Posts Tagged ‘Minutes’

The proceedings from the GSC meeting on 2006-10-25

• Agenda
• Attendance
• Minutes

Agenda

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GSC Agenda: October 25, 2006: 6:15-8:00 – FOOD @ 6:00!
Graduate Community Center – Nairobi Room
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Quorum for this meeting is eight voting members.

1. 6:00 FOOD (thanks Matt!)

2. 6:15 Welcome with Introductions

3. 6:20 Announcements (Paul)
i. Minutes from 10/18

ii. Mausoleum Party = 10/27 and Rains Halloween Party = 10/28

4. 6:25 Funding (Adam)

5. 6:40 GSC Diversity Committee Update and Funding Request (Cullen)

6. 7:00 GSC Stipends Committee Update (George)

7. 7:20 GSC Checklist: Where do we go from here? (Jenny)

8. 7:40 New Business

9. 7:45 Adjourn GSC Meeting

Attendance

Cullen Buie
Matt McDonald
Donna Winston
Maxim Afanasyev
Fen Zhao
Matt Turk
Zhuo Huang
Song Li
Jessica Allen
Annemario Baltay
Jeff Laretto
Dirk Englund
John Reifenberg
George Bloom
Matt Andrews
Andrei Faraon
Larkhoon Leem
Linus Liang
Jenny Allen
Paul Gurney
Alex Ene
Rebecca Kaplan

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.

The proceedings from the GSC meeting on 2006-10-18

• Agenda
• Attendance
• Minutes

Agenda

***************************************************************
GSC Agenda: October 18, 2006: 6:15-8:15 – FOOD @ 6:00!
Graduate Community Center – Nairobi Room
***************************************************************

Quorum for this meeting is eight voting members.

1. 6:00 FOOD (thanks Matt!)

2. 6:15 Welcome with Introductions

3. 6:20 Announcements (Paul)
i. Minutes from 8/11

ii. Grad Formal Date: Which of these dates work for your department – February
23 (Friday), February 24 (Saturday), March 2 (Friday), March 3 (Saturday)?

4. 6:25 Elm Street Murders (Jasmine)
- Requesting Funds to help put on the Elm Street Murders production.

5. 6:30 Student Life Survey (Rebecca)

6. 6:40-7:00 Graduate Life Office
- Discussion with Chris Griffith, Andy Hernandez and Ken Hsu

7. 7:00-7:20 Bechtel International Center
- Discussion with John Pearson

8. 7:20 Diversity Advocacy Committee Update (Cullen)

9. 7:30 GSC Checklist: Where are We? (Jenny)

10. 7:40 New Business

11. 7:45 Adjourn GSC Meeting

Attendance

Not yet available…

Minutes

FOOD (thanks Matt and Matt’s Mom!!)

Welcome with Introductions

Announcements (Paul)
i. Minutes from 10/11

Paul: Any objections to passing the minutes from October 11th? (none)
The minutes pass by consensus.

ii. Grad Formal Date: Which of these dates work for your department
- February
23 (Friday), February 24 (Saturday), March 2 (Friday), March 3 (Saturday)?

Elm Street Murders (Jasmine)

- Requesting Funds to help put on the Elm Street Murders production.

Thank you for last weeks funding. I hoped not to have to come and ask
for more but after a week of looking for funding from five other
sources I heard that four of the five could not provide more funding.
Today I was contacted by Stanford Dining and told I needed to let them
know whether or not the event was being held by 5pm. So I think that
this is my emergency plea deadline. I am asking you if you will
support the Elm Street Murders for an additional $500 to perform in
White Plaza on Oct 31st.

Jenny: Are there any questions?

Paul: How much more money do you still need?

Jasmine: I need $1500 and am requesting $500 from you.

Paul: If we provide the event with $500 will the event be held?

Jasmine: I am going and requesting emergency funds from another group
and will hopefully have $1000 soon.

Paul: Where is the $1000 coming from?

Jasmine: The row houses.

Adam: How much are you paying for food?

Jasmine: Stanford dining is providing food and dining

Yana: Are you getting security?

Jasmine: Security is included in the propsal. The security guards are
not students they are adults.

Yana: thought I saw a sports team being paid.

Jasmine: Stanford requires that you put in an order to have the area
cleaned as needed when you host an event. The rugby team will clean
events for fund raising. So to cut down on costs I’m having the rugby
team come and clean before Stanford sends their cleaners.

Paul: Before we make a decision. I want to speak in support of this. I
appreciate that people might not be comfortable funing this as it may
set a precident for future groups coming and asking for funding but I
don’t think that will happen. Does any one want to speak against
funding this event?

Maxim: Where will the money come from?

Paul: It will come from reserves.

Maxim: In the interm it will need to come from programing’s
discretionary budget but there isn’t enough there to make it work
right now.

Jenny: We’ll work with Matt and figure it out.

Paul: We have the money in reserves.

Maxim: True but it takes time to get that money.

Adam: It will be ok.

Paul: Are there any objections to funding the Elm Street Murders for
$500? (none) passes by consensus.

Paul: Thank you for your hard work. We really hope that you advertise
to graduate students. If you bring flyers to the meeting next week we
will distribute them.

Jasmine: Absolutely.

5. Student Life Survey (Rebecca)

I have been working on the Graduate Student Life Survey. As the
graduate student council we need to better understand our population.
They seem to be pretty happy with events now because they come but it
would be good to know if there are other things we are missing that we
should be providing. Right now the main thing I need is help from the
Chairs of the advocacy committees to come up with questions regarding
their committees. We want to make the survey as robust as possible but
I don’t know anything about Healthcare and Parking and Transportation
issues.

Maria: There is a huge survey being put out from bio. We should talk
about it after this meeting.

George: How many questions per committee?

Rebecca: I’d like 10 questions from each committee ranked in order of
importance. Another thing we need to talk about is insentives for
getting people to fill out the survey. Right now we don’t have any
idea of what we will do but something like ipods or something. I’d be
really happy if our survey rate was higher than our voting rate.

Cullen: Is the format going to be something like: “how much do you
like cheese? rate from one to five”?

Rebecca: Some of the questions will be qualitative some will be
quantitative. We want to ask questions like: if there was one event
you would want to see happen what would it be? And we also want to ask
questions like: how much did you like the thanksgiving dinner?

Jenny: We sat down this week and looked at the last graduate student
life survey put out in 2002. It wasn’t as robust as we had hoped and
was heavily biased towards housing. We’d like to also get more well
rounded information including information on how much students pay for
healthcare etc. We want to have purpose of why we are collecting this
information so when you are putting your questions together keep
action items in mind. We also want information like how many families
live off campus.

Cullen: Surveys with qualitative are difficult to analyzer.

