Fork over your five dollars, become a Hall Government member, and attend the meetings. All of you. Not only is it a requirement of the Demarest Contract, but Hall Government meetings are where decisions affecting the whole dorm are made, and you don't want a very small group of people making decisions about you behind your back. You have the responsibility to watch your elected officials and to let them know what you want them to do for you.

Demarest Hall Government has traditionally been very active, aiding and organizing hall-wide events and fundraisers. Hall Government is the democratic voice for the residents of Demarest, setting the rules for internal policies and carrying your complaints and requests to the Offices of Housing and Residence Life. Hall Government also publishes Demarest's own newsletter, the Johnnies, which is posted inside every bathroom stall door every week. Hall Government is the place to go if you want to use the Demarest TV or VCR, to hold a meeting of your campus organization in Demarest's Main Lounge, to start a fire, or to sponsor a hall-wide event.

The barest minimum of residents necessary for a Hall Government quorum includes all elected officers, all section leaders (or at least a representative from each section), all preceptors, and the RC; if any of these people is absent, the residents are inadequately represented and Hall Government can make bad decisions with no opposition.

This is the way Hall Government meetings were run while we were Demarites. This format works really well.

1. The elected officers meet with the RC in her apartment (or some other suitably private place) about half an hour before the public meeting in the ML. The purpose of this meeting is to hammer out the HG agenda and to discuss things which would only waste everyone else's time at the general meeting.

2. At the general meeting (which is mandatory for elected officers, section leaders, preceptors, and the RC), the first order of business is the Secretary's roll call. The Secretary calls each section in turn, and the section leader (or delegated representative, if the section leader is unable to attend) responds with that section's meeting time and place for the coming week, as well as the name of the person whose project will be presented and the topic of the project. Any section entirely unrepresented forfeits its right to a meeting space, and that section's usual meeting space and time may be usurped by other residents.

3. The elected officers then speak. One co-President speaks of resident concerns; the other speaks of dorm activities; the Treasurer reports the current balance in the HG Treasury; the Secretary and Historian report on their responsibilities and activities.

4. The preceptors and the RC may bring up any Demarest Res Life concerns.

5. The section leaders may bring up any section concerns.

6. The general Hall Government members may bring up any resident concerns.

About the Demarest Constitution, from Outtelligence, vol. 2, no. 3, 16 Dec 1989:

Among other provisions, the student-written constitution of Demarest gives Hall Government the power to create sections and determine residence requirements. The constitution was written by students in Fall 1985, after the previous constitution mysteriously disappeared from the files at Bishop House and the Demarest staff office during the summer. The reigning RC made various attempts to prevent its ratification, including continuous disruption of the Hall Government meetings where it was being discussed, causing three consecutive meetings to last for over an hour each.

The Constitution has not been seen in years, and nobody can find it in the Hall Government office, so this year's residents have drafted a new one, the text of which will be online as soon as I get a copy. We do still intend to hunt down the original, however.

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