Minutes

Thanks for the food Matt!!

Welcome with Introductions

Announcements
Jenny – Were there any changes to the minutes from last week? (none) Are there any objections to passing the minutes from November 8th? (none) The minutes pass by consensus.
Special thanks to Linus, Maria, and Paul for doing all their works on flicks. There was no actual movie but people had doughnuts and drinks anyway.

Matt – It was actually a m-mod failure and not a flicks failure.

Jenny – We are continuing to look into the possibility of making “little miss sunshine” a grad student flicks night to make up for it.
Next week is thanksgiving so there is no meeting. Enjoy your week off!
Thanksgiving dinner is happening next week. As of this morning there were only 150 spots left. If you know people that will be here on thanksgiving day tell them to sign up soon as it’s currently 70% full.
Are there anymore announcements?

Cullen – This Saturday Ohio state is playing Michigan.

Funding (Adam)

Adam – There is only one group this week.

Jenny – Every year we have $120 000 to give to student groups each year. If you are interested in getting involved with the funding group you get to give money away. Is the group here?

Adam – No but the amount is small so they don’t need to be here. In fact the funding committee can approve it because it’s less than $250.

The group is the European Students Association the requested $180 for a European wine and cheese at Bechtel Center. Are there any questions? (none)

Jenny – Are there any objections to funding the European Student Association? (none) Ok, that passes by consensus.



Elections Commissions Bill (Tim) – see attachment
Jenny – The bill asks us to approve Bernard Fraga, an undergrad, as the ASSU elections commissioner. The elections committee members are the sponsors of the bill. Bernard would be here tonight but is away in Chile spending a quarter studying abroad. Tim is currently doing a term at Arizona state or would be here.

Dirk – What responsibilities does the elections commissioner have?

Jenny – They are in charge of telling people how to become candidates, telling people how they can run, hosting a launch party, setting up the elections, ensuring the election policies are enforced, and ensuring the election is fair (web design).

Dirk – Is it paid?

Jenny – yes.

Adam – They have minions.

Dirk – Are there any other candidates?

Jenny – Yes there were other candidates. We’ll now take that to a vote this requires a two-thirds majority. Are there any objections to approving Bernard Farga as the Elections Commissioner? (none) Seeing none that passes.

Housing update (Yana)

Yana – I’ve been working with GHAC which is a student and admin body involved in housing. The issues that we’ve been addressing are trying to reduce the annual increase in the cost of housing, trying to make the moving in process more friendlily for first year students, trying to figure out vacancies over the summer so try and match up students who know they will require housing for the entire year. Matching students who will be around for the whole year will help because they are able to use unoccupied rooms to house people who come for conferences. Another thing is off–campus housing. Some of the off-campus housing has already been reduced and the rest is now on a yearly contract. Previously it was on a five year contract. One of the administrators from GHAC is coming to speak in a couple weeks. They are going to try and do a single student renewal policy so, if you know that if you are going to be on campus for the following year you won’t have to move in order to ensure housing.

Cullen – I thought it was already set that off campus subsidized housing was gone.

Yana – I thought so too but it was brought up that if there was enough interest and people living there that it will stay.

Adam – This is an ongoing thing, Munger has been delayed and so the obvious thing is to keep off campus housing until Munger is done.

Maxim – What is subleasing policy of on-campus housing? I know that there is summer subleasing but what about during other breaks?

Yana – Currently they don’t but I can bring it up. The other thing they want to know is what can they do to bring people on campus and what things do on campus students need that are currently lacking. If anyone has anything that needs to be brought up please let me know and I can bring it up with GHAC.

Jenny – Is there anything GSC can help with? One thing we have on our check list is to figure out costs with respect to stipends.

Yana –Currently we are just finding out what students really want and what needs to be improved. I think it’s really just gathering information right now. We did find out that there is no way to have utilities separated.

