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GSC Agenda: April 14th, 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 (Nanna)
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 (04/07/2010).
iii. Proxies of the week: Krystal St. Julien for Noa Lincoln, Crystal Yin for Janet Zhou.
3) 6:05 Funding Committee (Krystal)
* Stanford Spoken Word Collective
* Stanford Classics in Theater
* Stanford Solar and Wind Energy Project
* Bengalis at Stanford
4) 6:20 Funding Committee Bylaw Update for 2010/2011 (Ping)
5) 6:25 Report from Internal Auditing (Ping)
6) 6:30 2010-2011 FC Chair nomination (Ping)
7) 6:35 ASSU Update (David)
8) 6:40 Programming Update (Jess)
9) 6:45 Election Wrap-up (Quinn)
10) 6:50 GSC Budget Discussion (Ryan & Nanna)
11) 7:20 New Business (Nanna)
Voting Members present:
Business: Janet Zhou (proxy Crystal Yin present)
Earth Sciences: Mary Van der Hoven
Engineering 1: Robert Hennessy
Engineering 2: Addy Satija
Law: Eric Osborne
Medicine: Jessica Tsai
Natural Sciences: Bryan Chen
Social Sciences: Nanna Notthoff
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 (proxy Krystal St. Julien present)
Voting members not present:
Education: Jon McNaughtan
Humanities: Unfilled
Other people present: Michael Cruz (Undergraduate Senate), Angelina Cardona (New-elected ASSU President), Kelsei Wharton (New-elected ASSU Vice-President), Erik Lehnert (New-elected Natural Sciences Representative), Praveen R Shanbhag (New-elected Humanities Rep), Yichuan Ding (New-elected At-large Rep), Crystal Yin (GSC Secretary), Ping Li (Funding Committee), Krystal St. Jolien (Funding Committee), Briana Pang (Stanford Daily), Quinn Slack (Election), Tef Hesser (Funding), Peyman Kazemian (Funding), Folvos Karachalios (Funding), Pei He (Interest), Adam Beberg.
Listen to this segment
1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Drew!)
2) 6:00 Welcome with introductions and Announcements (Nanna)
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 (04/07/2010).
iii. Proxies of the week: Krystal St. Julien for Noa Lincoln, Crystal Yin for Janet Zhou.
3) 6:07 Funding Committee (Krystal)
* Stanford Solar and Wind Energy Project
They have 75% graduate students, focusing on engineering projects with Solar and Wind energy. They are having several projects coming out. They are requesting funding for an open house to showcase the projects they are doing and getting people to get involved.
They are requesting $880 for two events. The first event is an information event, which funding committee regarded as a town hall, which couldn’t be funded. However, the group thinks that it is different from a normal town hall. Stanford is instilling several new plants to get rid of Cardinal Cogen. This would be a town hall to tell people what is going on with that. The group thinks that this is not only a town hall, but also getting Stanford community about their opinions about the plans. It seems like Stanford is in need of such conversation, and they are trying to figure out the best way to fund it.
Q: Have you talked to the Sustainability coordinator for Stanford?
A: Yes. But there is no funding from them.
Krystal: Funding committee is not recommending it because in the past things specifically about updating students regarding the department has been funded by the department. This matter sounds like a town hall and therefore we think should primarily be covered under department.
Ryan: We do have money under advocacy discretionary.
Nanna: We would go over the other event that funding committee recommended first, and then come back to this.
The second event is an orientation to get students to be involved. Funding committee recommended $480 in total, which is way within the cap.
Approving funding $480 passes by consensus.
We proceed with approving funding additional $400 from the funding committee for their open house event.
There is opposition, so we proceed with voting, and the voting results are: 3 yes: 6 no: 4 abstention, which fails.
We proceed with approving funding additional $400 from the advocacy discretionary.
Ryan: We still have money for this.
Ping: Is there any reason that we have to spend everything left?
Ryan: No, we do not have to. But it is something worthwhile to advocate for.
Michael: I can speak of the committee; Guy does not normally fund groups.
Addy: The event is tomorrow and we should fund it.
Approving funding this group additional $400 from advocacy discretionary passes by consensus.
* Stanford Classics in Theater
They are putting together a performance at the end of the year in May about a play that they translated, which will be open to public. Last year the performance has 220 people attending, with mostly graduate students. This year it is expected to be even bigger and better. They are asking funding for A) paid labor; B) equipment rental. They are taking care of all the other funding part from other sources.
