stem coming up with their own IT policies and purchasing structures and maintenance and cybersecurity, so that area has already launched. So we actually haven't cut any people in that because one of the benefits of bringing together all the IT people is we can now have a much more robust service catalog where we've got more people providing support because not each campus could manage to have experts in everything. So we're able to take the existing IT staff and then assign them to different teams and really provide a much more robust service to everybody for IT, because again, IT is so critical to everything that we do. So as we move forward to any positions that have become vacant, so for example, we had a director of facilities who retired last summer. Once we're down to two institutions, we do not need a central director of facilities who historically was involved when there were big projects on campuses. So we haven't replaced that position. So we're always looking at how can we be delivering services, high quality services out to the colleges and also making sure we're doing it as efficiently effectively as possible. So with the shared services model, actually the presidents will have far more insight into how those operate than they've had historically because now those functions are going to report collectively to the chancellor and to the presidents and needs to say the presidents have their own budgets to worry about. So we have constant queries about how can we bring down this cost? How can we bring that cost down? So really, I think we're going, even something as simple as on the IT front, once all the information came forward and for example, CCV realized how much it costs to maintain all the existing computers, they realized they didn't need half the computers they had. So they're just going to take them offline and repurpose them. So like once people have an understanding of what everything's actually costing, it's enabling people to make much better decisions and we can be just much more effective and efficient as we move forward. So you established a policy, right? A poison. So right now we have a poison in the athletics and the libraries, not the whole of transformation. Everything else is moving forward. So does the plan stop the layoffs? So right now, the board has directed a pause and the expectation is that the president will bring a new plan back to the board. And so there is again, folks have been working on what that plan looks like moving forward and what the staffing implications of that plan will be. So right now, I mean the RIF notices are still in place but we're going to have to figure out what the staffing needs will be to implement whatever the final plan is that they will be coming to the board. So they're on the layoff? They, no, they were given notices back in February for a layoff of June 30th. So no one's been laid off. Ms. Scott, would you like to join us up here? Would you like to do, however you'd like to do it. I like to do it whenever it's possible. And if the chancellor just wants to move over, that's fine too since you'll probably be backed up. Are you sure? Yeah. You're happy to take a backseat for a moment. So you'd ask, you know, where are we heading and what are we doing? And so I want to talk a little bit about facilities. That's tab number seven here. And if we look at our facilities within the Vermont State Colleges, we spent significant time between 2021 and 2022 looking at the size and scope of our facilities and the condition of them. It is a significant cost driver, as you know. Maintaining buildings, the roofs, the windows, the grounds, et cetera, is a significant cost driver. And so as part of that work, we implemented two studies. One was a return on physical assets study that really looked at how, what is the condition of our existing facilities? How well are we maintaining them? And really what do we need to do to maintain them better? What we learned is that our deferred maintenance profile is really large. And we also learned that we should be spending about $9 million a year in terms of not improving our facilities, but essentially treading water to maintain our facilities. And we spent somewhere between $3 and $4 million. And those funds largely come from you in the form of capital appropriation. We really focus those funds on life safety, so making sure that our buildings are safe and secure. And not on improvements to the buildings. And yet if you walk around our campuses, you will see spaces in every single campus facility where the carpets are ripped, the walls might be crumbling, there are cracks in some places that you can even find areas where the wind comes through the windows. And you can see snow come in. It's not a great thing. But that's the condition and that's really where we have been as a Vermont State College because we've under-invested in our capital infrastructure. The second thing that we learned related to facilities is that we undertook a space utilization study. And we asked a firm to take a look at how well our facilities used for academics. So we looked at every academic space, every classroom, every lab, every teaching facility. And we said, tell us how well we're using them. And what we learned was a really startling and stark statistic. And that is that in no space on any one of our campus are we using the space more than 30 to 35% of the time in any block between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday in any 15 minute block. That is a startling number. And that's every single location. So every single location. Caston, Johnson, Linden, everywhere. We are not using the space more than 30 to 35% of the time in any 15 minute block. That is all of it. So that is so about 30 to 35% of the time we are using all the space. But the rest of the time, the space is empty or many of the spaces are empty. And for institutions of our size and how rural we are. So an urban institution with a lot of students, you tend to see very high utilization rates. And you spend to see very low utilization rates in very science intensive, lab intensive type courses. But for our type of institutions, largely general education, people that are taking humanities and other related things, what we would see for institutions of our size and where we are from a rural location is somewhere in the 65 to 75% range. And so what it tells us is that minimally we are over resourced in our physical space at least 25 to 35%. That is really important for us to understand. Like 25% is it over resourced? Over resourced by at least 25 to 35%. In fact, we could probably say that it's higher, but without looking at things more fully looking at the residential space and co-curricular space as well, we don't wanna go beyond saying somewhere in that 25 to 35% range. That's a pretty large number. If you walked around the state house and you saw 25 to 35% of your space or put it another way, 30 to 35% of your space being used fully only in let's say two hours a day, you would say, wow, the state house is too big. And what we know about us is that the Vermont State College locations, we have too much space. And so one of the things that we have to be looking for as we move forward is how do we shrink the size of our footprint to match the number of students that we have and make sure that the campus locations are vibrant. And there are lots of ways that we can do that. We can look at selling spaces. We can look at bringing businesses in to partner with us. And so a key goal of Vermont State University is really to find those ways to offer clear opportunities for students to engage with businesses and to be able to engage in ways that are really meaningful. That's an action. Quick question, I'm just thinking about all the other overarching crises that we have. Are there any of these buildings that can be used for housing? So we have explored the opportunity to look at housing and we are always interested in partnering with whomever is interested in looking at us. The challenge for some of our residential spaces is that they are group restrooms. You might remember from your own college days. So that can be a little challenging for families. And most of our residential halls do not have elevators, which makes it also a little bit challenging. That being said, we know that housing is a huge issue in all of the communities that we serve today. And so as we look forward, if there are ways that we can partner, those would be things that we would be really interested in finding ways to do that. So as we look ahead, yes. I just wanted to add, and for the record capital ambassador, director of external government affairs, I don't think I said that earlier. But we have had a couple of short-term contracts for housing that have been really interesting. One has been with Vermont Law School, housing students at the Randolph location when they had too many first year students to house in South Royalton. We've had some visiting nurses who are working at Gifford, live in Randolph campus as well. And currently we have, or they might be gone by now. I think they just left. They just left. Over the winter, we had a number of international students that were working at Smuggler's Notch Resort for the winter season, their summer season, but living in the residence halls at NB and Johnson. And so we've been able to explore some of those shorter-term opportunities with the residence space that we do have available. Additionally, we have a couple of faculty and staff members that have stated in a couple of rooms short-term. I'm thinking, in particular, one individual who lives in Saratoga Springs four days a week and comes and lives on campus three days a week and does some splitting-up time there. We've had another person that's struggled to find housing in Vermont like a lot of folks do and so has done a less split-living option like that as well. And then as Sharon was just sharing, part of the facility's strategic planning and long-term planning is exploring with some of the part organizations in the state, like what of our facilities, if the residence halls wouldn't be a good fit to convert to apartment housing, for example, what other buildings do we have that might need? And so I apologize for interrupting. No, no, that's great. So, Ms. Scott, just so you're talking, much smaller footprint needed. Much smaller footprint. And it sounds like there are, there are also gonna be additional cuts. There... I mean, there's gonna be big changes between now and the next several years. There will be... Huge changes in order for... Big changes necessary. For you to become the nimble, thriving, important institution involved. Absolutely. Absolutely. So from a facility's perspective, there very much will be significant changes that we need to anticipate. It is necessary in order for us to be able to survive and our next step in that process is launching the master plan. We recently hired Dumont and Janks and they are beginning the master planning process which will have significant collaborative and inclusive components for faculty, staff, students and constituents to move forward and help understand exactly what we need for enhancements but also what we need to do to consider divestment and where can we consider areas for partnership. Space is really hugely important in higher education. It very much is a symbol of who we are as institutions. And so we have to understand that that's likely to come forward as a significant issue for people. If you move next to tab eight, another key element as we move forward, as Sophie mentioned, is really looking at the... Head a little too fast. Really looking ahead to how to make sure that we meet the strategic goals of the Board of Trustees. And those are affordability for our students, the quality of our academic programs, the relevance of our programs and the accessibility of those programs. And Vermont State University made an enormous jump and I'm really grateful to the Board of Trustees for their leadership for approving that, which is to reduce the tuition for Vermont State University starting this fall. It was a very significant change. I've worked for the Vermont State College for 20 years and in that time, not once have we reduced tuition. We've held firm, we've held the line, but not reduced. And this was an attempt to really recognize that affordability for students comes first with what is that sticker price. Our sticker price for Vermonters especially was too high. And so we really wanted to make sure that there was truth in advertising related to that price. And so the price is just under $10,000 for the base undergraduate program. There's an additional tuition fee for some of our programs that require greater one-to-one resources, but we also took a really large step of making a 