November » 2014 » Graduate Student Council

GSC Meeting 2014-11-19

November 19, 2014 by secretary in Proceedings

Minutes

Approved

VSO Funding

SUAV:

-Putting together social brunch Fly day. End of quarter event, for members to showcase their work. Get people out to Lake Lagunita, demonstrate progress for more senior members, informal graduation ceremony for people they trained, encourage them to progress beyond the basics. Asking for $400 to provide food for event that runs from 10am-2pm the Sat. before finals. Recommendation is $400 for food. Expecting about 80 grad students throughout the course of the event. Voting, passes unanimously.

Persian Students Student

-Nobody is here.

Americal Society of Civil Engineers

-Planning a course on construction. Last year brought professor from Sweden who taught it. Got him to come to Stanford again, this time organizing a big event with industry people. Have panel that is moderated by him. Lot of interest from students in MS&E and Aerospace, want to bring expertise to construction. Think all the grad population would be good for the program. Recommendation is $700 food $30 event services. It’s a Friday Dec. 5. Expecting 60 grad students, have 30 confirmed already. Have a facebook event and also promoted within Civil Engineering. Event is in Y2E2. Voting for event, passes unanimously.

French Student assoc

-Organizing a wine and cheese, annual thing. On Dec. 4 starting at 7pm and going on for 3 hours. Looking for a room right now, thought of bechtel but it turns out German assoc has something. Thinking about Black Community Center or a room in EV or Willis lounge. Expecting about 150 grad students, last year there was that many, last BBQ they had had way over 150 ppl. Asking for $930 total. Recommendation $500 food $400 alcohol $30 event services. Sebas says that the event the Germans are having is a big one so they might have a dip in their attendance because the people are going to the Bechtel one. Voting, passes unanimously.

AAGSA

-Hosting a pre-finals Make your own spring rolls study break thing. Aiming for Sunday 7th from 3-4pm. Asking for $180 for food, $15 for event services. Expecting around 45 people to roll in around the hour. Recommendation is for $180 food and $15 event services. Voting, passes unanimously.

Request to Purchase Equipment

GSC offers equipment rental, from speakers to getting a karaoke machine. Putting in a bill to replace cables and equipment that we have. Lot of it is just replacing cables. Main costs within the bill are for another audio mixer, and subwoofer to go with speaker set. In total it’s about $1282. we have 2 sets of speakers. Sebas says we might need a CO2 tank for the jockey box. This is on previous notice. Bryce says a small bluetooth speaker has gone missing, asks for someone to return it if they have it. Sebas also says we have outdoor heaters too, should put on the list. Bill on previous notice.

Go Pass uPdate

Will be advertised by email starting Dec 1.

equipment Bill

Last week there’s some revisions. Comments from last week is that it’s explicitly for undergrad bills. Money is also coming just from the undergrad portion. Voting on bill to create UG Equipment rental system, passes unanimously.

Ben Holston’s Bill

Other bill is to appoint Elections Commissioner. They’ve called a special election for week 10 to address UG funding. They’ve had $400k requests for $300k budget, so not sure what to do. GSC and Senate are supposed to appoint someone in the spring. Asking to promote assistant elections commissioner to full elections commission. Saj is the person. Bill removes current elections commissioner because he is in Chicago now and can’t run it, and appoint Saj for the role. ashveer asks about their vision in addressing the budget issue. Ben says there’s only one viable proposal, which gets rid of some of the stuff that gets controversial like the 2 appointed people on the appropriations committee, caps on the UG fee. But it still gets rid of Special fee vs. General fee difference, the groups apply to the same pool of funding but now there’s standard grants and quick grants. Groups also have to budget differently. Right now Special Fee groups cannot be funded in the middle of the year. They are also going to tax 80% of the special fees groups reserves which they are not using. James B asks if all the special fees groups are going to get as much money as they did in the past? Ben says probably not, expects that they will ask less money on the ballot, because they can just apply for supplement in the middle of the year. There’s still also an annual grant, but they can apply for less money now because they can also apply for money during the year. Joint special fees are going to remain the same. Sam asks what is going to be on the election, is it just the plan that Ben just talked about? He says yeah. It’s a constitutional amendment but it’s only affecting parts of the constitution. James B asks if Ben isn’t worried about the timing of the vote? Why not just do it at the end of the year on the normal ballot? Ben says they need 1000 undergrads to vote on it in order to pass it, so definitely not trying to hide it, but they are very strapped on the funding for general fees groups. They’ve already gotte $450k worth of requests for the year but the yearly budget is only $350k. So they need money desperately. They drew heavily out of the general fee reserve. Bryce asks, isn’t the elections commissioner supposed to determine the next one before they can leave? Ben says yes but last year the process was already not followed, so same thing happened again this year. Saj is here! In the bylaws the elections commissioner is not supposed to be paid until after the elections. was assistant commissioner last year, he ran the special fees process last year, Hunter has also tapped other people to be elections commissioner. They were not expecting the elections until the spring so they didn’t really plan for it. But since it’s a simple thing, it’s probalby just going to be run on a Google Form. University is giving roadblocks and not giving him the enrollment data. Current plan proposed by Nanci Howe is for him to send them all the elections data and they will just eliminate the people who are not eligible. David asks do they get to see who voted for what? Saj says yes but they don’t actually use that data and it’s private. James B asked if this bill conflicts with the bill passed 2 weeks ago about the appropriations tracking ballot calculator thing. Trevor asks, if it’s not the legislative bodies that control what’s on the ballot, then who does control it? Saj says the bylaws say that the election commissioner shall determine the display of the ballot. Bryce says the voting in the spring, there’s 48 hours to change vote, is this similar? Saj says yes. David asks about the enrollment of graduate students for the purposes of the ballot in the spring, Saj says that the way it’s typically done is that we defer to the registrar. This bill is on previous notice, but we need to vote on it today. Voting to suspend rules specifically for the vote, passes 5 for 3 against 1 abstain. Voting on bill to approve election commissioner bill ASSU-A2-14-6. Passes unanimously. Rules are restored.