Rebecca: I Did this as a job for two years. So I recognize the
difficulty in getting qualitative information.

Matt: Can you use existing surveys? Like the surveys that come from
parking and transportation etc?

Jenny: We looked at the surveys that came from the commission on
graduate education but we didn’t think of getting the survey results
from parking and trasportation.

Kristina: Can we assume that all questions regarding demographics will
be covered?

Rebecca: You can assume that questions such as are you single/married
and man/woman and do you have kids type questions that will be asked.
If there are other demographic questions you would like answered you
can send emails to us to make sure that they all get answered.

Maria: I’m a bit concerned that if the biology and med students get
two similar surveys they will not respond to both.

Rebecca: We will definitely talk to them.

Jenny: Thank you for you work on this Rebecca.

Jenny: Please remember that Rebbecca Katz, Gail Mahood and Mark
Horowitz are coming Nov 8th.

6. Graduate Life Office
– Discussion with Chris Griffith, Andy Hernandez and Ken Hsu

Chris Griffith:

Pleas have a look at the handout which contains a brief overview of
what our office does. I think that all the university wide welcome
programs are planned by our office. Lorret is the new person of our
office starts nov 15th. She has been at the University for number of
years but is new to our office.

Ken: (Overview of the office)

The graduate life office has three main functions. The first is we
provide a support environment and counciling for graduate students.
Students are often refered to us by faculty and staff. We also act as
crisis responders. Someone from our office is on call twenty four
hours a day. We take this responsibility very seriously. If you have a
concern about yourself or someone else please call. The most common
types of calls we get are mental health issues and, unforetunately,
people get arrested. The Support, advising and couciling side is a big
part of our office. The second function of our office is programming.
We put on the only campus wide graduate student orientation event,
GOALIE. We all put on a spouse and family welcome event as well as the
president’s reception, and the grad student information center. We
work close with GSPB and we work with community associates residents.
Ken is works with EV, Andy works with families, Crothers and Rains.
People who live on campus should really get to know their CA’s. The
people off campus should pay attention to the GSPB. The third function
of our office is to enforce university rules and policies.
Unfortunately, sometimes we need to resolve disputes by enforcing
policy.

Andy:

I work mainly with graduate families. I just want to echo what Ken
said. With the GSC’s financial support the graduate family’s event was
great. I put an announcement in grad annouce email to try and get
information from off campus families. We’ve already had response from
15 families. We held a spouse welcome to help spouces get connected. I
also work with the EV undergrads, these are undergraduates who are
married, have domestic partners, or families. If you know of people
who have questions and aren’t getting answers tell them to contact us
because we know a lot of resources.

Chris: The graduate life office has two main programs: GSPB and CA’s.
Both of these are funded by the provost. Previously funding for CA’s
was cut but students said that this funding should be reinstated and
the Provost provided the funding. We also worked closely with first
group of GSC to encorporate programming to off campus students.
Through working closely with the GSC we were able to get the funding
from the provost. As well as any questions you might have I am
interested in hearing you input about initiatives we are working on
and how we can collaborate. The initiatives we are working were
started at the request of Mark Horowitz to meet feedback received from
the commission on graduate student infromation. The two main things we
are focusing on are interactions across academic disciplines and skill
development

If you are interested in getting involved or have ideas please let me
know. For the first thing we were thinking about hosting mixers for
people from different departments and lunches with faculty somewhere
close by on campus. We were also thinking of hosting a conference
style event where students showcase their research.

For skills development we are interested in looking at leadership.
This came about from a conversation with Cullen. We would like to
address what is required of faculty today. Faculty become deans, they
have students, and allocate resources. These situations put people in
a position they are not prepared for. We would like to prepare
students to fill those roles. We’d like to also look at ethical
leadership. We do a lot of consultation in office about conflict (due
to neighbours, noise etc). We would like to find some ways to give
people skills to resolve these issues themselves.

Jenny: Does anyone have any questions?

Kristina: How do people find out about your office?

Chris: Through CA’s, the website for grad issues, and grad announce,
mainly through email. We also try to attend each individual
orientations distribute the sheets that we gave to you.

Alex: There is also a GLO website.

Kristina: How do people find out about your crisis line?

Andy: In crisis or an emergency the Stanford police will contact us.

Paul: How many calls do you receive per week?

Ken: I was on call for a week and had three.

Chris: The majority of our concerns come through faculty, staff, and
roommates. Only a few calls come through the pagers.

Andy: We see things peak at the end of the quarter.

Kristina: Do you over lap with the omsbud?

Chris: We are knowledgeble of when to refer to him, and he often
refers people to us.

Jenny: Here is checklist of our over arching ideas. Things like fridge
are not important, but programming and others might be of interest to
you.

Chris: Earlier today we went to a seminar being offered to first year
students and had and hour to speak with them in an intamate setting.
One thing that we’d like to do is have an orientation that could take
place a one or two part seminar in the first quarter.

Jenny: Anyone interested in being involved in conflict resolution?
(Jenny, Kristina)

Paul: It’d be good to set a date.

Jenny: Yes we can do that.

Chris: We can get together and report back to the GSC later.

Jenny: What about leadership information? (Cullen – he’s also willing
to cause conflicts if need be).

Paul: Who will be responsible for driving this forward?

Chris: We will. They’ve given us money to move this forward so we have to.

Jenny: How are you going to interact with VPGE?

Chris: We don’t know yet but Patricia Gumpford is already refering
people to us so she is aware of us.

George: Would the orientation be scheduled for for next year?

Chris: Yes.

Jenny: We’ve been interested in this as well. I’ve talked to the
person that does the undergraduate orientation and it looks like it
might be a week long event.

Ken: The difference between undergraduates and graduates is that the
undergraduates come as a group and move to departments, whereas it’s
the opposite for the grad students. Feel free to contact us.

Jenny: Thank you for coming out to speak with us.

7. Bechtel International Center
– Discussion with John Pearson
I thought I’d say a little about general survices offered at center
and services offered to grad students. We are mainly an information
center. Previously we were known as the international student center
but the student was taken out to reflect that we cater to more than
just students. We are essentially, the imigration office for the
university. We do immigration for students and post docs, permanent
research positions. We offer a pretty large array of resources for
international students and employees. We also offered help to people
who are coming for short term visits. We get visitors from all over
the world wanting to understand how Stanford has made as much money.
We bring them in for a day or two at the most. There are probably 700
such visits per year. There are also others who come and contact
faculty directly. We also have part of our office that is focused on
helping American students apply for international scholarships such as
the Fulbright. Our current building used to be a frat house; one of
the reason that we are housed there is because we have quite an active
volunteer contigent that caters to international students. The
volunteers offers home stays, language exchanges for conversational
english skills. We also offer 15-18 english classes per week. We have
an advisor that deals almost exclusively with spouses and family
members. A spouse of a student on an F-1 visa can’t work or volunteer.
We try to work to help spouses feel at home when dealing with a spouse
who works all day in the lab or office.