They requested $5214, which is recommended by the funding committee, including equipment rental and labor fee, etc.
Alexandra: What do you mean by considering ticketing non-students?
A: It depends on the details about the revenue. We are still deciding.
Alexandra: If you end up making a profit, what would happen?
A: We are not expecting to make a profit. We would use the profit to this show next year so that we will not need more money next year.
Addy: You can’t give it to next year.
A: We are fine with you taking back money if we are making a profit.
Approving funding this group $5214 passes by consensus.
* Bengalis at Stanford
They are a group of students representing Bengalis. They are planning for an event taught by a doctor, who is the leader in this field, mostly talking about the career. It would be of interests to the general students. The second event would be movie, which used to be funded by I-center. The movie is talking about Iran and the licensing is $200, which I-center would cover $100. They are requesting $100 from GSC. Afterwards, they will donate the movie to the Green library. The third event is the spring party.
This group requested$1985, but funding committee recommended $1535. The difference comes from the money requested for gift.
Addy: For the gift for speakers, is there any reason we are not funding that?
A: Funding committee thought that it was for students. If it is for speakers, we are going to change our recommendation to $1635.
Approving funding this group $1635 passes by consensus.
[Finishes this item at 6:31]
4) 6:31 Fire Fire
It is an annual event at I-center which people from all kinds of culture come together to grill delicious and unique foods. It is a good opportunity to encourage interaction among different cultures.
They are asking $6,500 from GSC, and we have the money. GSPB might co-sponsor $1,000.
Robert: We thought it was VSO and decided not to fund yesterday. I would suggest we wait until next week.
Ping: Historically it has been an event co-hosted by the GSC.
Nanna: It used to be an International Gala, but it did not happen for several years. That is why we did not have money budget for this.
Robert: This is a misunderstanding. The way it originally described makes it sound like a VSO event.
Addy: We are reviving the International Gala this year.
Justin: The quota was around $10,500. You do not need so much money to have people to come together to grill.
Ryan: The event is May 15th.
Nanna: We want to table it until next week.
Adam: I have seen this event for years.
Ping: They have three main items, in which event food cost around $7000.
Nanna suggest that someone help the person about saving options to cut down the budget, and Mary volunteer.
[Finishes this item at 6:37]
5) 6:37 Funding Committee Bylaw Update for 2010/2011 (Ping) 35:13
Krystal showed the proposed change on the projector as following:
Funding Policy
Funding Committee 2010 ~ 2011
The responsibility of the GSC FC is to distribute funds to student groups (VSOs) which organize events to benefit the entire graduate community.
• No funding for religious or political events, with the strict exception of events that are educational and that all grad students would be allowed to and feel welcome attending.
o Absolutely no proselytizing or political campaigning allowed.
• To be fair and equitable to all those who put money into the fund,
o The maximum funding per fiscal year is soft capped per student at $30/student/year.
o Groups with highly overlapping population or purpose will be treated as a single group to avoid double-funding.
o Maximum funding per fiscal year is $8000 ($6000 – back to old standard and the same as Undergrad FC) per VSO.
To encourage VSOs to organize joint events in collaboration, the annual cap for jointly organized events may be relaxed on a case-by-case basis.
• No retroactive funding.
• No funds for purchasing capital equipment.
• No funds for off-campus recreational activities (rare exceptions may be made).
• No funds for regular, consistent meetings including space rental, food, and other meeting costs.
o VSOs like Comedy Club and GradQ who do regular, well-publicized and well-attended events with broad appeal are not restricted by this rule.
• Limited seed funding for new groups.
• Advertising:
o Limited targeted advertising or marketing, no newspaper ads.
o Groups who do not advertise on Grad Events have their funding revoked.
o All advertising materials must feature the GSC logo and/or state either “Sponsored by the GSC” or “Co-sponsored by the GSC” as appropriate.
• Honorarium
o Maximum $1000, includes fees, transportation and accommodations
o Anything over $100 must have matching funds from other sources
• Copies /Marketing expenses
o Limited to $10 for copies and Marketing expenses per VSO per year (quarter per VSO).
o Use of Facebook Events is encouraged, no funding can be provided for facebook ads.
• Room Rental
o Groups allowed funding for one event per quarter in large venue. Groups will try to book free rooms first, unless all free rooms are booked. (rare exceptions may be made)
• Event and Labor services (ELS) charge
o Quota from ELS should be brought to Funding Committee meeting
o Delivery will not be funded
o Janitorial Fees are highly restricted; unless building administrators insist, VSOs should do setup and cleanup.
o Groups can check out a sound system and a projector from the GSC.
o Video equipment can be checked out from Meyer library for free.
