Agenda
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GSC Agenda: Jan 27th, 6:00-8:00pm – FOOD @ 5:45!
Graduate Community Center – Nairobi Room
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1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Drew!)
2) 6:00 Welcome with introductions and Announcements (Eric)
i. Please be aware that all meetings are audio recorded and will be made available on the GSC website.
ii. Approve minutes from the last meeting (01/20/2009).
iii. Proxies of the week: Crystal Yin for Jessica Tsai, Hanna Popick for Nanna Notthoff
3) 6:05 Funding Committee Update (Ping)
*Hindu Students Association
*American Society for Engineering Education (Stanford Chapter)
4) 6:10 ASSU Update (David)
5) 6:15 Programming Update (Addy)
6) 6:20 Bill to Modify ASSU Executive Budget (Andy)
7) 6:25 Discussions about Book Donation (Crystal)
8) 6:30 Funding for Spring Break Vegas Trip (Hari)
9) 6:40 GSC Co-sponsor the Valentine’s Day Party (Amy)
10) 6:45 Discussions about Elections Policies (Quinn)
11) 7:05 New Businesses (Eric)
A BILL TO MODIFY THE ASSU EXECUTIVE BUDGET
Executive Bill ___
Author: Andy Parker, ASSU Vice President
Date: January 27, 2010
Action requested: 2/3 approval
WHEREAS the ASSU has played a significant role in Haiti relief efforts, both at Stanford and through organizing a nationwide college fundraising challenge, and
WHEREAS the ASSU can and should continue to coordinate and facilitate these efforts, and
WHEREAS the current Executive Stipends’ Budget for FY09-10 reflects the following:
PRESIDENT $6,250.00
VICE PRESIDENT $8,500.00
SUMMER STIPEND $3,000.00
CABINET $22,800.00
TOTAL $40,550.00
THEREFORE BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATIVE BODIES OF THE ASSOCIATION
THAT the total budget allocation to the Executive Stipends’ Budget for FY09-10 of $40,550.00 remain unchanged, and
THAT the position of Haiti Relief Czar be created on the Executive Cabinet, and
THAT $500 of the ASSU President’s stipend be transferred to the Cabinet’s stipend, and
THAT the ASSU Executive Stipends’ Budget for FY09-10 be modified to reflect the following:
PRESIDENT $5,750.00
VICE PRESIDENT $8,500.00
SUMMER STIPEND $3,000.00
CABINET $23,300.00
TOTAL $40,550.00
Attendance
Voting Members present:
Education: Eric Shed (proxy Jon McNaughtan present)
Earth Sciences: Mary Van der Hoven (proxy Etosha Cave present)
Engineering 1: Robert Hennessy
Engineering 2: Addy Satija
Law: Eric Osborne
Medicine: Jessica Tsai (Proxy Crystal Yin present)
Natural Sciences: Bryan Chen
Social Sciences: Nanna Notthoff (proxy Hanna Popick present)
At Large 1: Justin Brown
At Large 2: Ryan Peacock
At Large 3: Aleksandra Korolova
At Large 4: Andrew Kennedy
At Large 5: Noa Lincoln
Voting members not present:
Humanities: Unfilled
Business: Janet Zhou
Other people present: David Gobaud (ASSU President), Andy Parker (ASSU VP), Ping (Funding Committee Chair), Brianna Pang (Stanford Daily), Quinn Slack (Election), Crystal Yin (GSC Secretary), Krystal St. Jolien, Adam Beberg, Li Zhang (CWCS), William Nguyen, Hariharan Vijay (Funding), Yuankai Ge (ACSSS), Xiaoyu Liu (ACSSS), Fanuel Muindi (DAC)
Minutes
Listen to this segment
1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Drew!)
2) 6:00 Welcome with introductions and Announcements (Eric)
i. Please be aware that all meetings are audio recorded and will be made available on the GSC website.
ii. Proxies of the week: Crystal Yin for Jessica Tsai, Hanna Popick for Nanna Notthoff, Jon McNaughtan for Eric Shed, Etosha Cave for Mary Van der Hoven.
3) 6:05 Funding Committee Update (Ping)
*Association of Chinese Students and Scholars at Stanford
They are requesting funding for the non-joint events including mixers for the members for 60 plus people. Another series of events are seminars for career development and CAPS seminars from Advising program. They are requesting $4000 but funding committee requested $2010 due to cap of marketing expenses.
Approving funding ACSSS $2010 passes by consensus.
They are requesting funding of joint event for the Chinese New Year performance, jointly held with CWCS. They are trying to reach as many people as possible, including undergraduates and non-Chinese people. They will have Stanford Chinese Dance and Wushu performances. They are planning to make it free. They are requesting $5500 in total.