I’d like to run over some of the issues affecting international
students. The international population has increased a lot in the last
10 years (this includes the graduate and undergraduate student
population as well as the visiting scholar population). The
internation population will increase as Stanford pushes the
international initiative. Since 9-11 there have been about sixty new
regulations that affect international graduate student. Our goal is to
make sure that international students don’t know and don’t worry about
these regulations. There is a lot of information out there on the
internet that mis-represents the regulations; we spend a lot of time
talking to people and convincing people that it’s not what the
regulation means.

This past fall, for the first time, we took over from registar’s
office the process where every graduate and undergraduate had to come
by our office. They had to bring copies of their visas and their
passport page. We have to confirm physical presence (all universities
need to do this). We ask all interantional students to attend a brief
session to help them understand their status. We asked them to put
their local address in the data base in a particular way. What it
meant is that for the very first time ever every international student
had to come by our office. What we’d like to move to is figuring out
how we can do our orientation differently (we currently do a five day
orientation). We have program funds for international student
organizations. This fund is provided by community volunteer and their
estate. This is someone who volunteered in the 50′s who met two
students who really became part of this persons family. This person
felt that this was one of most rewarding things she’d done and so has
provided funding to bring students and the community together. It’s
not on our web site. Programs are another part of what we do. I think
we are seen as an office that deals with paper work.

Jenny: Thank you, we are trying to do more outreach for international
students. Are there any questions?

Maxim: I am an international student. Bechtel is helpful but I think
that during orientation (at least to me and others I have talked to)
what information we are provided with is many people in the US don’t
know the regulations so you shoould be afraid of everything and be
careful. For example I know that during breaks students are allowed to
work. I think that might be helpful for students to know this.

John: We do struggle with what to tell people at orientation. We offer
workshops every week on working.

Maxim: Even at Stanford many of the staff don’t really understand
regulations and it might be helpful to hold workshops for them.

John: We do workshops with them. Every quarter we do presentations
with adminastrators. I don’t want administrors to become immigration
advisors. Does that make senses?

Maxim: I know cases where administrators don’t know about immigration
but still deal with it.

John: We’ve had problems such as this in the past. We are trying to
develop our outreach more and more. The University and the
immigration office often impose different rules. Your other issue I
think is really important and I don’t know how to address it, that is
what tone do you use address new students. 95% of grad students get
through without ever needing real advising from us. On the other hand
we need to tell new students about various federal agencies who are
not inclined to give students benefit of the doubt. We have students
who are stopped at borders, questioned etc. On one hand we don’t want
students to worry, on the other there is a changed climate here.

Guest: There are other things regarding working during the week that
didn’t come out.

John: there are two workshops that always get students. Work and Taxes.

Alex: Do you give new students workshop schedules?

John: Schedules are on the web?

Kristina: I attended a workshop on taxes a few years ago at the
I-center and it just felt like I was being sold a service.

John: I think I know what company you are talking about and they
haven’t been invited back. We get approached every year by tax and
immigration attorney’s and there are times when they need legal advice
rather than admin advice (ie car crash). We do have a list of
attorney’s. Occasionally attorney’s come to talk about how to apply
for visa’s. We do not do enough in the realm of taxes for
international students. We currently offer on-line software for
federal taxes but it does not help with California taxes. We are
looking to bring neutral people in for information on California
taxes.

Paul: Are there instances where students violate status? And what
happens to those students?

John: We are involved in SEVIS. It’s an electronic system where we
report to the governement data on international students. It’s the
same data that schools have always been required to keep. Previously
government didn’t ask for this data. Before we send everything to the
governement we check everything. So say after the class change date,
we need to send email saying that all students are fully enrolled. If
we find someone not fullly enrolled we contact them. In the years that
we’ve had an electronic system. I think it’s less than 5 students who
have found themselves in trouble because of what they were doing at
Stanford. If we get an alert we don’t just send it to the government.
If there is any alert that is a warning of action that could be taken
against students then we don’t send it, we check it first. We are paid
by Stanford not homeland security even though we have obligations to
homeland security.

Song: How many in students are in the database in the US?

John: Over 1 million. Where gsc can help us is by letting us know if
this database causing trouble.

Jenny: Thanks for coming out we really appreciate it!

8. 7:20 Thanks giving (Stephen).

Paul: this is the 9th annual thanks giving dinner for 1500 students.
Two years ago we started having it at the Wilbur dining. Last year
they started giving us a week off so they thought that the number of
people would decline but we still got 1500 people. We do allow people
to invite some family. It was catered by Stanford Dining last year.

The event is expensive and is limited to 1500 students. In the past
access for families has bee suboptimal. The Provost provides $40 000.
Our total budget is $45000. The thanksgiving coordinator coordinates
advertising, volunteers, web-site, and writes a post event report.

Families are interested in having an extra room and a more family
inviting environment. Smaller venue at GCC worked with Andy; he
suggested an separate event for ~250 at the GCC. The menu is standard
thanksgiving affair.

The venues we are considering are:

Arrillaga, Tents in the grad student living area, Wilbur, and a small
something at the GCC. The Arrillaga alumni center would seat 440
persons + 60 in the garden. Director may let the $1800 fee pass for
free. This would amount to 3 to 4 seatings (12, 1:30, 3 and if
neccesssary 4:30). For the tented option we would need standing
heaters. This option allows closer access to graduate students and can
be combined with the buildings. Seating is unlimited. The Wilbur
dining hall option would be catered by Stanford dining. The hall seats
up to 750 and is typically done in two seatings (1, and 4). The fourth
option, at the GCC would be catered by Just Catering. The Havana room
can seat 285 this would be 1 to 3 seatings and would be great for
families.

Caterers:

Michael’s catering $26/person regardless of size $39 000 for 1500 people.

Stanford Dining: offer $1750 discount. $30/person only willing to
quote for 1500 for a total of $43 250.

Just Catering: $22/person for < 500; $20/person for > 500.

Fen: How much do the venues cost?

Stephen: There are all inclusive prices. They rent the tents. Part of
the reaons that just catering is coming in so low is that they are
trying to offer competitive prices. So the total cost is for
everything.

Donna: I would prefer to have two venues but both be indoors, ie
Wilbur or the Alumni center with families over here.

Donna: How many grad students come? We could offer serveral seatings
here and other places. The system will ask how many members of family.

Song: are you going to offer any international food?

