LSU Student Bar Association Meeting Agenda Thursday, June 25

Note: Student Bar Association reserves the right to enter into Executive Session, if needed, in accordance with R.S. 42:16 et seq.

LSU Student Bar Association

Meeting Agenda

Thursday, June 25, 2020 2020 at 6:30 pm

Via Zoom

1. Call to Order 6:30 pm on Zoom

2. Roll Call

a. Patrick Riley - Executive President

b. Michael Dalman - Executive Vice President

c. Melanie Brown - Executive Secretary

d. Hannah Dardar - Executive Treasurer

e. Zachary Lester - Executive Director of Programming

f. Keifer Ackley -3L Class President

g. Bill Zloch - 3L Class Vice President

h. Adam Laliberte- 3L Class Secretary

i. Carson Delarue - 3L Class Representative

j. Andrew Jarreau - 3L Class Representative

k. Austin Pottorff - 2L Class President

l. Alex Domingue - 2L Class Vice President

m. Reagan Moody - 2L Class Secretary

n. Heidi Bieber - 2L Class Representative

o. Shawn Waldron - 2L Class Representative

p. - 1L Class President

q. - 1L Class Vice President

r. - § 1-1L Class Representative

s. - § 2-1L Class Representative

t. - § 3-1L Class Representative

3. Intro by President

a. We will be doing Zoom for a little while due to COVID-19 and that will continue to be an option

in case someone has concerns

i. Etiquette: If you can have your camera on, that is ideal. If you have a question, unmute but

otherwise stay on mute.

1. Questions in the Zoom chat also ok.

4. Public Input

5. Reading, Correction, and Adoption of the April 3, 2020 Meeting Minutes

a. Motion to adopt unanimous, minutes adopted. No corrections.

6. Committee Reports

a. ABA Student Representative – Chair: N/A

b. Academics Committee – Chair: Braxton Duhon

c. Athletics Committee – Chair: Jared Tregre

d. Community and Media Committee – Chair: Olivia Nuss

e. Diversity and Professionalism Committee – Chair: Kristyn Couvillion

f. Elections Committee – Commissioner: Robert Carter

g. Ethics Committee – Chair: N/A

h. Safety, Sensitivity & Sustainability Committee – Chair: Christian Redmon

Note: Student Bar Association reserves the right to enter into Executive Session, if needed, in accordance with R.S. 42:16 et seq.

7. Executive Officer Reports

a. President

i. Explanation of SBA Policy and Procedure

1. Handout that Pat put together that explains Motions you can make, how you make

them, voting, etc. and is essentially an orientation for SBA

a. SBA procedure is important and everyone should feel that they can

participate

b. Quorum right now is 8 voting members, when 1Ls join it will be 10.

i. Attendance important for this reason.

1. Constitutionally you are allowed 2 absences a semester

unless extenuating circumstances.

c. We are here to represent our peers and bring their concerns as well as our

own. We encourage debate, discussion, and everything we do is to elevate

voices.

ii. Vision for Upcoming Year

1. Key Elements of Reform

a. Want to make SBA more efficient, transparent and have better

representation.

i. Election Code

1. Ethics hearings are required when a complaint is made, and

the Ethics committee has put together potential revisions

for the Election Code to address this.

a. Need to work on this before the 1L election in fall.

ii. SBA Constitution

1. Technical changes like correction of misspellings.

2. Substantive changes to add guidance where Constitution is

unclear, reformat it to be more organized.

3. We would like to have two amendment packages to submit

to the student body so they can review and vote on it

hopefully during the 1L elections.

a. Ideas for drafting needed, get with Pat after meeting

today

i. Discuss problems and solutions

ii. Carson – how to send ideas? Email, other

communications and maybe a meeting with

everyone who wants to participate

iii. Update from the Dean regarding COVID-19 and other matters

1. Dean Lockridge has met with Pat a couple times to discuss

2. Based on what she mentioned a month ago:

a. Most classes in Fall are likely to be online or at least have an online

option.

i. 1L classes are going to be given preference on campus.

ii. Campus and library will be open but masks will be required.

1. Policy for reporting mask violations.

iii. Governor has not moved forward into Phase 3 at this point.

3. Events

a. We are forging ahead as if every event is going to happen until we are told

otherwise.

i. We want as little exposure as we can to liability so if we need to

sign event contracts try to find ones we can get refunded/out of.

Note: Student Bar Association reserves the right to enter into Executive Session, if needed, in accordance with R.S. 42:16 et seq.

b. Only event that there will probably be an issue with is the Halloween

party.

4. Just know that information is ever-changing and just continue to keep up with

your emails from Pres Galligan as well as Dean Lockridge.

5. Football

a. 1Ls always ask about this, Zach and Mike have been on contact with ticket

office about this for our section tickets

i. Ticket office still unsure what is going to happen but they are

working on it.