• Community Service Groups
o No soft caps will be applied.
• Fundraisers:
o Fundraisers are considered normal events, not community service.
o Soft caps will be applied.
• Reasonable food caps (max one per event, including catering):
o Snacks: $4/person $2
o Lunch/BBQ: $8/person $6
o Dinner: $10/person $8
o Groups are encouraged to spend under the caps.
• Ticketed events (or those with limited spots),
o At least 20% of the tickets/spots must still be open the first day the event is advertised in the Grad Events email.
o For any event where the total budget is over $30*estimated number of attendants, you must charge tickets.
• On and Off campus Conferences:
o No funding will be provided for a student to attend a conference.
o No funding will be provided to pay for conference registration fees.
o No funding will be provided for travel expenses.
• Academic Seminars:
o No funding will be provided for academic seminars.
o No funding will be provided for departmental seminars. The department specified should fund this type of seminar.
o No funding can be applied toward honoraria for on campus scholars including, but not limited to faculty, visiting scholars (for example, a professor on sabbatical), post-doctoral scholars, students, etc.
• Information session – such as a Town hall meeting:
o Will not be funded by Funding Committee, but might be funded by the GSC or a specific department.
• All residual decisions regarding recommendations are subject to the discretion of the Funding Committee. All soft-caps are applied on a case-by-case basis.
• Note:
o Internal Auditor:
The Funding Committee has hired an internal auditor. This is part of our internal control system to make sure funds that we dispense go toward the expenses purposed. If selected for audit, please help the internal auditor do her job, and be aware that the decision for who is audited is random. Selection for audit does not suggest any wrong-doing on your part.
o Other funding sources:
http://sal.stanford.edu/oncampus_funding
For international event, please also check Bechtel Center
For attendance with more than 30% undergrads, please also check Undergraduate Senate Appropriations Committee.
• Please be aware that the bylaw of FC and the Senate could be different, so please check out the Senate’s bylaw carefully.
For graduate student social events which cannot be funded by Funding Committee, please also check the Graduate Student Programming Board (GSPB)
o VSOs are encouraged to raise Funds for their own events with car washes, bake sales, and the like: (the following events will not be funded by FC, but can be funded by the funds raised by their own fundraisers)
Off campus events
VSO’s personal group gatherings
Gas expenses and flight tickets
Conference registration fees
Religious events
Other
Discussion:
Ping: The maximum funding per fiscal year is proposed to be changed from $8000 back to $6000, which was the standard three years ago.
Mary: Is there more explanation?
A: The money was so restricted and we do not have the huge reserve any more. We hope to let the groups to be more careful with the money.
Adam: It is not necessary.
Mary: It is a 25% cut.
Ping: If you look at individual account, yes, it is a 25%. But every year we only give certain percentage of groups that amount.
Ryan: Are you sure that they are fine with just $6,000.
Ping: This is just a way to give them more incentives to plan events more carefully. We encourage the VSOs to seek outside funding.
Ryan: It is the small changes that we made can help people plan the events more carefully.
Addy: How many groups hit $6000?
A: Good question.
Alexandra: How would you estimate this change would do to your group SWEP?
A: A lot.
Justin: The discrepancy of $2000 will be covered in many other changes we are going to discuss later.
Ryan: We have hundreds of VSO, and it is better to control them, but slowly.
Adam: The group used to have a cap of $6000, and it worked really well. Certain groups used to have a much better job in bringing more fund from outside.
Ryan: We have large reserves from Student money and in the past years we take out student fees for GSC programming. In previous year, we added $5000 from reserve on that. We have discussed about reducing that amount.
Alexandra: How about a two-tier cap?
Justin: Let us look at all the information first.
Krystal: For the marketing expenses, Facebook advertisement will not be funded.
Alexandra: I object this change. Facebook advertisementss can reach people who are not your friends. Many people are moving on to Facebook.
Nanna: We will finish the presentation first.
Krystal: We will request quote from ELS, and will not fund delivery.
Fundraisers are considered normal events, not community services.
The food caps are brought down from $4 to $2 for snacks, $8 to $6 for lunch, $10 to $8 for dinner.
We are requesting ticketing students when they are requesting more than $30 * attendees.
We are explicitly saying that we are not going to fund the conferences.
We are not paying for informational sessions. However GSC or specific department would do so.
Internal auditor is stated in the bylaw.