20% to 25% depending on the institution reduction in out-of-state tuition. And one might say, why would you do that for a Vermont institution? Well, and that's because we were massively discounting the out-of-state student tuition. And so there wasn't truth in advertising and our tuition at base tuition for out-of-state students at $28,000 or more plus room and board for another $14,000 put us in the $40,000 plus range to attend the Vermont State Colleges and it was scaring people away. And I like to think- What range again? The $40,000 range. And I have to say, I like to think about as state students as future Vermonters and we want those students to think of Vermont as an affordable option and to be able to move forward. We want the students to come to all of our campus locations because it's the right thing to do. So that change in tuition is a huge stride forward for us in terms of affordability and being able to make sure that our students, our Vermonters and the students that come to us from out-of-state can afford to attend our institution. It doesn't come without risk. And Chair Dickinson of our board is here with us today and they took an enormous risk to reduce tuition recognizing that it's gonna be a little bit of a hurdle to make up the difference in that tuition as we move forward. But we recognize that it's the right thing to do in order to be able to make sure that these are affordable institutions. Chair Williams. Going back to your slides that were presented Friday, one of your goals is eliminate duplicate positions. You have a firm number and how many positions are actually duplicate? Well, I don't know that I have a firm number on what, but I will say, so I come from one of the colleges originally. So I'm Chief Financial Officer now, but I previously was the Dean of Administration for Northern Vermont University. And prior to that, I was the Dean of Administration for Johnson State College. Well, at that time when I was at Johnson, there were five deans of administration. There are now two financial, Chief Financial or Chief Business Officers for the institutions, in addition to the financial staff. Previously for the institution that will become Vermont State University, there were three presidents and prior to the merger of Northern Vermont University, there were four. There will now be one. So those are many of the administrative, executive level consolidations that have occurred. I don't have an exact number for you though, right now. How about the costs? How much do you use, sir? Well, we have accrued some of those savings over the course of the last two years as individual positions have removed. So I don't have that immediately in front of me. That's probably why the five million for the past two years come from this electrician and vacancy savings. So if you and I were to jump on an elevator and go six floors, what would you say this place, the state colleges in particular, gonna look like in five years? And really, are we, and you can keep it as simple as, we're looking to be more like Southern New Hampshire University. We're looking to be more like Pennington College or we're just, you know, what's that message? Well, you would, because that would just help us in our understanding when things happen like the library or all of a sudden something else were to close or the space conversation. Just if we could get that in our minds, well, if I could get that in my mind, that would be helpful. So from my perspective, and I think this is probably a Chancellor question, I think perhaps you want to answer. Please, Chancellor. I think it being a statewide hybrid university, right? And so it will be both physical campuses, again, maintaining all the five current physical campuses, but also offering programs in a flexible format. So students can choose to take their courses in person, but they can also choose to access their courses remotely. So that might be remotely synchronously where they're coming in from another campus and that they're live and, you know, like now if you've got someone coming in as you often do, either on Friday or you could have asynchronous courses where someone's doing the course in the evenings or the weekends. So it's really, as we move forward, the goal is to provide as much flexibility as possible for students. So I'm making sure for particular programs that could look like different things, right? So I know we cite this all the time. So not so much an academic program, but the apprenticeship program, you know, for plumbing and electrical. When that went online, which it had to do during COVID, we actually were able to double the number of students that we had in it because it turns out a lot of students prefer to just be able to take the courses remotely. They're an academic piece of the program rather than having to get in the car and drive somewhere and do it. Because these are all people that are working at the same time. So really trying to build that flexibility in as we move forward. So it's not Southern New Hampshire University. It's not Bennington College. It will be something different. But again, being as innovative as we can be moving forward and making sure that students, wherever they are, have the ability to access the programs, access the resources. We do have this pilot program that's in play right now. This one-to-one device that's been going on for this academic year and is continuing forward. But really experimenting with how you can use digital equity, but making sure everyone has the same tools. So I see an iPad here. It would provide the opportunity, for example, to have all the students in the room with the iPad, with headphones, a pen, a keyboard. Faculty member has the same thing as do the students that are participating remotely. So it's a way that you can actually have everybody participate at the same time on an equal footing. Because often when you're doing the mix between being in the room and being on the screen, it doesn't feel the same. And so we've had tremendous excitement from the faculty that have been working on that. So again, it's trying to be creative as we move forward in how we're delivering programs. So just two more questions. What would admissions look like in five years? In other words, what number would you all be happy with in terms of the number of students, graduate and undergraduate combined? I know at Bennington College, we always talk. We've been at 700 really for decades and decades. And we do think, okay, there's a plan to get to 900. Slowly. So you must have some kind of optimal number in your mind. And then, well, actually, I'll just leave it at that in terms of admission numbers. I think the key as we move forward is really to think around the mix of students. So I think our traditional campus-based sort of undergraduate students, we expect that those numbers are not really going to grow significantly. But where we'll be picking students up will be more, again, re-skilling, up-skilling, more high job numbers. So did we get programs in the M.S. program? There's one piece that we tend to forget when we talk about our current enrollment, our current student numbers, is we serve over 3,671, is that the right number? It's about 3,000. Of workforce folks, right, that weren't as part of our degree programs. So I think it's just important to remember that we serve a lot of Vermonters that may not necessarily be showing up in regular enrollment numbers. It's important for us to hear. Senator Weeks. Yeah, just to follow up on the various questions. So you have a risk ahead of you to self-impose risk, to drop tuition. To drop tuition, you have to increase student numbers to the Senator Campion's point. Does he start? There's got to be like a metric. You start dropping tuition, you're hoping to escalate numbers of students. What's that student number look like? It's got to be over 10 students. I'm going to take this part of the question. So with the change in tuition, we were able to do two things. As I mentioned earlier, for example, out-of-state tuition, we were substantially discounting out-of-state tuition. So the sticker price might have been $28,000 for an out-of-state tuition, but we may have been giving students a 15 or $20,000 discount off the face of that value. So by changing the sticker price. That discount for everybody, that's discounted. It's not as though the Mellon Foundation is giving you that 15,000. We call it institutional aid. Right, right, which is really important for people to know. It's a scholarship expense. So we make an expense related to that. So basically we're giving a discount to a student that might have been $15,000. By lowering the sticker price by $8,000 to $10,000, we're able to dramatically reduce the discount that we provide for that. So our expectation is that, assuming we can maintain enrollment, there should be no loss. That being said, it's a big assumption in an environment where demographics are going, if they're declining for us. So the great news is we don't have to necessarily make up on volume because we make the adjustment in the discount to the students as much as possible. But there's a risk in that, what if students that come are, maybe they're interested in that lower sticker price, but they still want to see a $15,000 discount before they'll arrive to us. That's the danger, which is accelerating the amount of discounting that we're doing. The plan that the Board of Trustees approved allows us to be able to make some swaps so that hopefully, fingers crossed, there would be no negative impact on it. But it's still risky. As I said, we've never seen a decline in the sticker price of our tuition in Vermont State Colleges. That's always a risky maneuver. We always want to advocate, move the sticker price up. But when you're taking that same sticker price and you're increasing it, only to discount it again to the students. At a certain point, there's a value that just doesn't work. The value proposition no longer works for the student. We had a former Chancellor who used to say you can't sell $3 shoes for $2 and make it up on volume, right? And so that's part of the problem, right? You still need to get net student revenue. And if you've discounted your way to the point where it's actually costing you more to educate somebody, it's not sustainable. It's not sustainable. Right. So Friday, you were mentioning the budding CCB tuition in half. Is that really sustainable? The proposal would be funded if it's approved by the State General Fund. So a one-time general fund appropriation. And that would be a pilot to see if that boosts enrollment. What we have seen through critical occupations that were funded by the legislature and workforce development initiatives that were funded with previous scholarship programs is that price really makes a difference for Vermonters and particularly makes a difference for Vermonters who are first generation college students or are coming from low income backgrounds. It makes an enormous difference in their willingness to even consider higher education. So that particular proposal would actually allow students to see a path forward, much like Vermont State University making the decision to lower its tuition. This would allow CCB to pilot that with the one-time funding if that's approved. So $25 million in a five-year plan. Do you really think that with that amount of money, you're gonna be able to accomplish admission right now? I mean, what's gotta change? Are we anticipating the increase in tuition students that's gonna help get us on a path to prosperity? Did you ever consider coming back to the legislature and saying, you know, think about the optics of what we're dealing with at the universities that's closing the libraries? If we came back and said, well, if we didn't have to pay $5 million a year that we might be able to think about the PR, think about the optics of what's happening. So the challenge that we're facing right now is not the imposition of $5 million a year from the legislature. That's not the problem. The problem that we're facing is that we have a structural deficit that we cannot close. We have an obligation, the Board of Trustees, as the fiduciary for the corporation that is the Vermont State Colleges, and I as the Chief Financial Officer have an obligation to make sure that our debts are paid, that our faculty and staff are paid and that our vendors are paid. If we don't have, if we don't find a way and a path forward to reduce our structural deficit and reduce our expenditures or increase our revenues conventionally, we are not able to do that. There are only two sources of revenues, really, for the Vermont State Colleges. Students and the tuition that they pay for room and board, tuition and fees, and state appropriation. That's the challenge that we face without