We're starting off this morning with really one of my favorite scholars in one of the most interesting spaces. I think we've been talking about this question of what the open internet means for the public sphere. And one of the questions that's really come up in this is what does the open internet mean for social movements? Does it make it easier for people to get together and protest a government? Is it harder to govern in this age? Is it easier to foment revolution? There are people who have been arguing all sorts of different sides of this case. You have people essentially saying that once we have Facebook and the ability to organize groups, governments fall very quickly. People take to the streets. You have other people essentially saying that's madness, that's craziness. What really matters is people's offline ties, probably, in my opinion, the most insightful and nuanced voice in this space is the voice of our next speaker, Zainab Tufeshi. Zainab is a sociologist. She teaches at UNC. She's also visiting at Princeton at the moment. She's been over at Harvard's Berkman Center. For those of you who hang out with us at Center for Civic Media, you've met her a couple of times. She's come in and given a couple of talks. Zainab started working on these questions of media and social change, looking at the Arab Spring, looking at Tunisia, looking at Egypt, and then this same sort of disruptive social media-connected protest came to her native Turkey. And she has now been going back and forth between the U.S. and Turkey, trying to understand all that's been going on. She just flew in from Turkey, boy are her arms tired. We are so happy to have her here. Zainab Tufeshi. Thank you, everyone. I apologize for being late because I really did fly in yesterday and I tried to get some sleep so I would be coherent. We shall see. This is a new talk and I am trying to wrap my mind around some of the effects of the open internet in the case of Turkey and it's just been a fascinating journey. Now, I'm going to have to take this back a little bit to before the Gizi protests to explain how a citizen journalism network started in Turkey and how it evolved. So the first case I have to tell you to make sense of all of this is a story that starts about a year before Gizi protests when Turkish military jets under murky conditions bombed a group of smugglers between the Iraq and Turkey border. Who were actually doing their, you know, it's kind of hard to wrap our mind around this but their regular smuggling run which they do routinely and this is in fact a village that is paid by the government to be what's called village guards so they were in good terms with the local military and the local police and they waved at them and said, hey, we're going on our smuggling run because that's just the way it's done except this time something went wrong, something went all right and the smugglers were bombed by jets. It was a horrible thing, 34 people died, most of them in their teens, most of them from one or two families, it was just horrific. What happened is that the Turkish media knew of this and sat on the story because they were waiting for the government to tell them what to say. The old newsrooms knew the story, they all were sitting on it, they were all getting news and reports from this because Kurds also have their own media, this was not secret, they were all sitting on it. The media censorship in Turkey is complicated, it's a mix of self-censorship, corporate ownership of media that is aimed at getting government contracts and government pressure. One journalist, Sardar Akunan, who was in the newsroom and just watching this be censored, he just couldn't take it, he was like I can't take this, I just can't sit on this. He purchased a plane ticket with his own money, he told me. He went to the nearby airport and he got on a taxi and he just went there and found this enormous scene of this is a picture he put on Instagram of the snaking coffins of the people who had been blown up and he broke the story basically to the Turkish side. The Kurds had been hearing about it, they have their own media, they also have social media and this was a huge shock because I mean here was a so clear act of censorship and the pictures and the interviews, I think he put this on Instagram, I mean it's kind of crazy in other countries you have here's my lunch and in Turkey here's the snaking coffins. After he broke this, this was just a striking wake up call to lots of people in the Turkish side especially young people who had not grown up in the 90s where the Kurdish-Turkish war was a lot more bloodier and this is Sardar on your top, your left, this is like his pictures from the area, you can see how distraught he is and three young men later joined by others in their early 20s were just like they were shocked, they were really shocked that they had been subjected to the censorship and they said let's do something. They told me there might have been a little bit of alcohol involved, they were like drinking together and saying can't we do anything, can't we do anything and they decided to form a citizen journalism network.  They started going around doing what they thought they could do to do journalism, they started going around and interviewing people from wherever something was happening, you know this is Jem and this is Engin, they're just going to trials of you know journalists or they're going to trials of, they're going to protest, they just went all around the country trying to get news. At this time I had already met them and I was talking with them and I said you guys aren't really doing citizen journalism, you're doing journalistic citizenship, you're just you know being journalist and reporting, they were like what can we do, you know we're just trying to get the news out and it's not being reported so they were doing their own thing. There were a couple more incidents in which they were crucial, ended up being crucial in breaking news because journalists who were censored started pirating their news to them. Their own outlets wouldn't publish them so they would go to 140 journals and you know they sort of started building this network and then the Gezi protests happened. You might know this story, the Gezi protests were in response to the government's plan for a park in the middle of one of Turkey's sort of liveliest districts, the government decided they were going to put, let's see, the replica of an Ottoman era barracks that at once stood there and turned it into a shopping mall shaped like the Ottoman barracks. I mean it's just, it was the craziest plan and it was this little bit of park and it was just going to destroy the fabric of that neighborhood. There were huge protests and I've written about this in many places. The government, I'm sorry, the mass media once again sat on the news. Now when they sat on the news in the Kurdish areas it took someone from the Turkish sort of press going there and breaking the story. When you're sitting on a story that's happening in Taksim, that's kind of like sitting on a story that's happening on Times Square. It's kind of hard to sit on that one like that. What happened was tons of people heard of this on social media. I went there during the protests. I interviewed hundreds of people. I asked again and again, where'd you hear this, Twitter? Where'd you hear this, Twitter? SMS, Twitter, WhatsApp, Twitter, some Facebook, lots of Twitter. So people just showed up and this became this huge protest. It became so huge that on your right you can see CNN International is covering it live. On your left is Turkish CNN showing a documentary on penguins at the same time. So while CNN International is live from Taksim, CNN Turkey was showing a documentary on penguins. This became like the symbol of how crazy media censorship was. Somebody just put their two screens together and tweeted this out and penguins became the symbol of the protest. So people started photoshopping penguins into everything. Sort of like, come CNN, it was like called CNN baiting. You're trying to just put a picture in penguins. So hoping CNN would cover this, it just became this joke, right? You saw penguins were the theme. I've documented this myself, right? This is what's happening at the same time. People are being gassed in the Istiklal street, which is right next to where the protests were. This is what's on CNN. I mean, this is just, this kind of censorship was so blatant. So penguin media versus non penguin media became the symbol.  It just, these became the symbols of the protest because media censorship was a huge part of what people were protesting to begin with. So this is, you know, this was a graffiti from Turkey during Gezi. The revolution will be tweeted. That was the mindset. And this also, this is, there was actually a humor mask, very coincidentally called penguin. And there's a wonderful sort of humor illustrator, Sal Cigardem, he drew the sort of kind of bam, like, and this became the symbol. And that means resist, which is in Turkish connotes like occupy. So I went to Gezi Park. I went there to talk to people. I went there to interview people.  But if it hits your head, that's dangerous. And given how I make a living, I had to, you know, I went there with my bike helmet.  I was like, yes, the cab ride from the taxi, you know, from the airport to the park with no seat belts and just rushing through, that wasn't fun. But other than that, I think it wasn't too bad. So what I found was the citizen journalism as culture. People were, like, I would interview people and I would say, so what do you do when you hear something and you're not sure what's happening? And you would say, well, I go to the front lines. People would go like somebody showed me like a wound they got because they were trying to report from it. There was this enormous sort of, before 104 journals used to have to go places to report. With GIZZY, what we got was this, you know, as soon as something happened, people started taking out their phones, whatever the heck they had, and reporting. And after GIZZY protests, they're just sort of organizing citizen journalism became much easier because the culture changed and people started reporting.  