1. Follow up in July

b. Tailgates and main campus – Zach – we don’t have “LSU Law” tailgates

they are a separate entity so we are not subject to those rules

6. Finals

a. All online, pretty confident about that because Main Campus is not

coming back after Thanksgiving this year.

iv. SBA and Main Campus

1. Student Government

a. Chala (BLSA) went to a board of supervisors meeting and was made

aware that LSU Law is supposed to have representation in student

government and some undergraduates appointed themselves and filled

those spots on our behalf.

i. SGA president has spoken to Pat briefly over email

b. We need to decide if we want to represent on main campus.

i. We also can’t have two people representing the law center that do

not attend here.

1. Do we want to allow them to continue? Pat thinks we

screwed up in the past and these people just took initiative,

but we deserve to have a say and can initiate a recall to

replace them.

a. Heidi – more fair to open it up and have some sort

of election.

b. Alex – the people currently in these positions are

not law students and aren’t adequate enough to rep

us during these tough times

c. Bill – maybe make it a 1L position or have elections

but def open to our student body

d. Michael – we don’t have to have representation at

all. But if we do, we have to decide how to select

reps… vote, appointment, etc.

e. Shawn – don’t want to set a precedent that people

can just appoint themselves to various positions and

say they represent us.

c. What process to elect Senators?

i. If SBA was designated the official college council of the law

center, we would gain access to the fold and also access to money

distributed to the colleges for professional events.

1. We operate as a separate college unlike the undergraduate

colleges. We don’t want to give up autonomy.

d. No pressure on us to join versus not join.

i. Pat’s big concern – if we do this, we are subject to main campus

rules. We think in 2018 we were already forced to join and are

Note: Student Bar Association reserves the right to enter into Executive Session, if needed, in accordance with R.S. 42:16 et seq.

already subject to their rules like for tailgates, so we need to make

sure.

1. If that’s the case, we definitely want access to the money

and the Senate representation.

e. Heidi – discussion in SBA last year – the reason those spots weren’t filled

was because nobody would apply but they were available. It took too

much time to go to the Main campus SGA meetings.

i. Hannah – agree with Heidi about what was said

ii. Pat – definitely think that it is important to have representation and

maybe we can get a monthly report from whoever our Senators are.

Maybe we should add these positions to our Constitution so that

they can be filled properly by LSU Law students. We should make

sure there’s no longer an issue with making these spots known and

available.

2. Motion to Inform Main Campus SGA that we will Elect New Senators, and until

that time these Senators should be recalled… by Bill

a. Second by Heidi

b. Motion passes unanimously

c. Pat will report back once he contacts them

v. Items that will be accomplished this summer

1. Pat wants to meet with committee chairmen, so if you have ideas for committee

projects please let him know

a. Want to use them more than we have in the past, delegate more tasks to

them

2. Pat is also collecting 1L outlines to update the outline bank, Olivia Nuss is going

to re-do the website to make it easier to navigate and find the meeting minutes,

constitution, outlines, elections code, etc.

3. If we lose money on deposits to secure events, that’s ok – would rather be

prepared for events to go forward than the opposite

4. Another meeting in July to follow up on all of these things

5. Major thanks to everyone for working hard!!!

b. Vice President

i. Two (2) Prospective Student Organizations

1. Discuss provisional status and transition to being a full-fledged organization

2. Student orgs are all of our clubs. Students who want to create a new org have to

apply Art 10 to provisional status and follow those guidelines. They have to meet

the requirements for a year and then they can apply to be full student orgs.

a. Adam – faculty moderator?

i. Michael couldn’t find anything about that in Constitution but it

may be a practical requirement to have a faculty advisor. Not

required for us to approve them though it is for admin. Faculty

advisor really helps for longevity though and he will relay that

suggestion.

b. Real Estate & Property Law Society (Bonnie Stuart Smith, 2L)

i. She sent application and list of 18-20 members who are ready to

join. Michael recommends for approval.

1. Motion to approve provisional status by Heidi

2. Second by Carson

3. Motion passes unanimously

c. LSU Law Basketball Club (Jackson Ritchie, 3L)

Note: Student Bar Association reserves the right to enter into Executive Session, if needed, in accordance with R.S. 42:16 et seq.

i. Modeled it off of the football club. Includes a basketball

tournament for charity. 8 members ready to join. Michael

recommends for approval.

1. Motion to approve provisional status by Adam

2. Second by Reagan

3. Motion passes unanimously

ii. Tables N/A

1. Won’t talk about Tables and Funding b/c of corona and Zoom

iii. Funding Requests N/A

iv. At the beginning of each semester the VP usually calls council meeting with the leaders of

all the student orgs, he’s going to let us know the deal with that this year.

c. Secretary

i. Please be patient with me the first couple of meetings! Glad to see y’all though!