a commensurate increase to say we will receive an additional commensurate amount of appropriation, we have to make these cuts. It's not the imposition from the legislature. You saying we need to cut $5 million a year is not the problem. The problem is the structural components of the Vermont State Colleges. Just looking a little after five questions, please keep up the conversation. Just a quick question. I'm not trying to cut off debate or discussion. You alluded to the master plan. Is the master plan in here? Yes. So you'll see the master plan at the very end of tab seven. That's the RFP for it. So we haven't written the master plan. That was the request for proposal. We just hired the firm to help us with that work. This is only facilities. We're talking about the master plan. So to Senator Kempin's point, the 25 year, the 10 year, the 20 year vision. So that's not a documented year. So the strategic plan, a little bit more carefully. Yeah, the strategic plan is something that the Vermont State University has to develop and provide ahead of the launch of Vermont State University on July 1st. So that's the plan I talked about at the beginning that's in the NETCHI. There's not a draft in here about this. There's an outline in this page. Here's the teaser. Page 11 and 12 of the second progress report on unification for the Vermont State University and which is in the NETCHI tab, the accreditation tab. And that lists out, it's got four primary goals there. So one we just talked about, become the nation's first state wide hybrid university that expands access, increases affordability and improves student achievement. The last tab of section, the last part of section five. That's the second. The second, become a university that produces career-ready, civic-minded students. The third, become a community-engaged university that serves as a catalyst for rural advancement. And the fourth, becomes an employee-centric university. So that is being worked on right now at Vermont State University and that proposal, that strategic plan with the metrics that will go with that will be coming to the EPSOL Committee of the Board of Trustees in May and then we'll go to the full board for approval in June. Yeah. Board of Trustees, come in. Do you have any perspective on this part of this? Representative Dickinson. Yeah, so Representative Lynn Dickinson of the Chair of the Trustees of the Vermont State College of the Legislative Trustee of Iowa in New York represents that on this tab. And do you want to repeat that question again? Have you got to, can you add some perspective to where you think we're going? Yes, we are, our priorities right now are urgency. We have a little bit under 11 weeks left to go before we launch this new university. We've been working on it for three years. Really intensely for the past two, though it's started three years ago. We want to go and really see a transformation that is successful, where we continue to work on these things, all of the things that the administration talked about are things that are really important to do. And a lot of people have worked really long and hard with the project management, with all of the other work, the faculty, the staff, students who've been involved. It's been a very intense program by them and our board has also been very intense. They have gone and they have had monthly meetings. Zoom really was the success story for our board because instead of people having to drive two hours one way, we were able to go on our meetings to get a lot done. You had once a month, we have our many meetings. There's a full form or pretty close to a, more than a full form. And we are really involved and we have the best board we've ever had. From a variety of geographic areas, from a variety of occupations and skills. And so we're involved in the transformation as well. We are very supportive of our administrative team and all the other people who've done it because they're just working 24 hours a day to practice whatever and how they do it. And the third thing, of course, is that we're trying to figure out how to go and financially make it more stable with this $25 million reduction in our structural deficit. We have a plan. We have already gone through examples of how we can do it. We've had a consolidation for our administration. We've had, we did do a consolidation with MVU and Lyndon and Johnson previously. It wasn't a complete transformation. It wasn't as successful as we hoped, but we learned a lot from it and that has really come in handy with this. So we are really hoping that all the adults in the room on all of these campuses, all of the people that are going to have to hopefully save their jobs will come together and work with the administration on the board so that we can go and make these successful students. We have problems that are absolutely essential to the state of Vermont. Our healthcare industry would just collapse without the state colleges. There's all kinds of things in manufacturing and mental health counselors.  We have an incredible source of workforce that we need to work on and this is really, really vital. And I showed you the demographics, the graph that we get from JFO that we've gotten over the years of the legislature. For a school that accepts, for schools that are looking at 80 to 90% of their students coming from Vermont, that has really been a major factor, devastating, quite frankly, to lose all those students and not have them available to us. And it's not just us. We've had seven colleges close in this state in the past few years. Most of them are private, but there are some that are still living on the edge. So this is incredibly important. Thank you. Any questions or comments? Thank you. Okay, Sam. You said one more. Yeah, no. This is a moment. I like the demographic graph that you shared. But I believe in the Chancellor's testimony, you alluded to a 2025 demographic cliff coming up. What's the future? I haven't seen those numbers. And I'm curious if you, no, no, it's beyond 2025. I wanted to know what, like- And so what it is, is that from the recession in 2008, there were just a lot of children that weren't- Right, right. But do you have any data? Is there office have something to show what that, because that's critical to some of these conversations that we're having. I'm personally very curious. I'm sure that data is available. I mean, because we know how many students were born in 2008, so how many fewer of them are going to be available to be coming to college. We would start to look at that, right? We were, and there's information related to how many students are currently in high school right now. So we're looking at 2026 as the next demographic cliff that we will see a reduction. It does stabilize after that. Right, I get all the words. I'm just wondering if there is a data. I don't have it right here. Yes. If I may, Senator Kippic, I think one thing that we talk about a lot, but maybe we haven't talked about here because we've been so data focused, is the students that we serve. And I think about them a lot, because some of them are my family members. Some of them are our friends and neighbors, but we serve over 10,000 students a year on the academic side, and those 3,000 students on the workforce side. And for a lot of students, their opportunity to pursue a higher or continuing education happens because of the Vermont State College and their community. There are many of our students that look at a traditional big four-year out-of-state university experience, and that is terrifying. It is financially out of reach for their family, and they start to cut off their dreams and their future opportunities before they even start because the prospect is so daunting. And for so many of those students, it's one course at a time when the Vermont State College is, it is the one-on-one attention from the professors that makes the difference for them, and it's those personal, individual experiences, and that's something that I think we are all committed to carrying through to the new university. It's those opportunities and those professors and those interactions that pull students forward and pull them across the finish line. So many of our students take a little bit longer than four years to finish college. It may be that they dropped into part-time to take care of a family member. It may be that balancing their work and their academic obligations became too complicated and they had to drop off their class schedule a little bit, but that's the jewel of the Vermont State Colleges that I see us carrying forward with the new institution with enhanced flexibility. So using myself as an example, I took a couple of graduate school courses through MDUL mine and I took those asynchronous courses that you can do on your own time because as you all know, the legislative schedule is very predictable and I couldn't commit to a class time every week. So I took asynchronous courses and was able to improve a couple of graduate credits that way for myself. And there are so many students that pursue opportunities that way. There are others that need the school in their neighborhood and next door and they need that in-person experience. And I think about students like my brother who needed to be in-person at Vermont Technical College sitting down with a professor to get himself across the finish line for his degree. And I see the best of both worlds. I think so much of the conversation around transformation focuses a lot on that 25 million and focuses a lot on what's going away. But one thing that I wanna leave you with and that I like to think about a lot is what's the future and what's there when we go forward. And it's more of these enhanced academic opportunities that you've heard about. It's more of these meeting students where they are with what they need because at the end of the day, we're here because we love Vermont, we're doing this work because we think it's the right thing to do. And all of our faculty, all of our staff, everybody who's working on this with us, you know, we're all trying to roll in the same direction. So I apologize if that was a slightly off topic, but I just, I wanted to make sure that I spoke a little bit about where we're built into as well and not just what made me go in the way. This is about her chance to listen to that. Thank you so much for having us in. We're always happy to come. Any other questions, you know? We appreciate it. We appreciate it. But we're happy to provide it. Any other final thoughts? Just something else. I'm sure you want to talk about it now. Thank you. Committee, anything else for today? Yes. I have to go to a meeting. Please go ahead. Thank you. Can you repeat 30 seconds? Yeah. So I'm proposing that we send a letter to the Center of Kitchens, the Center of Corporations Committee, in reference to the Mont State College system with an action required that we first we request the committee repeal legislative mandate for the state colleges cutting $5 million per year for five years for a total of $25 million, by reducing the amount of cost savings to instead of $5 million, $4.5 million for fiscal years 24, 25, and 26. And second, that we request that the Vermont State College system be directed to staff and operate the universities at the same level as they were operated in January 1, 2023, until six times the newly appointed B.S.C.S. president has time to remodel the system's strategic plan. So it's not a $5 million issue, it's a $1.5 million issue for three fiscal years only to allow this situation to settle until a new president comes on board on his time to reflect on the real-world impact fiscal stability of the university. I would think that before making that ask, I mean, you know, we heard to the contrary just a few minutes ago that changing the $5 million a year is not what the problem is. And I would think that we wanna take a look at that, also get their opinion on it. If we're going to make an ask that makes substantial changes to what's guiding them right now. Yeah, and I would just say, and I've been a little public about this in some conversations with people, if I prefer if this is the direction, go and go forth, perhaps get other names and not have it be a committee position, having a little conversation with different people and see who might sign on and see if you can get some time to sort of, so that's my request. So I would welcome your involvement. Okay, thank you. You've been in the house, but I understood. It is a very significant challenge that the college system is encountering. It's not just about, it's not just one library issue. The attempt here is to alleviate one of the issues which is currently on the floor. Got a motion, a claim to show. Yeah, thank you. Thanks, everybody. Anything else? Okay, I think we're finished.