This is such a common thing. But, so this is so far, it reads like a regular story, mass media science, there's 140 journals, they come in, they report. But there's another really interesting twist to this, and this is the part I kind of want to add, is that mass media is often also a tool of culture war. Media control in Turkey, and I would say not only in Turkey, and a lot of other examples, is not just about censoring the news. It's creating polarized identities. It's creating a sense of culture comf around which you build political bases. This is not untrue in the US, right? You can't talk about, say, saying gun laws because it's become part of this culture war. Global warming has become part of culture war identity. And, you know, helpfully, that sort of, that culture war of, you know, elites versus the heartland kind of cultural identity gets attached to lower taxes, less public services, and that is the sort of vision through which a lot of ruling and governance happens. In Turkey, this is very, very strong. The Turkish polarization is happening through, the media control is not just about censorship, and it can't be at the, in the age of internet, it's much harder to maintain this. But what's happening is that they are, the media control is a way of portraying and demonizing and dividing the two camps through which the current government continues to rule. Now, Gizipark was a major challenge to this because it was a very multicultural space. It was, I mean, besides the fact that it broke censorship, it was this amazing meeting of a lot of groups that had been uncomfortable about the government but were divided internally, the opposition too was divided by these culture wars. So these are some pictures I took at Gizipark. And so on your left is one of Turkey's most well-known transgender activists. And she became kind of a hero in Gizipark because the park is near the neighborhood where Turkey's LGBT community lives, and she sat in front of an APC and stopped it, and there were pictures of this so she became famous.  And I just saw them find each other. The Kurdish anti, as we call them, went to her in her thick Kurdish accent and said, why haven't we talked together before? Why didn't we not have this? And then the transgender activists, and she was like, yes, why haven't we, and they hugged and they cried. And then I said, can I take a picture? They were like, sure. So, I mean, this is not the kind of cultural groups that would normally come together in Turkey. This is another picture I took.  She said, I can't stand the way they're gassing you. She was just crying because these were being gassed.  She has tattoos, piercings, she's wearing shorts. I mean, again, cultural wars. And they just consult her. Another example on your front is revolutionary Muslims praying on the back is the sort of a small socialist party protecting them. This was sort of, gassy was very anti-cultural camp. And that was a big threat. So what happened was, government's response was an all-out culture war on mass media. I'm gonna explain how this ties back to citizen journalism. This was really a weird case in which the government claimed that the gassy protesters had beaten up women wearing a hot hat scarf and her baby. They claimed that 150, she claimed that 150 bare-chested, leather pant wearing men had cornered her in the middle of one of the most crowded places and had beaten her up and urinated on her. This was just incredible claim. Now this was really, like the government's really smart because for years, feminists in Turkey have been arguing for believe the women, believe the women, believe the women. And, you know, she went out on TV and said this and the government said, do you not believe the women? There are no pictures. There are no sort of other things besides her testimony. So everybody was kind of taken back because it had supposedly happened in one of the most crowded places. I was like, not one picture, nobody. And the idea was mind-blowing. And then this became this huge thing on, this is like Turkish media. Can you accept this insanity? This kind of awfulness.  Now the claim, there's a lot of sort of government, has a lot of close circuit TVs all around and finally something leaked. So we now know this is her in 737. This is her three minutes later, she gets in the cab, nothing happened, nothing happened. So this was a blatant lie, but it took one year for that frame to leak out. And for a whole year at every rally, the Turkish prime minister went and said, they beat up women and babies because they're wearing the head scarf. There were other similar untested claims like that. Most of them were contested because of citizen journalism. I'm saying this because this is a major part of the censorship is not censorship per se, right? It's a way of creating a cultural war. So seeing all of this, the Turkish 140 journals group started evolving towards verification, counter polarization and community building. And this is what they've been doing for the past year because since everybody now takes out their phone, it's become easier to break censorship in Turkey. But culture wars and media control as a means of culture wars has not. So here's some of the things that they're doing. This is a verification example where in a little bit after Gizzi, there was a claim, a photograph that a secular organization's building, headquarters in a small town in the Black Sea region had been surrounded by mobs who are threatening to burn the building. Now in the Turkish context, there are examples of this happening, like mobs burning down buildings of opposition. There's a case in Sivas which killed about 37 people. So this is not a crazy idea that this would happen. They were really worried about it and mass media once again wasn't reporting but they couldn't really verify that this was happening because once again, this is a very difficult situation in which if you cry wolf and if you're wrong, then your credibility is damaged. If you're right and you're not reporting it, people may die. And this is the irony of it. This is on the shoulders of 22 year old college students because mass media is not reporting this and they're sitting there thinking, what do we do? We're getting these pictures. So they were really like good. What they did was they did the Google Maps and they identified every shop around this area and they started calling him and say, hey, can you walk to your balcony and hold your phone to the, you know, just out? Can you just like hold the phone? Somebody just called and called and called people till they got somebody to sort of walk out and do this. So it's really interesting how they're doing this verification. They have, I think they have one of the best sort of infrastructure right now. A bunch of college students have, I think one of the best infrastructures for verifying citizen journals and reports. I'm just giving you one example of what they've done. They have a whole area of techniques. They've developed that they could talk for hours and hours and hours on how they verify things and throughout all of Gizzi in which lots of false stuff was circulating, they made one minor mistake. And I think they've made one or two minor mistakes which they immediately correct since then. This is a year of reporting. I don't think mass media has that good a, you know, that mass media doesn't have this good a record. They've taken their verification to election monitoring, right? They started this thing and with this project, this website where you can take election reports from your local precinct, enter them and then verify them. And this is a picture of their first meeting like, you know, one, two, three, four, five people started this massive election monitoring. It's the same kids, it's the same kids, right? And this was just them on Google Hangouts, three of them down there, one whiteboard and they put up the app in a couple of hours and it was just amazing. So what's happening is there's these official ballot boxes per precinct kind of and there's an official count and they've got crowdsource counters so people go and like, this is handwritten so people crowdsource the writing the handwritten one and then they check it's just a great thing and it's mapped onto the Turkish sort of where there's discrepancies, pretty amazing. But they're not just doing that, they're doing this counter polarization reporting. They're going out of their way to report from protests from all sides. So this is a picture that they posted of Islamists who are praying in the Hagia Sophia. That's the old church that was converted into a mosque for a couple hundred years after the Ottoman is invaded Istanbul which was before Constantinople and now it's a museum and there's a desire from the Islamist sort of contingency to make it back into a mosque and they do these weekly prayers there. Hundred and further journals who are more like the secular kids, right? They're not sympathetic necessarily. They say they practice affirmative action. They get up at 4 a.m. which is when the morning prayer is so that they can report on this. In fact, they told me sometimes they just don't go to bed till 4 a.m. and they might be a little hungover. They make sure that they report on this because what they're trying to do is report everybody else's issues, feelings to each other. They are very much on purpose doing counter-polarizing reporting and they tell them it gets really weird. Like they go report on soccer teams and the soccer fans are like yay and then they go report from an LGBT protest and then they're like why? Why are you reporting on gays? And then every time they report something one group says why are you reporting on them? And he says over the years they just kept arguing to everyone you gotta listen to each other. In a culture, in a political system in which culture war is one key way in which you rule, reporting to each other, from each other has become this massive political statement. And sort of let's sort of close the circle to what happened to the... Remember Roboski, the Kurdish village I told you that had gotten banned? The people, the young ones from that village many of them, everybody lost someone, right? The last names of the people who died they're all the same, uncle, cousin, brothers they become citizen journalists. They have themselves have become citizen journalists and they now also work with 140 journalists which started because of them, because of upset. How upset they were, they report on it. So one of them is Farhad Enju. I spoke with them this time around. I went and listened to his story. And it really struck me how this culture war and censorship adds to the polarization. So he was telling me how his dad called him in the middle of the night saying, awful news you know your brother died and everything and Farhad, he was a college student too. And he got on a bus, he got on the first bus in the morning and he's going to his village. And he told me how he was just crying in the bus crying, crying, crying, just devastated and shocked. And there's a television in the bus because in Turkish buses there are televisions. He just kept looking at the television where this wasn't reported.  