You and another student are co-chairs of the associated student

You and another student are co-chairs of the Associated Student Organization (ASO) at your college. Student organizations that receive university funding, including the ASO, are required to submit formal minutes of each of their meetings. You have been approached by the dean of students, who oversees student organizations. The dean is concerned that ASO minutes are unprofessional and could reflect poorly on the organization. The dean has asked you to revise the most recent set of minutes (the one you see printed here) and attach a memo describing the changes you have made and explaining your decisions. Submit the revised minutes, along with the memo please.

Minutes of the Associated Student Organization

May 13, 2011

The meeting began at 3:10, even though it was scheduled to begin at 3:00. We had to wait for enough people to come to constitute a quorum.

The first issue we discussed was the proposed raise in fees for the General Parking Permit. This year it is $15, which it has been for the last six years. The university’s plan to raise it to $30 is unreasonable, especially given the 8% increase in tuition and the 12% increase in dormitory fees. A resolution was passed unanimously to protest this increase.

The discussion turned next to the lineup for next semester’s musical events. Bob commented that there were too many country acts, and not enough alternative acts. He said, “A little country goes a long way.” Marty got insulted at this and replied, “What do you want, some idiot in leather who spits up fake blood?” He added that country acts are popular with the whole community, whereas a lot of the alternative acts draw very poorly. With the current policy of up-front deposits required by Elite Productions, we have to be sure we don’t book any weak acts, which could deplete our whole budget for the year. Bob said he didn’t mean to be insulting about country acts, and the two agreed to keep talking about the issue.

The meeting adjourned at 4:15.

When you write a memo, organize it so that it is easy to follow. Consider these five organizational elements.

ü  A subject line. “Breast Cancer Walk” is too general. “Breast Cancer Walk Rescheduled to May 14” is better.

ü  A statement of purpose. As discussed in Chapter 5 (p. 108), the purpose statement is built around a verb that clearly states what you want the readers to know, believe, or do.

ü  A brief summary. Even if a memo fits on one page, consider including a sum- mary. For readers who want to read the whole memo, the summary is an advance organizer; for readers in a hurry, reading the summary substitutes for reading the whole memo.

ü  Informative headings which is the Body. Headings make the memo easier to read by enabling readers to skip sections they don’t need and by helping them understand what each section is about. In addition, headings make the memo easier to write be- cause they prompt the writer to provide the kind of information readers need.

ü  A prominent recommendation. Many memos end with one or more recom- mendations. Sometimes these recommendations take the form of action steps: bulleted or numbered lists of what the writer will do or what the writer would like others to do.

 An example of a Memo:

Dynacol Corporation

INTEROFFICE COMMUNICATION

To: G. Granby, R&D
From: P. Rabin, Technical Services P.R. Subject: Trip Report—Computer Dynamics, Inc. Date: September 21, 2015

The purpose of this memo is to present my impressions of the Computer Dynamics technical seminar of September 19. The goal of the seminar was to introduce their new PQ-500 line of high-capacity storage drives.

Summary

In general, I was impressed with the technical capabilities and interface of the drives. Of the two models in the 500 series, I think we ought to consider the external drives, not the internal ones. I’d like to talk to you about this issue when you have a chance.

Discussion

Computer Dynamics offers two models in its 500 series: an internal drive and an external drive. Both models have the same capacity (1T of storage), and they both work the same way: they extend the storage capacity of a server by integrating an optical disk library into the file system. The concept is that they move files between the server’s faster, but limited-capacity, storage devices (hard disks) and its slower, high-capacity storage devices (magneto- optical disks). This process, which they call data migration and demigration, is transparent to the user.

For the system administrator, integrating either of the models would require no more than one hour. The external model would be truly portable; the user would not need to install any drivers, as long as his or her device is docked on our network. The system administrator would push the necessary drivers onto all the networked devices without the user having to do anything.

Although the internal drive is convenient—it is already configured for the computer—I think we should consider only the external drive. Because so many of our employees do teleconferencing, the advantage of portability outweighs the disadvantage of inconvenience. The tech rep from Computer Dynamics walked me through the process of configuring both models. A second advantage of the external drive is that it can be salvaged easily when we take a computer out of service.

Recommendation

I’d like to talk to you, when you get a chance, about negotiating with Computer Dynamics for a quantity discount. I think we should ask McKinley and Rossiter to participate in the discussion. Give me a call (x3442) and we’ll talk.