October 2023 General Body Meeting

October 9th, 2023, 6:00-7:30 PM
Newcomb South Meeting Room

1.     Call to Order and Remarks (Max Schnidman, 2 minutes)

a.  Dean China or Dean Acampora invited to the November (or later) meeting. Kylor, who is rep on the College Foundation, has reported that they are working hard to raise funds for increased stipends and admissions for grads

2.     Old Business (5 Minutes)

a.     7th Year Funding Policy (Max Schnidman, 5 minutes)

i. Response from Dean China, quoted herein: “Yes, we are trying to make a shift away from providing teaching assistantships to 7th year students. In most cases, these “out-of-package” teaching assistantships did not cover students’ full living support and often resulted in situations where students were marginally funded for long and uncertain periods of time. Going forward, we would prefer to create a situation where students can plan effectively and know that they will be supported within a time frame appropriate for their discipline. There may still be some occasional exceptions to this, but we have asked DGSs in departments where providing teaching assistantships 7th-year students was a common practice to communicate to their students that this will be rare and should not be expected as it often was in the past.”

ii. Chem: a lot of students were set back because of COVID. It was case-by-case beyond the sixth year, but now it seems to be that nobody is going to be funded after their sixth year. Still not a lot of consistency from the department.

iii. Seems that DGS’s are encouraged to move away from post-6th year funding, but DGSs seem to have flexibility

iv. Want to know what is being communicated to first years. What is in their letters?

v. Informal poll: by show of hands, which depts have students that tend to go in their second year? History, Chem, Physics, Phil, Econ, art history

vi. Many rising 6th and 7th years are exactly the people for whom the bulk of their research would have taken place during covid.

vii. Questions for deans: To what extent is there a transition period, and to what extent is this being communicated to incoming first years?

viii. Is the trend toward longer completion times something that predates COVID? Or did it start with the pandemic?

3. Committee Business (14 minutes)

a. Finance Committee (Max Schnidman, 3 minutes)

i. Funding Request

1. Chem DEI committee requesting funds for DEI training event, promote and increase diversity and address issues in the department. Led by the University Director of DEI education. Any questions? Finance committee has recommended funding this in full.

a. Motion passes. Event is funded.

b. Research Committee (Zoe Robertson, 5 minutes)

i. Fall Research Grants: open as of today! Forward info to your departments. Refer anyone to Zoe with questions. Research committee attended grad resource fair and had a decent amount of turnout.

c. Social Committee (Gillian Courtney, 3 minutes)

i. Trick or treat on the lawn event open to all grad students, pumpkin decorating, candy and festivities. Working with GPC and Graduate Nursing. Would be on Oct. 31st.

ii. Shut up and Grade/Chat Cafes: some time for grad students to sit together and work/grade/write. Combine this with a chat cafe; idea is to serve coffee and treats, people just come and chat, combat lonliness.

iii. Wants to throw a prom, trying to partner with School of Ed, Architecture, Engineering, thinking April.

iv. Field Day at North Grounds, just sack races, 3-legged races, capture the flag?

v. Get in touch with Gillian if you have any questions

vi. Director of IM is willing to help get grads more involved

d. Graduate Education Committee (Max Schnidman, 3 minutes)

i. Goals: continuing bridge to the doctorate program, networking and DEI event adjuct to Huskey next academic year, helping to secure small doctoral programs who have had reductions in admissions (e.g. Slavic Languages), childcare initiative with a potential guide, transparancy with wages, stipends, and grants.

4. Council Business (40 minutes)

a. Stipend and Payment Issues (20 minutes)

i. FICA withholding issues (Jemima Elsherbini, 10 minutes)

1. Wrongful FICA deductions ($90 per paycheck) on international student accounts resulting in $540 total in underpayment. Contacted finance, was sent to HR, HR admitted fault but has not given adequate help. Sending them instead to the IRS. Have international students in other depts experienced the same issue? Ethan is willing to write a statement/email to relevant authorities. How to check for wrongful deductions: go into Workday.