Stephen: No. This is a standard menu that they are quoting me on. Part
of what we are trying to do is give an American tradition to
international students.

Fen: The tents are heated?

Stephen: They have heating lamps. It won’t be cold but people will
have to be willing to walk through the rain.

Fen: I’m excited by the idea of having something near us. If we have
it here it feels more like a graduate student event.

Stephen: I think either way you are going to want to stagger the
seating. The food is going to be a buffet style and you don’t want
people waiting in a line forver.

Paul: I like option 4.

Adam: If it is by EV there are play rooms.

Paul: I think that putting it closer, with the family options is
important other than that I think that the rest of it seems up to you.

Stephen: if Stanford came down in pricing the separate venues might be
more of an option. But if people like the tent idea we should go for
the indoor one with families.

Matt: I’m worried with the Just Catering that if they are trying to
lowball us then we will get bad food.

Elizabeth: At beginning of year provost had welcoming dinner at the
Arrillaga family center. That might be another option.

‘

Jenny- I do want to make sure that the quality is not low.

Paul I’m not worried about Michaels.

Stephen: They also do catering with google so any of these caterers I
ask them for the buffet style. I think it’d be fun to have it in
graduate student housing. I can also ask Stanford catering if they’d
be willing to do it in EV.

9. GSC Checklist: Where are We?

Jenny – since the meeting has run long we are going to wait until next
week to do this.

10. New Business

The proceedings from the GSC meeting on 2006-10-11

• Agenda
• Attendance
• Minutes

Agenda

**************************************************************
GSC Agenda: October 11, 2006: 6:15-8:15 – FOOD @ 6:00!
Graduate Community Center – Nairobi Room
***************************************************************

Quorum for this meeting is eight voting members.

1. 6:00 FOOD (thanks Matt!)

2. 6:15 Welcome with Introductions (Jenny)

3. 6:20 Announcements (Jenny)
i. Minutes from 10/04: Change name to Stanford Concert Network

4. 6:25 Funding (Adam)
Shaking the Foundations
BioAIMS
Stanford Comedy Club

5. 6:35 Retreat recap (Jenny)

6. 6:45 Meeting with the Provost/President (Jenny & Paul)

7. 7:00 Guest Speaker: Greg Boardman
Vice Provost for Student Affairs

8. 7:20 Dance Marathon (Jenny)
– Who is the social chair within each department
– Anyone interested in being the graduate student liason?

9. 7:25 GSC Member Update (Everyone!)

10. 7:35 New Business

11. 7:40 Adjourn meeting

Attendance

Kristina Keating*
Rebecca Kaplan*
Jon Gretarsson
Melahn Parker
Avi Turchman
Allana Ortega
Dev Rajnarayan
Yana Hoy*
Matt Andrews*
Jasmine Aarons
Niraj Sheth
Sazrina Adler
Caitlin Welsberg
Song Li
John Reifenberg
Maria Spletter
Justin Brown
Andrea Hartsock
Matt McDonald
Paul Gurney*
Jenny Allen*
Cullen Buie*
Adam Beberg*
Fen Zhao

Minutes

Announcements

i. Minutes from 10/04
Jenny – Kristina, are there any changes to the minutes from October 4th? (none) Are there any objections to passing the minutes from October 4th? (none) The minutes pass by consensus.

ii. Guest speakers:

John Pearson, Chris Griffith, Ken Hsu, and Andy Hernandez on Oct 18
Greg Boardman on Nov 1
Howard Wolfe on Nov 29

Dance Marathon (Jenny)

Jeff who is organizing the Dance Marathon at White Plaza would like to get more graduate students involved. The Dance Marathon is February 10-11th, students pay $140 to participate and all the money goes to charity. I spoke to the organizers last night and said I would get more info and find out who is social chair within each department. Can you tell me who the social chairs in each department are?

Rebecca: In the B-School it’s Greg Nikodem.

Yana: In the med School Charlie Anderson.

Maria: For biosciences it’s Valerie.

Matt: For the Ed School it’s Ryan Williams.

Cullen: I think we are it for Engineering.

Kristina: For Earth Sciences it’s Joanne, I’ll look up her email and get back to you.

Kristina: Rather than going through student government they might get a better response if they posted flyers around campus.

Paul – Are they looking for student participants or a student organizer?

Jenny – Both, they want to expand from 300 students to 750 students. Is anyone interested in volunteering as liaison? (none) ok

Funding (Adam)

Shaking the Foundations (Shakings)

Rep 1: Shaking the Foundations, or Shakings as it is commonly called, is a two day conference at the law school in two and a half weeks. We are bringing two keynote speakers in from off campus as well as panelists from off campus. The panelists will address issues from Katrina to reforming legal system. The conference is open to all students on campus. Last year around 250 people attended and we are hoping to have more this year.

Rep 2: It is one of the few Law school conferences that is student run and it has been going for 8 years. The keynote speakers include Bryan Stevenson and Julie Wade.

Paul: How many grad students attend?

Rep 1: Around 200 grad students.

Paul: Are there students from other schools that come?

Rep1: Yes, students from both local and east coast schools attend.

Request $4200

Jenny: Are there any questions?

Jenny: Any objections to funding Shaking the foundations for $4200? (none) Passes by consensus.

BioAIMS:

Andrea: BioAIMS, short for the Biomedical Association for the Interest for Minority Students is a student run group which supports minority students in the Biosciences PhD program in the School of Medicine. We are looking to for funds for workshops, namely in first quarter, on getting students adjusted to grad school, optimizing their first year, and journal reading. Additionally we would like to host a graduate student community building BBQ and a banquet to acknowledge students graduating, qualifying, and those who have had other big achievements. There are approximately 30 students and 10 faculty involved.

Request: $1205

Jenny: Are there any questions? (none) Are there any objections to funding BioAIMS for $1205? (none) passes by consensus

Comedy Student Group:

Melahn: There have been 31 comedy nights in past. Now we are a student group. In the processes of becoming a student group we spoke with a couple other speakers groups.

Jenny: Melahn, not everyone here knows the history of Comedy Night. Can you explain the basics?

Melahn: Yes, Comedy night is held at the 750 club. Each night we invite 4-6 comedians from around the Bay Area and sometime from around the country. Typically we get 3-4 features and one headliner. The comedians perform for around 2 hours. We typically get over 60 students attending although it’s usually closer to 100. There are members from the club here who can also speak in support of comedy night. We are looking for $200 for honoraria for each show. During the summer the GSC paid $1200 for 14 shows. They paid for 4 shows and the pub paid for 8 shows. We previously weren’t a student group and so we weren’t able to go about getting funding through the funding committee. It took time to become a student group and in the interim the shows were funded by donations from the comedy student group. We are now looking to get funding for the rest of this season, as well as the next two quarters. We have spoken with SoCa and they might inform students that there’s an open mic after the performance. I met with these groups at the request of the office of student activities.