Hi there, I'm Farika and I'll be giving a brief explanation of the different systems you will have to use for your enrollment procedure. First, there's SteadyLink, the Dutch National Registration System for Higher Education. To start your application, you will first need to register in SteadyLink. Then there's OSIRIS, which is the main information system here at Tilberk University with different modules. OSIRIS and MELS is the application system necessary to upload all your application documents. Then there is OSIRIS Student, which is only necessary once you've been admitted, where you can continue or complete your enrollment and also register for courses or even review your grades. Check out the following videos if you're interested in the student process or you simply like a step-by-step guide of our online application system.


Hello everyone. Very good afternoon to everyone over here. Thank you so much for taking interest in our topic. So today we'll be talking about overcoming imposter syndrome and gaining confidence as an open source mentee. So let us imagine this. You have heard a lot about open source and you open GitHub.  So that's imposter syndrome. You might even feel hesitant to comment on issues or work on them. So today we're going to be talking about overcoming that feeling, trying to gain confidence, talking to mentors, all of that. So before we get started, please allow us to introduce ourselves. So hello everyone. I would like to introduce myself. I'm Asmit Malkandawar, currently a mentee at ACIN KPI organization. I'm pursuing BTEC in computer science and business systems. My background lies in product design and creating user centric interaction design. I'm deeply passionate about open source projects and I have contributed to various open source projects throughout my entire university and I've been part of various open source programs such as Google Summer of Code, Season of Dogs, and the Linux Foundation's mentorship program. Hello everyone. I'm Depeche Bursay. So I'm a final year student too. I'm pursuing my bachelor's in computer science and business systems. I have been contributing to CNCF projects for more than a year now and I was also an LFX mentee in the summer term. I worked on refactoring the documentation and writing new user guides for a CNCF project called ORIS. Along with this, I'm also a foundation member at the GNOME Foundation. I have been a community manager and I'm deeply passionate about open source. So we have contributed to the following organizations. So these are the basic list of organizations that we have contributed as mentees through various open source programs such as Google Summer of Code or Season of Dogs and the organizations range from CNCF ecosystem to Python ecosystem and even API specification projects and when we started contributing to these projects they were very new to us and we didn't know much about back then and it took us some time to figure things out right from how Git worked. The funny thing is even years later we know how things work but we know how to approach things a bit better and it still takes us some time to understand how a new community or a project works the doubt, the learning, it's still there which is why we feel strongly about this topic. So moving on to why this topic so like he previously mentioned we do still feel a little out of place maybe when you're starting out or something like that so we decided to research a little bit about this topic so about 70% of working professionals generally feel this way at least at some point in their lives and if we just talk about the US it's around 82%. If we specifically talk about mentees mentees are often unaware of what imposter syndrome is which we both were too and which is why it gets a little more difficult to deal with it so they may find it difficult to voice their opinions actively engage in discussions or anything of that sort so giving any kind of feedback they might hesitate to do that so it can also lead to mentees setting unrealistic standards for themselves or striving for perfection even though that's not required or expected out of them so it can prevent them from taking calculated risks or they might miss out on certain opportunities because of this Additionally mentees are unaware that they have imposter syndrome they might even never know about it and this lack of awareness from can isolate them from further opportunities and talking to their mentors or other guides there's no fixed guidance available on how to deal with it and lastly we both felt imposter syndrome in earlier stages of our contribution we weren't able to communicate properly or talk to mentors, talk to project maintainers and thus lost a few opportunities in the process but only after we started talking to mentors communicating with the community members we got to learn more about the project and it wasn't as daunting as we thought it was and certainly we gained confidence to actively engage and seize those opportunities Additionally when we were researching about this topic we went to the two obvious platforms which is the Reddit and the X Twitter so there were many people talking about it and there were many memes shared about it and people were open about it and also discussing and sharing their views and their opinions about it so that's the reason we chose to speak about this topic today So what is imposter syndrome? So before we tackle it we need to know what it is so imposter syndrome is basically just feeling like an imposter or a fraud in your own life even though you do have the skills so it may be characterized by feeling insecure feeling inadequate, doubting whether you belong there all of those things it often leads to anxiety, low self-esteem or sometimes even depression One thing which is worth noting is while we were researching we came to know that it was first only researched on women so it was called imposter phenomenon which was only found in professional women over the years research also happened on men so men and women do feel this way but even today there are some studies that show that underrepresented groups feel it more or they have a higher tendency of feeling imposter syndrome because they see lesser people from their groups in leadership roles and they may feel discouraged So when we talk specifically about imposter syndrome in open source or when you're starting out Asmit and I felt these and a lot of people who we spoke to felt imposter syndrome by the following points in open source So when we are talking about imposter syndrome in open source these are some specific points that we jot down and we wanted to discuss about it So the first point that we thought was mentees feel like only good or real developers can contribute to open source projects they should know every text track right from the beginning they should understand the code right from the beginning and they can't figure out good first issues and they need to contribute to something complex which certainly isn't possible as it takes time to understand the project and these are some of the two common myths that mentees feel when they first land on the open source project then also they think that mentors will feel they are incompetent if they ask questions but that's certainly not the case many mentors expect mentees to ask questions research about their project and then come up with their own solutions and ideas and that way mentors also feel like happy and they also help the mentees out of their own way and then there's also certain doubts where mentees feel like will anyone from organization review my PRs or the issues while it certainly takes time to review the issues and PRs because most of the open source maintainers have full-time jobs and they do open source as a passion so mentees need to wait out and see if they get any reviews and PRs in click time then next point I would like to highlight would be reviews that point out flaws rather than the areas of improvement what this means is suppose you now make a PR and now you got a review but that review suggests you to make some changes that doesn't mean that it's a negative comment or they don't appreciate your work it just means that there's some improvement needed in that and you can take that as an opportunity for learning and implementing it in the other projects as well then the next point would be people not knowing code may hesitate to start contributing even to non-code aspects they don't know that documentation work, the design work and all the other non-code aspects of an open source project has an equal weight as to code contributions and thus they hesitate to contribute to the documentation or even design issues then not feeling qualified enough to particular status in the Agara project now there might be some cases where mentees have contributed a lot everyone appreciates their work but they still feel under confident and they still feel like they haven't done enough and they should do more to get some status in an organization such as a maintainer or a contributor or get some badge and mentees also wonder if they could ever be a real contributor because they don't have the right background they think that they should come from a CS background or a tech background to contribute to open source which is certainly wrong I have many of my friends and peers who come from various other backgrounds and they have contributed to open source successfully so, yeah, these are some of the points that we had so moving on to mentors and their expectations I think we have a lot of mentors in the crowd so whenever mentees feel under confident a lot of that also comes with the unawareness of what a mentor really expects or what they want you to do so we just thought we could get a few points from our mentors see what they think so starting off with the basics a mentor can be anyone who is experienced or who you can trust with advice advice could be to help you solve something if you run into some problem or it could be just pointing you in the right direction so when we are clear about what a mentor expects from us it's easier and it prevents any gaps in communication so knowing how and what you are doing to continue learning or making contributions so throughout our mentorships what we focused on was communicating to the mentors what we are currently doing it helped them to give us more resources tell us how to approach the topics that we are learning the concepts that we are learning they also assigned us issues which are related to what we are learning so it just boosts the learning process a lot more asking questions after proper research so most mentors are working professionals and they are giving time outside of their working hours so it is usually expected that we do proper research before we ask any questions so that we make the most of the time and guidance that they are giving us if you have any updates on the assigned work you can do it sooner or later anything of that sort anyone who is affected by any changes in your work they should be updated so that they can be prepared in case there is some issue discussing reviews and suggestions so most of the mentors, maintainers really appreciate getting a fresh perspective on different projects so it is usually really appreciated if we are able to discuss take part in any kind of conversations even if it's on Slack, any meetings or really even just on a PR so these discussions and suggestions really help so now we have talked about what imposter syndrome is and what mentors expect from their mentees we will now see how to overcome the imposter syndrome what are some of the points that you can consider applying the first point would be to recognize the imposter syndrome and challenging it so you need to question your thoughts that are your thoughts valid unless you question your thoughts it's