Q: Is it free?
A: Yes, free for all the Stanford students, and they can show their Stanford ID to get in. For other people, they can register online to have free admission, or buy ticket at $5 at the door.
Q: Is the registration link up?
A: Not yet. But we will mail it to the mailing lists in ACSSS and the email lists in the partner groups before the event happens.
Q: In previous years, there are people queuing without getting in. Is that the case?
A: Yes, so we encourage people to register online and come early.
Q: Is the Chinese Council going to attend?
A: Yes, we will invite them.
Q: Have you considered charging $5 for the admission?
A: We previously have not done so. In one year, there were tickets, which resulted in many complaints.
Q: As we are cutting down the budgets, in the future, we may not be able to fully sponsor the events. Do you have plan for that?
A: We have funding from Undergraduate Senate and outside campus.
Q: How much did you get funding from Undergraduate Senate?
A: About $5500, including venue and equipment rental.
Q: Basically the Undergraduate Senate and GSC are sponsoring the same amount?
A: Essentially yes.
Q: How far is this association from the cap?
A: $3500
Adam: This previously really worked well.
Approving funding the Chinese New Year party $5500 passes by consensus.
[Finishes the item at 6:15]
4) 6:15 ASSU Update (David)
The Stanford wellness week is coming up starting on Feb 8th. We are going to distribute about 1500 bracelets with the note: “I love the way I am”. We will have an event called “Puppie Cats Study Break” on Monday 11 am – 2pm at White Plaza to raise money. You can pay $5 to have a walk with the pets. There is a wellness challenge, and the details are still being worked on. The joint legislative meeting is going to be held on Feb 17th 6 pm at the dining hall.
Q: How are you going to publicize the joint legislative meeting?
A: Emails will be sent out.
Justin: The best use of the money is for it may not be to give it to this service position. Have you considered hiring somebody without paying? I believe there are many students would love to do it without being paid.
David: It is a lot of work (10-15 hrs/week). The money is actually from my salary. So far I only have 1 applicant. I think it makes a lot of sense to pay since this is a cabinet position.
Noa: Is there a protocol to follow?
David: Not really. Andy and I have chosen to do this.
Eric: Does it mean that whenever you want some people to do something, you are going to hire from the cabinet?
David: Thousands of people are dying and I think that is justifiable.
Adam: I am against this. This does not sound right if we pay someone to coordinate charity efforts.
Alexandra: A lot of students advocate for Haiti. If we are hiring somebody to help student bodies to contribute as a whole, it will be great.
Etosha: It does help if there is some stipend.
David: Shall we just donate the money to the Haiti? If we can plan a successful event, we can raise much more. Last Friday we managed to get $2600 out of a single event.
Andy: It would be very unfair if we do not pay this cabinet level person since everybody else is not paid.
Jon: This is coming out of their personal salary, and it shows that they care so much.
Drew: How many events are we planning?
David: At least 5 between now and the end of the year. Maybe there will more.
Etosha: Would it help if we can have the position as general charity rather than only for Haiti?
David: This is more of a campus effort.
Eric: Do you have a title for this person?
Etosha: Maybe we can call it National Coordinator for Fund-raising?
Justin: Otherwise you would need to hire somebody else if there are some other things happening.
Eric: How can we get the bracelets?
Andy: They will be distributed some time later this week or early next week.
David: We will bring you some.
[Finishes the item at 6:30]
5) 6:30 Programming Update (Addy)
Eric read out an email from Nanna regarding Masquerade Ball over the last weekend: All tickets were sold out. There were about 120 people, who came but did not manage to get tickets, and they were sent back. Some people jumped over the fence to try to get in and the security people came in. This indicates a huge success. The problem is that we told people that they can buy tickets at the door but we did not tell them that there were only 75 tickets available there.
There were some initial problems with the digital equipment. There were 8 incidents that are all alcohol-related. One person needs to be hospitalized. They decided that next year they will double the number of paramedics.
Bryant: How about the financial part?
Eric: There is $700 back to our account.
Bryan: Perhaps two dance floors may be better. Some people would love to do social dance.
Robert: No more tables.
Hari: I thought the tables were handy.
Robert: The tables should be put outside towards the end.
Etosha: Registration should have more stamps and more lines.
Bryan: We should somehow fix the issue of selling tickets at the door. There are a lot of angry people.
Adam: We can just sell everything online.
Eric: I understand the rationale behind having some tickets at the door.
Krystal: We should have indicated that there were only limited number tickets available at the website.
Crystal: Why is there a rule that the tickets cannot be resold? Some people did not show up and their friends would love to sell the extra tickets to the people waiting outside.