Paul: How many people are involved in comedy night?

Melahn: There are about 250 people on our mailing list.

Jenny: It’s an impressive amount of work that you’ve put into this. Let’s look at funding recommendation. It is my understanding you would like funding from funding committee and funding from GSC.

Adam: Request from funding committee $3300. My pool of money is not on the scale of money that they requested. I did what I could based on the rules for my pool of money. We talked about alternate funding sources like charging $1 for cover. I like what they are doing but this pool of money is spread over a large group of people.

Melahn: When we discussed the budget the $1200 that was given to us in the summer was held against us. The cap is 8000/year and we would like $5900 and we would like to be allowed to use this for more then 10 events for quarter.

Paul: Would we be breaking any bylaws by funding this?

Adam: The maximum of $200 for honoraria is a bylaw; the other rules are there to ensure the money gets distributed fairly.

Paul: So we can vote to bend these rules.

Avi: I’d like to talk about vision. I was an undergraduate student at Stanford and am now a graduate student. I think that since I’ve been here the number of graduate students has become larger than the number of undergraduate students but I think that one of the things that the Stanford community missing is linking undergraduate students and graduate students. I think that comedy night is one of the nights that can bring undergraduate students and graduate students together. We would like to expand comedy night to include undergraduates. This is part of the vision that we’ve had for this night that has already been really successful thanks to Melahn.

Jenny: Is it your intent to make comedy night a special fees group?

Melahn: Yes, there is a year long process but next year we would like to try. It is going to involve a lot of speaking to groups and collaborating.

Paul: I think that speaks to bending the rules because we want to help them keep the momentum going for another year until they can become a special fees group.

Adam: I think that there are a lot of alternate solutions, for example charging students $1 cover.

Allana: I think you underestimate the frugalness of the average graduate student. Even if it’s a minimal cost then you might prevent the students from putting on shoes and getting out door. We want to promote healthy lifestyles.

Melahn: I would prefer not to charge because of logistics. I would like to grow this event and tap into nation wide comics. For these sorts of shows it might be necessary to charge or work with other student groups.

Matt: $200 per show is the amount you’ve requested. What is the maximum number of shows?

Melahn: For this quarter we are $400 short. Next quarter there 12 shows/quarter and so only 40% is getting funded.

Rebecca: Comedy night is on Tuesday night. On an average night how many people go to the 750? Is the 750 making money?

Allan: No, frugal graduate students don’t spend money. They will buy one beer or request one water for one table for the entire show.

Melahn: The pub is not too happy with this event. They feel that the regulars who buy dinner don’t show up on comedy nights.

Allana: Instead of $4600 they’d get $4800.

Paul: Can you present options for funding? Let’s vote on the higher one first and the lower one second.

Adam: The actual request is $6800. This is higher than money we give to any other student association

Option one $6550
Option two: $4800
Option three: $3300

Melahn: Can I make a request for an option 1.5 $5800?

Rebecca: Is it entirely necessary to vote for every thing right now? Couldn’t we vote on giving them money for one quarter and then get them to come back again next quarter and ask again after they’ve looked for alternate sources of funding?

Melahn: My hope to get other sponsors to get bigger comedians.

Matt: I completely support you guys but it’s just that we get a lot of groups that comes by and if we made exceptions for every group than we’d end up with no money.

Allana: But how many other clubs would be willing to put the effort Melahn has put on every week. I am thinking that is someone paid me 50 to put on a comedy act I wouldn’t participate.

Matt: I one hundred percent agree but that’s not the issue. We get a lot of clubs coming and asking for money.

Melahn: I think you have to consider every group separately.

Matt: My recommendation would be a slower growth. As the group increases we’d be more then happy to increase budget.

Cullen: We can’t really consider everything separately because then we’d end up in a situation like the undergraduates. In addition I’m OK with it but I wouldn’t want to be here next year when the special fee doesn’t go through and you are asking for funding again.

Paul: The best way to get the special fees is to give the money and keep the momentum.

Adam: Here are the different options:

Option 1: $6150
Option 2: $4800
Option 3: $3300

Jenny: Are there any objections to option 1, funding the comedy group for $6100? (yes) Alright then it goes to a vote: [0 in favor: 8 against: 0 abstaining]

Jenny: Alright it fails. Are there any objections to option 2, funding the comedy group for $4800? (yes) Alright then it goes to a vote. [5 in favor: 2 against: 1 abstaining]

Jenny: Option 2 passes.

BioAIMS Rep: Is it possible to put in applications for funding during the summer?

Adam: Yes.

Matt: Can we slow this process down?

Rebecca: Is there anyway we can have an idea of the total budget and how much is left in the budget to get a sense of what we are taking out?

Adam: Yes, there is $80 000 left.

Jasmine: I made a request to be added to the agenda last week but see that I didn’t get added. I would like to ask for some funding for a Halloween event.

Jenny: Sorry about that would you like to tell us about your event.

Jasmine: I am putting on a Halloween theater event that I have been planning since last July. I am the social manager at chi theta chi. Other groups collaborating are the row, the student senate, Nancy How with the OSA as well as Stanford Dining. The theatre company putting on the production is Shannon Lark. It is a rocky horror picture show comedy type piece. There will be fake blood and burlesque dancing. The general shape of the event is that there will be a desert buffet put on by Stanford dining in White Plaza followed by the performance is in White Plaza. The event is on Tuesday the 31st. The desert buffet starts at 6:30 and will be picnic style seating. The stage is on the cement from 7:30 -9 after that there will be a meet the actors Halloween party at my house. At the party there will be sculptures of hands in the backyard. We are expecting 600 people for the party and 1000 people for event. One of the greatest areas that could use improvement in the graduate student community is social events and there is not much co-mingling between the graduate students and undergraduate students. I though that this would be a very good opportunity to collaborate with the different communities and bring them together. The first reason that I’m here is to talk about collaboration, second is to ask for funding. I originally thought that the event was going to be fully funded by absolute fun. But I recently found out that that was not possible because of the mausoleum. Now I am no longer scared about having funding but I am still looking for help with funding. Generally the event will cost $3200 for the performance, the physical set up will be $456, labor will be $500, and tables will be $26.

Jenny: I don’t see an item for seating. Are you not having seating?

Jasmine: No, we are planning to have every one sit on the ground in a picnic style like manner. We’re not sure if having it on a Tuesday night will work for or against our favor.

Jenny: Another thing not on the budget is promotional material.

Jasmine: That’s already been paid for.

Jenny: What is the total cost you are requesting from us?

