GSC Meeting 2007-09-26
Wednesday, September 26th, 2007Proceedings of the September 26th, 2007 meeting
Agenda
1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Anwei!)
2) 6:00 Welcome with introductions (Kristina/George)
3) 6:05 Announcements (Kristina/George)
i. Please be aware that all meetings are recorded and will be made available on the GSC website.
ii. Approve minutes from the last meeting (9/19/07) with the following added note:
ETA: At the 9/19 meeting, a budget of $2335 was approved for the BioAIMS group to hold a number of events during the year. After the meeting, it was brought to the attention of the funding chair that two of the planned events of the group, which were to be held off-campus, cannot be funded by the GSC because of its requirement that all funded events be held on-campus. Therefore, the budget for BioAIMS has been reduced to $2085, with the funding removed for the two planned off campus events.
iii. George will be taking a 2-month leave of absence. During that time, Matt Turk will be his proxy, and Euan will help with chair responsibilities.
iv. GSC members need to attend a funding committee meeting each quarter. Kristina will send out an email for date sign-ups, to which you should respond.
4) 6:10 Funding (Polina)
i. Shaking the Foundations Conference
ii. Romanian Student Association
iii. GSB Management Consulting Club
iv. Comedy Club
5) 6:30 Programming (Justin and Adam S.)
6) 6:35 ASSU Update (Hershey)
7) 6:40 Assistant for Graduate Elections (Ryan and Bernard)
8) 6:50 New Business
Attendance
Voting members present:
At large 2: Hanna Muenke
At large 3: Kristina Keating
At large 4: Zeng Fan
Business: Rhyan Uy
Earth Sciences: Kyle Anderson
Engineering 1: Melahn Parker
Engineering 2: Marja Mullings
Humanities: George Bloom (proxy Matt Turk present)
Law: Shireen Barday
Medicine: Yana Hoy
Natural Sciences: Fen Zhao
Social Sciences: Euan Robertson
Voting members not present:
Education: Unfilled
At large 1: Maxim Afanasyev
At large 5: Lan Wei
Additional attendees – Donna Winston, Polina Segalova, Justin Brown, Alexa Van Brunt, Mindy Jeny, Brian Berseth, Hershey Avula, Adrianna Dahir, Adrei Faraon, Sharmini Pitter, Anwei Chai, Aby John, Moshe Malkin, Ina Shen, Sean Y, Ilsa Dshmer, Adam Beberg, Christian Cader
Minutes
1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Anwei!)
2) 6:00 Welcome with introductions (Kristina/George)
3) 6:03 Announcements (Kristina/George)
i. Please be aware that all meetings are recorded and will be made available on the GSC website.
ii. Minutes from the last meeting (9/19/07) are approved with the following added note:
ETA: At the 9/19 meeting, a budget of $2335 was approved for the BioAIMS group to hold a number of events during the year. After the meeting, it was brought to the attention of the funding chair that two of the planned events of the group, which were to be held off-campus, cannot be funded by the GSC because of its requirement that all funded events be held on-campus. Therefore, the budget for BioAIMS has been reduced to $2085, with the funding removed for the two planned off campus events.
iii. George will be taking a 2-month leave of absence because he is studying abroad. During that time, Matt Turk will be his proxy, and Euan will help with chair responsibilities.
iv. GSC members need to attend a funding committee meeting each quarter. Kristina will send out an email for date sign-ups, to which you should respond. Meetings are Mondays at 11:30am in the Clark Center.
4) 6:07 Funding (Polina)
Polina describes the general funding process again. See previous minutes if you would like this information.
i. GSB Management Consulting Club
Workshops to help students prepare for interviews with case interviews. This is applicable to people beyond the GSB, such as others going into consulting. Held on October 3rd, with sessions at12-2pm, and 9:30-11pm. Requested $2,850, recommended $900. ($750 for speaker, $150 for snacks). Currently, students are paying $48 to attend, but hopefully ticket prices could be lowered if some funding is approved. Open to up to 60 students. Giving $900 passes by consensus.
ii. Shaking the Foundations Conference
Conference held at the Law School. Series of workshops, panels, and keynote speakers, etc. All student organized. Topics include the future of the death penalty, voting rights, racial justice, etc. Expensive event due to panelists coming in. They’re a public interest group, so rely on outside funding. Conference held October 5th and 6th. Fee for students is $5 now, $10 later. Attendance was 250 last year, hoping for more. Requested $5650, recommended $4200. Giving $4200 passes by consensus.
iii. Romanian Student Association
Barbecue this Friday, September 28th. Requested $350, Recommended $350. Giving $350 passes by consensus.
iv. Comedy Club
Secretary note: The recorder ran out of batteries at the very beginning of this presentation, but batteries were replaced quickly.
Some history of the comedy club:
Have done 59 shows since Jan 31st 2006.
-15 Winter/Spring shows: $200 each from GSC funding to 750 for activities.
-14 summer shows $100 from GSC and $100 from 750.
-30 Fall/Winter/Spring shows $160 each from GSC through Comedy Club.
GSC previously gave $4800 with intent of Comedy Club becoming a special fee. Made it on ballot with 1139 signatures, but failed to pass (780 said yes (46.4% voting, 10% total population), 902 said no, 566 abstained). Melahn points out that no grad group has ever passed the special fees.
The Comedy Club is currently requesting $8000 from the GSC ($200 in marketing expenses, $7800), which covers the cost of 30 shows this year.
