Agenda
General Body Meeting
September 29, 6pm Havana Rm of the GCC
1. 5:45 pm -FOOD (thanks Drew!)
2. 6:00 pm -Welcome with Introductions
3. 6:10 pm -Announcements (Justin)
i. Minutes from 09/22/2010
ii. Proxies of the week:
Fanuel Muindi (Drew Kennedy)
Xi Cheng (Crystal Yin)
iii. Reminder that meetings are recorded.
iv. GSC Fall Retreat is Nov. 6-7 in SF
v. Dinner at the Lakehouse with Vice Provosts is Monday,
October 25, 5:30pm
vi. Welcome Back Party was a success, thanks Joanna,
Addy and everyone who helped
4. 6:15 pm – Nominations Committee Appointee Introductions and
Approval (Stephanie)
5. 6:30 pm – Residential and Dining Enterprises (Chana)
6. 6:50 pm -Funding (Krystal/Erik)
i. Pakistanis at Stanford
ii. Romanian Student Association
iii. French Stanford Student Association
iv. Russian Student Association
v. Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics at Stanford
vi. Korean Student Association
vii. Organization of International Health
viii. Stanford Solar and Wind Energy Project
ix. Stanford Taiwanese Student Association
x. Stanford Brewing Club
xi. Association of Chinese Students and Scholars at Stanford
xii. Belgica
7. 7:30 pm – Programming Update (Joanna/Addy)
8. 7:35 pm – ASSU/SSE Update (Angelina/Kelsei/Raj)
9. 7:40 pm – GSPB Update (George/Krystal)
10. 7:50 pm – New Business
Attendance
Voting members present:
Business – Ping Li (proxy Di Wang present)
Earth Sciences – Justin Brown
Education – Imeh Williams
Engineering – Joanna Lankester
Engineering – Drew Kennedy (proxy Ryan Peacock present)
H&S – Humanities – Praveen Shanbhag
H&S – Social Sciences – Salvador Zepeda
H&S – Natural Sciences – Erik Lehnert
Medicine – Jessica Tsai
At-large representative – Tao Chu
At-large representative – Krystal St. Julian
At-large representative – Crystal Yin (Xi Cheng)
Non-Voting Members Present:
Angelina Cardona – ASSU Exec
Chana Rodriguez – Stanford Dining
Ted Hesser – Solar and Wind Energy Project (SWEP)
Vimal Bhaya – interest
Teng Sun (Stephen) – auditor
Adrian Albert – Romanian Student Association (RSA)
Megha Makan – interest
Adeline Agut – French Student Association (FSA)
Jonathan York – NomCom Nominee
Luyin Zhao – interest
Fausto Bustes – NomCom nominee
Subhan Avi – NomCom nominee
Stephanie Garret – NomCom Chair
Adeel Arif – Auditor, Funding Committee
Mai El-Sadanay – NomCom Nominee
Joo Hyun Lee – Korean Student Association at Stanford (KSAS)
Ju Hyung Nam – Korean Student Association at Stanford (KSAS)
Lewis Marshall – AHA!
Elsa Birch – AHA!
Nicholas Sergeant – BELGICA
Stephanie Aupont – BELGICA
Stephen Trushum – Election Commision
Brian Jungmon – Observer
Yi-Hsuan Lin – Stanford Taiwanese Student Association (STSA)
Nate Chambers – NomCom BJA
Nate Meng – Organization of International Health (OIH)
Edmond Cofu (sp?) – NomCom Nominee Vaden Insurance
Chris Hillies – NomCom nominee
Raghuveer Krishnamurthy – interest
Suril Shah – Pakistanis at Stanford (PaS)
Anastasia Zakolyukina – Russian Student Association (RSA)
Voting Members Absent:
At-large representative – Addy Satija
At-large representative – Yichuan Ding
Minutes
Listen to this segment
General Body Meeting
September 29, 6pm Havana Rm of the GCC
1. 5:45 pm -FOOD (thanks Drew!)
