GSC meeting 2008-10-29
Wednesday, October 29th, 2008Proceedings of the October 29th 2008 GSC meeting
Agenda
1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Sean!)
2) 6:00 Introductions and Announcements (George)
i. Please be aware that all meetings are audio recorded and will be made available on the GSC website.
ii. Approve minutes from the last meeting (10/22/08)
iii. Hanna won’t be here next meeting (November 5th), so we need a volunteer to take minutes.
3) 6:05 Funding (Addy)
i. Pakistanis at Stanford
ii. Persian Student Association
iii. Korean Student Association at Stanford
iv. Chinese Women Collective at Stanford
v. Stanford India Association
vi. Stanford Outdoors Budget Modification
4) 6:15 ASSU and Undergrad Senate Update (Jonny/Fagan and Justin/Ryan)
6) 6:20 Programming (Justin/Adam S.)
7) 6:25 Diversity Committee (DAC Representative)
8) 6:30 GLO (Ken)
9) 6:50 NomCom report (Eric)
10) 7:00 Environmental Faculty Dinner Series (Polina)
i. Request for $500
11) 7:05 Proposed Moratorium on Political Endorsements (Addy)
12) 7:10 GSPB Request for Magician Event (Fen/Melahn)
i. Request for $500
13) 7:15 New Business (George)
Attendance
Voting members present:
At large 2: Adam Beberg
At large 3: Nanna Notthoff
At large 4: (Interim): Ryan Peacock
Earth Sciences: Justin Brown
Education: Shane Moise
Engineering 1: Polina Segalova
Engineering 2: Addy Satija
Humanities: George Bloom (proxy Matt Turk present)
Medicine: Sean Young (proxy Maria Spletter present)
Social Sciences: Hanna Muenke
Voting members not present:
At large 5: Unfilled
At large 1: Aleksandra Korolova
Business: Rick Thielke
Law: Andrew Park
Natural Sciences: Fen Zhao
Other people present: Shelley Gaio, Kyle Anderson, Done Rip Kim, Ping Li, Annemarie Baltay, Li Zhang, Zeng Fan, Matt McLaughlin, Adam Sciambi, Andrew Danowitz, Brian Scoles, Chris Chan, Ariel Dowling, Daisy Chen, Simone Manganelli, Mary Van der Hoven, Melahn Parker, Dave Sty, Morteza Imbrahimi, Eric Osborne, Angelina Cordona, Lila Kalaf, Jonny Dorsey, Andy Lomeli, David Gobaud
Minutes
1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Sean!)
2) 6:01 Introductions and Announcements (Polina)
i. Please be aware that all meetings are audio recorded and will be made available on the GSC website.
ii. Approved minutes from the last meeting (10/22/08) by consensus.
iii. Hanna won’t be here next meeting (November 5th), so we need a volunteer to take minutes. Nanna volunteers to take this role.
3) 6:05 Undergrad Senate Update (Ryan)
Shelley from Undergrad Senate is here today and will continue to join us in the future.
– Yesterday Senate had an abbreviated meeting, and Matt had a closed meeting about SSE afterwards.
– Adam B. is working on some bylaw revisions that will affect Undergrads, so they’re waiting on those.
– Undergrads also working on the swim access time. Speaking of pool, Nanna gives brief update. Rec people are reluctant to give info on operating costs, still working on that and also trying to get more information about costs from other schools.
4) 6:08 Funding (Addy)
i. Stanford India Association – Divali celebration this Sunday from 5:30pm on at Old Union, which is the Festival of Lights and very popular in India. Requesting $2250, primarily costs for food. Expecting 450 people to attend, including general public. Giving $2250 passes by consensus.
ii. Pakistanis at Stanford – Beach BBQ targeted for new students to get to know each other. Are arranging rides from Tressider, and will request RSVPs ahead of time. Addy is helping the group with completely liability issues involved with traveling off campus. Requested $500, recommended $490 because of food cap. Giving $490 passes by consensus.
iii. Persian Student Association – Group has been around for 20 years, have primary cultural events. Have two events coming up. First is a fall party including snacks and music. Students from other universities also come, but pay some admission. Requesting $750 for this event, recommended $700 due to honorarium caps. Can’t find the budget for the second event first, so came back to it later. Notes are continued below, but audio file is at the end of ASSU update. Second event is about Persian classical music, and are inviting a professor from UC Irvine who will give a talk and two workshops. ASSU Speaker’s Bureau will also help with the costs of this event, and are requesting $1000 from GSC for honorarium. Total requested for both event is $1700. Giving $1700 passes by consensus.
iv. Chinese Women Collective at Stanford – Cultural adaptation seminars, study breaks, other talks. Group has about 50 members who attend events. Requested $4060, recommended $3860. Giving $3860 passes by consensus.
v. Korean Student Association at Stanford – First time they’ve come for funding this year. About 464 graduate students at Stanford on email list, have 350 people attend their events. Events currently planned for this quarter are: coffee breaks during exam times, a market, a lecture event, and movie night in Havana Room. Recommended $3600. Giving $3600 passes by consensus.
vi. Stanford Outdoors Budget Modification – This is a Special Fee group looking for a budget modification from last year’s budget. This is the first time they’ve been a Special Fee, so there was some difficulty last spring in getting all the sub-groups coordinated to pick correct line-items, so have some changes that they need. Requesting $11,000 to move around. This is approved by consensus.
