Resources

The Student Government Association

For a much more comprehensive guide to SGA, see the SGA website and handbook. A copy of the handbook should be kept in the publications building, but can also be found in the SGA offices.

SGA is composed of three main branches: cabinet, whose members are either elected from the student body at large (in the case of the president and vice president) or appointed by the president and vice president; senators, who are elected from the dorms, from off-campus college-owned housing, and from off-campus non-college-owned housing; and committee members, who are appointed by the president and vice president or the heads of their committees.

Senators and cabinet members meet once a week at Joint Board, where they review the activities of the various committees, review budgets submitted for student activities, and discuss campus issues.

Important SGA offices

President: The primary responsibility of the president is to serve as the voice of the student body in dialogue with the college administration and the Board of Trustees. The SGA president and vice president meet on a weekly basis with the president of the college and maintain regular communication with the chair of the Board of Trustees. The SGA President also attends general sessions of the Board of Trustees, and serves on the board's Student Affairs Committee. The president serves as chair of Joint Board and acts as the primary link between students and the City of Grinnell.

Vice president/PAA: The Vice President/President of Academic Affairs (VP/PAA) is the students' representative to the faculty on academic matters. In addition to aiding the president in his or her duties, the VP/PAA chairs the Student Curriculum Committee; sits on the college's Curriculum Committee; coordinates the Student Educational Policy Committee system; represents SGA on the Judicial Council and casts a vote for the Cabinet at all Joint Board meetings; chairs Joint Board in the president's absence; and sits on the Board of Trustees' Committee of Academic Affairs.

Cabinet members: Aside from the president and VP/PAA, SGA's cabinet includes the treasurer, assistant treasurer, administrative coordinator, all-campus events coordinator, concerts chair, films chair, student groups liaison/publicity coordinator, and the student services coordinator. The cabinet is generally responsible for the allocation of SGA funds; each member is responsible for different aspects of SGA and chairs a different committee. The cabinet also has one vote at Joint Board, cast by the VP/PAA.

Cabinet selection begins in the spring, after the president and vice president are elected. Applicants are then interviewed, the president- and vice president-elect nominate the candidates, and Joint Board votes to either approve or reject the candidates. Those who are approved take office after commencement each spring.

The one cabinet member who is not appointed by the incoming executives is the treasurer. Each year, the assistant treasurer advances to the position of treasurer, and the incoming executives pick an assistant treasurer to be treasurer in another year.

Senators: Senators call periodic hall council meetings to discuss issues within their dorms. At Joint Board, senators address issues discussed in hall council meetings or other issues posed by their constituents. Additionally, senators are asked to serve on an SGA committee and to provide their hall with joint board minutes.

Grinnell's administration

At the broadest level, Grinnell is run by its Board of Trustees, a group of volunteers who meet several times a year, sometimes at Grinnell and sometimes elsewhere, to make major policy decisions. The board hires Grinnell's president, who is in turn responsible for presenting issues to the trustees, for serving as the college's leader, spokesperson and major policy-setter, for making major decisions about hiring and firing and for many fundraising duties.

Below the president are a number of vice presidents, who specialize in various areas of college policy. Some of them are also deans; some of them supervise deans and directors. All of these administrators have support staffers, who schedule appointments, sign books, send emails, and generally keep the administration itself running.

Most administrators them also serve on several committees, most of which also include students and faculty. The most powerful of these committees are probably:

1) the faculty's Executive Council, which includes the president, the dean of the college, the chairs of each division, an at-large faculty representative and the chair of the faculty. They oversee just about everything pertaining to academics at Grinnell.

2) the Budget Steering Committee, which includes the president, the chair of the faculty, an at-large faculty representative, a student representative and a number of vice presidents and deans. They set large-scale and long-term budget priorities for the college, like the amounts allocated to each office and department and the tuition and fees for each year.

Here is a PDF flowchart from a spring 2002 S&B, listing all the major administrators and their staffs. It has been updated for this edition of this handbook, but these structures will certainly change further in the years to come. Still, it should provide a fairly accurate overview of the administration, and who is responsible for what.