2. 6:00 pm -Welcome with Introductions
3. 6:10 pm -Announcements (Justin)
i. Minutes from 09/22/2010
ii. Proxies of the week:
Ryan Peacock (Drew Kennedy)
Xi Cheng (Crystal Yin)
iii. Reminder that meetings are recorded.
iv. GSC Fall Retreat is Nov. 6-7 in SF
v. Dinner at the Lakehouse with Vice Provosts is Monday,
October 25, 5:30pm
vi. Welcome Back Party was a success, thanks Joanna,
Addy and everyone who helped
4. 6:15 pm – Nominations Committee Appointee Introductions and
Approval (Stephanie)
Stephanie – As you guys may be aware, our nominations are a little bit later than usual. One of the issues you can help us with is getting the word out to the grad student community. We have not had as many grad student applicants as we want and need. Please forward any e-mails we send out, we have a lot of interesting committees.
If you’re one of our nominees, please stand. Nominees stand.
Justin asked us to have the nominees come here tonight so that there can be better dialogue between the committees and the GSC. They’re going to ask you a couple of questions before you are approved.
Justin: We’re going to try to avoid fiascos with our faculty senate committees and the people who are on them. If anyone has any questions, please ask.
Krystal: Can Stephanie tell us what reps are here?
Steph: Career and alumni center, board of judicial affairs, student activities board, bike safety, graduate housing (GHAC), alcohol advisory board.
Jess – Question for bicycle safety – What ideas do you have, who do you plan to work with, what do you plan to push?
Bike Safety Rep – Helmets are a big deal for me – I think we need to have a way of removing stigma.
Joanna – Plans for housing committee?
Housing Committee – I’ve personally only lived in Studio 2, so I’m going to try to get student input – there is supposed to be a student rep from each different housing on the committee, and someone specifically from a housing assignment might be able to answer questions better.
Krystal – Do they committees work with VSOs or are they all closed?
Hillary – The committees are run by university faculty and staff. They don’t really work with VSOs.
Krystal – The reason I ask is because SWEP is here, and their group is heavily about sustainability, I encourage committees to talk to VSO leaders if possible.
Stephanie – The committee chairs tend to know about these resources, but it’s good to remind all the reps about this. Take advantage of the students around you.
Justin – All in favor of approving, 12-0-0. Passes. Can we have a round of applause for Stephanie and Hillary?
5. 6:30 pm – Residential and Dining Enterprises (Chana)
Chana – We want some support for new meal plans for the graduate community. We’d like help getting the word out – we’re also looking to expand this. If you have any advice on this, please send me an e-mail. chanar@stanford.edu. There are some perks for helping with this, like free meals. Right now we have a 5 meal a week plan that includes 50 cardinal dollars. This is really convenient, especially during weekends when a lot of things are closed. There’s a lot of variety for $6.95, and it’s all you care to eat. We’re also looking for a family meal plan, which would be $3.95 for children. This could be a very economical way to eat.
Joanna – I’m wondering this apartment meal plan – is this being advertised to graduate students? Isn’t the graduate meal plan a much better deal?
Chana – It’s a convenience – the grad student has to be reloaded every week.
Joanna – But the apartment plan is much more expensive per meal. I’ve had people contact feeling that this is misleading and an attempt to make people pay more than they would have to with the other plan.
Krystal – Would it be possible to make a plan to load up?
Chana – You can already load up, but it doesn’t include breakfast.
Krystal – I know that a lot of grad students are very centralized in their portions of campus. I see a lot of areas of campus that aren’t represented here. Are you guys working to get a deal with Ray’s or other areas that grad students eat?
Chana – Where is that?
Krystal – Here.
Tao – I think it would be most useful if we get price per meal.
Justin – To help with the dialogue that’s happening, can you talk about the differences between the meal plans on the web-site?
Chana- Yes, we’re open to suggestions.
Jess – I think this is a great idea – especially if we want to reach out to families.
Chana – Children under 5 eat for free.
Jess – I think the locations are fine – you can’t really move the dining halls. I think there are locations close enough to a lot of people.
Chana – Thank you very much.
Adele – Actually, there’s a grad student who has calculated all of this and I have the excel sheet. It’s 8.65 for a meal, which is more than the grad meal plan.