Jasmine: $1000.

Jenny: The date and time is the same as the concert in the Dinkelspiel auditorium, is that going to conflict?

Jasmine: It’s at the same time but they are different events and cater to different groups so I don’t think it will conflict.

Cullen: How do you intend to get in touch with the graduate student population?

Jasmine: Through postering and e-dining.

Alex: Could Chris Griffiths include this in her email to all grad students?

Jenny: Typically events in the bulletin are either GSC or GSPB events.

Alex: Yes but we don’t give every event $1000.

Jenny: I think we can find other ways to help out.

Jasmine: I don’t see that as an obstacle.

Jenny: If we are going to give you funding we want to make sure that graduate students know about the event.

Cullen: A lot of grad students won’t even know that it’s Halloween.

Paul: What other support have you received?

Jasmine: I’ve received money from the Row, and the Senate. The event itself is dry although the party afterwards will not be.

Paul: How could we fund this? Could we use the discretionary fund in the programming budget?

Fen: What is the breakdown and certainty of your funding sources?

Jasmine: Some of the money is in the grey and some is concrete. The row promised $1500 and might give and additional $1000. The ASSU gave $1500, the senate gave $500. I am also in the middle of an application for more from another random fund.

Cullen: So you have $3500 definitely and maybe as much as $4500.

Jasmine: The grey area money is contingent upon along social allowances of other funds and was offered as an emergency fund.

Alex: She got $500 from the undergraduate senate.

Fen: $1000 is a lot from discretionary. I’d be ok with giving you same as the senate.

Jenny: Another funding source we could consider is reserves

Fen: We are running low on discretionary but I’m still ok with giving $500.

Alex: Can we give them $500 from the discretionary and then if they want and then them more later in the year.

Jenny: Am I hearing $500?

Jasmine: Does that mean just $500 or $500 from reserves and $500 from discretionary?

Jenny: Just $500.

Fen: Have you looked for other funding sources from grad students? GSPB, CA’s?

Jenny: How about we put $500 on the table and then we can talk about other sources of funding later?

Jasmine: I greatly appreciate you considering this only three weeks prior to the event

Jenny: Are there any objections to funding this event for $500? (none) passes by consensus.

Women’s wellness series (Carol Pertoski health promotion director at Vaden)

Jenny: We have Carole Petroski here to talk about a women’s wellness series. I’m sorry Carole, I forgot to put you on the agenda. Can you tell us about the program?

Carole: This program has been around for a dozen years as a part of student affairs, work with university. We work closely with Chris Griffiths. A recently conducted survey found that graduate women in some ways self report more stress then graduate men and both undergraduate men and women. I am working with the health improvement program interested in helping grad students with women’s issues. Five years ago two students got “graduate women’s wellness” funding. For years it was not kept up and now I want to water it. I would like to water with programs for graduate women. We thought a launch would be to do something for breast health month. A leading oncologist coming to campus and everyone is invited. We would also like to create programming that addresses the needs of graduate women. Some new fellows would like to do a group about stress relief. A nutritionist wants to do cooking classes. In conversation with Jenny we decided it would be good to get your input. What would you want in a women’s wellness series?

We recently got a $200 000 grant to stop sexual violence on this campus. These case area often not heard because they are confidential. We have used money to fund stipends to create intervention work on this campus. I open up the question to you. If we were to do this women’s wellness series what would be the things that women would come out for. Areas such as relationships, nutrition, stress, sleep, general wellness, dental health.

Alex: The things you mentioned, sleep, dental, health, stress , sound good. They make us pay 25 for dental health care but don’t cover much.

Carole: We would not be dealing with problems of health insurance.

Kristina: I bet if you raffled off a free trip to the dentist you’d get a lot of people there.

Carole: What about a workshop on massage techniques?

Carole: What about cooking classes, or cooking on a budget.

Cullen: That’s a great idea.

Maria: Last year we did cooking classes, people that showed up and it was lots of fun but it was difficult to get people involved. We would cook and prepare a full meal.

Carole: How many students were involved?

Maria: We had 4 sessions, 10 students came to the first set and the 15 people came to the second set.

Carole: What about a one shot deal? People at CAPS are really interested in building a class. Folks at the family fitness centre are putting special attention on how to put together a plan and how to put together a work shop.

Fen: I’d be interested in family planning seminar including things like having kids in while writing your dissertation.

Yana: Yes, most people say it’s a good time because you are done with lab experiments. Write, defend and then have kids after your defense.

Matt: How about a big buddy program for pregnant graduate student mothers. I have six pregnant women in my house daily because my wife has had children and offers them support.

Carole: What about spouses and partners that are here? I think that some of the international spouses are really isolated.

Cullen: I’ll speak to that. I think that’s a huge need but I think it would be difficult to reach to them.

Matt: Try talking to the CA’s.

Carole: I wanted to talk to you first. The biggest problem we have is getting attention of the graduate student community .

Cullen: For students something to address might be thinking of your whole life. Such as finding ways for graduate students to implement fitness in your life. i.e. healthy holistic life styles, eating, sleep etc. Grad school taxes everything because grad school demands so much of your time. If there were people who could guide through it and help grad students get through that would be helpful.

Carole: Something like a dummy’s guide to surviving grad school?

Cullen: I think that people build up habits as a grad student that will get your through but not help you in the rest of you life.

Carole: What about practical topics versus research topics such as how lifestyle affects concentration?

Jenny: I’d go with practical tips. I think if you gave research seminars you’d get a smaller group of people. Some times people get stressed about finances.

Carole: Interesting, I would have thought that graduate students would have a handle on that.

Maria: I Agree with Jenny that you should focus on practical training but attaching a statistic with the practical training might be good too.

Carole: There many studies on these topics such as the link between sleep deprivation and weight gain. Thanks for great suggestions. I invite you to get in touch with me if you have any more ideas for this.

Jenny: We’d like to help promote we have grad events, plus we send out an email once per month that goes to all grad students.

Carole: We are going to begin with breast health month. We are inviting students to stay after the talk and teaching them how to do a really good breast exam.

Maria: You should also get in touch with the graduate women’s groups.

Carole: Is there a central group?

Maria: I’m part of SEGWA, which is an umbrella organization. We have a website that lists women’s groups.

Carole: How do we find fuzzy women?

Jenny: I’ll look into it.

Retreat Recap:

Jenny: didn’t end at 7:15 but I would like to use the next 10 minutes. On back of agenda checklist. For the rest of year going to get as many goals as possible accomplished. (Goes through check list on the back of the agenda).

Cullen: I am meeting with Pat Jones from diversity cabinet next Thursday and am also looking to meet with Roberta and Artie.

Fen: We will have a new webmaster next week.