Addy: There is a “black market” for our tickets.
Justin: We have got another event, which is graduate formal.
Hari: Perhaps we can sell the tickets at higher price when it is near the date of the event.
Bryan: It may be a good idea is to make money out of the events. Perhaps we can charge $3 for a drink.
Addy: Some non-alcoholic people think that they are simply subsidizing for other people’s drinks.
The Masquerade Ball is a very successful event and comments have been noted down for future events.
[Finishes the item at 6:43]
6) 6:43 Bill to Modify ASSU Executive Budget (Andy)
We discussed in the ASSU update. We need to officially approve to transfer the money from David’s salary account to the account of the cabinet.
Approving modification of ASSU Executive Budget passes by consensus.
[Finishes the item at 6:44]
7) 6:44 Discussions about Book Donation (Crystal)
Stanford wellness room is thinking about setting up book donating boxes at the residences to collect books for the library.
Noa: We should donate to the public libraries instead of Stanford library.
Ping: You may want to specify the book type: novel, textbook or magazine?
Krystal: We need to make sure the box being emptied regularly.
[Finishes the item at 6:46]
8) 6:46 Responses to Westboro Baptist Church (Joe)
This Friday morning at 10:00 the Westboro Baptist church is coming to protest. They are anti-Jewish, anti-gay, anti-America, anti-soldier and anti-everything. That is not a good message. We will gather many culture groups to sing there to show that there is love in this world. We just finished finalizing the announcement and it would be great if you can forward email to everyone, especially to the graduate community.
Eric: How do you know that they are coming?
Joe: You can find out their schedule on http://www.godhatesfags.com/.
Eric: How can the campus allow them to come?
Joe: They will sue whoever stopping them to come. It is going to be at Stanford Front Lawn at Mayfield. Afterwards they will hold breakfast.
Eric: What is the best way to send this out to everyone?
Justin: Send to the discussion group, or the graduate event.
Addy: Who is funding the breakfast?
Joe: It is cardinal at Stanford. At this point I really hope to get this message out as much as possible. They believe it is the lie that God loves us. Everybody please help this out.
[Finishes the item at 6:53]
9) 6:53 Funding for Spring Break Vegas Trip (Hari)
Hari is planning another Vegas trip in the spring break and he will sell tickets using SSE website. He is asking for two subsidies. First is to subsidize the SSE fees (5%) over the tickets. Second is to fund the trip coordinators.
Eric: For the first request, are you going to subsidize the credit card companies?
Answer: No. It is paying the SSE, which is us.
Adam: It is not going paying us. There is a 2.2% processing fee and charging from outside.
Hari: It would be about $700. Another request is to subsidize the coordinators, who will tip the front desk people to get the room upgraded, etc. We are planning to give $150/person, and one coordinator/ 5-7 rooms. It is estimated to
Krystal: Last trip was more expensive than what we can get. Are you going to have more economic trip.
Hari: We will get slightly lower-end hotels. It will be 3 nights. But we are not going to break the cap of the people allowed to be in the room. It will be probably $25/person/night.
Addy: Every graduate students pay $30 for activities. We should not pay more than that to just 100 plus people. Have you tried to talk to Ryan for where is this money going to come out of?
Hari: I have not talked to Ryan.
Alexandra: How are the students selected?
Hari: Simply random.
Alexandra: Where did you send the emails?
Hari: I sent out emails to GSC, Munger-chair, etc.
Crystal: Is there anything that you can improve from last trip?
Hari: Yes. Last time people were buying their own tickets because I can’t pay for everybody’s tickets ahead, in case of any last minute cancellation. But now we can make people pay for the ticket beforehand.
Adam: This is way beyond what GSC can fund.
Justin: He agrees.
Hari makes a motion to fund $600 from programming discretionary to subsidize the SSE charges. We proceed with voting and the results are: 2 yes: 9 no: 0 abstension. It is not approved.
Hari would like to reduce the amount to see whether it would be approved. Justin proposed a straw poll about how people are feeling about funding the trip. Most people feel that we should not fund this.
Hari moves on to funding the two coordinators, $150 each for two coordinators.
Alexandra: why do you only subsidize the amount that Napel trip coordinators get?
Etosha: It is much more work to do in the Vegas trip.
We proceed with funding $150 for each coordinator, which is a total of $300. The voting results are 5 yes: 5 no: 1 abstension. Vice President Andy can break a tie, and he chooses to be in favor of funding, which means GSC would fund $300 to subsidize the Vegas trip coordinators if SAL approves this.