Justin – If there’s a way to get a description of the differences.
Ryan Peacock – If you can list places where cardinal dollars are accepted, that would be really useful to get grad students. That’s where a lot a grad students eat.
Chana – We can definitely look into it.
Justin – Thank you for coming.
6. 6:37 pm -Funding (Krystal/Erik)
Krystal – I want to give a little update on where our funding stands. As of right now, funding committee has a set of spreadsheets with all of the information we are running off of for the year. For the summer, we spent 3,170.00 of the 3,441.19. We’re at about $21,320.80 of 80,000 of our annual, which we expect to have done by the end of Autumn quarter, so we’re basically on track. To date, we’ve approved ~$32,000.00, which is about right.
v. Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics at Stanford – Our group seeks to meet the needs of atheists, agnostic, and humanist students in a way analogous. Our first event is blasphemy day, which we . Lewis will be giving a statement in the beginning indicating that we are not condoning any of the views in the movie, but we are showing this moving because it is in fact controversial. We have sent out an e-mail to the religious groups encouraging them to come and promising a respectful discussion afterwards.
Krystal – We recommended $20 of the $85, because the $60 room rental fee was no longer necessary and the $5 for facebook ads were not something that we normally fund, and they withdrew it.
Ryan – While we’re thinking about religious funding reviews, we need to make sure everything is fair.
Funding for $20 passes by consensus.
iv. Russian Student Association – Graduate group for Russian language and cultural events. Our events are mainly parties related to Russian holidays. This year, we applied for funding for 7 events.
Krystal – All of these events are food/celebratory events. This group originally requested, $5,310.00. We recommended $3,010.00. This is because their events were going to draw the same 100 students, and we soft-cap at $30 per student per group per year. So, each event requests $410 for food and $20 for programming.
Justin: Are there any questions?
Jess – Is this for the whole year?
Krystal: Yes
Imeh – We’re funding a lot of food events, can you talk about how this impacts the greater community?
RSA Rep – It’s mostly socialization – it brings together people from different schools. We are working with some start-ups so that members of our association can talk to members of start-ups in Silicon Valley, etc… But this is the social side of our group.
$3,010.00 passes by consensus.
vii. Organization of International Health
OHI Rep – We are co-sponsoring an event with the undergrads to have a speaker talk about the social, economic, and medical issues involved in disfigurement and reparative surgery. This is a great opportunity for graduate students to learn about disfigurement. We are anticipating that one-third of our attendees will be graduate students, but we are only asking for 20% of our event budget from the GSC.
Krystal – This group requested originally $275, but they only have matching funds for the $87.50 that our bylaws require. So $187.50 is recommended for funding.
Funding for $187.50 passes by consensus.
ix. Stanford Taiwanese Student Association -
STSA rep – Organized by Taiwenese graduate students. We’re hosting a welcoming party on Oct. 3rd. We are asking for $1200 for event food for 150 people, $80 for programming, and $130 for facility rental.
Krystal – This group originally requested $1930. We recommended $1200 for food, we only recommended $70 for programming, and the room request was originally $650 because they were quoted the off-campus price, but because they are students they can get it for $130.
Joanna – How many people attended last year?
STSA – 120, but we expect more.
Jess – Do you have to use Tressider, could you cut back by using a free venue?
STSA – We would like to have a bigger place because it’s so many students.
Funding for $1,400 passes by consensus.
viii. Stanford Solar and Wind Energy Project
Adele – Stanford Solar and Wind Energy Project (SWEP) please describe your group. We do engineering projects around campus to improve knowledge of solar and wind energy. We have a wind tower in Salinas, a 1-unit course on wind data, we have a speaker series from the clean-tech industry that come and speak.
Adele – This group recommended $4,550.00. We are recommending $4,130.00 because there was a miscalculation in the honoraria, bringing it down to $600. Secondly, because they expect 40% undergrad at their welcome event, we recommended 60% of the $550, which is $330. So we recommended a total of $4,130.00.
Jess- HAve you looked at getting departmental funding, since this sounds academic?
SWEP – We get funding from some departments and an outside company?
Jess – How much does the department fund, if you can disclose this?
