The student council discussed important points such as communication strategy, student clubs and integration of CEA students at the meeting of Nov. 5 in room 022.

The meeting kicked off with Michal Hron, a student council member, updating on the situation with council’s online presentation. “We need a website,” said Hron. “Posters are fine, Facebook is cool but we really do need a website for things such as long articles or the list of [student council] members.” The reason why the realization of the website is complicated is because the council needs money for it – approximately 1200 czk per year plus 15 dollars for a template.

Vendula Zenata, the secretary, explained why AAU does not want the panel’s website to have the same domain as the official AAU website. “I talked to Hrishabh [Sandilya] and first of all, it is impossible for them to divide the AAU website into different parts,” said Zenata. “Next thing is, he simply doesn’t want our content to be there.” The members then voted and approved spending money on the new website.

Zenata mentioned that organizing and promoting any events is now a responsibility of an individual member – to approach the PR committee and cooperate with them. The main event coming up was Career Day and several members agreed to volunteer and to promote it.

After that, the discussion moved to student clubs such as proposed Basketball Club, Volunteer Club and Drama Club. The members had to vote whether they agree with creation of these clubs. “Dan [Padolsky] doesn’t want us to approve the Basketball Club,” said president Tanya Bechev. Padolsky, the council’s advisor, was missing at the meeting but he apparently sent an email to Bechev prior to it regarding the Basketball Club. “He said he’s not happy with it because there’s no list of attendees and the application is incomplete,” said Bechev.

The members disagreed and Zenata said, “I think [student clubs] applications in general are not good.” She mentioned the proposed Volunteer Club, where the application doesn’t mention anything about funding. “[Padolsky] wants us to get them involved with the Christmas charity, so we have to approve them,” said Bechev.

The members agreed that “we can approve the clubs but we don’t have to agree to fund them.” The members therefore approved all of the clubs. “If these guys want to play, who are we to tell them that they can’t?” said Bechev. “It is in our interest to have as many clubs for students as possible,” said Zenata.

The last issue discussed was integration of CEA students. “Our budget was changed,” said Bechev. Apparently, the council now has extra money that it gets from the university. “All the money we were going to give to guest speakers can go to other events,” said Bechev. Other events include trips for CEA and local students, such as a trip to Skoda. “If we approve the trip, then we’ll have to approve every other trip and allocate money for it,” said vice president Radovan Fafilek.

President Tanya Bechev then brought up an idea of the so-called “buddy system,” where local students would spend time with CEA students in order to help better integrate them into the university life. “We need to have them in direct contact with our students,” said Bechev. The “buddy” person will get paid a certain amount of money after the evaluation of such person by CEA students; approximately 1000 to 2000 czk.

Fafilek was skeptical about the idea, implying that it’s unlikely to get students to volunteer for this. “For cash, yes,” said Bechev. The members decided they would give the buddy system a thought.

The next student council meeting will take place in two weeks.