difficult to separate the reality from underconfidence imposter syndrome is common even among experienced developers accepting that fact that you feel that way is the first step towards overcoming it you can talk to your mentors or your close peers or discuss what you're facing they will definitely come forward and help you with your thoughts I remember when I started contributing to open source projects I reached out to my mentor and I asked him that I'm not understanding the project at all do I need to know all the tech stack and do I need to contribute to some other issues and he really calmed me down first and then he talked to me saying that it's okay to feel that way and then he basically showed a simple guide on how I can first start setting projects locally and then understanding what issues I can find out and then contributing towards it so that really helped me ahead and I got selected as Google some of code mentee in that project so the second point I would like to highlight here is setting small and attainable goals while working on a specific project or towards a larger goal make sure to break them into smaller like weekly or bi-weekly goals we both had followed this throughout all our major projects and mentorships and that sense of achievement of finishing small task that lead up to a bigger one is incomparable and it's very important that you feel good about yourself and participate in discussions this is like one of the important things that you can do in an open source community and no one would stop you to do that so don't hesitate to join the discussions within the communities sharing your ideas and knowledge can boost your confidence and help you establish yourself as a valuable mentee join the community meetings that may happen weekly or bi-weekly depends on the projects and when we were selected as LFX mentees we used to wake up around like 5 a.m. in the morning attend those meetings share our ideas talk with the other maintainers that give us another insights of like other insights of the project and that helped us really bond with the community much better then don't hold back your knowledge is always required this point goes hand in hand with the last point which I discussed the project needs you as much as you need the project and when you feel like you're not qualified enough you tend to participate in the discussions less and you hold back yourself that way the project is also missing out on a good idea and everyone contributes in a unique way so you can bring something unique to the table and your suggestions might just prove to be a game changer for the project I remember when I was selected as an intern for Google Season of Dogs they really had an old framework for documentation and it was becoming really hard to maintain and update the documentation so I suggested them that they should move to a new framework so I deployed a small demo for them and the mentor really liked the idea and he showcased it to his company and they adopted the new framework and that's how you can bring small changes to the big open source companies and then ask for feedback on your work getting timely feedback helps you make sure that you're heading in the right direction please remember that getting reviews doesn't necessarily mean that your work is wrong it just means that it just needs some improvement and when you get negative comments or you need to change something on your PR don't abandon that PR instead work on it and improve the quality of PR this will not only help you overcome imposter syndrome but also help you ahead in your career because most of the recruiters check the positive discussions that happen in the PR I remember that when I had made one PR in the CNC of Glossary it almost took one month to get it merged and I learned a lot in that process and how to technically write some terms and how to describe it in a more simple language then practice self-compassion be kind to yourself understand that making mistakes or getting stuck is a part of learning process don't be too hard on yourself and when things don't go as planned, they're just fine so ask for help so it's okay if you don't know everything no one does and especially as mentees we are here to learn so it's okay sometimes we just can't find an answer because we're not looking in the right places or the answers are very project specific so I myself have asked very basic questions over the years and my mentors have been more than happy to help me out so the best way to deal with it is being open about the questions that you have except that you have had some role in your successes this is so important because you are here because of your hard work and no one can take that away from you if anyone else had achieved everything that you did you probably would give them credit for it so a lot of this invalidation that you don't deserve where you are sometimes at least for me I have seen comes from social media so maybe getting a reality check on that seeing if it really makes sense to compare yourself for that person all of these things really help and you need to acknowledge the fact that you're here because of you stop comparing yourself to anyone so a little related to the previous point but I know this is a lot easier said than done but you need to identify who you're comparing yourself with so as a student I cannot compare myself to someone who has years of experience in the industry it just doesn't make sense so identifying who you're comparing yourself with and if you're really fascinated by someone's work you can connect with them the best part about open source is the connections that you make so this approach has helped me a lot to connect with folks from all around the world I have learned a lot I've gotten to upgrade myself especially because of these connections so the best way is connecting with people writing about it so about two years back when I was still pretty new to open source I felt like I wasn't doing enough and I usually express through writing so I wrote a blog about it and surprisingly after the statistics but surprisingly it got the most views or a lot of response so I noticed that a lot of people feel this way and whenever we write about it we are able to check our facts we tend to come to logical conclusions so even though this is for maybe someone who expresses the most through writing it might help almost anybody so it's a must try strategy being wrong doesn't make you a fake the most human thing that we do is exaggerating our mistakes and undermining everything that we have done before this so making sure that it's okay to be wrong and you might not know everything is okay and it does not make you a fake faking things actually does work so fake it till you make it sometimes it does not make you a fraud neuroplasticity literally means shaping your brain by pretending so when you started walking we all fell but that didn't make us a walking imposter so we were just learning so that's okay and we need to keep trying and that's probably how we can beat imposter syndrome so on a concluding note we just want to say that imposter syndrome is when we doubt ourselves and feel like we are faking it however it's important to recognize that almost everyone faces it even the most accomplished ones and only by acknowledging this we can find comfort in knowing that we are not alone in our struggles moreover it's crucial to remember that there will always be someone ahead of us and someone behind us we are all at different stages in life embracing the fact that you are upscaling yourself every day will reduce the burden of you feeling like an imposter when you find yourself in the grip of imposter syndrome don't hesitate to reach out to mentors and your friends share your feelings about it and those who have walked the similar path might help you get valuable insights and encouragement we have been now contributing to open source projects for almost two and a half years and we still ask a lot of questions but increasingly we find ourselves in the conversations where we are using and understanding the language that was unknown to us a few years ago and the biggest difference isn't just in the terms of what we know but is that the new questions we have no longer make us question whether or not we belong here so yeah thank you I hope you liked our presentation it was the first time we were talking we are sweating buckets here so if you have any questions you can just ask yeah yeah that's actually a really good point as in like what a mentor can do to make the mentee feel better something like that yeah maybe to overcome the imposter syndrome so maybe regular feedbacks something like acknowledging the work that they are doing or the learning that they are doing in order to maybe sometimes we have to work we have to learn a lot to even make a small change or make a small PR so maybe acknowledging the fact that so much of hard work has been put into just doing something small maybe something like that might help at least I think for me getting acknowledged really matters after my LFX mentorship I got a message from my mentor appreciating the things that I did and that made me feel really good and I felt more as if I am in the right place I am contributing to the right project so I think that should help thanks any other questions anything thank you very much for this talking about this important topic how do you see you said like a mentor they have their full-time job and they are busy and as a or as a student or as like somebody as a mentee how much time would you like when you say hey are you working 20, 30 how many hours a week how much time should a mentor put like reserve and keep free to have actually time for being a mentor I'll take that question so I don't think that mentor should keep a fixed time deciding that okay I'll give 10 hours to this mentee helping him with this project instead whatever doubts they have generally mentors appreciative mentees do some research about the project do their homework and then ask questions then mentees are also happy to help them more and you know explain about the project more instead of just sliding into DMs and say hey I want to contribute how do I do it so yeah I don't think they can be like fixed hours to help improve someone but it's something that mentors can both do it like coordinating something like that I hope that answers to be specific I think both of the mentorships that we've done we usually used to have weekly or bi-weekly calls which were like about an hour and if we had any doubts about the work that was assigned for the week we could just drop them a message and they could answer whenever it was convenient for them so really just one or two hours maybe a week but even this one hour was usually more than enough so I guess yeah thanks thank you very much, well done it was a very concise and clear talk from the mentee side how would you advise someone to seek for a mentor so where do you establish a relationship mentee and mentor in your experience and what could mentees do to find mentors I missed the first three minutes sorry for that maybe you explain how you got into mentees okay okay so what we have done throughout is usually whenever we see a project that we want to contribute to we do a little bit of research and we find out who the maintainers are the ones who are active we usually text on the public Slack channels or Discord or wherever first and if we do want to personally connect then we just drop a question in the public chat saying can we message you DM you personally and then maybe from there we can connect we can ask them and if it is an official mentorship then we usually have the mentors assigned so we can directly talk to them so if we're talking to a maintainer then we do it through Slack and if it is for a mentorship then we text on the public channel and then text the mentor directly that's usually how we have done it add on to that so this point may be helpful to new mentees who are watching whenever you are texting mentors don't just say hi I want to contribute to this you need to drop a full paragraph of explaining what issue you are facing what you have done before setting up the project, what you have done after then maybe add screenshots that will help mentors get in the problem at once instead of texting back and forth so that might help the new mentees actually looking out for mentors there's also a website for that which I like to share so yeah so this is the website which I found so basically it just explains all the rules that whenever you are texting someone senior or whenever you want some help don't just say hi or hello just explain the whole thing and they'll read through it and they'll explain you and contact you much in a better way last question how hard do you think it is to find a mentor or what is the likelihood from your experience for you to be reaching out and someone actually dedicating time to helping you and becoming a mentor generally in our case when we reach out to contribute to some projects we first read through the issues of course and see who have opened that issue and then contact them personally and then if they are willing to help but if they are not they connect us with someone who is also working on that issue and that's generally how we get started contributing towards it sometimes it might be hard to find a dedicated mentor like one-on-one mentors but asking the questions publicly in the channel generally helps any other questions okay thank you so much for listening thank you