SWEP rep – About $600 per year.
Imeh – Since I’m in social sciences, what would I get out of these events?
Swep rep- The broad context of energy infrastructure change is a social issue, which should be of interest to a broad population, in addition to the technical information.
Funding for $4,130.00 passes by consensus.
i. Pakistanis at Stanford
We are hosting a Pakistani poet and lecturer.
Krystal – This group is requesting from us and the UG senate. They are requesting $250 from us. They are 60% grad, so they are under the limit, so we recommended the full amount.
Jess – How many people do you expect?
PSA rep – About 60.
Funding for $250 passes by consensus.
iii. French Stanford Student Association
We have events to promote French culture and French community at Stanford.
Krystal: This group requested $450 for a BBQ. We recommended $400 for food and $30 for programming.
Justin- Your group is known for having wine at your events? Will you be having any?
FSA – Not at this one.
Funding for $430 passes 12-0-0.
ii. Romanian Student Association
RSA Rep – Our group is bringing together Romanians, friends of Romanians, and people interested in Romanian culture. We regularly organzie events like picnics and BBQs to let people socialize. We also organize cultural events like a film festival. This event is for welcoming incoming Romanian graduate students, but everyone is welcome to attend.
Krystal – This group came with a request for $450. They wanted $370, but the cap was $300. They requested $80 for programming expenses, basically for a yearly stash of cups and plates, but since we’re an event-by-event funding source, we brought that down to $25.
$325 funding passes by consensus.
vi. Korean Student Association
KSA Rep – KSA has 250-300 active grad students at grad students. We host parties for Korean students and students interested in Korean culture. We sometimes work with companies as well. We requested funding for two of our parties.
Krystal – This group requested $2000 for each of two parties. They are within caps for food, so funding committee recommended $4000.
$4000 funding for KSA passes by consensus.
xii. Belgica -
B-Rep- We have a few events per quarter for anyone interested in Belgian culture. We like food, so it’s part of our culture. We’re organizing a welcome BBQ to welcome all the Belgians on campus, so we’re asking for money for food.
Krystal – Their request was $300 for food, which we recommend. They requested $50 for programming expenses, but we dropped that to $30. And they requested $20 for paper, but they decided to use that later in the year. We recommend $330.
$330 passes by consensus.
xi. Association of Chinese Students and Scholars at Stanford
ACSSS Rep – We try to create a community for Chinese students at Stanford and bring Chinese culture to Stanford. Our first event is “Can Innovation Succeed in China” with a CTO of Shanda. We are asking for $50 from the GSC for event food. We are requesting $300 for a welcome BBQ and $50 for programming at the new student reception.
Krystal – We recommend as is for $400.
Funding for $400 passes by consensus.
x. Stanford Brewing Club
SBC rep – We’re here because there was an error in our original funding request. We requested $200 for food, but it turns out ice is considered a programming expense by SSE. We were hoping we could transfer some of our food budget to a programming expense line. Because this hasn’t been done before, so we’re presenting this here.
Krystal – There are no rules for or against this, because we’ve never seen this before. This isn’t retroactive funding, because we are not changing any numbers – we funded them for this amount before. This is, however, a retroactive transfer. I don’t have any problems with this, no one on FC did either. The GSC makes these decisions.
Imeh – Are there any consequences if we approve this change?
Krystal – No, this is just for our benefit. This group is being upfront about this, and we really appreciate this. This is nice and transparent, I have no issues with this.
Transfer $25 from food to programming passes by consensus.
7. 7:13 pm – Programming Update (Joanna/Addy) – As you all know, we just had our welcome back party, which was a huge success. I’d like to thank everyone who helped out, especially those who stayed until 2:30 to help clean up. I just wanted to get some feedback on stuff for next year on a few specific topics.
Music – Everything fine.
Krystal – Great!
Beer and beer choices?
Justin – Do you want to keep this casual and loose and just kinda talk?
Joanna – Yes, once I get through a few specific things, we can talk about anything.
Imeh – People were confused about beer choices. Can we do something about that, like maybe having some simpler beers?
