Meeting Minutes- 03 June 2013

Welcome

Summer Meeting Location

  • Newcomb closed after 5, look for email prior to meetings

Proposed Amendments to the Constitution

  • Changing language about representation
  • Proposed change to article II section 5 as well to include degree granting programs

New Member Intro

  • James Pierce, Alec Hickmott, Evan Farr, Emily Sydnor, Chris Cornelius

Committee Updates:

  • Pro Dev (Katie):
    • Looking for members and co-chairs
  • Research Committee (Kaycie):
    • Distribution of Huskey Prizes delayed, should be distributed within 5 days
  • Social (Jake):
    • Rapture Happy hour went well, ~40 in attendance
    • Movie night/BBQ: June 27th Butz BBQ catering
    • Winery Tour: This Sunday- 7 slots left, need $20
  • Initiatives (Amy):
    • Housing (Amy and Kaycie):
      • Many rapid changes and poor communication occurring with little notice
      • Met with Phil Trella (on committee for housing), and Vicky Haas directly about these changes
      • Found that there were still workarounds for many of the changes, but people needed to still talk to her about them
      • Need to improve communication on this
      • Kaycie put out a survey about the changes to residents of grad and family housing
      • Biggest issues identified from survey, and planning to send them out to residents
      • Emailed Dean Perez about these issues, learned that their concern is with efficiency of move-in, move-out, affording staff positions, and accounting for single and families living in the same housing
      • Looking to separate families and single grad students
      • Working for better documentation of exceptions to changes
      • Family housing association effectively dissolved due to funding cuts, proposing a new council for both single and family housing representation to eliminate disconnect between administrators and members
      • Waiting for feedback from administrators
    • Tuition/DGS Update:
      • Met with Dean Zelikow trying to identify where communication breakdown occurred regarding tuition issues
      • Zelikow communicated that dramatically increased funding had been given to departments to support grad students (not sustainable)
      • Budget from departments given on a student–by-student level
      • Communicated hardships from students, Zelikow was adamant that if the DGS communicated these hardships he would be happy to help, but he can’t help us on our level
      • Communicating with DGS’s about hardships experienced by students in their department
      • DGS’s indicated that this was something they were working on during the time of the survey
      • Kate: would it be useful to do a second survey to account for negotiations that might be in progress
        • Amy: this might be useful for a targeted subset of departments with confusion
        • Kaycie: might be worth doing a full survey
      • Tom (GSBUVA): How is this student-level budget beneficial?
        • Amy: Not necessarily beneficial, just different
      • Discussion stopped due to time constraints, contact Amy Grady for more info
    • GSAS Orientation:
      • Looking to create a unified GSAS orientation that was separate from TRC programming, possibly incorporating social programming, at the request of deans
      • Designed to help foster a sense of community
      • Planning this at the next initiative committee meeting, next Monday, time and location TBD
  • Budget (Danielle):
    • New funding year staring 7/1
    • All internal and external requests need to be made through the GSASC website, if you have difficulties, email Danielle or Nivi
    • Need requests to be submitted minimally 10 days before general meeting
    • Date of event MUST be specified at the time of the request
    • Event must be planned in advance of budget of approval
    • Funding Requests:
      • First Harmonics Summer Concert:
        • Request $500, Recommend $400
        • Approved Unanimously
      • Social Committee Movie/BBQ:
        • Approved during last funding cycle, but need more $ for movie
        • Request up to $500, Recommend $500
        • Approved Unanimously
    • Nivi: get all reimbursement requests for this budget cycle to her ASAP

Wolfpack Form (Trish and Ben):

  • Updated with job descriptions
  • Going out tomorrow to gsasc list, all need to fill out, even current members
  • Kaycie: Will the form go out in the fall as well for new members?
  • Ben: Yes, will go out in the fall as well

Send items for connections to Ben by end of the week.