Hey everyone and welcome to Norris Cove. Welcome back. I'm Yoshida. Today we're going to be doing our weekly budget. I'm just going to hop on in if you are new here. I'm a self-employed hairstylist and I get my life together by budgeting and planning minimally or functionally in a planner. And today we're going to be planning my budget for the week of February the 27th through the 5th. I am a little late. I've just had a lot going on. But I'll quickly review last week. Did you get that paid? Everything went well. I guesstimated 1100 because that was my busy week and it ended up being 1607. I can't believe it. I don't even know where the money is. I did write down some things. I was kind of paying the bills from this week. Like Citibank came out of there. There are some other things. I purchased budget box items with this money. All that kind of stuff. And I put down Norris Cove for 250. It ended up being 235.87. And let me whip out this because I've started something. I'm just always trying to find ways to see where my money is going. How can I be more aware of what's going on? So I made these little stickers for my calendars. And so it ended up being 264. So I must have something extra got added on. So it was in the band 264. And that was just regular people shopping. And I think there were a few budget box in there. Also with Etsy, we made $64.81. I have that reflected here. I can close that out. And a total of 1907, 68. Now, some of the money I left in the bank, I don't typically kind of touch the business stuff. Just when the money hits, I may either pay myself back or just go ahead and purchase something else. That's how I do it. That's how I'm surviving. And like I said, I had money left over. So that's covering some bills for this week. So I do have like a little bit of a roll over. And I'm getting my taxes done this week. And I have here for 227 Etsy. I got 34.19. I also got a refund. I purchased some tote bags for the budget box. Basically, I got jipped. They was giving me the runaround. Certain stuff you should know. You'll see that I haven't planned for the month here. But anywho, the buzz and pan attention didn't read no reviews. Just like I need to have them. I don't want to make it still my idea. And the idea was already gone anyway. So needless to say, I got a refund back from those. So let's zoom in here for this week. What we think we're going to make for this week? This week is slow. This is the week that I will have my surgery on Fridays and out surgery. But I still need to be off a couple of days. I won't be working Friday, Saturday. And of course, I don't work on Sundays, but and I may not be working to come in Monday. It just depends on how I feel. I'm going to estimate 650. We'll see how that goes. And then for Norris Cove, the subs came out this week. The last I looked, it was just a total of like 199 with subs. So I'm just going to put 220. That's just the estimation. And then with Etsy this week, the item is currently sold out. Well, I did get I have this here. So 3419. I should have put you at 3419. That's not going to increase because I'm going to try to get the envelopes out that I already have before I open them back up. And plus I need to restock some vinyl. I bought the vinyl. I need to add that to the Etsy. So let's get into the bills this do this week. This is the first. So we have a cloth and paper. That's on the second. And they've gone up. So that's $45. Amazon, today's the first they came out. And that was like 1589. Who else is the first? Oh, we have community. And they're normally like $30. Victoria's Secrets is due tomorrow. What am I putting down? Victoria's Secrets about the same 30. I'm going to pay them off when I get my taxes. On the fourth, we have Walmart. This is the first. This is all those small credit card bills. They're $28 on the fifth is credit one. And credit one is supposed to be my business credit card, but it is maxed. So we're going to definitely pay that down when I get my taxes. So I believe that is 30 as well. We have Booth Rent, which I'm going to pay on tomorrow, which is the second, because that's my last day of work. And that way I don't have to worry about trying to come out and pay that. And that's $250. So yeah. So some of that roll over from last week, I'm going to use to do that. Also, I thought I had paid up. It was about a month ago. I paid like two car insurance. I thought that was for this month and it wasn't. So I'm going to put that down here. Now views that I can take that off. I'm going to use that to put in car insurance. And that's 435. And I'm not going to add that. Okay. So I want to also I had cash to do cash stuffing and I was so tired Saturday. I didn't want to do nothing. So of course, now I didn't get into that. So I'm going to try again next week, maybe this weekend, because I do want to get back to that. So let's do some totaling $428.89. All right. And let's total up. I'm just going to add, well, Etsy, I already reinvested that because I had to get more laminating paper. That's what I said. As you all see, I charged $45.55 for those. This is what I got back. I invested, I think it was, I have to look, I think my things at 45, 80 something back into the laminating paper. And it was actually more than that because I got laminating paper, some more card stock that I print on, and I spent what more vinyl I spent $27 on vinyl. So I was up back $80. That's why I don't like doing the envelopes because I'm not really making a profit again on that. But let's just total all this up here. $904.19. Okay, I want to highlight a little highlight this. Let's just highlight some stuff. I don't know. I just love highlighting stuff. Let's just highlight my total 904. And I noticed there is no total on here. I don't know why I didn't do that. 19. Okay. Subtract the $4.28.80 is $4.75.39. $4.75.39. Total income it is here. $904.19. Total bills $4.28.80. Total expenses. Oh, I got gas this week. That's going to probably, oh yeah, Lord, that reminds me. Let me put some money in my account because I just got the gas today. How much did I spend? I spent $62.60. I'm going to put $63. So that's $63. So that's what we have, finest is $63. $412 left. I'm just going to put that here, $412.39. Again, it is what it is. So let's pop this back in. So yeah, and actually I'm done with February, no, March's box. I've done, I want to blast some more stuff, but I know it's just not going to be here in time. So I've kind of already started on April. So that's a good thing. Like I said, if I need to pay myself back, I'll pay myself back. But actually I think I'm just going to go ahead and invest because I got some things already for April, been had those. I'm going to try to get ahead. I've kind of gotten ahead by just coming out of my own pocket. So I'm going to try to stay ahead and make sure everything's done because I like the boxes to go out on time. But this is what we have for this week. So we know our income is going to be low. We don't count Norris Cove. Even if we didn't have Norris Cove or Etsy, we still would have some income left, just a couple of, you know, hundred dollars to play with, but not necessarily play with, but we would have that left over. So I want to continue to look at my budget, keep budgeting. I was going to not even show you guys my budget because I was just kind of frustrated. Me and I have to be off this weekend, but my health comes first. So I'm going to just kind of reassess some things so I can get back into my cash stuffing. But also, you guys, the two-page sticky notes are restocked. Get them right there in stock because I'm going to try to a different vendor so they'll be gone for a while. So until we get that situated. But thank you all so much for stopping by. If the day was your first time watching any of my videos and you enjoyed today's video, give me a favorite. Come back for more. Hit that subscribe button. Also give me a thumbs up and I'll see you guys in my next video. Bye.


Welcome to The Core Report. I'm Corporal Clayton Philpovage. And I'm Corporal Alibai Swinger. Let's kick it off with a breaking story. Infantry Marines are now able to take part in the new Squad Leader Development Program. The program was designed to put the most qualified Marines on track to become Infantry Squad Leaders, with their own M.O.S. of O365. The Marines selected for the program will attend training and be assigned an Infantry Squad Leader Building. Infantry corpals and sergeants with three to five years time in service and five years of obligated service remaining on their contract are eligible. If you're watching on YouTube, click the link in the video description to learn more. Effective January 1st, 2015, service members are prohibited from allotting pay to buy, lease, or rent personal property. The Department of Defense created the rule in an effort to protect service members from dishonest companies. So, although existing allotments won't be affected, service members won't be able to make new allotments for a number of purchases. He means those Marines out there who think it's a good idea to pay 40% interest on a mustang will no longer be able to allot pay for their sweet cars and Xboxes. Wow, but I got such a good deal. 15 more payments and I got myself a Nintendo 64.  Household goods, rent, and electronics are also off limits for allotments. If you're watching on YouTube, click the link in the video description for more information. The holidays are right around the corner, so you know what that means. Toys for Tots. What? I meant your thing. For those of you who want to spread holiday cheer, the Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots program is collecting new, unwrapped toys for less fortunate children in the community. Donate to a Toys for Tots event near you, or visit toysfortots.org for more information. We'll be taking off for the rest of the year, but we'll be back January 15th. Stay safe over the holidays, and remember, you can catch up on everything else going on around the Corps by logging on to our official social media sites. Thanks for watching everyone. We'll see you next year. Right here on the Corps Report.