Erik – Can we have multiple service points? There was a huge mass of people that never moved and took up the whole space. I think having that huge line might lead to servers not watching people as much to determine if they’ve had too much.
Joanna – I don’t know if we need to serve people faster – we ran out and there were some people who had too much to drink. What do you think about having a walk-through?
Jess – Can we have the beer farther from the music, that way it would be easier for the servers to hear what’s being asked for? Also, in terms of logistically setting up, we need a better barrier than a side-table to stop people from turning into a second service station.
Ryan – Beer away from dance floor/ DJ. Either near the fountain, or back in the next field to keep people from hanging out around the beer.
Imeh – I’m all for having multiple stations, but was there a security officer for each service point?
Justin – We used rope and had security guards at all the different sites.
Joanna- Do we need more security?
Justin – If you want more serving points, yes.
Erik – I just wanted to make sure people knew that I think that some of the issues with over-consumption wasn’t due to us serving them – I saw people walking around with box wine and beer – stuff at the event. Are we liable if people are essentially serving beer at the party? Should we ask people not to do that?
Ryan – We’re not liable, Stanford is.
Anne-Laure – First, I’m French, so I wanted to say it’s very not classy to get drunk on wine. Secondly, logistically, it might be faster to have separate lines for the different beers.
Justin – Really quick, Joanna, how many items do you have?
Joanna – Just a few more. What do people think about -
Justin – A few…five? Three?
Joanna – Sure. What about wrist-banding?
Justin – Three?
Krystal – I think we’re fine on time.
Justin – I know – I just want to make sure that this isn’t going to turn into a long, long, long discussion.
Krystal – I think it’s worth it.
Joanna – We do four parties a year, this is the only time this quarter I will be asking for time for feedback, and I think it’s valuable.
Justin – So, keep it moving along.
Joanna – I don’t think that’s necessary.
Justin – Thank you for your comment, please be nice, guys really quick…
Erik – Motion to continue discussion topic.
Krystal – Seconded.
Joanna – What did everyone think about the wrist-banding set-up?
Justin – I think we need more points of wrist-banding service because it got a little bit
crowded where we were.
Krystal – I’d thought it was fine, but people were confused that there were three people wrist-banding. Maybe if we had signs for each line?
Jess – I think it would be helpful if there were more signs directing people for wrist-banding. That way people wouldn’t go to get beers only to realize that there were wrist-bands.
Joanna- EANABS/food – No comments
Joanna: General comments?
Jess- Can we maybe not do glass bottles in the future, as sometimes these break and they take a lot of time to open and clean up.
Ryan/Salvador – Can we have a punch?
Erik – It’s unclear if we’re allowed to serve anything with a hardA component.
Addy – I’ve started looking at Grad Formal venues, I’m thinking about history museum, City Hall, and Mountainview theater.
Erik – Do we know what we’re doing for winter event?
Justin – Did you have anything else, Joanna?
Erik – Did we have any security issues besides the one case of too much drinking?
Joanna – Only very minor ones.
8. 7:29 pm – ASSU/SSE Update (Angelina/Kelsei/Raj) – Last week, exec committee met. We nominated a new chair and deputy chair for NomCom. This is because the previous chair and deputy chair stepped down. Just to clarify, the deputy chair is still on the council, but just not dep chair. We appointed Stephanie and Hillary to make sure that these are filled quickly. There is particularly a lack of grad students in the current committees, we’ll be reaching out through you guys and through a mass e-mail.
We have three positions open on Constitutional Council. We had a few applicants, but we want to do a more thorough application process now and add an interview process. We want to make sure we are nominating people who are going to do a good job and make the council more active.
Fall into health is 11 am this friday, we’ve worked with them over the summer to create a wellness passport program, “make your journey to wellness”. You take the assessment and get told what you can do to improve your day-to-day health. It’s really great programming.
We’re also sending out a campus-wide e-mail by the end of the week in order to let people know about this.
Salvador – Can we get something to forward about these committees that still need graduate students?
Angelina – Yes, an e-mail is being drafted right now.
Erik – Any word on the solicitor general thing?
Angelina- NonCom is adding that to their list of positions to fill.