Comes out to $260 each show, which will be matched with $160 from Pub in food and drink for comics
Will have 6 comics per show: (Headliner, 4 features, host). Comics have transportation costs, at the least driving from around SF, which is part of their payment. The headlining act would usually get paid $500 per show, but it costs us less because the events are on Tuesdays.
So far, 176 comics have performed, and 66 are will not perform until we can pay better. Of the 176 comics, 30 would likely perform for free, 54 would require a little payment to at least cover their gas, and 92 require more significant payment as they do this or a career. Want more funding this year to be able to pay the 66 new comics who have higher fees and continue to pay the past comics who won’t come out for free.
Comedy Club provides comparisons to the budgets for other special fee groups (groups that have a high operating budget). Also lists other student groups who have gotten high budgets from the GSC with comparable membership numbers.
Fen asks about honorarium, Polina reiterates that the cap is $750, typically per event, but it is unusual for a group to ask for so many honorarium.
There is a discussion about attendance at the Comedy Club events. Melahn and other members of the Comedy Club report 100 people when he counted, others who have attended estimate closer to 60, but in general, there seems to be a crowd in the GCC.
Euan asks about the collection which has been there, which gets between $8 and $30, which goes to the comics.
[Change from after the meeting – Half of the tip collected goes to the comic, the other half goes to the bartender]
Adam B. reports that the Comedy Club was given a lot of money initially as a new student group, but was expected to later get special fees status. They were also recommended to work with other groups such as the Speakers Bureau and Concert Network which co-sponsor events, and also to work with Undergrads for funding. Adam also reports elections time trouble with Comedy Club advertising, but Melahn disputes this.
Shireen reports having gone and found the content objectionable. Melahn reports that comics could do cleaner material, but he hadn’t heard any complaints.
Melahn also reports that he did ask to work with the Undergrads, and Hershey does agree that Melahn asked at the end of spring quarter. However, Comedy Club was not flexible in location, and 750 is not so great for undergrads.
Donna responds to Adam B’s comments about that the Comedy Club should be working with Speakers Bureau, arguing that this isn’t really feasible, because of the set-up of smaller weekly events. Donna really likes that it is weekly, and would want funding to come from somewhere, even if it cannot be through GSC funding for student organizations.
Moshe argues that many small events are just as good and should be funded as well as fewer larger events.
Kristina breaks vote into two parts. First is $2480, which is the amount recommended by the funding committee as coming from the Graduate Student General Fee. Second vote is for an additional $5620, which would need to come from the GSC reserves. Short discussion ensues about the GSC reserves.
First vote ($2480 from GSGF): Objection to consensus. 8 for, 1 opposed, 3 abstaining. This amount passes.
Second vote ($5620 from reserves): Objections to consensus. 1 for, 7 opposed, 4 abstaining. This amount fails.
Melahn asks that an intermediate amount be voted on from the GSC reserves.
Rhyan brings up the point that funding the Comedy Club failed in a referendum (the Special Fees vote), so it would be irresponsible to approved it. Donna says that we have gone against referendum votes in the past.
Third vote for $2000 from reserves.
3 for, 6 against, 3 abstaining. This does not pass.
5) 7:00 Programming (Justin and Adam S.)
Needs volunteers for Oct 5th Welcome Back party, lots of roles, including server, sober monitors, set-up/take down. Donna reminds us that it’s expected for GSC members to help out or find a proxy, because we can’t just fund events and expect CAs to do all of the actual work at the event. So far only 7 of 12 people who are present at the meeting have signed up to help, so Justin encourages those people to sign up or find a proxy to work for them.
6) 7:02 ASSU Update (Hershey)
Lots of new things.
-Constitutional Council Interview Committee has found its two needed members (for a total of 4).
-Old Union is now open, lots of fun stuff, including new eatery (Axe and Palm), GSC office over there, meeting rooms over there too. Have a party this Friday, which will possibly have members of Santana performing. They have created a programming board for events at the Old Union, have $4000 so far, aim to have $10,000 over the year.
-Gender neutral housing board is starting, so talk to Hershey if you want to be involved in that.
-Social events – Mausoleum will be on actual Halloween, Wednesday October 31st. It is a dry event, which is a possible turn-off for grad students. Marja also says that undergrads don’t like us at their events anyway (“sketchy grad student” stereotype), which also may make grad students less interested in attending.
-CourseGuide is up and running through Axess, and has many ratings of courses available.
-SSE is starting a bartending class. Will have entrepreneurial funding for innovative student groups. Donna recommends using people who pass the bartending course to staff future events calling for bartending.
7) 7:07 Assistant for Graduate Elections (Ryan and Bernard).
Ryan is this year’s elections commissioner. Ryan welcomes any emails with suggestions about next year’s elections. Can be best contacted at woessner@stanford.edu. Most importantly, they need to find an Assistant for Graduate Elections. Workload would be 1 hour a week in Autumn quarter, 3-4 hours per week in Winter, and 5-10 hours per week during elections time in beginning of Spring quarter. No one who is officially involved in GSC as voting member or paid member can take this role. Ryan has a list of specific duties that this person would be doing. Kristina suggests that Ryan make up an advertising and send it out on the GSC listserve. Every member should then spread the word and find someone to apply for the position. The position pays $1500. The person would only do the graduate side of elections, with a focus on getting out the vote for graduate students.
8) 7:13 New Business
Congrats to Marja on passing her Quals.