Constitutional Amendment from the UGS

2 options. Both involve GSC approving something at sometime. John suggested that we approve it and they wait until after January for us to vote on it. Since it’d need to wait for the president’s approval anyways. This satisfies the constitution and allows us to have a voice on this as well. Other option is that a week before the vote, the final text has to be approved, so they can come for us on Dec 3 for our vote, for their vote on Dec 4, and they would just release the final text more than a week before.

Thanksgiving Dinner

Gabby really really wants volunteers to help. She wants at least 5 volunteers. Volunteers will get $10 amazon gift cards. If people can come Wednesday night to help set up in Rays. Gabby needs to wear a Turkey suit.

Advocacy

-Wendy says DAC is having its first mixer event between the black student community and the LGBT community. it’s between 5:30-7:30pm in the evening, in the Nairobi room.

-Sebas is talking to Eric about getting Rays to stay open until 2am.

-Sam is on a committee that’s writing guidelines for how to spend buffer funds. Asking for people to help with. Wendy asks who is on the committee. Sam, Pau, John Lancaster-Finley, Frederick, Justine, Olivia, etc.

-Ashveer says, last year they did this thing with the Anthropology department about keeping their housing during one year. After Ashveer passed the resolution says but a lot of grad students already left housing because they didn’t think they would be able to get back into housing or because it was cheaper at the time.

-Ashveer second thing is that he used to be in “Bhangra Empire” competitive dancing. He wants to throw a Bhangra dance event on campus which would cost around $800 for a DJ and about $2500 for the whole event. Trevor says that he should ask around some different groups to see if he could get some money from them first, and then try passing this bill.

-Sebas says he’s interested in having a hackathon between non-profits and grad students which could come and solve their problems. Durgesh said Stanford India Assoc had something called “Code for India” before which was similar. Maybe he should contact them and see. Wendy said the D School has something called like “Design for Change” or something which is similar, maybe he could check that out.

GSC Meeting 2014-11-05

November 7, 2014 by secretary in Proceedings

GSC Meeting Minutes – November 5, 2014

1. Approval of last week’s meeting minutes and attendance (October 29)
Approved unanimously

2. Seed funding for new student group – Ruby L.
Ruby inquired about how to apply for funding for the new student group for graduate students in different physics-focused programs. It was recommended that the best thing to do would be to follow the standard grad student group event funding procedure and to use expected figures when being asked about past figures. It was also recommended that she speak to Sam and to the funding committee if anything is confusing.

3. VSO Requests and Funding Committee Recommendations

a) Stanford UAV Club (SUAVE) – $200 ($200)
Inviting the CEO of aerial imaging company Skycatch to speak to an expected audience of 100 students, 65 of which are expected to be graduate students. The event is to take place nextTuesday, November 11. The club is requesting $200 and the funding committee recommends $200.
Vote: Passed unanimously

b) Stanford Polish Student Association $240 ($240)
Organizing a barbecue for Polish Independence Day on November 11. The barbecue has an expected attendance of 40-45 people. The association is requesting $240 and the funding committee recommends this amount.
Vote: Passed unanimously

c)Stanford Wine Society $560 ($560)
The society is holding a joint event with the Stanford French Student Association on Thursday, November 13. It will be a dinner at which half of the wines will be from France, and the other from California/other parts of the US. In order to ensure that other people besides the society’s members come to the event, the society will implement a lottery system and save 20% of the spots for non-members. The society is requesting $560 and the funding committee recommends this amount.
Vote: Passed unanimously

d)Biomedical Engineering Society $3150 ($3150)
The society is inviting different people from the biomedical engineering field to present their work. There will be games and different activities at the event. Most of the cost will go towards the venue rental. The society requests $3150 and the funding committee recommends $3150. The GSC has a banner that the group can display at the event.
Vote: Passed unanimously

4.Caltrain GoPass Planning Update – Trevor M.
We have stopped advertising for this quarter and we will start selling GoPasses again December.