5) ASSU Update (Jonny/Lila/Angelina)
– Phone bank this Saturday about No on Prob 8, asking for people to sign up for 3-hour shifts.
– Lila and Angelina are reestablishing a Health Advisory Board. Putting a well-being room in Old Union, and a health-week before dead week. Think some of the health issues on campus could be helped by increasing the role of bystanders, who may observe people in need of help but not step in. Are making a website, bystander.stanford.edu, to help counteract that trend. Would like participation of Grad Students as well because different situations impact them, so it would be worth having targeted scenarios on bystander.stanford.edu. Want to have someone coordinate programming for Grad Students, work on the website, and coordinate resource roll-out. Polina requests that they write up an explanation that can be sent out to the email list and people can get in touch with them accordingly.
6) 6:30 GLO (Ken/Anne/Lorette/Andy)
– Anne Boswell is new to the group, but was an Undergrad Residence Dean before this job. Others we have met before, but like to say hi again at least every year.
– Main goal of GLO is to avoid students facing difficulties (academic or personal) on their own. For example, the goal of programming is to connect students to schools and each other with the idea that that will make for a more positive experience at Stanford and that they will then have more resources.
Some of their roles are as follows:
One of the four of them is always on-call, pager number is on GLO website.
They run the CA (Community Associates) program in the residences, which is complemented by GSPB doing the off-campus stuff.
Also run Provost and President dinners among other things.
Andy works primarily with the families, and we’ve given some money to help with those events. They try to include grad student families off-campus, but have a hard time reaching them because University doesn’t specifically ask about that demographic information.
Andy will also be helping Munger get started.
Deans can be advocates for us in terms of interfacing with departments and financial offices if something comes up that we can’t coordinate on our own.
Polina asks about what they feel are the biggest issues faced by the grad students in the past 5 years. Ken feels that mental health issues have increased over that time. Have already had 4 involuntary commitments to the Psych unit so far this year. In terms of Policy issues, housing continues to be a problem, in that everything is so crowded they don’t have options for moving students around if there are roommate conflicts. Long waiting list is also a problem in that it’s clear there are more students who want housing who can’t get it. Lots of physical changes around the campus as well, which can certainly impact Grad students.
Question about why there is an increase in Mental Health concerns. Ken thinks part of it may be that because therapy and medications do well in treating existing conditions, more students are arriving at school trying to manage a condition, where previously they may not have made it so far. Also thinks there’s something to be said about the stress levels involved with being a Stanford student.
The GLO offices are just down the hall in the GCC, and also in EV, can stop by if we want to talk to them.
7) 6:48 Programming (Justin/Adam S.)
– The formal will be on April 25th, about a month into Spring quarter. Good balance of spring weather and not in the way of holidays.
– Election party on Tuesday at 5pm. The 750 Pub will be open at 11am during voting so people can stop by after voting. The polling set-up uses the outside doors to the Havana Room so the line won’t go through the pub, and will leave room for the Election Party later.
– November 15th will have tailgate at noon before USC game.
7) 6:51 Diversity Committee (Shane)
They had a meeting with the Provost to talk about the letter they sent last year outlining some goals. Two priorities are creating Diversity Advocates and increasing transparency about diversity on campus. Think statistics about grad and faculty diversity should be presented at Homecoming, and would like a link on a prominent Stanford page to a diversity website. Would like Diversity Advocates (faculty or staff) in each department, who could assist in diversity training, encourage reading applications in a manner sensitive to diversity, etc.
9) 6:53 NomCom report (Eric)
– Last week we approved a budget modification for NomCom, so Eric will say more about that, and also give other updates.
– NomCom met last Thursday to do fall committee appointments, and right now have 10 positions left total to fill, many of which are pretty precise. However, some are broader, like the Sexual Assault committee which hasn’t yet had any Grads apply, and also haven’t had enough applicants for the housing committee. Continues to want our help in emailing out to any communities we’re a part of. Probably next week we’ll vote on the appointments.