2. Issues also present in physics, chem, history, and econ. Sprintax usually charges more than what students are owed (though, maybe not for $540)

3. Taxes also not deducted for domestic students in chem and econ (switching from instructor to research assistance)

4. Stats: issues with overpayment

5. Envi Sci: lots of mistakes happen due to human error

6. Who have people talked with in HR? They don’t direct us to a single person. Some have had better results with calling than emailing.

7. Different treaties for different countries. University refuses to be clear about this because it is considered “tax advice”; legal issues.

8. Department manager helped Sydney know who to go to. CC’ing her helped her see where she was supposed to be going.

ii. Continuity of payment issues (Louisa Liles, 5 minutes)

1. Transition of power among DGS’s resulted in huge payment issues.

2. Stats payment inaccuracies started with change in DGS.

3. Same with math

4. Chem also just switched DGS’s, didn’t process external fellowship and didn’t get paid for two entire months

5. Bottom line: new DGS’s might just increase potential for human error, seems that a lot of issues

iii. Payments issue tracker (Max Schnidman, 5 minutes)

1. Office form sent out on a regular basis for logging issues with payments, stipends, missed payments, overpayments, expense reimbursements. China Scherz and Evan Barrow like the idea. Will help us share resources.

2. Form is kept within GSAS and anonymized, nothing goes straight to deans or finance people

b. Parking & Transportation Issues (15 minutes)

i. Readout of meeting with UVA Parking & Transportation (Max Schnidman, 5 minutes):

1. wanted to try to get UTS routes into google maps, but technical challenges are that google transit dashboard doesn’t allow the correct frequency of updating necessary for the changes happening with UTS, and that there are some restrictions on what google allows to be on their maps service. UTS interested in moving forward with this, but may face staffing/time constraints. Also considering a ridership advisory board.

2. Parking shortage: we are in the middle of a bad pinch that will go on for the at least next 2 yrs. JPJ parking lots closed, Emmet/Ivy no longer available to us, more lot options at University Gardens. Longer-term, two new parking garages, one for health commuters (instead of Emmet Ivy), another one somewhere near JPJ.

ii. Parking costs (Haley Scolati, 5 minutes)

1. E3 lot is now $26.00 per day, used to be $1.75 per day. Chem grads losing access to more lots, huge concern that there is no parking for grad students that live outside cville. Some people don't make enough $ to live in Charlottesville,

2. Jemima is looking into parking policies at other grad schools, something we can bring to UTS folks.

3. If parking lots are replacing grad housing, will they build no grad housing?

4. Could academic and health routes be integrated so it’s easier to change from red&blue lines to others?

5. Commuter lots reserved for students who live a certain distance away (U.C. Davis)

6. P&T soon being invited to future meetings.

iii. Loading dock ticketing (Jemima Elsherbini, 5 minutes)

1. Envi Sci loading dock issues. Used to happen in Chem too, had their department talk to P&T and issue resolved. Physics is also having this issue right now. Next steps: have your department put pressure on them.

c. Outreach (5 minutes)

i. Social media (Jemima Elsherbini, 3 minutes): GSASC is moving away from twitter. Show of hands for facebook: 8-10ish, threads 0, insta most people, tik tok a few people but UVA will frown upon it.

ii. Newsletter (Max Schnidman 2 minutes): exec is working on a newsletter, Dean China will circulate it to everyone in GSAS, rather than having us forward to our departments. Reps submit items by mid-day Thursday. If your department would like to publicize something that is related to grad students. Could be fun to have grad

5. For the Good of the Order

a. Issue from Physics department. Certain grants require phd candidacy, department has been unclear about what constitutes candidacy.

b. Humanities often require prospectus, some STEM fields do not.

c. SIS might list candidacy requirements under “degree requirements.”

6. Time for Committees to meet (as needed)