Useful websites

On campus

Campus Memo
college press releases
academic catalog
student handbook
faculty handbook
college factbook (Grinnell, in statistics)
Student Government Association
Board of Trustees
Campus Master Plan
Office of Institutional and Budget Planning (large-scale financial coordination)
faculty committee reports (minutes from the Executive Council and other bodies)

Local

City of Grinnell
Grinnell Chamber of Commerce
Grinnell-Newburg Schools

News of the outer world

BBC News
Washington Post
New York Times (free registration required)
Des Moines Register

Other useful websites

Daypop Top 40 Links (blog-powered compilation of popular postings online)
CIA World Factbook (concise, up-to-date information about nation-states)
THOMAS (searchable U.S. legislative information)
League of Women Voters (nonpartisan nonprofit with information on elected officials, candidates, issues and voting procedures)
Internet Movie Database and All Music Guide (what hypertext was invented for)
Project Gutenberg (cache of publically-owned literature)
Oxford English Dictionary (all the definitions, all the contexts, all the roots; college connections only)
New York Times Navigator (breathtaking web signpost covering everything we didn't have room for here)

Recommended reading

The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual is widely described as a journalist's bible. The S&B keeps a copy of its own in the publications building, and Burling Library has another. Editors should consider buying their own copies, especially if they're considering journalism as a future profession. As well as its comprehensive and section on style and usage (a larger version of chapter 4 in this book), it contains an indispensable guide to punctuation, a 20-page guide to libel law and basic outlines of copyright law and the Freedom of Information Act.

Burling does not, unfortunately, have a copy of The Associated Press Guide to News Writing, by Rene J. Cappon. It is, however, a wonderfully readable and effective handbook, designed specifically for journalists.

Bill Kovach and Tom Rosensteil's The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect is just one of many good books on journalistic ethics published in the wake of the O.J. Simpson trial, the Clinton impeachment and the 2000 election. It provides an intelligent and broadly applicable vision of our job in a modern context. It's also fairly short and very easy to read.

Grinnell's academic catalog, published at the beginning of each year, includes an extensive introduction to academic life at the college, including an overview of campus life, the application of different coursework, and the college's mission statement. Obviously, it lists all the majors Grinnell offers and all the professors in every department. And the back lists everybody on the faculty and everybody in the administration, with their full titles, the schools they graduated from, the degrees they've received, and the dates they were hired by Grinnell. There's also a list of Grinnell's trustees and all its past presidents.

Grinnell's student handbook, also updated and published annually, contains more specific guidelines on college policy, most usefully in the realm of Student Affairs. Essential reading for any article involving JudCo, for example.

The SGA handbook contains comprehensive descriptions of positions, committees, policies, and duties of Grinnell's student government. Copies can be found in the SGA offices.

The college factbook, published each year by the office of Institutional Research, has all sorts of useful statistics, on admission, financial aid, budgeting, demographics, academic trends, and so on, often mapped across the last few years.

Grinnell's policy of self governance

The cornerstone of student life at Grinnell since its institution in the early 1970s.

Those engaged in a liberal arts education create a community based on freedom of choice. By making individual choices, students meet the challenges of a rigorous academic and rich out-of-classroom experience. Self-governance encourages students to become responsible, respectful, and accountable members of the campus, town, and global community.

Principles of self governance

- You are responsible for your community. That is, you work at a variety of levels to build, maintain, and contribute to the campus, local, and global community.
- You are accountable for your choices. That is, you take ownership for your actions, opinions, and beliefs.
- You are accountable for preventing your actions from infringing or violating others' rights.
- You are responsible for speaking and listening to others to reach shared understandings.
- You are responsible for addressing situations and communicating concerns about issues that undermine community or individual rights, whether they be your own or others.

These principles of self governance are supported through:

- an administrative structure intentionally designed to challenge and support students to govern themselves
- an academic structure encouraging choice through an open curriculum
- a campus community committed to social consciousness and community