He told me how like devastating it was to sit in that bus for a couple of hours crying and just watching the news not be reported. He also told me how when the Gizi protest first started he was angry. Now that had never occurred to me, to my shame it had never occurred to me that you know someone from a Kurdish background would be angry because I thought they'd be happy that you know the western side of the country was also there was something going on. And he said well you know what I was so angry because they wouldn't listen to us or protest about us and they were protesting about trees. So yeah, I mean I can see why you'd be angry I can really see that. He told me he sort of got over that anger when he started seeing people getting tear gas and beaten up because he's a Kurd, right? If people are being beaten up he's just gonna empathize with it because that's sort of just natural sympathy and they're just you know very good about this. And then he started saying wait I should empathize with these people. Now in Gezi Park I talked to tons of people. I've had young person after young person tell me wait a minute if we're the terrorists and the Kurds were terrorists, wait a minute you could see you know I've had kids tell me that next time there's something in the Kurdish region they're not gonna turn on the television they're gonna check social media they're gonna check 140 journals and now they can also check Kurdish citizen journalists themselves. So this counter polarization through citizen journalism reporting has been so interesting and Farhat now goes all around sometimes reporting you know from non-Kurdish areas he's just got this and these are totally self-funded scrappy things, right? He had this phone that was barely working and it wasn't like he doesn't have the latest phone he doesn't have latest equipment he doesn't have anything. He just has himself and of course doing this he's come under a lot of pressure he was once detained but when he was detained his name trended in Turkey on Twitter because he's also on social media people were so upset that someone who had lost so much would still see government pressure so there was this sort of merger between it wasn't just the Kurds who were outraged a lot of Turks were outraged and he was freed and he told me that his followers are his biggest protection and I said are you afraid? He said no I have what's the number now he said I have you know 20 some thousand followers and some of them are you know big important people in Turkey so I feel more protected and he said if I ever stopped being a citizen journalism they'd probably disappear me that was his word so citizen journalism for him is very important and it's really these are incredible stories they've also become constant check on mass media there was an incident in which a young woman jumped from the Bosphorus Bridge to her death unfortunately and she before jumping she had taken off her clothes so she had jumped nude Turkish press of course covered it so sensationally they published the pictures of her jumping it was just awful her family did not go object about this to the Turkish traditional mass media they went to 140 journals and they just put this they said can you publicize this so the citizen media has become this constant check on mass media's not just non-reporting and awfulness I mean these are just some examples I see like people's tweet to 140 journals so things will get reported and mass media is always following this I talked to a lot of reporters they know that their censorship is gonna be visible now sort of also to wrap up on what else that happened Sardar who had first broken the Robowski story to the Turkish side started something called Vagustv which was going to be like this alternative internet based traditional media so it wasn't gonna be citizen media it was gonna be traditional media they got some funding I talked to the people who did the funding it didn't work it's really interesting that the person he's a great reporter he's an amazing reporter with great journalistic instincts they found the money but their model did not work so he became a beekeeper he gave up after a year of effort now he became a beekeeper and he's raising goats and making cheese it's a huge loss to Turkey I mean that we can't keep our traditional journalists who wanna do good reporting in spite of funding and I talked to the people who funded him and they were like well it just wasn't sustainable you can't make money and the government shuts down your site whereas 140 journals because they're Twitter based they're a lot more protected now next steps what they're doing now I mean this is really interesting they're trying to do creating communities through reporting so they're trying to develop a Twitter based app Twitter based so that they are not subject to government censorship where if you're reporting on something that's not like a national news you have say animal rights they wanna bring together the people who are reporting on animal rights issues and help them create their communities and they're trying to develop these apps of gamification they have all these I talked to these kids and it's like talking to a bunch of little Steve Jobs in the civic space they are so creative and so interesting in their ideas and they've tried so many things but of course there's a problem and this is them this is just us talking the last time around there's no funding this is all done and I have just given you maybe little slice of all that they've done in the past couple of years that there's a lot of other stuff they're doing they are doing this as college students who are going to college who also are doing odd jobs here and there to completely self-finance 140 journals zero funding, negative funding I mean they have to go to school and take exams one of them flunked new media theory he just missed the exam because he was giving he was doing all this this is insane right this is the kind of a 22 year old he flunked it because he was at even talks at Harvard and Princeton by the way that he was out of town on what they were doing so the professor was like no I can't let you do a makeup and flunk them and he says he barely passed when he retook it new media theory but there is just done through this complete scrappy energy adrenaline and they're really smart about things you know you talk to them you know they talk, they develop their own language we keep trying to find words for what they're doing they're like we're not really doing citizen journalism we're going to be doing community building through reporting there's no word for this concept yet they're gonna try I mean it's just counter polarization community building people finding each other their own rules of objectivity that doesn't really map completely I mean they're very very strong on factual and verification but they don't mind people having sort of points of view it's a new model of journalism or reporting or community building whatever you want to call it and just as this is like and after I was talking to them there Jem was like oh I haven't slept in one day and he just like crashed on that yellow sort of pillowy there and just passed out this is a total volunteer effort it's not sustainable like this I mean there's only so many years you can get out of young people because one little hiccup an illness, a problem and you will get into things so and this is my like some of the examples that we have is that we have Center for Civic Media all these things that are being tried I love it the personal democracy forum is starting trying to start like a civic startup in New York which I think is a great idea we really I think need to expand to global it need to expand globally to risky unknown ventures our funding model of funding a little more guaranteed stuff is the opposite of what Silicon Valley does and I'm guessing like Silicon Valley's got a lot of problems but they're so good at just this crazy funding which we laugh at we're like why is everybody funding the crazy stuff well because if you don't fund the crazy stuff you don't get the interesting stuff either right Silicon Valley has this ecology of crazy angel investors and a lot of money and a lot of young people who wanna do something and they do get something done in the end and I've been thinking you know we've been talking about this with Ethan Zuckerman I've been talking about this with Mika Shiffri other people we really need to bring the sort of culture of funding with less strings attached just to this stuff to civic startups to civic media and to third world because that's where a lot of the innovation is occurring right and you know M-Pesa starts in Kenya for a reason there is a need and there's a lot of people who are smart and great and whenever I go to someplace like that I'm just blown away about how much stuff gets done how do we do this? I don't really know because it's a challenging funding environment you can't just fund success and get success because the successful people are already successful cannot fund guaranteed projects if this is gonna work because I assure you 140 journals wasn't the only one that started right so you have to create this and there has to be some failure in experimentation built into how we fund these things I mean things like the night news challenge did 140 journals they applied and got rejected by the way they're trying to develop an application to create this community building and gamification because none of them are programmers and they can't afford to hire a programmer they've been stuck in we can't afford to hire a programmer in the past year so they didn't get funded they're trying because it's harder it's harder to apply