Alright guys, hold on, this week we're going all the way down the rabbit hole. Last week I did a video about how I think redness is something that doesn't exist in the world, it's a way of describing the phenomena that we experience. Redness is in the contents of my perception, it's not something that's out there in the world. How far does this line of reasoning go? Let's take something that seems utterly fundamental to the physical world. Let's say we're talking about space. What is space? We have all kinds of experience of space, this stuff. What is it? There is one way of thinking which says that space is another way of representing sense data to your consciousness. In other words, space is also something that only exists in your mind, just like redness. Now I don't actually have this belief per se, or I have it with some qualifications, but here we go. Simple question, do you have any experience of some phenomena outside of your mind? Have you ever experienced anything without your consciousness being an essential part of it? In other words, have you experienced something outside your experience? If you think about that, I think the answer is resounding no. You don't actually have any experience directly of some kind of world outside of your mind. All of your experiences are kind of by default within your mind. A lot of people take this and they run with it and they go, oh my gosh, therefore there's no such thing as a world outside of my mind. But specifically think about space. Do you have any experience of three-dimensional space that exists separate of your conception? I don't think so. 100% of the space that you have experience of is space in your mind, just like 100% of the experience of red that you have is the experience of red in your mind. It may very well be the case that the mind which is taking in all kinds of sense data about what we assume to be the existence of the external world is really painting a picture for your consciousness that may not correlate at all to the way that the world actually is. So I have the positive belief that this is the case with color. I don't think that my representation of red has anything to do with redness in the world, anything that makes sense. I don't think there's such a thing as redness in the world. But that gets a little fishy when we talk about space. Here's the reason why. In front of me I have a pen. When I am talking about the pen, if I'm being really precise, I'm actually just talking about perception in my visual field, blueness and so on. Blueness and whiteness. When I close my eyes, that blueness and whiteness disappears. Disappears comes back. Disappears comes back. So I don't think it's the case that blueness is something fundamental in the world. But here's this crazy thing about space. Even if I close my eyes, I still have other sensations that can be understood within the context of space. I have touch. I'm not having any sensory experience of the pen. And now I feel like I'm moving my arm out in this three-dimensional space. Now I'm feeling the pen, now I'm not feeling the pen, and so on. So even when I close my eyes, it seems like I'm seeing space. But even when I close my eyes, I have this other kind of experience of space. This is also true when you think about your sense of smell. When you smell things, they get stronger and they get weaker. And it appears to be the case that this strongness and weakness of smell correlates with being closer to the smell or farther away from the smell. So it seems like this concept of space, this mental representation of space unifies all kinds of different sensory experiences. It works with sight, it works with sound, it works with taste, it works with smell, it works with feeling. If you feel flames the closer, it seems like the closer you get in this three-dimensional space, the hotter the flames feel. Now to me, that makes me think, well, it's this common thread through all kinds of different sensory experiences. Maybe that implies it's something that is fundamental in the external world or what I assume to be the cause of the contents of my perception. But there's another possible option here. It might not be that space exists in the world. It might be the case that the mind is so constituted as to have found a brilliant way of representing sense data to my consciousness. It might be that space is this concept that our minds have come up with, not due to our own thinking of it, just due to the structure of our own minds, in which it can place all kinds of other sense data. It's kind of the context in which a bunch of other sense data makes sense. Our representation of the world seems to work really well. We seem to be able to navigate around and achieve goals that we want to achieve fairly successfully. So this idea, if you follow this line of reasoning, is where people come up with the concept of idealism. The idea that everything is just an idea. There's no such thing as a mind-independent world. There's no such thing as anything else other than ideas or mental phenomena. Now, that might be true. However, I think it's also compatible with the idea of dualism. We have our representation of the world. We have mental phenomena.  And we guess, we don't know, we guess that the reason that we're having the sensory experiences we're having is because of the existence of an external world which is impressing upon our senses. The only option here that I think we can probably rule out is physicalism. The idea that everything is mind-independent or that there's no such thing as mind. I think that is certainly false. You got to stick my mental phenomena in somewhere and either they're fundamental or they have this mutual relationship with the existence of the external world. Last thing I'm going to say about this is answering a question that I get somewhat regularly from idealists. They say, Steve, why bother positing the existence of the physical world? Why not just say everything's an idea? That's the only thing we have experience of is the mental world. Therefore, that's all that exists. Here's my response. I have a difficult time understanding why it would be the case that the contents of my perception would be so varied. When I go for a walk down the street, there is all kinds of stuff that's assaulting my senses. There's all kinds of different colors. There's what appear to be little life forms that are moving around that are organized in these crazy ways. Here's an example that I won't get when I'm walking down the street, but you can if you're on Google, is just Googling deep-sea creatures.  Unless you have a really amazing imagination, which I don't. I couldn't come up with deep-sea creatures if I put my mind to it. They're too ludicrous and complex and crazy. I find it a more compelling theory to say, the reason the contents of my experience are so varied isn't because my mind is just making it up randomly or because all that exists is only minds. No, I find the theory of the existence of the external world, the external physical world, very compelling. If I didn't have as much varied experience that I have, I'd probably be an idealist. But the more time I spend in the world, the more experiences I gain, I go, I didn't come up with this. This is not mental. This is totally crazy. This really almost only makes sense to me right now in terms of the existence of some other world. But I got an open mind. Maybe it's the case that eventually I'll wind up in idealism. If you're an idealist, put your best argument in the comment section. We'll talk about it. Not going to be a physicalist. I think that's certainly false. I'm stuck in dualism right now, but who knows? Maybe someday I'll make that leap to only ideas exist. We'll see.


US 2nd Fleet Commander visits USS Leyte Gulf, CG-55. Vice Admiral Doug Perry, Commander, US 2nd Fleet, speaks with sailors aboard the Ticonderoga class-guided missile cruiser, USS Leyte Gulf, CG-55, at Naval Station Norfolk, January 19, 2024. US 2nd Fleet employs maritime forces ready to fight across, multiple domains in the Atlantic and Arctic in order to ensure access, deter aggression and defend US, Allied, and partner interests.


Okay, welcome everyone. This is Melissa Arman reviewing the play of the day, second play of the day here, which is JWN, second stock pick. Two picks today, this was the second of the picks. Wish I would have got this out of the gate, but what are you gonna do? Anyways, it's working now. It looks good. It looks fabulous. High up here was 52.60, lowest 49.83. Could it break that yes? What would be the reason? Well, the market flips around here, which I, you know, we're red now in the cues. This we are not, but we're in danger of the low here in this and definitely in this. And if all of that transpires where the market falls, this is gonna go down to at least 50 and possibly the low and possibly break it and could get to 49, but I don't know what time that happens. And I'm not saying anybody should hold this trade till then. Anyways, we ended up being this for a long time. We did a very, very, very late trade in this, right in here, wasn't tight with the stock, got the drop, push back, did the add, got the drop, everybody's up. So it's just a matter of time. And I just, this is not my ideal look to a chart, not here and not here. And that's probably what took me off of it this morning to be honest with you. That this is just, this isn't gonna be a nice straight move down. It's gonna back up and then drop and then back up and then drop. It's kind of like what I did here. Then it goes green, then it goes drops, but the movement is consecutively down. Obviously we're up in the train, but it's a weird look to it. This is not my favorite look. It's working, we're up. But to read it, to just bar by bar, it doesn't really work in this case. So you kind of have to decide.  Are you gonna hold it to a target? Are you gonna hold it through the low? Or are you gonna wait and see what the market does? Because just to say, well, I'll bar by bar it.  So this is not my favorite look for a chart at all, not at all. Very difficult to manage in here. You just kind of have to say to yourself, well, I'm up for the day, I'm gonna get out or I'm gonna hold it into noon and I'm gonna get out or I'm gonna wait for the market and then see what happens and then get out. So 62, 64. Cathy got out. Cathy took her money and ran. 64, 62. All right, so we're seeing where this goes. Anyone interested in the Golden Gap course? Email me at melissaatthestockswish.com. Today is a deadline to sign up for the class this weekend.


