At the start of this school year, I entered the Associated Students of DigiPen as its first president under the revamped organization. Going in with my three vice presidents, we knew that the decisions we made this year would create precedence for future executive councils to come. We wanted to create a system that would help people let their voices be heard in the increasingly complex and vague DigiPen. We set out to change what we could about the school for the better. But, never did we expect where we would end up come 2020. When I left my desk on Friday, March 6th I had every expectation that I would return after two weeks to continue working, to continue being amongst my fellow students, and improving our time but as I experience my last week remotely from my home in Texas, ASD has had to establish policies that took our organization completely digital.
Thankfully, ASD has some digital resources in place to help ease the transition. We have an organization-wide discord that all students had access to. Before the closure, we had about 150+ students on the server which is almost 12% of the student body. After the closure, it increased to 200+. Our Vice President of Communications had plastered our invite link in almost every advertisement both physical and digital, students that were already on the server were able to invite other DigPen students, and we had a dedicated website that allowed quick access to the server. We made sure that the server was clear of almost all DigiPen staff, faculty, and executives save for our advisor. This server allowed for unfiltered feedback from the students in a safe place for them to communicate. Once we went digital, we did not have to have a widespread announcement that we would move to discord since we already had it in place, it was simply an expectation. Other aspects of the school had to have widespread announcements that they would be moved to MS Teams, or Slack, or Zoom with links to all of these different services. Discord is a centralized place that most students already were. It had everything we needed, it had text chats for perfect record keeping, separate channels for the various operations of the organization, voice chats for any calls that had to take place, and simplified ways of splitting off into separate conversations.
With the adjustment to discord, one of the major changes had to come to the weekly General Assembly. Traditionally, it was an hour-long in-person meeting in whatever large room DigiPen had open for a large portion of the student body. Here, any and all pieces of feedback were brought to the ASD and telegraphed to their appropriate avenues. The GA was where a majority of voting occurred for the various happenings of the organization and was a space for any student to come and express their opinions and experiences. When we went virtual, we lost that in-person connection but we gained accessibility. Since many classes were done over a video call or voice chat we knew that most students would be on their computers most of the day already. We also knew that students liked to avoid being on video or on voice call so we adapted the GA to be on the text channels exclusively. This allowed students the ability to multitask their engagement with the organization and communicate in a more comfortable fashion that gave them a chance to more succinctly gather their thoughts.
Virtual GA Discussion
To make our virtual GA more successful, I developed basic rules of GA etiquette to allow for a simplified experience and to prevent the meeting from devolving to the point that no one could communicate. This included utilizing an altered version of Robert’s Rule of Order where students had to request the “floor.” To do this, they had to react to either the last message I posted as chair of the meeting or the last message of whoever had the floor at that time. Then they would have to wait to be called upon with an @ post.
During this time, the student can collect their thoughts either in a notepad document or in the discord text field to post once the floor has been given to them.
When they are done talking they then yield the floor back to me and we would continue our discussions and open the floor to other people. This has allowed for various creativity with each meeting having its own reaction. Sometimes it would be a hand raise other times a question mark. Yielding also had a variety of responses with some
people simply yielding the floor at the end of their statement, others put it in their own reactions, we have even had reaction gifs as part of the process. All of which were welcomed as they ended with the same result, prompting another person to speak. This process created the means of a viable back and forth for students to express their feedback, opinions, and questions.
Virtual GA Voting
On top of the discussions, we also had to digitize our GA’s voting process. We wanted to make a process so that as many students could get involved as possible. At a traditional GA, a person would propose a motion, it would get seconded, and we would open the floor to questions and alterations to the motion, once all questions were answered and motions altered, we would go into a vote where those in the room would vote in favor, oppose, or abstain. For constitution revisions, we would require a quorum of 11 students which is 1% of the student body. Once we received a majority vote with the quorum, the motion would pass. For our virtual GA, we had to undergo some adjustments.
The first thing we started doing was taking attendance at the beginning of the GA. This would let us know if we had a quorum or not. We would base it on reactions since it is a very easy click of a button versus everyone announcing that they are there through posting a chat. This also allowed for latecomers to be counted as well without interrupting the conversation. Commonly, we would start the meeting with 6 people and end with 10 - 14. As both myself and the advisor count towards attendance but not a quorum, I make sure to subtract two so we always need an attendance of at least 13 to vote.
