Lauren has done an amazing job this year