Maria: The bulletin is in progress.

Meeting Adjourned

The proceedings from the GSC meeting on 2006-10-04

• Agenda
• Attendance
• Minutes

Agenda

*************************************************************
GSC Agenda: October 4, 2006: 6:15-8:15 – FOOD @ 6:00!
Graduate Community Center – Nairobi Room
***************************************************************

Quorum for this meeting is eight voting members.

1. 6:00 FOOD (thanks!!)

2. 6:15 Welcome with Introductions (Jenny)

3. 6:20 Announcements (Jenny)
i. Minutes from 9/27
ii. REMINDER: Don’t for get to send Maria your submissions for the fall bulletin by Friday Oct 6th (spletter@stanford.edu)
iii. REMINDER: Submit reimbursable expenses (with receipts) to Jeff Laretto for the GSC Welcome Party
iv. REMINDER: The following people need to pick up t-shirts from Donna: Jeff Laretto, Rebecca Kaplan, Zhuo Huang, Matt Andrews, Hershey Avula, Laura Graham, Cullen Buie and Shireen Barday. If they don’t pick them up today, Donna will leave the shirts in the GSC room & they may not be able to find the size they need if that happens.
v. THANK YOU: All the volunteers at the Welcome Party (including Fen, Paul, Maxim, Kristina, Yana, Matt, Song Li, George, and Dirk)!
vi. REQUEST: Kristina is going to be away for the October 25th and November 1st meetings. Can someone volunteer to be secretary for those two weeks? (Kristina will send a reminder closer to the dates for whoever volunteers). Thanks!

4. 6:25 Parking and Transportation FAQ (Kristina and Aaron)

5. 6:40 Funding (Adam)
- Mexican Students Association (MSA)
- Indonesian Club at Stanford (ICS)

6. 6:50 Retreat update (Jenny and Kristina)

7. 6:55 Agenda for President/Provost meeting (Jenny and Paul)

8. 7:10 Healthcare Update (Kristina)

9. 7:25 New Business

10. 7:30 Adjourn meeting

Attendance

Kristina Keating*
Aaron Fafarman (P&T)
Fen Zhao
Alexandre Ene
Paul Gurney*
Niraj Sheth (Daily)
Cullen Buie*
Matt Andrews*
Elizabeth Heng
Shireen Barday*
Alejandro Ponce-Rodriguez
Linus Liang
Dona Winston* (proxy for Dirk)
Evelyn Mintarno
Zhuo Huang
Song Li*
Matt
George Bloom
Elizabeth Buck (Stanford Concert Network)
Jeff Laretto*
Jenny Allen*

Minutes

FOOD (Thanks Matt!!)
Welcome with Introductions (Jenny)
Announcements (Jenny)
i. Minutes from 9/27 (ammend to include Donna and Tom in the attendance).
Jenny – With those two corrections are there any objections to passing the minutes from 9/27? (none) The minutes pass.
ii. REMINDER: Don’t for get to send Maria your submissions for the fall bulletin by Friday Oct 6th (spletter@stanford.edu)
iii. REMINDER: Submit reimbursable expenses (with receipts) to Jeff Laretto for the GSC Welcome Party
iv. REMINDER: The following people need to pick up t-shirts from Donna: Jeff Laretto, Rebecca Kaplan, Zhuo Huang, Matt Andrews, Hershey Avula, Laura Graham, Cullen Buie and Shireen Barday. If they don’t pick them up today, Donna will leave the shirts in the GSC room & they may not be able to find the size they need if that happens.
v. THANK YOU: All the volunteers at the Welcome Party (including Fen, Paul, Maxim, Kristina, Yana, Matt, Song Li, George, and Dirk)!
vi. REQUEST: Kristina is going to be away for the October 25th and November 1st meetings. Can someone volunteer to be secretary for those two weeks? (Kristina will send a reminder closer to the dates for whoever volunteers). Thanks! (Cullen volunteered to do the 25th and Jenny volunteer to do Nov 1st)

Additional annoucement (Fen):
The Stanford Concert Network would like to request assistance from the GSC. They are registered as an undergraduate group but cater to both graduate and undergraduate students. They put on bring performances to the university and were previously organizing the events at COHO. They have out grown COHO and so would like to bring the events to the 750 and host them in the Havana room. However, since they are an undergraduate group they cannot reserve the Havana room and were wondering if the GSC would be willing to sponsor the event book the room. They would also need access to the sound equipment. The even is four days during this quarter.

Paul – I think that this is something we can do without putting to a vote. Jenny and I can take care of it. Do you know if they’ve check to see if the room is available on the dates they are interested in?

Fen – I don’t know.

Parking and Transportation FAQ (Kristina and Aaron)

After Hannah graduated, the people she recruited to help with the parking and transportation committee moved forward with the transportation board. We have been working on a survey, you may have received emails regarding survey, looking for more ways to get funding for the Go-pass, and looking for ways to convince the provost to continue to contribute funding to the go-pass. The survey has been designed to obtain the GUP numbers (number of peak hour trips) from students who currently use the Go-pass as well as trying to discertain how much money grad students are willing to pay to keep the program running. We are looking into having a tiered system which charges students more depending on their location from Stanford. So far we’ve collected 650 responses to the survey request, about 450 are current users the remaining 200 are students who are interested in using the GO-pass in the future. So about half of the current users have responded. So far the numbers indicate that go pass replaces peak transit hours for the majority of Caltrain users which is very different from statistics from parking and transportation which attributes only about 10 peak hour trips to graduate students. I am meeting to discuss these numbers and the feasibility of using tiered system with Brodie Hamilton next Tuesday. We are also working to see if the combination of the effect of the GUP, the image/recruiting and money that we are willing to contribute as grad students may convince provost to continue to fund. In addition we are looking into finding alternate sources of funding.

Paul – What are people willing to pay?
Aaron – In the survey we gave choices based on where you come from. Locally people were willing to pay $80, more than half the respondants coming from San Francisco or San Jose were willing to pay $500. It’s still going to be difficult to set numbers based on these statistics to tell provost how much money we can guarantee from grad students.

Jenny – What about incoming students? Do you see a problem with having people pay the same rate in September?

Aaron – We haven’t thought about that but we should look into a pro-rated system.

Jenny – You should talk to the Deans about chipping in to support the program.

Aaron – Total cost of the GO-pass is $320 000. Even if the schools were willing to contribute per student in their school but might not make much of a dent, we we will ask.

Matt – I think you should be aware of the bias in the Go-pass survey. In the email that went out encouraging students to participate it says “you could save the go-pass”.

Aaron – We were looking to survey students who already use the Go-pass so we intentionally biased the survey

Matt – But perhaps, by including that bias, the student who responded would say they would be willing to say they would pay more than they actually would.

