Introduction

• Welcome
• You didn't just get a place to live, you're a part owner and member
• Your main responsibilities are:
  • Paying your room charges
  • Doing your housework
  • Attending house meetings
• See the ICC Owner's Manual which complements this video

About ICC

• What is ICC? (the nine houses, the 189 members, the board, the office/staff)
• Brief history (why we have a central organization)

Moving In

• Pay room charges first
• Get a key
• Ask for help with moving in from housemates
• Help yourself to anything in the kitchen (besides Cooks' and Personal)
• Your room is probably wired for Internet, and there's probably a house computer
• See your house manual (printed or online) for information about how your house works
• You're a full member the minute you move in, and no one who's been there longer than you is more important than you

Governance

• What the board of directors is, and what kinds of things they decide
• Who's on it
• Your board rep is your important link to the board
• ECC (The Coordinators)

Finances

• Where does your money go? (24% Mortgage/Leases, 18% Food, 15% Maintenance, 12% Utilities, 19% Staff, 10% Advertising, Education, Savings)
• Who plans the budget and when
• How room rates are set
• The #1 key to making ICC affordable is to keep the houses full

Email Lists

• Automatically added to iccForum, openForum, and your house list
• Remove yourself from or add yourself to any list on the website
• Limit of one post per day per person on ICC-wide lists

Website

Simple, fast list of available resources:

• An Academic Year calendar
• How to paint your room
• Tips for how to run the first meeting of the semester
• Labor Holiday ideas
• How to handle the interim period between semesters
• House manuals
• How to use your house's own webspace on the ICC website
• A way to get on or off any ICC email list
• A place to upload files you want to share with other members
• Information about ICC Scholarships
• Contact information for each house, each officer at each house, every board member, and every committee coordinator
• A list of all ICC committees along with contact information
• House officer job descriptions
• A complete list of all ICC rules and policies, including the alcohol at parties policy and procedures for membership review

Kitchen & Food

• What you do affects everybody
• Cleaning up after yourself
• Zero food in sinks
• The Jackson: It's not a dishwasher, don't put wood-handled knives in it
• Hang up items like serving spoons instead of running them through the Jackson
• Hang pots on the inside
• Cast iron: Don't soak, don't use soap, lightly oil
• Refill water and juice containers when you take the last
• Don't open a new container of something when the existing container isn't all used up
• Don't put hot foods into plastic containers (heat leaches plastic chemicals), and don't microwave plastic when cooking for the house
• Don't leave sharp objects like knives and food processor blades ling around
• Clean thoroughly when cleaning
• Recycling: What's recyclable, what's not

Fire Safety

• Many co-ops, here and locally, have suffered serious fires
• When a co-op burns, co-opers don't just lose their belongings and possibly their pets, but their room rates go up too to cover the cost
• How to prevent fires

House Meetings

• Why they're important: Participating in meetings is one of the main ways you contribute to your house, just like doing your labor
• Houses are happier and more harmonious when decisions are made by the greatest number of people
• If members don't have any interest in managing their house, it might as well not even be a co-op
• What kinds of things are decided at meetings
• How to get a proposal onto the agenda
• Typical agenda for a house meeting
• How a bill becomes a law
• Use twinklies to express agreement, but don't use any hand gesture to express disagreement, which is rude. Wait your turn to speak instead.

Labor / Love

• When and how labor positions are chosen
• What to do if you know you can't do your labor
• Consequences of not doing labor

House Officers

• Elected at the beginning of the semester
• Anyone can run
• The positions:
  • Board Representative
  • Trustee
  • Membership Officer (sometimes combined with Trustee)
  • Treasurer
  • Kitchen Manager(s)
  • Education Officer
  • Labor Czar / Lovemaker
• Officer reports at house meetings keep you informed and are how you hold your house officers accountable

House Money

• How much your house gets (~$110/mo.)
• House has both a Checking Account and a Savings Account
• Savings Account does not grow unless the Treasurer specifically moves unspent food money into it
• ICC pays for things like utilities and major maintenance
• Kitchen Managers can authorize food spending
• The Maintenance Officer usually has a small maintenance budget, spent from the checking account
• In some houses any two officers together can approve spending of $25 or less.
• For all other spending a house vote is required

Maintenance

• Write on the Maintenance Request sheet if something's wrong
• If the Maintenance Officer can't help you they'll ask you to fill out a Maintenance Request Form on the ICC website.
• Don't fill out the form on the website until you've talked to your house Maintenance Officer.
• Never request routine maintenance from the ICC Facilities person by phone or email, unless it's an emergency. Use the website form instead, and then only after talking to your house M.O.

Membership Review

• Most problems between members can be resolved through talking.
• When that fails, or when the problem is very serious, members can call a Membership Review meeting
• An outside facilitator runs the meeting. The problems are stated, and the member under review can respond to that.
• The house can choose to take no action, or can put the member on probation, or can make the member move out, or can come up with any other kind of creative solution.
• If a member has to move out then they still have to pay their room charges, otherwise anyone who wanted to get out of their contract would just cause problems so they'd get kicked out.
• Any three members or certain combinations of two members or officers can call for a membership review.
• More details about the Membership Review process are listed on the ICC website

Solving Problems

• Don't rush to proposal
• Food (use the food request list, talk to the kitchen manager)
• Maintenance (use the maintenance request sheet, talk to the maintenance officer)
• Another member not doing labor (write on the Labor board if your house has one, talk to the Labor Czar)
• Room charges (talk to the office)
• Creepy people (if they're not visiting a house member, kick them out)
• Interpersonal problems (get the Trustee to help mediate

Changing things at the ICC level

• Get your board rep to carry a proposal
• Run for a board position
• Members can overturn board decisions via referendum

Summary

(purposefully incomplete)

• The #1 way to keep ICC affordable is to keep the houses full
• 20% of your room charges goes towards food
• Kick creepy people out
• Don't burn your house down
• Go to meetings
• Don't put food in the sink
• Laura is always touching Don's butt