Meeting minutes
Last modified 10/21/2024
Present: Ananya Majumdar, Tudor Finaru, Lars Thalian Morstad, Alexandra Purcarea, Rokas Gudavičius, Daniel Kirkman, Ryan Schuller, Advaith Sai Maddipatla, Samuel Macleod
Agenda
Decisions
Writing a post was unanimously considered the bare minimum to do, though the details will be further discussed in the chat. The general guidelines for it is to be non-inflammatory and tech-related to some extent.
The general consensus was for us not to get politically involved, though what counts as ‘political’ is subject to debate. Palantir and BAE are possible counterexamples to the non-political rule. Antiracism is not political, but the BLM movement might be seen as political.
Drawing the line and defining our involvement in socio-political issues might be useful, and could be done formally through the constitution. Other committees might have different ideas, but it is good for the current one to stay consistent.
Defining political involvement might ‘shoot us in the foot’ later, as it might encourage us to stay complacent. On the other hand, some guidance on these issues was considered better than no guidance at all, at least as a starting reference for future committees.
Monetary decisions must be unanimous and will be further discussed at another meeting in the near future.
Some people objected to donating on the basis of not putting a price on people’s lives and rights, as well as not knowing charities that well. If we do decide on a charity, we need to track where the money goes, preferably towards educational purposes.
We want the community to have a say on who we donate to, and that might be done through the open poll system. There were concerns whether that would only draw attention to us and not the cause.
The amount to be donated was greatly debated, starting from 300 GBP up to even 2,000 GBP.
Supporting the movement should be continued through this year, possibly through debate-style events to give people a platform, and through reinforcing our equality and inclusion rules. On the other hand, we have to be prepared to be held accountable for anything said during these events, which defeats our rule of not being politically involved.
Votes
TODO