? – What other options are there besides the go pass.

Aaron – When we looked at the economics of other options there was nothing that even came close to the Go-pass.

George – Is the point of the program to have a benefit for off campus students or to promote alternative methods of transportation for students who already live off campus.

Aaron – It’s a combination of both.

Cullen – Has there been any thought proposing another fee that was small but also provieded benefits for on campus students.

Kristina – That’s what the previous measure tried to do, but it turned out that the benefits for on campus students ended up being the expensive and not comparable to the Go-pass for off campus students.

Paul – What’s your approach for provost?

Aaron – We want to meet with Brodie Hamilton before we meet with the provost, but we would like to meet with the provost.

Paul – What can we say to the provost to make things easier for you?

Aaron – Digest of what I’ve said. The numbers from our survey are showing different results than those from P&T, we are looking for support from the deans, and looking for alternate sources of funding. The Law school Dean already spoken up in support of the program.

Jenny – Have you already asked the Deans for money for funding?

Aaron – No. We’re asking for support now and will look in to getting funding at a later time. So far we have support from the Med school, SES and the Law school.

Linus – What’s the history of this program?

Jenny – It was offered in 2005 on a trial basis for free. This year it was offered at a $60 per pass, the rest was funded by the provost and the GSC.

Linus – No one paid I the original program?

Jenny – Yes, but it took years to get the program in place.

Linus – Have you explored the option of forcing all grad students to pay something?

Jenny – Yes but didn’t pass. The Provost said we needed to put on ballot in order to be willing to fund it for 2006.

Paul – This is an option we can try again.

Linus –Berkley has a similar program but it was $30. It’s not something that you can opt out of.

Kristina – Is it possible to create a fee that is only charged to graduate students living off campus?

Jenny – No, the way that the constitution works you can’t divide up a fee between on and off campus students.

Aaron – How often do you meet with provost ?

Paul– We meet with him once a quarter but we can set more meetings. We can mention it tomorrow and talk about what he needs to see to move the program forward and let him know that you will be wanting to meet with him.

Aaron – That would be great.

Jenny – Thank you for all your work.

Aaron – I will be keeping survey up as long as it needs to be up.

George – if the point was to get it passed why not have a fee where you either get a hundred dollars off a parking pass or a go pass?

Paul – That’s a great idea, especially if you could get some funding from the provost to bring the cost to students down and that way you’d get spend less than $100 but get something worth $100.

Funding (Adam)

Paul – Adam is not here. The constitution just say that the finance committee needs to report to GSC. Do we need him? Jeff could you act as the representative for the finance committee?

Jeff – OK but I don’t know what the requests were or how much the finance committee approved.

Paul – I think that he sent the information to Jenny and I. (checks computer)

Jenny – While Paul is looking for the requests, can we get an introduction from both the student groups?

Mexican Students Association (MSA)

The goal of our group is to bring the Mexican community at Stanford together and to promote Mexican culture to non-Mexican students. We have about 100 graduate students and about 80% attend the events.

Events: Comida de Bienvaneda, a reception BBQ and reunion for mexican students ($455); Pasada, a gathering at night where we break a pinata ($632); Rosa de Reys, traditional gathering after Christmas ($512); Cena Mexicana ($830); Carne Asada ($455); a Seminar on Political Changes in Mexico ($1050); and Fiesta de despedida ($830). We are asking for support from the GSC and will get some funding from other sources.

Request: $4764

Jeff – Are there any questions regarding the events?

Kristina – For Dirk’s sake – how many people are in your association?

MSA rep – 100 graduate students, about 80% attend the events

Jenny – Are there any objections to funding the MSA for $4764? (none) Seeing no objections that passes by consensus.

Indonesian Club at Stanford (ICS)
Event: Welcome reception in two weeks
Request: $250

Jeff – Are there any questions regarding this event? (none)

Jenny – Are there any objections to funding the ICS for $250? (none) Seeing no objections this passes by consensus.

GSC promotion stuff (Jenny)

Last week we decided on mint lip gloss but I found another company that makes chocolate so I’m going to look into that and we will discuss this again next week.
I looked into Bicycle fenders are out of our budget range

Alex – What about hooks for the back of the door?

Jenny – We’ll look into it.

Jenny – On the agenda there is a picture of a water bottle cages. What do people think aobut the water bottle cage?

Cullen – It seems like it would be difficult to have something written on the water bottle cage that people would actually see.

Donna – What about GSC underwear?

Kristina – I like the idea of laundry bags

Matt – What about reflectors? I’ve seen people walking around with them.

Elizabeth – What about umbrellas.

Jenny – I’ll look into that stuff. And report back again next week.

Retreat update (Jenny and Kristina)

The details of the retreat including a preliminary agenda have been handed out to those attending the retreat? Are there specific subjects or things not on the agenda that people want to discuss?

We have extra space if anyone else is interested in coming.

Linus – I’d be interested in attending but I need to check my schedule.

Elizabeth – My cousin’s wedding is that weekend so I’m taking off and won’t be able to make it.

Agenda for President/Provost meeting (Jenny and Paul)

Jenny – The agenda got emailed to everyone. Since you’ve had a chance to look at it is there anything that you would like to add?

Cullen – I want to know how much the VPGE can do. For example would the VPGE be willing to help out with the P&T issues or not?

Paul – I see this meeting as a time to put the GSC in front of the Provost and President.

Song – I have a question for the meeting with the provost: are you going to suggest extra funding to increase interaction between student groups?

Jenny – Yes, we want to have him support larger events like the Lunar New Year.

Paul – We want to know how he sees the interaction between the different departments going.

Healthcare Update (Kristina)

Paul and I met with Ira Friedman, the Director of Vaden Student Health Services to discuss the future of the Heath and Wellness Advocacy Committee. The overwhelming impression from the meeting was that Ira is committed to ensuring that students have adequate, affordable coverage and that all students are covered including dependents. We discussed the change in dependant coverage, we discussed the rising cost of health care, and we discussed wellness programming. We are still figuring out what we are going to advocate for this year.

Paul – What would be the best way to get information from families given privacy issues?

Matt –It would be best if Ira sent a staff person to go had someone go door to door.

Donna – We could also do this through CA’s for families as well as couples. There are couples without families who might not be insured.

Kristina – Ira also talked about getting a group together for a seminar on the drivers of the cost of health insurance. Who would be interested in attending?

(George Matt, Elizabeth, Cullen, Jenny, Paul)

Kristina – I’ve also gotten in touch with the NomCom and we are going to meet to discuss the relationship between the GSC and the NomCom.

New Business

Donna – The freezer is broken and needs to be cleaned/fixed.

Adjourn meeting