from Turkey it's harder to apply the grant making language that you need the success you already need and I don't really have an answer to this but there are so many and this is just one project in Turkey there are right now tons of projects I think this is one of the best I think they're great and really smart but they're not even the only one and I'm guessing other countries have all of this so I just wanted to end on this how do we create a civic startup culture that flourishes all of these besides the few places we have here the civic media center or other places so thank you for your patience listening and I hope you have any questions, comments thank you so much Zed up and please don't go anywhere you can give me the clicker if you want but we're not letting you offstage just yet despite skillfully planning this so that you would avoid Q&A we've squeezed in 10 minutes so I wanted to make sure we could get at least a couple of questions to you while we have you here so those of you please great get hands up and I will start running around with the mic and we won't have time for everybody but we'll see what we can do here and I know that Zed up's around for the rest of the morning if people want to talk I'm here till like I think 4 p.m. I have a 5 p.m. if you have questions just catch me here we go hi there I'm Dana Priest what's been the government's reaction to how you're doing and a lot of journalists have been imprisoned lately in Turkey are they related to 40 journals yes so here's the interesting thing they have not yet faced direct government threats it's an interesting case because part of what they're doing is reporting very very carefully verified things from citizen journalists so and they've been reporting from all sides so that's a little harder for the government to target them but if they get bigger and more successful that's a real issue for them but because they're also on Twitter see the Turkish government the censorship in Turkey on places like also Russia right it's not always it's not the censorship is very much also self censorship by the main media corporations the number of jail journalists there's a lot of sort of contested numbers there and it certainly happens right the Turkish government does jail some journalists but to be honest the bigger problem is that there is no media corporate media in which journalists are free that is a much bigger problem and that happens by the government pressuring the media corporations and also industrial sort of big industrial conglomerates go by media and then they use the media as a means to curry favor with the government so that really is like rather than being jailed being pressured it's kind of like the Putin's way of getting NGOs because the radiator needs to be three inches from the wall and it's two and a half inches right and then you're shut down that's what's been happening since they're just scrappy little startup on Twitter they're harder to pressure that way and they're not breaking any laws very carefully they're not breaking any laws in Turkey there's not really major laws against reporting a lot of things a lot of it is just sort of the government I mean we know the things that have been leaked that the government the prime minister personally telephones heads of mass media organizations in Turkey when he doesn't like the ticker he calls and says I don't like your ticker and the guy on the other end says yes sir and he admitted he made this call so this is like this audio leaked and it was like of course I call I didn't like the ticker you know I have a right to call when I don't like the ticker so that's how the censorship is occurring and they wouldn't listen if you called them and said take off your thing so they're kind of protected by not being very institutional not being in this for the money now if they really like if they made a mistake you know they could get sued under personal defamation and all of other things and so far that's what's going on my name is Tanta Palaga I'm from Romania Eastern Europe we closely watched what is happening in Turkey and in Ukraine and the way the governments is censoring the information and I would like you to elaborate a little bit about how the government is cutting off the access to Twitter YouTube to internet specific websites with disseminating information is criticizing the government because this is I think very interesting and another additional question if you can explain a little bit how they do it they are calling directly the companies the phone companies or what they do I got so this is a very interesting it's a great question because see as far as I can tell in the world there are three and a half models of internet censorship one is China and I think Rebecca's in the room again yeah so you can read all about it from her it's an amazing infrastructure right you have your tech scene you have your direct access to the government has direct access to Weibo and you have to have been China to do that you needed to have started 20 years ago with that kind of foresight so Turkey's not doing it like China one the health model is North Korea right just have no internet except know who the heck wants to be North Korea nobody on the planet besides North Korea wants to be North Korea so Turkey doesn't want to be North Korea Turkey has one of the most amazing useful e-government infrastructures in the world it's better than the US hands down this government cannot operate without the internet everything you do with the government you know if you have a primary care doctor through the government's health insurance you use the internet to make your appointment that is partly why the government's popular they have used the internet to create this amazing infrastructure that makes life much more convenient so there's no way they can unplug the internet they would you know they just that's not gonna work so what do they do they go after these platforms except that doesn't terribly work either because when they went after Twitter what happened was people just got around the block you can use a VPN since they can't unplug the internet it's not very easy but it did slow down access to Twitter right so if you had to go through a VPN it slowed down access which was a major problem for people but in time that would have gotten solved people would start getting you know paid VPNs and things so people would likely have solved that problem so you can't really censor that so what do they do they make it part of the culture conf they make it part of culture wars the prime minister goes on TV all the time and says Twitter is where there's porn and anti-family values and lies and it will defame you it will break up your family what they're doing in Turkey and I see this like I wrote this up as soon as I wrote this up like people from around the world started saying my government too Indonesia you know I'm Malaysia every lots of places are going this third way which is demonizing social media so your own base stays off it so that you can go continue your culture war because unless you're China it's really not possible to do this massive filter it's just not gonna work attacking you know YouTube they block YouTube and the government's base why you know the date there's a lot of popular cartoons in Turkey that they use YouTube to make you know let their kids watch that stuff they were not happy about it you know the government's own base was like I wanna watch Caillou and Pepe and what the heck and also Turks I really got circumvention because the government's been blocking porn sites for years and there's no better training in circumvention apparently especially in the Middle East it's like everybody knew how to circumvent so circumvention is well understood very widespread you know whether it's to get to porn sites or to watch Caillou cartoons like you know grandmas know how to change their DNS setting so that the kid can watch Caillou I'm not kidding so it's the blocking doesn't totally work but you can slow down throttle and you can make it part of the culture war you see this in country after country where people go and like leaders go and say internet is awful, ugly, evil, Azerbaijan does this what happens is that their own base stays off Twitter it's not that Twitter stays unaccessible so it's really important for Silicon Valley to sort of understand this and kind of figure out what they do in response they're gonna be demonized they have to be careful they have to have their help pages in Turkish they have to like localize without giving in to the sort of just in the censorship per se it's a complicated long story and I think this is what we're going to see in a lot of places is this demonization, throttling, culture war in which internet is part of it the prime minister famously doing this at Twitter is a minister society and that's what he meant So the wonderful thing about bringing top academics to the stage is that you get answers to questions you never expected to have answers to I now know who actually watches Caillou I have to say I'm a parent of a four and a half year old I never thought there was an audience it's in Turkey Huge audience This is important for me to know Xenia incredibly helpful Thank you so much for inviting me I'm so glad you're gonna be around for the rest of the day I hope people will seek Xenia out over lunch over breaks we don't actually have breaks but if we did you would find her then and in the meantime a round of applause to thank her Thank you Thank you so much for inviting me


