Users Executive Committee Quality of Life Subcommittee Meeting December 6, 2005 8:00 AM EAG Workroom WH7W Alton, Finley, Merritt, Diehl (Chair), Kopp (ex-officio member as UEC Chair) Degenhardt (GSA), Jack Hawkins (Guest) Women-only Dorm or Wing in the Village -------------------------------------- This issue has been in the works throughout this subcommittees tenure. Please see previous minutes for the introduction. Jack Hawkins is from the Accommodations Office. He is in charge of the Village housing. He was invited to report his thoughts on the designation of a women-only dormitory or dorm wing in the Village. First he described the current status and process. There are 92 dorm rooms in the village. Occupancy of those rooms is ~80% at this time of year. In the summer they are ~100% occupied. Many people who reside in the village, including the women, ask for specific rooms for a variety of personal reasons. If no preference is noted, the women are steered to dorms with other female occupants. Their privacy is kept in mind when room assignments are made. This committee believes Jack and his staff work very hard to satisfy lab users and that they are mostly successful at this. Last year's UEC poll results indicated people who stayed in the Village were fairly satisfied. We also believe there is demand for a female-only dorm or dormitory wing. There was discussion about a number of issues that come along with this topic. Would 3 to 6 rooms be required at the beginning and more in the longer term or will these rooms go unoccupied? Women would not be required to stay in the all-women area but that might be the default unless they specified otherwise? Is a men-only area desired by the guys? Is there an expandable plan that is fair to the men or women who are displaced by the all-women area, even in the summer when the occupancy is high? These are things that have to be keet in mind as the plan for an all-women area is developed and organized. Some of this is appropriate for the QoL survey. Some of this will best be determined experimentally. Jack provided maps of the first and second floors of Aspen East. An area that is practically adaptable to women-only is a set of six rooms with a commen bathroom on the 2nd floor, west side. He will show us the layout of the corriders and stairs in that area on Thursday afternoon 12/8 at 2 PM. He expects this cannot be set up in a time scale as short as the holidays; it might be implementable within a couple of months. At such point as it is appropriate, we expect we can get the word out by grapevine, Fermilab Today, and the UEC minutes. Fermilab Guide-to-Life (Alexis A. Aguilar-Arevalo) -------------------------------------------------- The upcoming version of the Guide-to_life is the work of the recently past and the present Graduate Student Association (GSA). The conversion from Word Document format to Latex format has been started by Jennifer Pursley. From the 8 chapters in the 2000 version all but 4 have been fully converted to Latex with updated (to last year accuracy) information. Alexis started the conversion of the remaining chapters last week. This involved calling to some businesses to see if they are still in operation, updating some maps, etc. Version 2000 had 91 pages. the current version will have a similar number of pages, but some of the listings that are currently in version 2000 will be replaced by URL's in the new version, making it (hopefully) a little thinner. Alexis says that the guide is ~60% finished. It is his understanding that the GTL should avoid giving the impression that it endorses certain businesses over others. Alexis has kept this in mind while doing his editing of the older version, but he requests some review of the final version. He probably can finish the conversion some time in late January. QoL Survey ---------- Please start submitting questions to the subcommittee email list. Chair to compile them. A.O.B. ----- The EMail Center/Helpdesk in Wilson Hall Ground Floor: There has been progress in the on-going construction of the EMail center. We have been keeping our eyes on it. The Helpdesk group leader (Rick Thies) provided some helpful info. It will be 6 workstations with two tables each. The workstations will have PC's plus seats for connection to laptops. Now there will also be wireless in the room. Construction has finished. The Email center furniture will be going in soon. Helpdesk furniture is coming in on the Dec. 19th. So it's not clear if it will be open just before or just after the holidays, but certainly ASAP.