5.Bills Joint with Undergraduate Senate – Victoria K.

a) Appointing Nominations Commission (NomComs)
The university has over 40 different committees that students are nominated to. This includes everything from sitting on the Board of Trustees to academic and research committees. Interviews were conducted over the weekend in order to get through the appointment process for the different NomComs. Rules were suspended in the Senate in order to get through the appointment process faster; it would be best if all new members could be registered and ready to go while the previous members are still in office and can train the incoming members.

Objections to suspending the rules and voting on this today: none

Vote: Motion to suspend the rules passes unanimously

Vote: Nom Com ASSU 2014-5 Bill: Passes unanimously

Vote: Appointment for committee nominee: Bill 2014-6 – Student Initiated Courses Committee: Passes unanimously

Rules are reinstated.

b) Bill to define what an ‘order’ is
This bill would specify a definition of an ‘order’.

c) Spring Voting Ballot Bill
This bill would add a page after students press the ‘submit’ button on the spring voting ballot. As always, students would still have a 24 hour window to view and modify their votes. The added page would show the fee information for everything students vote in favor of. This would be another safeguard so students know what they voted on and which groups they support for special fees. Do we want this to be extended to the graduate ballot as well? Bryce says that it would be good for graduate students as well.

d) Alternate Review Process Bill
While there is already a Sexual Assault Task Force under the leadership of the Provost, this resolution proposes changes that could be made in the interim period until the taskforces implements its actions.

Summary of the bill: (1) Support the ASSU Task Force recommendations (detailed in a 20 page document) (2) Give reviews and information from final outcomes as far as sanctioning; at the moment reviews don’t get feedback on what those sanctions might be. Also could have a survey (right now there are no formalized ways to get feedback so the OCS can weigh it). (3) Change the language of the e-mail witnesses receive. It can be made a less intimidating and more welcoming. (4) Provide the option of video recording the statement if witnesses prefer to do so. (5) Put an educational pamphlet online that answers common questions around issues of consent.

It was asked what the GSC vote on this bill would represent and it was answered that it is a form of showing support.

It was asked if having a video recording might infringe on issues of confidentiality, to which it was answered that just like all other materials of the process, it is confidential. Its video recording form does not make it any different from all of the other materials.

It was asked that if the bill is approved by both parties, when would something like changing the language for when a witness is called upon come into place? Victoria answered that she is meeting with the Board on November 20, so the suggestions could be applied to the next case. It was also stated that the actions to come out of the Provost’s task force might overlap with some parts of this bill, which might render some parts of it moot.

It was also recommended that the bill be split up into its component parts as one would have to completely agree with the whole document in order to vote in its favor. The bill is very detailed for people who don’t know a lot about the process and it might be better if, for example, one could vote on each of its five main parts separately.

5. Advocacy and Projects Updates

a) Bicycle parking for the Caltrain – Bryce A.
Bryce and Trevor met with Parking and Transportation services and found out that there is a bike station at the Caltrain that is run by Palo Alto Bicycles. It is essentially like a locker; you pay $20 upfront and every time you use it, it is a $1 charge. They are looking into buying an x amount of memberships for students. It would be very useful as on the weekend there is no Marguerite shuttle service and the Caltrain station is at a significant distance from campus. Trevor and Bryce are looking into putting together a pilot program to make it free for students to use this type of locker system. It is a room that you need a code to get into, and then you lock your bike in there, so there is a double level of security. It could be something similar to Zipcar, where it can be an app on your phone – you would receive a code via email, punch it in to gain access to the room, and get billed later. This system is a preliminary idea and the details are still being worked out.

b) Thanksgiving Dinner update
Earlier today, the Provost confirmed via email that his office will provide the $53 000 in funding that is needed to cover the catering costs of Thanksgiving dinner.
Gabby to co-ordinate with Sam in order to get a check for CoHo, the caterer, as this is needed ASAP.
The dinner will take place at the Graduate Student Center on November 27th.
We anticipate a significant attendance rate and we do not want to run out of food, so we based our catering order for an estimated 1800 people, just to be safe.
Bryce suggesting increasing the number of time seatings to five (up from the traditional four) as it was crowded in the tents last year and a fifth dinner time might help to reduce congestion. Gabby to follow up with CoHo about this possibility.

Meeting adjourned.