I would like to move a board comment below action items and above public comment so that we get through the we we we get through the um Robert rule of order um official pieces of the business before I or anyone else start communicating Carl yes could I I just need some time to talk about things I might need for the bulletin um absolutely let's uh let's add that I don't need time but just just basically there's some things I just don't understand well enough to be able to write about and uh could it could need some support because obviously this is crunch time we need it in the next two weeks uh maybe well now that we're moving a little later I think we it needs to be in the hand of the well we need to talk about it yeah scheduling absolutely let's uh um do you want to let's uh we'll add it as a uh as a uh a discussion item um and discussion below action items and we'll add it we'll add it ahead of board comment and public comment good thank you uh Bonnie Lindy uh any uh uh adjustments from you guys Bruce no I don't have anything no I don't think so okay I'm going to now flip over to this screen where I believe so I did everyone get um the replies from uh Dina to the compendium of questions I love there was compendium of questions by the way that's brilliant um yes and and I applaud you for waiting through this holy smoke um what so the big um where's Dina Dina stepped through it all the only piece that seems to be um of issue and uh I'm not sure what we want to do about it is um the uh she makes a comment that um you cannot uh the the civil board of authority would have to have a formal vote so the the the fact that um uh Lori said oh yeah we're we're cool with having the vote at town offices instead of at the school actually requires them to at least one special meeting get together and say we're down we're down with town hall so um town offices I'm just going to keep saying that over and over again because I was the one who slipped up and said town hall um but I think when I talked to Lori this morning she told the members that they were going to to plan for a formal meeting I think she's on this call today to clarify that um but because I still hadn't heard back about whether it needed to be a formal warned meeting or not so she was going to move forward with that process excellent yeah this was uh Dina just answered this uh around noon or so today so this this is uh uh so will sending there's not presses at all carl and lindy yes will from the secretary of state office did respond to my email this morning that um the board of civil authority does have to have an official right meeting advice changing and accepting the polling places okay correct and Dina if they are using a new polling place the bca should vote to designate the new polling place per statute 17 bsa 2501 okay um I seem to believe I mean Dina didn't say we couldn't I do believe that we can I'm I'm I'm going to to to decide we can warn this um even though the the civil board of authority has not yet acted and cross our fingers and trust that they shall indeed act and uh and give us the approval of the approved polling place um by the time we uh need that polling is everyone else think that's a reasonable assumption yes yes that's all you can do yeah I would think so okay um Dina also clarified the the uh issue around uh individually counting versus uh commingling um oh it's oh just do you have noise in your background I'm just it's you're a little broken up for me uh I I do not it's it's it's really quiet here must be the must must must be the phones that are something yeah okay um there is if you go to the lower uh lower right Ethan the closed captioning on google meet is pretty good and there's a so if you hit that three button or hit where it says turn on captions that that that sometimes helps me um uh to to to read what gets gets missed uh Ray Carl I think it was actually Jenny taking notes but I'm not 100 positive and she has muted since okay um hopefully uh hopefully I stay clear so so okay that's the that's the first piece that that we know we have to we have to do and it seems like the civil board of authority in Stockbridge is well in hand with dealing with that since the votes have taken place at the Rochester Town Hall offices place off office yeah so since the votes have taken the votes are taking place at the school they're taking place in the high school building correct yes correct okay but not in the auditorium in rooms 208 and 209 correct um can we do do can we just warn the high school building do you think and not have to specify room numbers um and just have signage to direct people uh I don't know if that's a legal question Carl but we certainly can have signage to direct people um what are we basing the uh school uh as the official polling place on because that is not it is the town office that is so we Rochester probably needs the board of civil authority to approve that change too it's just about where your school vote would normally occur not necessarily your polling place my understanding if somebody read that differently please prior to the uh the district's merging the school vote was taken by Australian ballot at the town clerk's office okay so Julie would need to uh we would need to have Julie get I mean how many people are on the Rochester Civil Board of Authority it's the same as yours it's the select board the justice of the piece and the town clerk okay so whatever whatever quorum they would need to to jump together just to say let's do it at the school I mean it seems to me from what I understand the select board and Sandy Hawes all walk through the high school building so it seemed to have been a fairly consensus and a fairly you know consensual decision about where to have all the Rochester elections the select board actually asked to come in because they don't believe that the town offices provides us a large enough space to safely conduct the vote but that doesn't mean we don't have to go through the same process as Stockbridge based on the point it sounds to me that since the select board was the one that was asking about it and they're a good portion of the civil board of authority I think we can proceed with the same assumption that they will they will get together and warn their zoom meeting and and give it the thumbs up and we can proceed with with our warning problem first thing in the morning crawl and get that process started in Rochester and so all they need is the any board of civil authority needs to to make an official motion is that what it is yeah okay warn special meeting to consider the polling place for the uh Rochester Stockbridge Unified District Australian ballot polling place um so Dina confirms that they can get the they can get the uh ballot done for us the last piece we really need to talk about involves involves Jenny and I think that from Dina's latest communication so we have to we have to choose whether the civil board of authority in each location would would tabulate the votes at that location and then report out the results to the uh uh uh district clerk the school district clerk which is different from the board clerk that takes the minutes it's the the district clerk that does the annual minutes and um you know certifies the voter lists and things like that the voter list is provided by the civil board of authority and um uh you know that basically as long as the list is the authority the responsibility seems to be around oh let me finish the the vote mingling so so either the civil boards of authority count the votes individually and communicate the results to the district board clerk um or the the civil boards of authority bring all the votes the ballots and the votes to a central location where the votes are physically counted by the civil boards of authority under the supervision of the district board clerk um the the thinking that uh Jenny is very concerned about being in a room with all those ballots and uh uh uh all those people uh given given uh you know the the the state of of uh her family and uh medical issues which is completely understandable so we can and we probably should entertain a motion to um have the civil boards count their own ballots yes yes Amy I would like us to really think about this though um we are a district and standing as a district collecting all the votes together and reporting the combined yeas and nays of our district um I I'd like us to really think about those implications um I think that being being one it's a stand of being one getting all the votes together it's not this many people in Stockbridge voted yea or nay and this many people in Rochester voted yea or nay it is our district which is what we are trying to continually promote right well we'll have to look at I believe we have to look at which town there are for at least the the positions of you know the the Stockbridge resident and the and the I believe only Stockbridge residents vote for the Stockbridge representative and only uh Rochester residents can vote for the Rochester representative or is it one for me to know everybody who votes right okay so I agree with it can you hear me now okay I agree with Amy I think whatever we can do to show that this is a merged district would be what we what any anything that we can any little detail that we can do to show it together I think we should okay it is I'm sorry go ahead Ethan uh I I mean I hear those points I just think this is extraordinary times and I think um with Jenny's concerns um we are looking to some extent about expediency here we're trying to get this done um and I think I would I would just say that I think it's safer and more expedient to do it in the separate places and have the information come I understand I really do understand the arguments about bringing things together but I just think that may have to go by the wayside right now but that's my two cents um Jenny Jenny has offered to if the because one of the questions was in one of Dina's opinion she said that since we had done a commingled vote we had to continue to do a commingled vote and Jenny had offered to step aside if that was the case Jenny do you want to speak to just your your your whole sense of how you feel about participating um yeah I think I'm okay with doing it either commingled or mingled however if we do um have to have the the district clerk there then I would have to step down and I don't mind either way um um either commingled or mingle I see pros and cons to both we would have to find someone to be the clerk if we um had to do it one of those ways and in terms of them commingled I would the clerk just needs to confirm the results is that correct if yeah I think they're I think if they're commingled the clerks you know they're they're all brought to a place and they're all kind of counted in front of everyone versus they're counted in Rochester and Rochester calls you and they're counted in Stockbridge and Stockbridge calls you but does the clerk physically have to be present at the commingling I thought it was just the board of civil authority counted and then the commingling the clerk they're they're brought to the clerk and the clerk the clerk supervises the counting the the counting in front with you know