Healthcare update (Kristina)

Kristina – We recently had two meetings informational meetings at Vaden. We discussed how healthcare is chosen, what administrators are trying to do to reduce costs and make sure that everything we need is covered. I was struck at how the people at Stanford are trying to make sure we have good, inexpensive health care. Dependent came up and Amy Baldwin, who works directly with people at healthcare, has had around 100 graduate students with dependents come and they’ve managed to find options for all of them. One of the things we want to try to figure out is what percentage of people with dependents have dependents without healthcare and what kind of coverage that people have if they don’t have cardinal care. We discussed dental care and we found out that the vital savings we have gives you good deals.

Maxim – I looked on internet and found better deals.

Kristina – Please send them to me. People are not taking advantage of the dental program from Stanford.

Maxim – The Stanford dental plan is different than insurance.

Kristina – Someone did ask how much the cost of insurance would be if we added dental and was told that you would get exactly the same coverage that you would get from vital savings. We also discussed vision. All graduate students have one eye care exam per year that is covered by cardinal care. There is also vision that is partly included in vital savings that gives you some savings on glasses, but it is about the same as discounts that you can get at some stores. Shireen put some students in contact with me who are concerned that there are policies in Cardinal Care that are anti-Tran gendered students. I talked with Amy Baldwin and she said that vaden is redoing its website and make sure that it is clear that all Stanford students are welcome.

Cullen – what exactly is the concern?

Kristina – The disclaimer in the policy says that healthcare won’t be provided for medical expenses related to sex changes. They would like that policy changed. we can immediately deal with to make sure that there is something on the website so that people are aware that cardinal care is available to all students regardless of gender. Does anyone have any questions?

Gabriel Garcia (Haas) – one has to provide a culturally respectful healthcare to minimize the chance of stigma. there are ways that our administrative group and clinic can do it and we should aim for it. Our goal is to destigmatize.

Kristina – We have made vaden aware of it and are working with Ira and Amy to make changes.

Gabriel – According to a study I worked on, if you are in the lowest quintile of socioeconomic, you were less likely to use Vaden. We are failing to serve large segments of our students. I collaborated with people at vaden to do this study.

Haas Center (Nicole Taylor and Gabriel Garcia)

Jenny – Today we have two guests. If you have any questions for the GSC please ask them. Thank you for coming in today because we would like to find out more about community services at Stanford.

Gabe - Between the two of us we have been at the Haas center for nine months. The mission of Haas center is to link between all students and the community. What we hope to achieve is a vision for the next few year. What are the expectations of students from the Haas center and what would be expected of the students? The Haas Center was found with purpose of engaging under graduates. In the past year and a half have made it clear if we fail to provide the same opportunities to the graduate students then we are missing out. We are working on funding line items of the Stanford Challenge. The hand outs are what are current programs are and what is available for grad students is on the pink handout.

Nicole – We have a few things we work on. One is fellowships. We have undergraduate summer fellowships and 6 slots for grad students for work right after graduation. We would like to have fellowships that would occur as 6 or 9 month internships. We are working with the international group to make that happen. As well as trying to make those opportunities happen for grad students we send hundreds of undergraduates all over the world. Those opportunities don’t exist for graduate students and we are going to be working to make that a reality. Our undergraduate fellowships are endowed and we would like the same for the graduate fellowships.

We also work on courses. Most of our courses are for undergraduates. We are trying to make the courses for graduates count as service granting courses.

We have a couple different ways that we do research. We have support that is available, we work with faculty that is available we create a triad between Haas Center, the faculty, and a community member. We have public service scholars program where seniors can look at making their research useful for a community.

We operate programs at Haas center that take programs to the community. We are retooling the upward bound continuing education program and trying to engage graduate students in tracking, and redesigning programs. This is something we would want and need graduates students to work on because you have skills that undergraduates don’t. We have leadership program where we engage undergraduates and teach them how to be leaders. We will be working with VPGE to figure out same thing for graduate students whether it is gsc, running non-profit and have it be cross-disciplinary. This is something that we’ll be working on. We’ve already spoken to the VPGE and we’ve heard that this is something graduate students will be interested in. Another thing is that we have the space to incubate programs. The Haas Center is in the middle of the munger project and so is hard to see. It’s a three story building and it is open twenty-four-seven and is a great meeting space. I encourage you to use that as a space if you have meetings. Because we have such a great space we can help get programs such as the “Center for philanthropy and civil society”, started. This program is lead by two members out of the Ed school. They just selected their first year of fellows from that program. We really are going to make a concerted effort to reach graduate students. We know that many graduate students have had real world experience and have skills that we want to capture.

