October 1, 2020 – Held via Zoom
Meeting started at 6:30pm
Margaret Matz opened the meeting. She noted the meeting will address communications between CUAA and Cooper Union, and the CUAA budget.
Eric Hirschhorn, Co-chair of the Alumni Affairs and Development Committee, introduced himself. He noted that announcements from the CUAA and Cooper to alumni, website information, and donation requests are not aligned. Eric proposed increasing coordination between the two. Examples included Cooper-only announcements, CUAA-only announcements, and combined announcements. There are multiple records for alumni (Cooper and CUAA records). Eric is meeting with Cooper IT to see if they can allocate resources for CUAA.
Lynn Lander and Rob Marano generally agreed that coordinated communications would be beneficial.
Mary Lynch noted that CUAA used to have a joint website with Cooper and that under the previous administration, and that when Cooper was sending out emails on behalf of CUAA many emails were not being sent out.
Eric responded that CUAA would have the ability to send emails on its own, and the existing data would be put in escrow in case relations break down.
Carol Wolf mentioned that alumni would benefit from joint communications, and that CUAA has good social media outlets that reach alumni. She suggested there is a great opportunity here.
Aftab Hussain also voiced support for unified outreach to the alumni base.
Mary Lynch spoke about previous relations between CUAA and Cooper. She said that when things were not controversial, posting and communicating through Cooper was easy and ok. However, when there was controversy, it was difficult to distinguish who the communications came from. She also noted there were different viewpoints regarding alumni who were spotlighted in articles (Cooper preferred to spotlight already-famous artists).
Bernie Codd summarized yesterday’s communications committee meeting. The committee thought it was a good idea to coordinate sending out communications and mailing lists. He said some people on the CUAA list did not want their information shared, so perhaps a neutral party could compare lists and ask people not on both to opt-in or opt-out of being on the joint list.
Anna Brook suggested tackling communication list coordination first and during that time figure out how to maintain CUAA autonomy while that project is happening.
Eric Hirschhorn summarized the plans to encompass common communications, a technologically common website, and common mailing list. He will draft a high-level list of how these things would work and provide it to ExComm for review.
Anna Brook presented the minutes from the September 3 Executive Committee Meeting. Proposed edits were incorporated. The September 3 Executive Committee Meeting Minutes were approved by the Executive Committee.
Anna Brook presented the minutes from the May 28 Executive Committee Meeting. Proposed edits were incorporated. The May 28 Executive Committee Meeting Minutes were approved by the Executive Committee.
At 7:25 pm, Margaret Matz presented the proposed Chairs for the Committees and the following Chairs were approved by vote.
| Committee | Chair |
| Events | Mark Vasquez |
| Communications | Bernard Codd |
It was noted that the Tellers and Constitution committees need chair nominations.
Ron Vogel addressed the budget. He asked whether ExComm needs to vote on the budget and whether the Events budget needs additional line items. It was noted that 2019-2020 actual expenditures appeared to come in under the budget. The 2020-2021 budget was confirmed by vote.
At 8:10, Mary Lynch provided an update regarding alternates. There is an opening in the new council year and Mary contacted Julian LaVerdiere. Sim Blaustein (alternate) will join the council. Mary is still working on the other open positions.
Mary Lynch noted that ExComm needs to set an agenda for the Oct. 15 Council meeting, including a speaker. Margaret noted that Ken Schless was a potential speaker.
Anna Brook mentioned to add conflict of interest forms to the council agenda. Mary Lynch suggested Paul Nikulin can give a brief presentation of the background of the forms. Carol Wolf and Rob Marano mentioned adding fundraising to the agenda.
The meeting was adjourned at 8:25pm.