that uses the civil board of authority I believe the question is do the civil board of authority do it under their under their own uh purview and then report the results or do they get mingled or do they get brought to one location and the the district board clerk oversees the counting that is you know done you know with members of the of the civil board of authority the civil board of authority isn't dropping them often waiting outside while the clerk counts them or the board counts them the civil board of authority still has to help participate in the count either way um but here's here's my thing is that I it has a little to do with publicity I just wonder if anybody's gonna really know that the whether the votes were commingled or not commingled you know like it's one thing to have classes go on a field trip together in the past or you know all be together in the Rochester auditorium but the fact is I don't know that that many people are going to know how this is happening how this vote counting is happening in that case you know let's be expedient about it and safe about it Megan speaking I'm gonna agree with Ethan I kind of if it was you know a normal circumstance I truly believe a commingled count would be the way to do it but given the COVID and trying to you know be conscientious of not mixing so many people together I'm siding with uh east on this one I I do think we should not commingle them and have them have our BCA's report to Jenny okay because that again the the the the the important thing is the difference that is the point that Amy was making in in a commingled count you wouldn't really you you wouldn't really be able to to sugar out where where where one town went in one town one town didn't which may or may not you know it it may or may not matter well I think I think Jenny would be the only one who would know that well I would think that I would think the civil board of authority would be would be reporting the figures individually right but aren't they but just to Jenny take confidential I'm not sure if they're confidential or not I that that would be a question probably for the attorney so I do wonder just because I know people have to jump to a meeting at six o'clock is this a decision that has to be made right in this moment or do we just need to revise the warning and make sure the warning is accurate and we can figure the commingling it sounds like there's still some confusion around it got you I think there I think there is and I I think that um unless unless Bruce can get to Dina to answer that question in like the next 10 minutes because I don't have Dina's cell number he might be able to get a hold of her real fast I can try to get a hold of her but she was getting on another meeting so I can try we can Carl do we we can warn the meeting and we can we can address the the question of tabulating the ballots much like we're addressing the formalizing of of the of the other piece of it you know what I mean right I just don't want us to run out of time if there's no we really we really do need to warn this thing today correct you saw the time when I mean that and then even let's get this and it doesn't sound like we need to have all of that that needs to be decided before we warn it is not an item that is on the warning it is tonight it is that is made to support the election so I would believe that yeah we do not have to we do not have to nail that down tonight to to to move the question forward well and I think I could be on agenda item for a regular meeting on Tuesday yeah good idea do we have a revised warning Carl um I believe we do I'm looking at Rob's email there's so many things that are back and forth if the votes are coming and then this just came in from Rob Robert Fletcher at the dean's office if the votes are commingled they will be counted by representatives of the bca in each town in a single location and results certified if they are not commingled they'll be counted in each town by the by the respected bca's and the certified results sent to the board clerk the board clerk then report reports the the results so it does sound like if they're kept separate they would be reported they they would be reported as as separately certified resort results because the scene around do we but Carl do we have the current warning um that is what I was looking for when I was searching on Rob's name so I will uh it was not attached to that email that he had sent about uh voting there it is okay the one I see was sent it looks like on Thursday I haven't seen anything since then okay Thursday's the uh May 19th 21st 21st okay prior to our meeting on Thursday um so I'm seeing here's a warning Bob sent you 21st that's the 18th yeah I see the 18th um so we don't have it I'm I well I I'm sure I do I'm sure we have it somewhere there's like I said there's okay here's one from the 19th I had the two versions one with the reserve and one without the reserve which is the last question we have to decide as I find the find the versions of the warning um what is our what is our our pleasure in terms of we do have to decide for the warning um well actually so this is this is also complicated yeah Dina's Dina sent in another email talking about the idea of uh of the the reserve funds and in this email she she seems to indicate that the reserve funds because they were set up and approved by the electorate they can they can be funded by vote of the board which means that the fact that the the articles of agreement that never really said that the stock bridge existing reserve fund was supposed to go to the stock bridge reserve fund or that monies from the dandelion daycare sale were supposed to go to the dandelion daycare fund theoretically according to this last email from her could just be voted but not have to be warned since the since the taxpayers made the funds and that the board could just vote vote the funds into them so the board can do that the board can vote the funds into it the town doesn't have to that's what that letter is a pre designated carl the way I read that was only specific to the funds that were already existing you still need your voter approval to take surplus money and put it in a reserve fund so just make sure there's that clarification there okay because she okay so I think given these can given the confusion about the reserve funds I think we need a warning I think we need to vote the warning that does not speak to reserve funds at all and we need to just vote to vote towards getting a budget getting the people elected getting the bridge loans you know in that language taking care and the point is you can do this at some other time I agree I think again expediency and clarity or let's not complicate this too much it's going to be hard enough to just get this basic budget passed yes um so the last one I see seems to be at the bottom of of Tara's from 521 Tara revised Roberts 520 to put the numbers in so Tara do you see that version that you you revised an email that you sent around at 235 on May 21st that says I have revised the warning to now include the per people spending and the percentage increase that's the first sentence in that message Tara yes I have that saved on my computer okay that would be that to me looks like the latest warning that we have it just needs to have that article six about the reserve funds taken out of it it also needs to say stock bridge town offices and not stock bridge central school as the voting I'm going to share my screen I need to say the location in Rochester as well not the auditorium right oh yeah right the high school building or rooms 208 or 209 okay so all right hold on I'm trying to get Tara's this all right so it is at Rochester Rochester high school auditorium it says right say rooms 208 slash 209 or just Rochester high school I don't know that we need to spend my room and stock bridge town office yes yes and just for my clarity are we completely putting to bed the reserve funds issue are we just tabling it for now we're tabling it for now because we need to we need to we need to sort that all out we just want to be on that that that's not so you would take out article six did you say I got article six completely and can you please just for me put a comma after Rochester high school my wife would kill me if you didn't elect the clerk to elect the treasurer to elect the following persons to the Rochester sacred unified school district to all the voters the budget authorize the board to borrow issuance of that our um that's our tan that basically that's the tan the voter I'm still trying to figure out how we're going to do without an approved budget I've got legal counsel in the state of Vermont all working on giving me some guidance on how to move forward with it so can we talk about the time from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. when Laurie and I you have to go until 7 p.m. and Laurie it was 10 o'clock till seven yeah we were doing 10 o'clock in the morning right from the party not from us so if we can if you think we can change it that's what the other districts are doing yeah just to eliminate and try and encourage some absentee can we also um go over to the second page and under Janie Feinberg where it says clerk can we put director oh yeah good catch who's your board clerk Jenny Austin who can who can are on director she can sign and accept this warning and then should the ballot be decided to be done in a different way but she's uncomfortable with she can she can resign then can you go no this is not for the this is isn't this the clerk of or that's the school district clerk the person that like it used to be it used to be or it used to be uh joanne and it used to be kathy brown i understand what you're saying um can you go back up to jenny feinberg and put the r on the director yeah good so if we had to change the school district clerk is that okay that that person's name isn't on this document um yes and you would take out where it says jenny off well is the clerk of the i mean it is we don't we don't say we don't show who our vice chair is in terms of our directors do we really want to show that jenny Austin is the is is is the clerk let's make her director i mean i guess we can leave her as clerk she's clerk both places i mean it really should be it should also show your vice chair i mean those you're elected as a board into that position who