Student Disability Commission Director

Dear Successor,

Congratulations on your selection as the Student Disability Commission Director for the upcoming 2017-2018 academic year! Your commitment to the mission and vision of the ASUW Student Disability Commission impressed us, and we are so truly grateful for your willingness to build and grow the commission. I will preface this by saying that this position is by no means an easy job. Yes, it will be challenging, and yes, it will be hard, but you will learn so much and you will grow in so many ways that you never thought was possible.

Cheers,

Jessie Zhang
Student Disability Commission Director 2016-2017

Email: asuwswdc@uw.edu – Password: haydenandmagpie1
Twitter: asuwswdc@uw.edu – Password: haydenandmagpie1
Facebook: Admin needs to be added from settings menu under Page Roles
RSO Center: asuwswdc-1024
HUB Reservation: asuwswdc@uw.edu – Password: StuDis14
Slack: asuwswdc@uw.edu – Password: haydenandmagpie1

Note: Your work computer changes the password once a month or every other month. It can be annoying, so please make sure to check!

Here is a list of weekly to-do’s that I usually do, barring classes and other commitments.

• Check emails. Respond to them as soon as possible!
  
• Attend JCC meetings. Fill out entity reports every Sunday evening.
  • What is JCC?
    • JCC stands for Joint Commission Committee and consists of all diversity commissions at the ASUW plus SARVA (Sexual Assault and Relationship Violence Activists) and SHC (Student Health Consortium). These diversity commissions include: Women’s Action Commission, Middle Eastern Student Commission, Asian Student Commission, Queer Student Commission, Pacific Islander Commission, Black Student Commission, La Raza Student Commission, American Indian Student Commission, and — of course — Student Disability Commission. (I apologize if I’ve inadvertently left a commission out!)
  • What rules exist?
    • You will need to follow Robert’s Rules of Order. However, this may depend on what your Director of Diversity Efforts decides to do this year!
  • What’s the format?
    • Every Sunday evening, the Director of Diversity Efforts usually sends out an email stating the location of the meeting along with links to the agenda and slides for entity reports. There are some old and new businesses to discuss; occasionally, there will be guest speakers at the beginning of the meeting to speak on an issue or bring up an interesting collaboration.
    • Entity Reports: At the end of the meeting, Directors comment on their entity reports. You should be filling out your entity reports every week, which can be 1) what you worked on before, 2) what you are working on right now, 3) anything that is relevant (sometimes, people like to share some personal things from their life such as going to a conference or flying elsewhere for break!).
• Attend SAB meetings. Send a proxy if you are unable to attend.
  • Note: I’ll be honest, I didn’t know I was expected to attend the SAB meetings since my predecessor did not send me transition documents explaining the purpose of SAB! So I’ve had to pick up pieces here and there. Even though you are an ex-officio officer, meaning that you cannot vote — only ASUW Director of Diversity Efforts can vote — you are still expected to attend.
  • What is SAB?
    • SAB stands for Student Advisory Board and is the board filled with students and a few UW administrators. This is an excellent chance for you to voice your opinion on issues that you care about, as well as on relevant campus issues. 2016-2017 was an interesting year for SAB as we’ve had to deal with issues from ICE to Milo Y.
• Attend Student Senate meetings. Send a proxy if you are unable to attend.
  • You have voting privileges! Please use them wisely. This year, we used an electronic clicker system to vote via tinyurl.com/vclicker21. You may have a different link or system next year.
  • You will also be assigned to a committee. This year, I was part of the Academic & Administrative Affairs (Triple A) Committee. Try to request the same committee next year. For about 10-15 minutes in Senate, we discuss resolutions that have been sent to our committee, request point of information, and make amendments. If you’re familiar with Robert’s Rules of Order, this should be a fairly easy task. If not, please don’t be afraid to ask the Senate Membership Coordinator!
• Attend one-on-one meetings with your SAO Adviser.
  • This year, my adviser was Jennifer Pope (jkiest@uw.edu), who has been an invaluable source of guidance and support for SDC! She used to advise the D Center in the past prior to the hiring of Lesley Ellis, so she is fairly knowledgeable about the history of the D Center as well as SDC. She’s great. She’s also busy with other RSOs and ASUW entities, so please try to give her as much information as you can in advance of your events!