Ryan – To clarify, they can bring up issues themselves or do the legwork for anyone who wants to file a complaint.
Angelina – We are also looking at an executive elections spending cap bill, so if you have any input, let me know.
9. 7:37 pm – GSPB Update (George/Krystal) – I have a little hand-out, so I wanted to give a brief update before I get into a funding request for GSPB. We’re going strong, we had our second meeting of the year, it was great – we have some students coming back over and over, and they are starting to become interested in running events. We had the tailgate event, a trip to a play called “Dead Man’s Cell Phone”, we’re doing an outing to see the Facebook movie, we’re also sponsoring the Family Book Giveaway.
Ray’s is really trying to reach out to students this year, one is dedicated to students on campus. Crystal Martinez came to our last meeting and talked about how Ray’s is interested in interacting with the grad student body, so if anyone needs to interact with Ray’s, contact me and I can get you her info.
We are requesting some money from the GSPB by-line. $2500 for a Stanford v. USC tailgate in Koret plaze, we expect 800 grad students, $400 for a National Coming Out Day Party co-sponsored by LGBT-CRC from general by-line, and $300 from lottery dinner byline for a lottery dinner at University Cafe on Nov. 4th for 20 grad students. $2500 from the fall tail-gate byline, $400 from general, and $300 from lottery dinner. Funding passes by consensus.
Imeh – What are the account balances for the different bylines?
Krystal – I can’t give you exact numbers, but we’ve spent ~$1,900 from the general.
10. 7:46 pm – New Business
Jess – We’ve been working with Donovan, who works on sexual health issues at Vaden. They are putting out a survey on sexual health and relationship abuse. It’s a very comprehensive survey and will provide some great data. I’m requesting money for an iPad as a prize for filling out the survey, which would be $547 from advocacy discretionary.
Addy – Usually we don’t do such expensive things for the survey. Can we do something cheaper? We’ve done iPod touches in the past. It seems like a lot to spend – maybe we should give out smaller prizes…
Jess – I think this is a really important survey, I would be willing to go up to $1000 on this, I think this is so important.
Angelina – I think we need to ask how much we’re basically paying for a response…
Imeh – Given the sensitive nature of this topic, it’s hard to get people to report. We need good incentives to get people to respond to this.
Erik – Can we do a groupon strategy? It could incentivize people to talk to their friends to get them to fill out the survey?
Imeh – Maybe we can have a grand-prize for people who refer their friends?
Angelina- The problem with referral is that it’s so sensitive.
$550 funding from advocacy discretionary to go towards sexual assault survey raffle prize passes by consensus.
New Topic (continued)
Imeh – I think we should talk about this at the retreat – we’re giving out so much for VSO funding, I think we should be asking more from groups. I don’t like giving so much money basically for buying people food.
Erik – I’d like for VSOs to be able to buy name tags from programming line-item. There’s no rule against this, it’s just a change in policy. Anyone have an issue with funding committee telling people this? No objections.
Academic Advocacy update – things are going well. The TA survey is moving forward, the registrar’s office has asked for a draft. If there’s anything you think needs to be on it, let me know.
Jess – I would talk to Cynthia Irvine, she’s the assistant dean of graduate education for the med school.
Erik – That’s great, we have a list of about 5 or 6 people we should talk to, so please anyone who’s interested in this step up.
Krystal – I wanted to introduce Anne-Laure, she will be on Funding Committee this year. Adele will be our auditor as soon as Ping signs off on this.
Erik – We should talk about how we want to use the auditor to check events – we should have a set policy. We’ll probably come to you guys with a recommendation for discussion and approval.
Justin – Two pieces of sad business.
Jess – Evan, our law rep, resigned. He got into a clinic that he couldn’t fit in with GSC schedule. So we need to find a law-rep. We’ve been tapping individuals that we know – we will activate a larger network to find a new law rep.
Joanna – Will you also e-mail a law student list so that this is open to everyone?
Justin – On a final note, I’ve gotten a lot of feedback, and I want to say, be respectful. I hope this is the last time I have to say this. If someone needs an e-mail response or a signature, please respond.
Meeting Adjourned 8:07 pm.