Minutes

GSC Minutes

October 25, 2006

Paul: Minutes from last week were sent out, any objections? None, passed

Halloween is coming up, spread the word on the Maousoleum party. This is a resurrected Stanford tradition. The Rains Halloween party is on Oct. 28th in Hacienda commons. Then there’s also the special white plaza event on Friday night at 6:30. Murders on Elm Street.

John: I met with John Dacola and we talked about mouse pads, laundry bags, and lip balm. He’s supposed to get back to me soon and next week we’ll be able to make a decision.

Paul: Next week’s meeting is in the ASSU office and it’s very short. Arrive at 6pm and we’ll then travel to Boardman’s house for a GSC celebration.

Jenny: It’s very important for everyone to show up on time so that we can get the student groups funded. Let us know if you need to have a proxy. If you haven’t RSVPd please let me know soon. And you don’t have to be an elected member to come to the meeting.

Paul: Don’t be surprised if you show up here and nobody’s around.

Also, there’s a grad night coupon going around. Donna do you have more details.

Donna: John should know more.

John: This is sponsored by GSPB.

Paul: we have a new webmaster, Matt Turk. And we have a new publicity coordinator, John.

Funding will be taken care of by Alex.

Alex: we met on Monday to discuss three groups, BioMass, the Korean Student Organization, and the Romanian Student Organization.

BioMASS: Our primary constituents are the 12 different programs in the biosciences and the medical school. We try to bring everyone together who’s interested in biology related studies. We help with orientation for biomedically affiliated students, work with the career center, etc… We do one big event per quarter, and this year we might do a wine and cheese event or a softball game. The rest of our funding comes from Deans and the Biology departments.

Dirk: How many members do you have?

BioMASS: we have 30-40 students at meetings and around 200 people at our large events. We try to get our event funding from other sources but we just need help for the big events.

Dirk: what percent of your budget comes from the GSC:.

BioMASS: Less than half of their money comes from the GSC.

Maxim: Do we fund monthly meetings?

BioMASS: This funding is not for monthly meetings.

Alex: Any objections? PASSED

Now the Korean Student Association. Asking for funding for five events, tell us about it.

KSA: There about 400 students in our group and including families we have ~500ppl attending each event. We’re trying to have ~2 events per quarter. One of the events we’re planning this quarter is having a guest speaker talk about the north Korean nuclear weapons issue. We try to hold events that everyone can attend and have a unique asian style. We’ll also be having an end of the year party and a guest speaker series. Most of the money that we’re asking for is for meeting food for our events.

Rebecca: Can anyone go to the events that you guys hold?

Alex: Yes

Rebecca: Have you asked for ASSU speakers bureau money?

Alex: I told them to ask in the future.

Dirk: I’m confused by the number of members. Last time you said 300 and this time you said 400 people.

KSA: We have about 440 people on our email list but some of them are alumni. At the party we had earlier we actually ran out of food when we estimated 300.

Maxim: I see that they are funded at their cap. If a group comes that is 10 times smaller will they get ~ $800 per year.

Dirk: It would be helpful if we knew how much was spent per person, per year. Is there anyway we can see how much each group is granted per meeting.

Song: Where was the last event held.

KSA: It was in the GCC and it spilled outside since there were so many people. The event went on until 9pm but most people went home after they ate since there was no place for them to sit.

Alex: Any other questions? Any objections? PASSED

Let’s get to the last group, the Romanian Student Association.

RSA: We try to bring together Romanian students and those interested in Romanian Culture. We have an event on Dec. 1st which is Romanian indepence day. We’re also trying to organize a Romanian movie night to screen a movie by a Romanian director. We have two events in winter. We have an event on 3/1 which is a celebration of mother’s day and the beginning of spring. Our biggest event is an Easter dinner. Easter is the biggest Christian event during the year for Romanians. We will have traditional food. In spring we have a traditional Romanian bbq and we have another event at the end of the year that’s a party. We have 60-70 members and most of them are grad students. We also have people on our email list that are just interested in the culture.

Fen: Do you go to the church for your easter party.

Alex: Grad students are invited to the dinner but they don’t have to go to the church to enjoy the dinner.

