February General Body Meeting

Zoom, 2/1/21, 7 pm

1. Updates, News, and Reminders

   • Total attendance: 23.

   • Big-Picture Spring Calendar:

     • Full body meetings on Feb 1, March 1, April 5, May 3 (funding requests would have to be in before those meetings).

     • 2021 Huskey Research Exhibition - afternoon on Tuesday, March 30.

     • Elections will be held in the April meeting.

     • GSASC Research Grant, round 2, due Feb 9.

   • GSASC Research Grant

     • Looking for reviewers! Email Tyler if you would like to volunteer.

   • Miller Mclean (French Rep) - GTA wages are unevenly distributed throughout the academic year, i.e. we receive $250 more per month in the spring semester than in the fall. French department asks that we consider petitioning the Graduate School to change this practice, making the payments equal in fall and spring semesters.

     • Tyler talked with Dean Barnaby about this. Payroll wants set wages for fall and spring, so they restrict our ability to change the payment schedule. Graduate students had discussed this years ago, but unfortunately, not much we can do about it.

   • Max Schnidman (VP Finance) - Is it possible that the school might add dental care to the scholarship package?

     • Tyler also brought this to Ed Barnaby. Not many graduate students take the health insurance waiver, so assuming they all also accept the dental insurance as well, it’s $314 per student, on the order of $500,000, which would take up half of GSAS’s discretionary budget.

     • GSAS will be considering the idea of a request process for emergency dental funding.

2. Committee Updates

   • Honor Committee

     • Working to permanently strike nonpayment of rent from being an Honor offense.

     • Committee is in favor of a shift to multi-sanction, if the ballot passes.

     • Not enough people vote on Honor Council ballot measures! VOTE! (If you feel comfortable, remind students in discussion sections/labs!)

   • University Judiciary Committee

     • 23 fall cases, 9 about COVID; 61 students total, including 43 for COVID.

     • No graduate students.

     • If you don’t comply with the university’s enhanced testing policy this semester and get some kind of consequence/sanction, let Tyler know and he will discuss it with Dean Barnaby. GSAS wasn’t in favor of sanctions for grad students. 

   • Social Committee

     • Kicking around a few ideas for using our funding with the gathering restrictions and safety considerations in place.

     • UPC is holding a few virtual/remote events; these are available to graduate students as well!

   • Research Committee

     • Looking for reviewers for Research Grant: due Feb 9, want to notify winners by Feb 23.

     • Also looking for Huskey reviewers: application portal will open in next day or so (350 word abstract), will close Feb 26, notify winners by March 5, giving presenters about 3 weeks to prepare their talks, event March 30.

     • Ten people who received Spring Research Grant will present at Huskey what they intend to do with that money (5 minutes).

     • Ten presenters who apply directly to the Huskey exhibition give ten-minute Ted-style talks.

     • Considering not having a keynote speaker to save time (already going to be three hours on Zoom).

     • For more information, refer directly to the Huskey webpage: http://gradcouncil.com/huskey

     • Direct questions to huskey.presenters@gmail.com

     • We’re going to end up giving out about $10k in research grants to graduate students this year!

   • Finance Committee

     • No requests for funding.

   • Graduate Education Committee

     • Survey about restructuring or revising graduate education will research departments soon.

3. For the Good of the Order

   • Next meeting: individual Roots catering!! Council members will be contacted with a code by email, order the day prior, and can pick up the hour or so before meeting.