1. Sorry that voting has to be by roll call while we are on Zoom

d. Treasurer

i. Inside Account

1. 4

Floor handles this so TBA

a. Have not gotten the statement yet. The last meeting minutes indicated on

March 2 that the account had about $11,400 including Barristers expenses

that were going to be paid but likely weren’t.

2. Inside account is for funding things EVERYONE in the law center will benefit

from. Ex: org meeting food, our main events. Student fees with tuition go here, so

we need to try to use it as much as possible.

3. Improvements

a. If at any point we want to help make school better, we can contribute to

those purchases. Ex: the new microwaves

ii. Outside Account

1. $52,462.77

a. Will be $49,962.77 after check to Fielding

b. Thanks for participating in the E-Vote!

iii. Will be buying a file organizer and new deposit stamp, will likely ask for reimbursement

for expenses at next meeting

iv. New Changes:

1. Re-vamping accounting records/excel sheets

2. All events will need individual accounting upon completion

a. In form of a Profit/Loss statement

i. Will make template for this that everyone can use. Need to include

expenses for putting on the event and/or any profit from the event

ii. This way, future boards can determine how much each event has

costed in the past and what money was spent on.

v. Pat – managing “the people’s money” is very important, and beefing up our record-keeping

and accounting is really good. Students need to know what we are doing and we have to

deal with IRS, etc.

e. Programming Director

i. Plan for Fall and COVID-19 Phases

1. Up in the air!

2. Football tickets revisited, going to follow up and update us

3. GIFS

a. They will happen, maybe have to separate by class to make them smaller.

b. The goal is to allow student body and SBA to decide how we proceed

Note: Student Bar Association reserves the right to enter into Executive Session, if needed, in accordance with R.S. 42:16 et seq.

i. Hannah – like Pat said, plan for everything because canceling is

either than scrambling. We should consider house parties also.

Zoom game nights

ii. Bill – will it cost more money if we split by class? No, because we

negotiate to have these events with the owners

iii. Pat – doesn’t want to expose people, but also wants to allow

people to congregate and it is our duty to provide that opportunity.

Maybe we should avoid bars but we can tackle that when we get

there and we should accommodate people that want to spend time

together.

iv. Melanie – trivia, outdoor venues

v. Heidi – could we have “GIFs” but outdoors like a tailgate?

1. Pat – back in the old days that’s exactly what they did right

after school on a Friday

2. Zach – campus is a dry campus except football so don’t get

in trouble!

vi. Reagan – really important for 1Ls so if anything we should focus

on them

8. Class Officer Reports

a. 3L Class

i. Hats & Canes reception venue deposit - $500

1. The Estuary – Water Campus on Friday, October 23 from 7-10 PM

2. Goal is ensure Hats & Canes go forward, been a tradition since the 30s. Estuary

has refundable deposit unlike some other venues and we haven’t done an event

there before

3. 3L only event

a. Motion to expend $500 from the outside account by Keifer

b. Second by Bill

c. Motion passes unanimously

b. 2L Class

i. Checked on Old State Cap and ~basically~ they said they’ll never do an event with LSU

Law ever again.

ii. Merch

1. Merch shipped directly to people instead of handing it out, checking on that and

will update us

2. Quality of merch might suffer but they will research and might be limited choices

a. Hannah –if they can meet the minimum on France shirts to accommodate

people that didn’t get one from last year even though nobody got to go to

France this year.

b. Reagan – maybe poll for transparency

i. Pat – wants to utilize polling more

1. Email list of admitted students

c. 1L Class

d. LLM

i. Are we even going to have LLMs?

9. Old Business

a. Review of E-Vote (Art. IX) from Monday 6/15/2020. Last year’s 3Ls personally paid a $2,500

deposit to ride the St. Patrick’s Day float in the parade that was ultimately canceled due to

COVID-19 concerns. If we leave the deposit with the parade organization we will automatically

have a spot in the 2021 parade.

Note: Student Bar Association reserves the right to enter into Executive Session, if needed, in accordance with R.S. 42:16 et seq.

i. E-Vote was to pay the 3Ls back from the SBA account and leave their paid deposit with the

parade organization with the understanding that we will recoup this $2,500 loss when our

3Ls pay for parade spots in Spring 2021.

1. Motion for SBA to reimburse Spring 2020 3Ls by Heidi

2. Second by Andrew

3. Motion passes unanimously

a. Check for $2,500 to be cut to Fielding Matkins.

10. New Business

a. Orientation

i. 2L SBA board is in charge of lockers, Pat is also working with campus to get us our

parking spots situated and keys to the office

ii. Some of our committees will have panels at orientation if it is in person

1. Zoom if not in person

b. COVID can’t stop us from having a great year and setting future boards up for success!

11. Adjournment

a. Motion to adjourn by Heidi

b. Second by Bill

c. Motion passes, goodbye!!