that's amy that's amy is like that vice Miami vice yeah all right so we have uh 10 o'clock a.m when the polls will open ending at 7 p.m when the polls will close to voting australian ballot to the to elect a town clerk so this doesn't say the date people are voting does that need to be in that first paragraph yes so yeah it would be june 30th right where i'm not sure are here by notified and warned at 10 o'clock and ending like uh i'm not sure we're in the sentence it's got to say june 30th would be right after i thought it was there you go i thought it was right up the top but that's fine okay yeah we're just talking and we should have that on there thank you that is very big deal yes okay so let's run our eyes over that one more time time or three more times could folks just clear for me it could be just my not understanding this how did they know who they're voting for for um the two terms it's just the ballot has to be posted 20 days before the thank you yeah if you look at that if you look at that companion of questions the the timeline of when we have to open the window for nominations and then when we have to get all of those forms of a scent or consent forms or whatever they're called um to the attorney to make the ballot so the ballot is ready and available the 20 days before yeah i think i spelled that out i think i spelled that out in the yes you did thank you for that that's very helpful we were the we have the the attorney has confirmed that we get them that information end of the day whatever the day that those forms are closed they will have it ready for us in time and uh julie had said that she's comfortable doing running it off and i'm assuming lori'll run it off as well thank you for being rated at the locations thank you um all right me i don't approve the uh warning as shown does anyone as i it looks okay to me but then i missed the fact there wasn't a date on it so um does everyone uh i mean if we're comfortable i would entertain it takes two more minutes let's just read it again from the bottom all the way through do we need to put the parentheses about when the polls will open and when the polls will close or were those notes to us from the lawyer to make sure we had that information in there i think it's important i think it clarifies it really shows that this is an open and open and a close it's not that all this is an all-day meeting gotcha that's how i would i read it yeah totally fine just throwing it out there it's good to hear others perspective um i just think we should maybe have an at before the stockbridge town office so it's at rochester high school and at stockbridge town office just how do we get rid of eight in there too as i stated in article number four do we have any cents in our total budget amount or is it an even dollar amount good i don't believe it's an even dollar amount that's what i remember from the budget tara okay sorry what was the question in the budget number the four million three hundred ninety one thousand one hundred and twenty five is there any sense with that or is it an even dollar amount usually the aoe rounds it up to an even dollar amount but let me there could be cents in it it's 40 cents in the budget carl this is just a formatting question in article three okay do we want to have the dates like from 2020 to 2023 like we do up an article one and two um sure that that would certainly be consistent it would also clarify how long the term is for if anyone's looking back good what'd you say bonnie in article three would we want to have the dates like we do an article one and article two yes i agree from july one 2020 to june 30th 20 23 right well before we were gonna be consistent it would say for the term of july one 2020 to june to june 30 20 23 i think it does help if you're looking back because often there's a question well you know how long does that term go for and periods after both the 2023s and we said it was and ethan said it was 40 cents for the the 391 125 dot 40 yeah the total expenditure amount 125 and 40 cents so this is just another format question article four shall the voters approve the amount if approved so i don't so that's a question but i don't see a question mark anywhere and then in article five the question mark should be at the ensuing fiscal year right the rest of that language is is is statutory okay so then we'd put it at the right after fiscal year yep and then article five is just a straight question yep so just looking at the time it's uh 538 um what is the plan for the next meeting all right because i feel let's let's let's let's let's approve this are we all it has i just read through it again um except i really can't read the very bottom e but i don't think that has changed um that was like statue sorry jargon does anyone else uh want to run another eye over it i would entertain a motion to approve the uh uh warning as uh presented by tara so moved do i hear seconded seconded a motion has been made and seconded to approve the uh the warrant yeah dina's calling i have her on speakerphone dina you're on speaker i'm hoping the board can hear you okay what's the question can you hear carl yes hi dina we're still we're still um so we're trying to understand the bit around um consolidating or commingling the votes versus counting them separately and the the the the issue that we're we're we're coming up against is the idea that on the one hand if we commingle them it seems like there will not be a a certified vote by tau or by by polling place whereas if we voted them if we counted them at each polling place then the results will be certified by the polling place so you would know you would you would have information as to what stock would be in voting in what russia russia's area in voting yes i agree that is that is a major difference yes does does the board this the school district clerk have to be present for the counting of the commingled votes for the commingled yes but does not need to be present for for for separate correct if you do it separately which is so so when i said i thought that doing it separately was a good idea it was based solely upon what jenny had articulated as her concerns and not taking anything else into account so if you do not if you do it separately by town she doesn't need to be there um the bca rep and the town clerks they do it they count the votes they break down what the votes are for whichever candidate yes or no on the budget and they report the results to jenny if you comminglet the bca representatives have to bring the ballots to a centralized location where they are then taken out and tabulated you know yes or no i voted for carl i voted for jenny and she supervises that she doesn't have to touch the ballots but she has to generally under the statute supervise that so she would have to be somewhere in the room one would say when they do it and and to do to uh to complete this warning process because we've gone through and we've we've dealt with the warning and we're about ready to to vote on it we do not need to have this decision made about commingling or or separate counts decided at this time you should be doing it at this time okay because it's not it's not part it's not part of the let me think about that carl do you have to do it at this point in time right if we could do it another we would have to figure out if if jenny was going to step down we'd have to think about who we were appointing and make sure that person whoever they were was okay with it so that's where we're saying just like we have not we got your message today that we have to uh we have to notify the um the stockbridge town clerk to hold a cba to move the vote from the school to the uh to the town offices and they're comfortable they're comfortable doing that they've said they'll they'll bless it we're assuming that we can just warn the warn the budget warn this warning now trusting that they're going to follow through and do what they said and actually have that formal meeting you know have their one one person be done um process carl on the issue of do you have to decide commingled right now or not um i don't think that there's a requirement although i know i have in the past put on the the warning how ballots will be commingled i'm not i think it is more and more noticed than you necessarily have to give okay about it okay um lori you had a comment yep don't worry i'm going to i'll send out the let the bca know tomorrow that i'm going to warn a meeting and they'll need to participate in that just to approve this or or the 30 vote of the town hall and um from 10 to seven yeah you know i've actually said i'll do it so you don't even have to trust me i i told you i'll do it how's that you did just use the words town hall but you want to say town office town office okay i know that verify it right and we're gonna have and we're gonna have bonnie reach out to julie to do to do the same thing to to make sure that the time is set in the place is is is set in those rooms the the rooms that the select board has chosen so thank you for all your help with this lori you've really you've really stepped up and dina i think you are our questions that we that we needed to have about how to go forward so i think uh i think we're gonna go ahead and have the vote but thank you dina thank you dina all right great bye hon okay um so motion has been made and seconded uh to approve the uh warning as uh currently being presented by our business manager any further discussion hearing none all those in favor uh we're going to go in ballot order by the list so let me open up this thing and we'll go through uh carl groppy votes i uh ethan bowen i jenny austin hi uh amy hi and uh janey i don't know which phone number you are but if you could vote it's star six to unmute janey i thought i unmuted myself no that's that's fine uh the ice carry at the warning has passed unanimously um okay we've got just a few minutes so ethan um you're you're up to talk about the um the uh a thing let me let me do this by email i've got to get some going for a wilder before i uh did make i just want to say megan votes i yeah megan votes i i'm sorry megan no worries no worries yeah i'm working on getting um online physically yeah um yeah let me let me communicate by email there's just there's there's a lot there is a lot to do again he's got a great template but there's still a lot of explaining