[Finishes the item at 7:15]
10) 7:15 GSC Co-sponsor the Valentine’s Day Party (Amy)
EV is planning a valentine’s party on Feb 12th Friday night. EV is asking for $1500 from Programming discretionary.
Q: Is it a similar event last year?
A: Last year there was miscommunication between EV and GSPB. They were having separate parties. But this year we are going to have a big event for everybody.
Justin: The party is going to be end at mid-night. Where is the food going to come from?
Answer: The party will end at mid-night due to the cleanness requirement. We will order wine and food to have a more classical Valentine’s Day.
Justin: Is there a way to shut the music down and continue the party until slightly later.
Answer: Yes, we are working on that.
Approving funding $1500 passes by consensus.
[Finishes the item at 7:20]
11) 7:20 Discussions about Elections Policies (Quinn)
A) Policies to encourage graduate turn-outs.
They have sent out the plans to encourage turn-outs. One of the main parts is to sponsor the happy hours with the candidates coming in. Another thing is to have voting stations in the residences. More face time would increase the interests. Everything is within budget and all comments are welcome.
Justin: There are paper ballot and computer ballot. Is there a chance that people vote twice?
Answer: We will double check and take care.
Adam: We can put voting station at the Clark center and dining room.
Krystal: It is not realistic for graduate population to have phase time with the candidates. You may have a lot of “grab and go”.
Ryan: It is probably more important to have publication at the coffee shops.
Etosha: The lunch time is probably at coffee. It is probably more important than residences.
B) Election Policies
Quinn proposes two main changes: 1. you can campaign during voting; 2. Removal of the sticker limit.
The worry about the campaigning during voting is that the candidates are going to be annoying. The voter fraud is when they try to interfere the secrecy of the votes.
Eric: When is the voting going to be closed?
Quinn: It is going to be closed on Friday midnight and the results are going to be out on Saturday 5pm.
David: I think it is a bad direction to go. It is very hard to say “No” to someone face to face.
Quinn: People can go back to change the ballot before the ballot is closed. If a candidate force you to vote, you can go back to change it.
David: How is this more enforceable than last set of rules?
Quinn: There is kind of grey area in the “campaigning”. A lot of candidates just kept on campaigning while the ballot is open.
Adam: You may have a lot of people going out of control if you remove the rule.
Quinn: Even with the rules, special fee groups are still going to go out and break the rule.
Quinn requests an informal vote for this new law, and the results are 12 yes: 0 no: 0 abstension.
Candidates limit flyers: The undergraduate green student group will enforce a flyer limit system. Whoever chose to limit their number of flyers would receive a green stamp. It is the candidate’s choice weather they would like to go ahead about it. I still have thousands of stickers in my bag. The psychological barrier is still there.
Addy: Last year there was a rule that for every four flyers in undergraduate location there should be one flyer in the graduate location.
Etosha: There was no such a rule last year.
Ryan: It is in their interest to advertise to the graduate community. Everyone please help us to get the graduate execs.
Crystal: Why do we still need to remove the rule? Are they still putting on stickers?
Quinn: It is up to them and the voters to decide.
Ryan: I am not worried about some of these changes.
Etosha: My concern is that if they get money from the undergraduate senate, they will pay more attention to the undergraduates.
Eric: Is the green student group a special fee group?
Quinn: No. That is definitely a valid concern.
Andy: There is no fair campaign at all, which means that there is no campaign week specified. According to the current system, you can start campaign starting from Jan 2nd.
We proceed with an informal voting for the removal of sticker rule, and the results are: 7 yes: 3 no: 0 abstension
We proceed with an informal voting to allow the campaign to start tomorrow, and the results are: 8 yes: 1 no: 1 abstension.
[Finishes the item at 7:32]
12) 7:32 New Businesses (Eric)
Eric: Updates from the undergraduate senate is that there are questions about the honor code, basically about student cheating. It would be great if you have any commentary about students cheating.
Robert: Robert requests an approval of GSPB $300 co-sponsorship for the graduate night.
Approving $300 GSPB co-sponsorship passes by consensus.
Fanuel: DAC is requesting $300 for a town hall and $400 for a happy hour.
Hanna commented that the DAC full budget should have be passed at the beginning of the year and was wondering what had changed that they now needed more money.
Ryan: The town hall is from their own fund but the happy hour can come from the programming account of GSC.
Justin: Justin opposed because $400 is too much for a happy hour. He suggested $200 as the graduate night only costs $300.
Amy: We did dinner for all CAs (60 people) for $500.
Fanuel: I would change the request to $200.
Approving funding $200 to DAC happy hour passes by consensus.
Crystal: Approving minutes of 01/20/10 GSC meeting with correction of Nico’s name.
Adjourned 7:36.