THE SHORTEST MEETING IN HISTORY: Congress Weekly – October 23rd, 2020
Written by Tahira Akbar
Edited by Bhromor Rahman
This week at the MSU Congress meeting, members met via google meets to discuss various soon-to-come events that Marianopolis students may participate in. This week’s congress meeting was the shortest in congress history, only lasting for about 35 minutes. Even though the meeting was short, congress was able to go through all of the topics on the agenda quite efficiently.
MOVIE NIGHT
An important event that will be occurring every Friday is a weekly themed movie night. After a long week of school grinding, students can enjoy a movie on an easy to join platform. All you need to do is download Teleparty’s chrome extension.
OPEN HOUSE
Congress discussed what their roles for the virtual online open house, but members are still unsure as to what they will be doing now. Members are contemplating if they should have a PowerPoint presentation if the open house is on zoom, but there have not been any confirmations as to what their plan is. In essence, Congress is waiting to hear from the administration to know when it’s going to be and how it will work since it doesn’t want to prepare something that it cannot use
DAWSON X MARIANOPOLIS INTERCOLLEGIATE HALLOWEEN ACTIVITY
October is almost over, which means that Halloween is upon us! To celebrate the spooky season, Marianopolis is collaborating with Dawson college for a pumpkin carving contest. The contest will be held online, on Instagram and Facebook, and more information will be available on Facebook soon. The deadline for this will be on Sunday, November 1st which should have lapsed by the release of the article.
STUDY GROUP
For context, the virtual student lounge is a project in collaboration with the Student Services (Trudy, Leticia and more) called “The Chill where we C.A.R.E.” This will probably be used in the future as a platform for study groups as well. Congress would like to have a platform available as a virtual student lounge where students can eventually come together and participate in several activities. They would also like to collaborate with the study sheep club to eventually work together for final exams, so students can participate in group studying sessions. Additionally, Congress suggests that this same platform could have separate channels for various activities such as chill rooms, escape rooms and events among other things. This platform could be a casual place for students to come together to have fun and meet each other, without being formal. Congress is currently in the process of putting this together and this week they will be in the testing phase of the platform.
If the testing goes as plans, students will be randomly invited by their programs to participate in this student lounge and it will be available on libguides.
MUSIC PLAYLISTS
Congress members are currently looking into creating Spotify and Apple music playlists. Discussion was made surrounding Apple music requiring a monthly payment, unlike Spotify, which is free. Congress has contacted apple to obtain a student discount on the monthly fee, requesting $5 rather than $10, but have not yet had any response. Congress members decided that if the student discount request is rejected or ignored, they will proceed by paying the standard price of $10. Since it was not a large sum, it was decided that a vote would not be necessary.
MENTAL HEALTH WEEK
In commemoration of mental health week, Congress will be organizing various events. On November 12th, there will be a virtual speed friending event in collaboration with Vanier, John Abbot, Dawson, Champlain, and Heritage, and students will be invited to get to know each other. Similar intercollegiate events will be held with several colleges to get to know each other and socialize. More information will be available on Facebook soon.
There will also be a showcase for various art forms, for students to submit their work. There will be a spoken word event on November 19th. Congress is also trying to create empowering services for mental health that can be available 24/7.
INTERCOLLEGIATE TALKS
Pratham has been in contact with the anglophone Cegep student unions part of CASAQ, for students to present in the “Looking Back At It” event. This event will be intercollegiate and students from several schools will be speaking about their past experiences. By the time of publication, Ella Waxman has already been selected to represent our school for a talk on November 6th at 6:30PM!
CIRCLES FOR RECONCILIATION
The Circles of reconciliation is a project that had a very successful start a couple weeks ago. Since it requires the participation of Indigenous people, Anne and Pratham are working together with students at John Abbot College to organize it. As mentioned in previous editions and multiple Congress posts, the Circles of Reconciliation is a session that can help students better understand Indigenous history, heritage, and colonial history.
WINTER PLANS
With winter right around the corner, Congress is planning various Instagram takeovers after Christmas. They also plan to do some online question and answer sessions, for students unfamiliar with MSU congress.