and the tiger financial news network update well there we go guys how y'all doing this is this this is jacob uh the four p.m market update well the market's up a little bit right just barely we're very flat right now but uh it's better than we were earlier today the es is up uh point two seven the ym up point six five the nq barely up at all at point zero eight percent very flat and the russell up again 1.7 percent every time i've been on it seems like the russell has been uh cracking along pretty all right our other major guys meta that did finish up at 1.19 percent tesla down 1.76 we'll talk about them in a second apple down 1 percent uh still really interested to see what happens with their vr uh headset navidia down barely at all and microsoft down 1.6 if we took a look at tesla uh their sales at least for china when they drop their prices were up 20.6 sequentially outpacing china's overall 8.7 rise and tesla really we may see a beautiful evolution of this company going forward it seems like their charging port and their plug is going to be accepted as the industry standard um which you know that's massive uh when other companies start you know let's say that tesla does um perfect this driverless uh you know driverless vehicles the data that they have will be invaluable to the rest of the industry that will be trying to accomplish the same feat regarding them in china the passenger car association of china confirmed this week uh that tesla sold 74 000 212 vehicles and exported 19 468 units for the month of june solidifying that 20.6 sequential rise for the ev maker is impressive even more impressive for tesla is that china's june retail passenger vehicle sales were lower by 2.6 percent year over year uh falling to 1.89 million units according to the same data and you know there's not a lot of like phenomenal data on chinese counterparts uh to tesla um so they will be breaching the chinese companies will be breaching uh into europe i think within the next year or two and it'll you know stand if if the quality is good we might be seeing just people want something more foreign right like i don't know it'll be interesting to see but it's great for tesla and they have a lot of cool stuff coming for them in the coming years folks thank you so much uh have a great rest of your day be safe and stay cool if you're in the southwest or just the south in general it's been uh been horrible isn't it thanks guys have a great rest of your day


The Apostle Paul wrote, obey the government. It was the government that separated Paul's head from his body. The question of the debate is really simple, is biblical slavery immoral? And so for anything, if we're gonna try to determine whether or not it's immoral, first thing is, hey, let's make a statement and say, like for example, do you think generally speaking is a general rule? It's wrong to own people as property and pass them on to your kids because I do and yet the Bible allows for that under some conditions. And I don't think the conditions that the Bible allows for it, in any way, eliminate whether or not it is a morally correct action. Like would either of you be my slave under the rules in Exodus? Well, I think that ends the debate right there. Thanks. I would genuinely love to- It depends, Matt. Okay, it depends. I gotta tell you better. Well, no, but do you think the slaves got to make a choice about whether or not they knew that person better? I mean- We're getting to slave, right? And we're getting to slave servant, evad, doulos. So I'm not worried about the word. We're gonna have to affect all of that before we actually just hop in and- Let's go with it, man. I'm happy to, but I'm talking about the position where someone is owned as property. So for example, if among the people that you potentially could war with, do you think we should enslave the leftovers? Because I don't think that's moral, but what's worse is that the Bible doesn't even advocate merely enslaving the leftovers. The Bible advocates in Deuteronomy 2010 that you should go and make proclaim peace to a tribe or a city that you fight with. And if they agree to peace, then you enslave them. That's versus 1011 of Deuteronomy 20. How is that moral? You have a basic presupposition that I disagree with. And that basic presupposition that you keep on banging on is because the Bible says it, that makes it true. And good and moral. I started out with Matthew 19, guys. And in Matthew 19, Jesus is not saying that divorce is good. Can you connect slavery? Can you connect slavery to Matthew 19? Absolutely. It's a basic principle of interpretation which says just because there are laws in the Pentateuch that communicate, if you're gonna divorce, then you need to give your wife a certificate of divorce. Doesn't make that God's ideal. I didn't know anything about ideal. We're talking about permissivity. We just interrupted who here, Matt. That's fair, but you're repeating the same thing that we've already addressed. We just interrupted who, Matt? I interrupted you. I fully acknowledged that. All right, okay. Go ahead, Matt, you're at the floor. Oh, wait, let me just try and take a side of it. I'm saying that something is immoral. What difference does it make whether or not it was God's ideal? So you're talking about the Suzerain and vassal treaties, right? And so if you think about, for example, Joshua in Joshua chapter 10, where Israel is supposed to, as the Suzerain help out the vassal, the Gideonites, and they end up doing that in a very peaceful, and we know, we can actually even use the word love going back to this vassal Suzerain terminology starts in Genesis with God and man, and then even in regards to Pharaoh, it's used. But then there's another place in scripture outside of Joshua, where the Suzerain being the Israelites don't go and save the Gideonites, and God punishes them for that. And so there's clearly a connection there where God is calling for that loving relationship where you are helping out those who are less than you. Okay, so two things. One, Deuteronomy 20 is very clearly distinguishing, right? Those that are far and those that are in the land of Israel, in Israel proper, right? So those that are far become Corvay labor. If they submit best case scenario for them, right? They become mas, which they return for like tribute Corvay labor, right? So what Solomon does with Israelites and what Solomon does with foreigners, and this is something that you're forced to work, right? I don't think they're, I wouldn't consider them slaves proper according to the definition that I gave earlier, but they're Corvay labor, right? So what you see with the Gideonites also is not like the Gideonites that was in the narrative, the best case scenario for them, they either are standard harem, right? Under the ban and are annihilated or they trick the Israelites and become like these water carriers, right? So their Corvay labor. So, I mean, I think we need to be real honest about what the narrative is saying. This isn't like, we wouldn't do this today. We wouldn't do it. Right, and I see, if this is gonna be the big part of the debate, this is where I agree with you. We are not gonna be operating in the same way that the Israelites, Canaanites, et cetera, operate back then. We do not wanna operate that way. I certainly hope not. But I mean, you brought up Solomon, and when Solomon talks about an Ecclesiastes, for example, Josh, when he had in-home slaves and yet clearly in Ecclesiastes, he says, be wise in how you treat them. Treat them with love and respect, sacrifice for them. I mean, wasn't that pretty unique to that day and age? No. No? That's not humane. Oh, sure, I mean, it's more humane than beating them mercilessly. That's a low bar. But if, yeah, I mean, if you're gonna do that, then you would have to say the law in the antebellum south was humane. We know that it wasn't, right? The law in the antebellum south said, look, you can't murder your slave. Masters can't just murder their slaves. And they can't beat them except for moderate correction. That's the most.   So of course, that's not how it played out, right? There's significant loopholes that the people found in that. But the point is that if we're going laws and laws in comparing those, like, I don't think anybody would wanna make that argument that legal stipulation that's there in the antebellum south, like post-revolutionary antebellum south was somehow, and that's not my area of expertise, I wanna be clear about that. But like, we wouldn't do that, right? And it's, I think we would look back at that and say, but it's the same rationale. It's the same legal rationale that you see in Exodus 21. I have a side question that gets back to basically, Cliff and I are gonna argue back and forth about this whole thing about whether it's God's ideal or whether the Bible condones it. Now, condone means to accept or allow. The United States condones the drinking of alcohol by people over the age of 21. That does not mean the idea, the United States is saying, oh, it's ideal for people to drink. It is talking about what is permissible, what is allowed. And the same thing applies if God or the authors of the Bible or somebody's interpretation of what the authors of the Bible meant or what God meant, whatever, say that you can in fact have slaves, you just can't beat them too much and you have to let them go under certain circumstances. This is, I'm not saying and have never said, the Bible says slavery is God's ideal. That is a ridiculous straw man, but the Bible absolutely condones and it's legalistic notion is condoning slavery within certain limits. And I'm saying what the Bible allows for, we'll call it biblical slavery, biblical servitude, whatever, is in fact immoral and we all agree to that. Like I would think we would all agree that owning someone's property is in fact immoral. In other cases, I stood one day, this won't surprise either one of you, I stood one day at a debate and there were four apologists who I was not debating, but who came to watch. And I won't give you their names although you know some of them. And one of them asked a question about slavery and for the next 20 minutes, all four of them offered four different rationalizations and excuses and understandings and explanations for slavery. And I just looked at him and said, when you guys figure out what the actual right answer is, come back and present that to me because I'd rather debate the one right answer than four views about right answer. But if the Bible says you can have slaves as long as you do it this way, how is that not condoning slavery? The apostle Paul wrote, obey the government. It was the government that separated Paul's head from his body. So when Paul says obey the government, he's not saying, oh, by the way, and what Hitler will do is really good in gassing Jews. No, he's addressing a fallen world. And that's why one of my points was the fall. The Bible addresses the very real existence of evil. Not every government is good. And when governments institute slavery, the Bible is not saying that that's good. And when the government says, decapitate the apostle Paul, that is not good. And when Nero lit his gardens with Christian martyrs on torches, the Bible is not saying that that is good. And when the Bible says that marriage is to be a lifelong commitment between people and then says, okay, because of the hardness of people's hearts, yes, divorce is gonna occur. And Moses permits it there in the Old Testament. And when the Bible communicates that all people have been created in the image of God and all people have equal value and dignity.  And yet Paul writes, obey the government. You've got to think through what is going on here. I did. What is the standard? What is the ideal? And what is the evidence that sin has gotten into the mix and really mess things up like slavery? It just sounds like you're saying that the Bible condones things that God and the people knew to be immoral, that are in fact immoral. Because God could just, why isn't there an 11th commandment that says, thou shalt not own another human being as property?


The supply chain is broken. It's the pressure on consumable goods and materials is done. The fascistic governments came in and locked society down. In my opinion, in the family's opinion, they are intentionally breaking the economy because they want to reset it. Pumped the worth of trillions of dollars of fiat currency. A lot of big companies are doing buybacks. For example, Enrich came out. Oil company came out recently and said they're doing a $1.6 billion stock buyback. Like holy shite. Why are they doing that? Because they got free money. They got free money and they really don't see room investing in too much in R&D because they don't know what's happening with the markets and stuff like that so they're propping up their stock price. Apple is doing the same thing.