Krystal: we listed the funding sources. If they have more than 50% undergraduates, they should also go to undergraduate senate. We also encourage students to raise funds.
Eric: Well done. This is very impressive. I applaud your efforts. When talking about fund raisers, we are going to give the VSO the option to pay back the money.
Krystal: We discussed about this. But any other student group
Justin: If they can get their own money, why do they come to us?
Mary: Seed money.
Addy: If they are giving us the money back. Can we treat this as a credit line?
Adam: Regarding the ticketing, if there are 4 ticketing distribution locations, there should be some tickets in each of those. This is consistently a problem that there are no tickets when the graduate students hear about it.
Addy: For a group wants to do a lot of fund raising, we should act as a bank.
Justin: There is already a bank, which is SSE.
Eric: the context is that there are some groups spending $8000 and raise only $2000. If you are an ineffective fund raiser, you would use up your own money. If you are an effective fund raiser, you are
Nanna: I suggest moving on for those and return when we have time later.
Robert and Etosha skip their comments.
Ryan: SSE is a bank. They can deposit as much money. We should not bother about you can pay us back.
Ping will email out or set up a Google document, which is now available at: http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0Ad5v1OkC-SzSZGRiYjVyNjNfNGRmNDRzY2hr&hl=en.
[Finishes this item at 7:06]
6) 7:06 Report from Internal Auditing (Ping)
Ping: The internal auditor audited an event and filed a detailed report. The group asked $450, and they spent $453. The conclusion is the auditor did a very good job. I am asking for Ryan for the salary.
Eric: The auditor is only investigating one event?
Ping: This is just an observation of her. VSO activities may be randomly audited at random times.
Q: How much does she get for this case?
A: $100 for this case.
Adam: I thought SSE is tracking the receipts and everything.
Ping: Right now after funding committee is not tracking about the reimbursement in the SSE.
Justin: It will be great if the auditor can get access to SSE Mygroups.
Matt: Yes, we can arrange that.
Funding committee will confirm the details with SSE.
[Finishes this item at 7:11]
7) 7:11 2010-2011 FC chair nomination (Ping)
Krystal will be the nominated as the Funding Committee chair.
Robert: when will the transition start?
Ping: Now.
Adam: Special fees happen in Feb next year. FC needs to transit before the GSC. That is why this is happening now.
Addy: Krystal is also involved in the special fee process.
Ping: When the official transition can be effective, it is actually now. I got officially confirmed after the election, which is this meeting.
Approving Krystal as the new Funding Committee chair passes by consensus. Congratulations to Krystal.
[Finishes this item at 7:14]
8) 7:14 ASSU Update (Angelina)
Next week we will have FutureFest, Iron Chef Class and many more events.
Eric: Do you need money during the time of your transition?
Angelina: No.
Matt: The Senate has hardly spent any endowment. If you have any plans before July, you would need money.
Ryan: Technically both bodies should approve.
Angelina will talk with Matt offline about it. GSC applaud to send Congratulations to Angelina.
[Finishes this item at 7:16]
9) 7:16 Programming Update (Jess)
You should have the Google doc for volunteer. Please sign up.
Addy: You will be obligated to help.
Angelina: we are sending out openings for cabinet positions, and both graduate students and undergraduate students are welcome to apply.
Jess: We picked up Ray to be the catering.
Addy: We are not doing a live band. We sold only 40 tickets in 2 weeks, so please do help with publicizing. Tell your friends that cheap tickets would end next week.
[Finishes this item at 7:18]
10) 7:18 Election Wrap-up (Quinn)
Congratulations to everyone who won the election last week.
Eric: I would like to know the three issues raised by the Daily, such as the two senators who forged the endorsement.
Angelina: Someone printed twice on paper so that it looks like being printed on recycling paper.
Quinn: In school of Education, there is actually someone showing up with some writing votes. We checked that and the person has three votes. Therefore he is actually elected and we will have a full GSC this year! Mary did an amazing job within a very short period in getting the graduate election turn-out. Adam helped a lot. Briana covers GSC for a long time. Etosha helped me a lot as well. For the next year election commission, we have four strong interested candidates. We will be interviewing them over the next few weeks. We will also compile the feedbacks we have gotten. The feedbacks are anonymous and we will really appreciate for your feedback.
Mary: Quinn, we are so impressed.
We clapped for Quinn for the amazing election turn-outs.
Quinn: Some people did not submit the Declaration of Intent about the undergraduate senate. No candidates crossed the section out that they will be on campus for four quarters. I think it was important information that the voters should know.