To maintain the Robert's Rules of order, we kept the proposition and seconding of a motion. In this new form, the student would propose a motion and I would announce the ability to second the motion. So second a motion, students could simply react to my post. This lead to very quick responses, we rarely went more than a minute waiting for a second.
Once the motion was seconded, the ballot would be posted. This would include an In Favor vote, an Opposed vote, and the ability to abstain. We would have the Discord channel viewable and reactable until midnight that night. This would allow students that were not able to make it to the meeting but would still like to vote the ability to do so. Often we would start the vote with 6 - 7 immediate responses and by the end of the meeting that would increase to 10 - 11. Many motions were passed in this form. All in all, our virtual General Assemblies were successful as we kept accessibility and asynchronicity in mind.
Virtual Executive Council Meetings
One of the cornerstones of a successful large organization is communication between executives. Before the closure, the three VPs, the advisor, and I would meet in-person weekly. We would use this time to go over what would occur at the GA that week, what actions we have taken in our capacities as executives, what we were going to that week as executives, and plan coordinated actions, and a variety of other things. These meetings and our hallway meetings solidified the council as a unit. It strengthened our connections and trust in each other. My time as president would not have been nearly as successful without them behind me.
When we moved to digital, I was worried about maintaining this connection and communication we had worked so hard to develop. One of the first things to establish was a replacement for the hallway conversations. While they could never entirely be replaced, our in-place executives' discord server helped to keep us connected. If an issue came up in the student wide server and one of us did not know how to handle it, we could easily ask the others in our exclusive server. It gave us the space to bounce ideas around, discuss previous actions that were taken, and many other things we would have done in person.
To replace our official meetings, we moved them to the discord voice channels. This allowed us to have the same paced conversations we would have in the meeting room. We were mostly able to work as usual. One of the vice presidents did not have a mic but was still able to hear us. For this, we mitigated it by reading out the messages whenever he sent them out. Whoever read it first would read it out to the others in case it did not catch their attention. This made it so that we all could continue to interact with each other.
One of the bright sides be being completely digital was that we were able to continue our chats into the GA. The GA would follow almost immediately after the executive council so we ended up just staying in the voice chat and continued talking to each other while the text GA went. It really helped in filling out the minutes of silence when people were typing or had nothing to say. It also helped in developing concise responses to the variety of situations students can report. In the physical setting, it requires a lot of immediate reactionary suppression. As president, a lot of what I can say is taken seriously which requires a conscious effort of thinking through every way my words can be interpreted. At physical meetings, I would have to do this very quickly so that the pause is not noticed. This can be an exhausting process under normal circumstances especially considering the sometimes appalling things the students report. Having my executive council to show my immediate reaction to and bounce better responses off of made the GAs run emotionally smoothly. This was especially necessary considering the situation the school and the students were in.
Virtual School Executive Meetings
One of the newer duties I adopted to the president role was weekly meetings with DigiPen Executives. These included the Cheif Operating Officer, the Dean of Faculty, and the Dean of Student. I started these meetings to foster better relationships with these executives. The president must utilize their position to further the communication and feedback of the students upwards. Previously, the executives knew the president but not in a "stop in the hallway and chat" kind of way. That was something I was able to achieve with these meetings. this allowed for very quick communication about the concerns of the students. If they brought up a question, I would be able to ask the executive and bring an answer to the students in less than a week, sometimes the same day if I had the meeting later. This allowed for a lot of information that would not have been a part of a huge announcement to be disseminated to the students. This included progress on the second DigiPen building, the application for remote learning at the beginning of the pandemic, and faculty responses to the various surveys we produced.
Much like the executive council meetings, once we moved to remote I had lost these meetings. Since I still wanted to maintain a sense of professionalism, I stayed away from connecting on Discord, Slack, or over the phone. I continued our correspondence over email. One of the pluses that came from remote was the freedom to communicate at any time. I was no longer restricted to just our weekly meeting times to bring questions and feedback, I could email them immediately after our General Assembly to discuss what we had received at the meeting. I could ask questions on new policy as soon as new emails came out since I knew they would be at their computer. I was free to reach out at any time. The downside was that they were able to do the same. They were able to send emails out late at night and sometimes on weekends. Normally, I would not respond to these messages, maintain business hours, but due to the circumstances and the fact that I would message them on odd days, I continued our communication.
We underwent some difficult times with the closure and quarantine but the relationships and services we had in place before made the transition much smoother than it had gone in other departments. These new policies are now in place so that if we ever have to go remote again, say for extended snow days, we are ready and flexible.