Gabriel – Individual schools may have programs like this, we want to work with them and if they need help with establishing a service learning class or something we can help them move towards that. That mechanism is available and you have mechanisms available so you can create student courses as well and get money from our agency.

Nicole – If anyone is in the med school check out Office of community health. In the GSB the there is the public management program; there are a lot of opportunities there.
Engineering has the Community services office in the Office of student affairs.

Jenny – Here there is a list of one time service programs. I know that Rains and EV have on going programs by the GSC and GSPB have only a few programs. Is there an email list we can send one time opportunities to?

Nicole – It’s on the back of the sheet.

Jenny – We should put that on our web site.

Cullen – What is the name of the center being started out?
Nicole – It’s the center for philanthropy and civil society.

Gabriel – part of what we would like to hear is these are initiatives and what you would like to hear. Use your reps to tell us what you would like. Part of my goal is to make sure that graduate students are involved in meaningful service by the time graduate.

Maxim - What do you mean by public service?

Nicole – We define quite public service quite broadly. It can be government related such as, housing, sustainable development, education, all areas of government. It can be from the non-profit sector such as public health, environment any issue critical to individual or community’s development. Or even the private sector, looking at opportunities through the work that you do, investing in responsible ways, looking at environmental impact, and philanthropy. We want this to become something of who you are and part of the life you live.

Gabe – We want these actions to be voluntary and for people to value this.

Donna – I see you have some partnerships. Are there any plans for partner ships with schools?

Nicole – For Upward bound and VPAA we are working with faculty and students.

Donna – I’ve been working with VPAA for the last couple of years.

Nicole – They are eager to coordinate efforts.

Gabriel – the bulk of our programs are tied to the Ed School.

Nicole – Education is one of our big areas.

Jenny – Thanks for coming and sharing with us.

Nicole – We have two people here who know a lot (Elizabeth and Marcelo) Please just come in and talk to our staff. It’s a big house you are welcome anytime.

Jenny – Thank you so much.

8. 7:20 GSC Checklist: Where are We? (Jenny)

Jenny – you can see that the list was updated recently. I will try to do that often. The refrigerator is not on list. Next time when we come back thanksgiving dinner will not be on the list.

The first deals with VPGE. We are going to see if both and Paul and I can meet with Gail next week to see if we can.

Kristina – I have questions about the maternity leave program that Gail might be able to answer since she was involved in creating it.

Cullen – Seemed like it happened because Gail said it was something we needed to do and piloted it.

Matt – It’d be nice to set up something with the VPGE so we have staff member there that can check in with us regularly.

Jenny – the next is academic issues. Currently no one is leading the academic affairs group. When we meet with Mark Horowitz we will try and get a list of courses in departments that can be taken by students in other departments.

Maria - make it explicit that it’s classes with no prerecs.

Jenny – This is something we will ask Mark Horowitz about. Is someone interested in faculty advising and mentoring?

Maria – I’d be interested. I’m already working with the alumni center.

Jenny – I met with the family CA’s Maria Keyshen. We are meeting in the next couple to discuss Easter and to look at in home child care. We will see where funding would come from for that. This was one of the goals for the advocacy for the year.

Cullen – The diversity committee is meeting tomorrow at the GSC office to work on the five year plan. we want something documented because we feel that university should be more explicit about its goals for diversity. We are drafting a five year proposal plan to present to the president with the ultimate goal of them planning one as well. We are meeting with Roberta to discuss a few things that will take large budgets. If anyone is interested in coming to meetings we can always use bodies.

Polina – where are meetings?

Cullen – we are having one tomorrow in the GSC office.