Ryan: I believe we have the ability to vote still.
Adam: We can overwrite him if he screwed up.
Addy: Is there a requirement that any legislator later to be on campus for the entire year? This person can serve as a senator?
Quinn: Yes.
Eric: This person not only violates the election policy. This is a fundamental standard violation. There is nothing in the bylaw that GSC can challenge this and election commission can only report voter fraud. This is mess.
Robert: This is the internal matter of undergraduate senator. I think we should move on.
Justin seconds Robert’s recommendation.
Adam: I am fine with letting Senate handling it.
Addy: Are we required to be on campus throughout the entire year?
A: There is an attendance requirement.
[Finishes this item at 7:30]
11) 7:30 GSC Budget Discussion (Ryan & Nanna)
Addy has question about cutting out the constituency outreach discretionary because he thinks a discretionary account helps him to make quick decision.
Ryan: Technically you need to approve that.
Nanna: Is there any strong feeling about this? Since No, we can move on without cutting it.
GSC funding committee, most things remain unchanged. Meeting food increased from $600 to $1200. It was recommended that we have auditor.
Ping: I suggest we only hire one person and pay him/her $1000. The previous reason that we are hiring a separate person is that I do not want to involve chair/ deputy chair of FC, just to avoid bias.
Addy: I would suggest we have more paid positions on funding committee because it is a lot of work.
Adam: I agree that w should have only one person for auditing. For meeting food, we spend $1000 for GSC meeting but $1500 in funding committee meeting. But GSC involves about 30 people each time and FC meeting has only 3 people from FC.
Krystal: We used not to feed other people and they were fine.
Ping: We might hire someone through SSE. The reason they are doing that because they need an additional to approve.
Mary: The impression that I have is that it is very important for someone to go to the event to actually count the attendance. It does not matter if this person is not a graduate student. We need a secret person.
Ryan: $500 is more than enough. They can show up for the event with free food.
Ping: It is a lot of work. The person went there and count the people and everything. I think it makes sense we will have two auditors.
Angelina: It is very important to clarify the process.
FC will specify the auditing process.
For GSC programming: We got rid of bulletin coordinator and quarterly bulletin. We are calling International Gala to International Center Event this year.
Addy: I am very happy that we are reducing the money we are taking from the reserve.
Etosha: I feel like that graduate students would go to Flicks anyway and we do not need money for that.
Nanna: We discussed previously and we are making things very cheap.
Addy: I think that we should drop grad night, since we already paid flicks.
Alexandra: As far as I know for the Flicks coordinator, it is just taking donut out and take the movie.
Mary: I support to have it.
Nanna: It is not a trade-off.
Eric: It is only $150 for the entire year, it still takes time.
Addy: I know it is cheap but it does not serve a purpose.
Drew: It is annoying job. But I do not think they should cut it.
Robert: The expensive part is the movie.
Drew suggested eliminating the position and we proceed with voting.
The voting results are 8 yes: 3 no: 2 abstension, which means that this position is eliminated.
Alexandra and Bryan are the tax coordinator this year. They did tax information session not only for international students, but also for domestic student and they partnered with Intuit. Intuit had two sessions with three hours each. They had four professionals answering questions. Intuit has made a very good job. They are giving away the software and professional help. Every student went back with tax filed and questions addressed. The international tax workshop is not necessarily a success because they are more confused to begin with. The session caters very general interests. Aleksandra suggested to consider inviting tax professionals knowledgeable about international student issues to hold office hours and address individual questions, similar to the format of Tax Clinics held by Intuit. However, this could turn out to be very expensive.
Nanna: What is your suggested budget?
Alexandra: It is a lot of work and it is over 100 emails. I would suggest increasing the tax coordinator stipend to $500.
Addy: I saved $1400 after the session.
Many more items are discussed.
[Finishes this item at 8:04]
12) 8:04 New Business (Nanna)
Eric: I would propose to have people taking the new rep out for lunch/ dinner. I would encourage you to do that since we will have a relatively brief transition retreat.
Nanna: If you already spent $50 in your outreach money.
Addy: We successfully made Vaden changed the policy. We had strong support from I-center and many other people. We are requesting $100 from advocacy discretionary for buying thank-you token for them.
Robert: Requesting $400 for GSPB co-sponsorship for Tria Night tomorrow. Approving this passes by consensus.
The Rain’s situation was resolved and thank everybody for the effort. Thank you
Adjourned 8:08.