Dirk: Do you have an estimate for what % of your funding comes from GSC.

RSA: Most of it comes from the GSC but some events are funded by alumni.

Maxim: What’s the cap per member.

Alex: ~$30 per member.

Paul: Any objections? PASSED.

Alex: Funding Committee meetings are currently at 1pm on Mondays in the Clark Center.

George: I’m trying to get a committee formed and I want to get clarity on what we’re doing. First of all we need committee members. The first item is the stipend rate of increase. Last year it was 4%. The next item is the TGR fees. First of all, they were very low and Stanford chose to raise them.

Rebecca: What to they mean?

George: When you’ve gone to PhD candidacy your tuition is reduced. Etchemendy wants to decrease the amount of time grad students spend on campus because they are expensive.

Maxim. Why do they think increasing the TGR tuition will reduce their time on campus.

George: They think that if you increase the cost to the department that will decrease the number of grad students and students will be encouraged to graduate sooner. One of the things that I’d like to see is if this has been effective. Etch is very firm on this and it doesn’t seem like he’s going to change his mind. I still think that it’s worth submitting a proposal to the VPGE on this issue.

I think that in some areas we can focus on the school but there are some issues where we might have to advocate on the departmental level. We need to do some information gathering, information collating and other items in order to present a good argument. We want to know what the trade off is for advocating for increased programming that affects quality of life or for increasing stipends.

Alex: I don’t know if this is in your scope but I think that one way to reduce the time students spend in school is by putting a cap on the # of years students can spend in their program.

George: They’ve already done that in a way by only giving guaranteed funding for the first 5 years. I wonder at times if we should highlight the fact that we are entrepreneurial grad students.

Ultimately I want some help trying to determine what some feasible goals are.

Maxim: I think that this way (Etch’s) might be efficient but I don’t think it’s the right way. I think that we should be focusing on improving departments and programs. This is wrong because when the money gets tight they will be miserable and be encouraged to leave whether they have a degree or not.

George: That’s one of the reasons why I think we should look at attrition rates since the implementation of the TGR increase.

Fen: I don’t think you can set a time to degree for all departments because it varies by department. More grad students are needed in some departments and in some cases 6 years is a perfectly reasonable expectation for a phd.

George: What time can people come to meetings?

Ann-Marie: I can come in the evening if that’s ok with you.

Fen: What exactly is the ultimate goal for this TGR increase?

George: I think that it’s done increasing.

Matt A.: I think that we should give stipends some perspective by taking into account cost of living issues.

Maxim: What is the minimum stipend and who sets this lower limit.

George: It’s set at ~$6300 per quarter.

Paul: Let’s wrap this up but thanks George for all of your hard work. Speaking of which, let’s go through the checklist for this year.

Jenny: Yes, let’s see how we’re doing on this list. Feel free to add items as you all see fit. Ideally, by the end of the year we’ll have all of these items checked off.

(Going through the checklist)

Healthcare: Meet with the Vaden advisory committee. There will be healthcare info sessions in the next few weeks.

Int. Student issue: There was one student, Brian, that showed interest but we still don’t have a chair. We should meet regurlarly with John Pearson from the I-center.

Legislative: Maxim and Rebecca are interested. The GSB government and politics club is going to Sacramento in the spring, she can bring up some issues there.

Parking and Trans: Update from Kristina last week. We should look at a marguerite route that goes to the foreign food markets.

Stipends: George gave an update today.

Grad night at Flights: We’ll do superman returns.

Thanksgiving: Stephen is working on it, see last week’s minute.

Formal: We’re now looking at February because march is taken. We will shoot for the last weekend in February. Make sure the med school students can attend as well. We’re looking at a space for 600 people and we’re keeping dates open right now until we find a good venue. We’re considering going to san jose or SF. The med school ball was at the regency but it doesn’t have multiple rooms.

Lunar new year: Adam’s working on getting all the groups together.

Funding: We’re trying to get more people on the committee

Membership: John is the best advocate we have. Maybe we should put the meetings on grad events. Post advocacy committee meetings on websites or advocacy committee meetings.

VPGE: We’ve already invited them to a meeting. Town hall.

Website: Matt’s gonna handle it. We’re gonna streamline the process.