Jenny - International student issues – Zhou isn’t here so I don’t know if there is any update on that item. Legislative action: Maxim said he’d be interested in working on legislative action. Anyone else?

Dirk – I’d like to work on it as well.

Jenny – we want to discuss something at some point about what you’d like to discuss.

Kristina – Will you go to Sacramento?

Maxim – We could.

Donna – What are we advocating for? Like having room and board be exempt from taxes for students?

Jenny – Good question – I would like the board to review current status of legislation and bring pros and cons of legislation. We could expand to healthcare and visa issues. Especially since we have powerful people in the government who live near us. Before we have them advocate we should be on the same page as a group. That’s my thoughts on that if people have other ideas let me know.

Kristina – Parking and Transportation: Martin sent email to the provost to get meeting for P&T.

Jenny – Stipend: George is not here work but he is working with the VPGE.

Jenny – Thanks to Paul for work on website for thanksgiving dinner.

Adam – There were 220 spots when I signed up before meeting.

Paul – That doesn’t change in real time, when I last looked there were 75 spots left and I’m the one that shuts the door.

Jenny – GSPB will bring bins from second harvest so there will be a food drive too.

Adam – As you’ve all heard there will be a Joint lunar festival this year. Undergraduates have been less then helpful so we are going to just go ahead and hope they hear. Unfortunately everyone is leaving Friday and so I hope we are going to meet when they return. We Submitted a request to the university for the quad. They are asking other admins for this event. We are waiting for budget to come before we ask provost and president That will materialize once we meet with them.

Elizabeth – undergraduates are concerned about the approach.

Adam – If there was a way to contact them we would have contacted them earlier. We are aiming for it to be not nine pm until one am we are aiming for earlier in the evening. We want it to be a family event. There will be lots of food and activities.

Jenny – We need to consider weather.

Adam – Weather is key. Because of what the event is we are going to have lots of people. Holding it in the quad is key because of the paved floor and covered space. So need space to hold large number of people.

Donna - how many?

Adam - ~4000 people

Elizabeth – Exactly what does it entail?

Adam – That will happen in the meeting. Various areas of the quad will be for different groups/ethnicities. Kind of like an I-Gala but with a more focused theme.

Jenny – Thanks for you work. Any updates on the formal. It’s on Feb 23rd.

Maxim – it will be in the Hayes Mansion. It’s between here and San Jose

Donna – it’s in San Jose.

Jenny – I believe that committee is looking into hor d’oeurves.

Maxim – we have received menus from them and we will select what will be served to students.

Jenny – are there some people who are interested in party planning? It should be fun.

Alex – when are you meeting to plan that?

Maxim – Fen said she prefers sat or Sunday. but no one is here so we could do this after thanksgiving week.

Yana – I can probably help some starting next quarter.

Jenny – lots to be done from web work to getting a flyer together. Easter egg roll. Meeting with family CA’s this Friday. Flicks will look into for winter and spring.

Funding committee membership –

Adam – Alex still shows up. Who would come if it was at a different time?

Cullen when is it now
Adam – 1pm on Monday.

Maxim – I have class at 1pm.

Cullen - I could actually start going now I’ve just been gone.

Adam – if I moved it to noon that would work for more people?

Kristina – haven’t been getting emails.

Adam – maybe I haven’t been sending them.

Yana – my water bottles falling apart rim cracked a broken.

Matt – I’ll look into them.

Jenny – last I heard they were going to give us new ones.

Matt – If I need to get involved let me know.

Jenny – don’t think we have anyone working on retreats. I will look into dates. Everything on the list.

Alex – were we planning on getting Shirley Evert – she is housing and dining. Above roger.

Jenny – we might not be able to get her for this quarter but maybe we can get her again for this Thursday.

Cullen – we have funding for a happy hour?

We have 1-2 hundred to work with.

Maxim – is it in operations?
Jenny – I think so.

Maxim – several hundred is left (1500 to 1900).

Cullen would like to do engineering pre or post finals week. Start telling them about voting.

Jenny – you are not allowed to do programming during a certain time of dead week. Other items for the agenda.