explaining that we need to do the people um one one thing i'd like to put out there i would like to put out the um breakdown that tera sent out of building costs that's been a big question a lot of people i think it should be in our report the the building cost community the analysis that we've been trying to get for for the tera sent out some basic numbers of electricity fuel costs between the three buildings great let's let's look at it and we can on uh uh uh on our meeting on tuesday we can really be trying to right we can finalize all the pieces in parts is that true i will i will that's my goal is by tuesday to have a rough draft of everything for you i think i'll be wondering can i ask a question carl yes can i ask a question sure how would you all like to sign this warning now that you've approved it um we can uh sign it at we need to sign it at a place last time i went to the two town offices and we met there and and signed it if that's if they could bring it to us out the door well i can email it to somebody but you can say can we pass it around and i don't know if everyone has the ability to sign it and scan it and pass it to the next person yeah or i can i mean i can come by and and and and sign um you know if there's if it was at a place i mean i don't know i have the ability to scan in and and send it back is that are we is that something where you can do though or does that have to be original signatures it probably probably would want to be an original signature then i would recommend that if jenny has the ability to print it maybe she could print it and sign it and then then she gets a fresh clean untainted copy and then somebody could you can leave it someplace where we can't sign it until you all have signed it as board members first she can sign it as she can sign it as a board position right but not as the school district clerk until you have the majority of you have signed it okay there goes that plan lindy at some point i have to bring um the cards that emma's making for the sixth graders to the school i could if you email it to me tara i can work with janet and we can she's there um and we can just set up times for people to step by school and sign it and jenny she can bring it out on a clipboard to you or something that way yeah that works i have to bring those cards in at some point anyways does that work for others um is that sorry one percent at a time sorry i heard a bunch of people yep i was thinking and then move it to rochester but then it still has to get back to stockbridge again let's start it in rochester and bring it to stockbridge so that jenny can sign it at the end oh i see so does that make a little more sense it does and bonnie can you so i'm gonna start it in rochester i guess i'll print it out and i will i will bring it to to ethan and to megan and then to and then connect with me amy and we can figure something out i will i will get rochester's side signed and then we'll connect and you can figure out stockbridge perfect amy if it's easier you can bring it to her because they're thursday afternoons okay great and people could just go down there and sign it just let them just let them just connect with her if you want to do that super i definitely will thank you it's got to be it has to be posted though 30 days out right yep okay so then we just need to make sure it gets signed by friday morning so lori can post it in stockbridge because she only works till noon okay i will i'll be able to get right on this and get it right right done okay okay please do email it to me thank you um if we if we do get tight on things note that it does not need to it has to be posted it has to be signed by a majority of of the board it if there's someone who we can't we we can't make work we can we can skip having a one of the signature lines we have a signature line blank we've done that before um because we've had to get it published so if we have to we can but let's let's focus on trying to get everyone on it okay and ethan's going to be reaching out um electronically to discuss the book and we are going to be meeting our next meeting is our regular meeting on uh tuesday june 2nd it will once again be held in uh cyberspace at a point uh in the spacetime continuum exactly halfway between our two schools i love it carl can i ask one more question sure do you want on core to give their presentation in your june 2nd meeting uh yes we'll put them we'll put them on just uh uh i mean yeah it's about 15 minutes okay i will let her know thank you um before we move into board comment and public comment i just i'm questioning if we start to go beyond six i do want to make sure that our board has representation on the stu meeting so who i believe um i'm okay with with foregoing what i was going to uh uh to mention um i think uh we have and i i will also be making a hard stop at at five uh five fifty nine but that said um if there is someone on the board that wants to comment please be mindful of of the time and just take a minute or two or public rather hey carl this is keith hi keith how you doing okay how are you good a couple of things i have some questions maybe you can clarify for me okay okay so the the current budget is proposed by the board definitely pulls below the uh threshold spending amount per student correct correct okay uh second um i was listening to dina and it was interesting um she thought it best that the vote does show by town so this way we can see how the stock bridge people vote versus how the rochester people vote did i misunderstood stand her or is that correct um she said that she said that i don't believe she offered a uh an opinion one way or one way or the other she said that's a good idea to have it separated due to the logistics with um the residing clerk and health concerns with the current state of the covid virus was the the the sole reasoning okay but yeah how does how does the board then have a sense for for how the stock bridge voters feel versus how the rochester voters feel since rochester has a larger voting block um the i mean that it would be it that would be that would be one of the reasons to have to have a separate count would be to have it played that way wouldn't that make the most sense for the board so you have a feel of how each town feels um i could personally see it it being helpful i could also see it see it being hurtful um i know that one of the other points that that someone had made was you know it uh having a commingled vote reinforced the idea that we're we're we're one we're one unified district as opposed to uh two separate towns yes but in my opinion one district or one town benefits more than the other so by doing the commingled vote the board never really sees how each of the two towns actually feel and i thought in terms of transparency that's what the board would want to see so they can properly analyze what's best for both towns well i certainly see your point i'm just and and and like i said i can see it i can see value in in in in both ways the other point that was that that was made that i want to reinforce to you uh a real quick heath is you know remember ethan was saying and uh megan was saying as well the idea of expedience and if we did try to commingle the votes we would probably need to replace uh jenny as the district uh as the district board clerk which means we'd have to have another special meeting to appoint someone train that person in in in how to do things so it's certainly and then find the third location to do this neutral counting so certainly then you know the the point was also made very clearly that that uh you know there's there's an expedience advantage to doing separate counts where where you get the report from the rochester polling place and the report from the stockage polling place um i think that's a question that we've is more important than accuracy excuse me i said if i understand you correctly expediency is more important than accuracy no you misunderstand me completely the the expedient the expedient answer the expedient answer would also be the more accurate answer because the expedient answer would be rochester would count and stockbridge would count and they would submit things to jenny we wouldn't have to replace the the the district board board clerk we wouldn't have to find a third place to quote to to to count the votes so it'd be far more expedient to just have the votes counted in each town and submitted which as you pointed out would give the accurate layer of information about what the stockbridge voters said and what the uh um um rochester voters said you see what i'm saying okay so look if i understand what you're saying so in other words you would be able then to see and you would separate out for all of the constituents how the stockbridge people voted and how the rochester people uh people voted correct if the if the if the board chose to authorize a separate count um yes that would be that that that's how the votes would be certified and reported okay so will the board will the board recommend that because i think it's very important in this situation um i think we're going to decide that on tuesday after meeting then carl one of the other questions we had is we do need to just verify that that these results are indeed um public for public consumption and that they are not uh confidential in any manner so i just want to make sure we have that answered before we uh are committing to i think dina said that they were that they that that if they were certified in each town that was the sort of the certified number and that was what was reported but yes i will get get further clarity on that and at this point in time at 559 i unfortunately have to go represent our uh our district at the um su meeting so i want to remind everybody that we will be having a full regular um rsud our regular uh first tuesday of every month meeting on a tuesday june 2nd uh at 6 30 the agenda and the contact information will be as usual available on the bolton boards of the town halls as well as again uh at the w r v s u dot o r g the su uh website there's a calendar with the agenda and and uh supporting materials w r v s u dot o r g uh i would entertain a motion to adjourn so we can go to our su meeting do i have a second thank you everybody that's been made in sec with it seconded to uh adjourned so we can get to the su meeting this meeting is adjourned