If you are unable to attend any of these meetings, please be sure to inform the Director of Diversity Efforts and the Chair or Vice-Chair of the Student Advisory Board (SAB). This year, our Director of Diversity Efforts did not want a proxy; however, for SAB you must have a proxy. Proxies are truly invaluable and will help you keep up to speed on what is happening on campus! This year, my interns stood in as proxies for SAB and Senate. I’d encourage you to do the same.

The current Chair of SAB is Julien Ishibashi. He is approachable and tends to be a little sarcastic.

The current Vice-Chair of SAB is Ritika Jain. She is wonderful and personable! Both of them work extremely well together.

Autumn Quarter:

• Get to know the Associated Students of the University of Washington (ASUW) .
• “Hire” interns! The early on, the better for the commission (and you won’t feel as tired by singularly putting on programming!). I cannot stress this enough — this is something that I wish I did in my term! Interns are a higher-commitment version of volunteers because they are unpaid but have the potential to take your position the following year if they perform well. I would encourage you to get five interns.
  • It will help your commission significantly if the interns are proficient in:
    • Event planning.
    • Equipment + general volunteering. Interns are a huge asset as they can help set up and take down events.
    • Advertising + marketing. This is a huge weakness of SDC this year, so at least one of the interns should be proficient in using online tools and software to create graphics for SDC.
    • Proxying. It is helpful if interns are aware of campus connections and issues.

Winter Quarter:

• Continue building the SDC’s constituency, by outreaching to the RSOs, the D Center, and other entities.
• Continue programming for small and medium-sized events.

Spring Quarter:

• Collaborate with the D Center to host the D Month, a month-long celebration of the Deaf & Disability culture and community usually held in April. As such, big names may be coming to the UW around this time.

The SDC is expected to attend meetings for the following:

• ASUW Student Senate: 5pm to 7pm on Tuesdays.
• Joint Commission Committee (JCC): Weekly, exact dates and times determined by the Director of Diversity Efforts. JCC meetings usually last 1.5 hours in the evenings. Entity Reports must be filled out prior to the start of the meetings.

The SDC is currently an ex-officio officer for the Student Activities Board (SAB) meetings so the SDC Director is not required to attend the meetings. However, the SAB strongly encourages sending a proxy if the SDC Director is unable to attend its meetings. The Student Activities Board discusses agenda items pertaining to the undergraduate students at the University of Washington.

Furthermore, the SDC traditionally has had a close relationship with the D Center, which stands for the Deaf & Disability Cultural Center. The current D Center Director (formerly adviser) is Lesley Ellis, who can be reached at lesellis@uw.edu. Otherwise you may reach the D Center at their all-inclusive email dcenter@uw.edu.

American Sign Language (ASL) Club: Contact aslc@uw.edu. Look up “UW ASL Club” for their Facebook group for more updated information.

To reserve HUB rooms, visit hubres.uw.edu and follow instructions to reserve the spaces. It is advisable to make the request at least two weeks in advance of your event. In the Spring Quarter, rooms tend to fill up quickly for Parents & Family Weekend, cultural events, scholarship receptions, and other events. I would strongly recommend booking rooms at least before spring break for the Spring Quarter.

To reserve the D Center, simply email dcenter@uw.edu with your request or visit the D Center in Mary Gates Hall 024 to make the request in person. Be sure to clearly indicate the date and time that you would like to the space to be reserved, as well as any equipment that may be needed. The D Center is able to provide a projector, a screen, and two air purifiers so there is no need to bring them directly from your ASUW office.

The Office of Volunteer Opportunities exists to help entities recruit volunteers for the ASUW and to foster the larger volunteer community so that everyone feels welcome in the offices no matter what entity they volunteer for.

If you have questions about ASUW Volunteer Policy, want to open a volunteer application, want to select interns (and write the internship description), or send a message to all of the ASUW Volunteers, go to the Employee Portal at “employee.asuw.org”, go to the “OVO Resources” tab, and you will find Google Forms or PDFs with all of this information and more!

It is important that you use the “Request for a Volunteer Application” form for all of your volunteer applications so that OVO can check them, post them on the website, and advertise them in a timely manner! If you choose to make your own form, there is a place to indicate that and OVO will simply review it, but send those through the provided Google Form.

If you will be selecting interns there is a new process this year. It’s not complicated but check out OVO’s “How to Select an Intern” guide, also located in the employee portal.

Once reviewing this information you can always reach out to OVO at asuwovop@uw.edu