– Main news is that training will be November 19th (Wed) at Encina Hall. Training is a new thing and would like to set a precedent for this. Have a speaker who graduated from Stanford Law, accomplished many things after that, including being Chair of the Board, and will be speaking about the role of students. President’s assistant may also come, and there are plans for Jonny and Fagan to also talk. They’ll talk about major issues they feel are facing the university, which gives the 120 students participating on these committees a broad picture.
May request some additional funds for the training once they have their quotes for the event set. Reminder about the policy to submit any non VSO request for GSC money by the Friday before the meeting at which it will be considered.
10) 7:00 Environmental Faculty Dinner Series (Polina)
This idea came out of meeting with Stanford dining. Plan is to have a series of sustainable dinners including faculty working on the environment in some capacity. Have money from various other sources as well. Money could come from co-sponsorship since we’re working with ASSU and Dining, and do have $26,000 left in that account, though much of that money is line-itemed. We do tend to underspend this category though. Proposal is $300 from co-sponsorship and $200 from Chair discretionary (the latter of which does not require a vote). Giving $300 from co-sponsorship passes by consensus.
11) 7:04 Proposed Moratorium on Political Endorsements (Addy)
Addy would like us to refrain from political endorsements. Doesn’t think it’s appropriate for us as an elected body to be doing so. Various reasons he believes this, mostly based on circumstances in other countries that students may be from. For example, free speech not always the case, nations can prosecute outside their border, and not all courts are fair.
Some examples of cases where people from other countries were prosecuted by association with groups who made certain proposals, including someone from Malaysia who was prosecuted when his London college made a statement against monarchy.
Justin and Matt argue that we’re always somewhat political by default, so based on some of the examples presented by Addy, students would be in trouble anyway based on what we already do. There are lots of international students that we represent, and Addy concerned that we shouldn’t speak on their behalf for American/Californian issues.
As a specific type of entity receiving certain funding, we are apparently not allowed to endorse candidates, but referendum may be okay.
Sum of points:
International Law (some countries prosecute)
California Law (prohibits aliens from taking part in political process)
Out Constitution (Adam B. says we’re okay though)
Tangibles (What does this accomplish?)
Precedence (Where do we go next?)
Two alternate proposals that Addy would like the GSC to consider:
1) The ASSU Graduate Student Council by-laws to be amended such that we do not take stands of a political nature, over the decision of which, we do not have any control.
2) The ASSU GSC by-laws to be amended to ensure that if we need to make a political endorsement, we will requirement consensus. Any contention/objection serves as a veto for a political endorsement.
Nanna feels that given the advocacy we do (one of our three pillars), we are taking a political stance anyway, so we wouldn’t want to limit that ability by endorsing this proposal.
When we go do Legislative Action, the whole point is to influence the political process. Addy thinks that countries consider this differently than endorsing, since they do lobby the US as well.
Mary thinks much of this conversation is futile given that we don’t have the knowledge/background to evaluate the legal argument Addy is presenting.
501c3 status is important to keep in mind as well, as there are rules that need to be followed by tax exempt organizations, which we are. Every once in awhile this impacts the GSC, so it might be worth getting a straight answer from the University about what exactly we are allowed to do.
Ryan thinks we should consider writing down who votes against or abstains for bills so that international students wouldn’t be lumped in with the rest of the voting GSC unnecessarily. Also, thinks we need to be more consistent about looking at Undergrad Bills that possibly affect us, given that ignoring it might make it look like we support by default, especially if the ASSU Execs and Undergrad Senate do support it.
Maria thinks there should be some balance of the rights of students who are American Citizens and can participate in political process, without putting International students into jeapordy.
Simone thinks that if the reason we considered No on Prob 8 last week is about civil rights, then we also should have considered some of the other Propositions reflecting civil rights. Also feels that we as an elected body shouldn’t make broad proclamations – Congress, for example, doesn’t.
Ryan points out that we considered Prop 8 in particular because that impacts grad students more directly than the other Propositions.
Many people interested in meeting with legal counsel to learn more about what role the GSC can appropriately play politically. Will try to get them to come here to talk to us about that.
Not ready for a vote on this yet, moving on.
12) 7:33 GSPB Request for Magician Event (Fen/Melahn)
Want to do a show in Havana Room with a Magician. $500 gets 40-minute show, but can pay for more time if we want. The byline total for GSPB co-sponsorship is $10,000 for the year, which they haven’t spent much of yet, but based on splitting that evenly across the quarters and other expenses for events GSPB thinks they’ll have this quarter, there are only about $750 still open for this quarter. However, their budgeter isn’t at our meeting today, so can’t verify that number. We’ll vote on $500 for now, and they’ll figure out the rest of their budget and see if we want to give more money for it later. At first talked about involving families, but based on the timing of show and possible adult content, will just make it an adult event.
At the recent NOLAS event, they gave out 232 wristbands, and there were more people there who didn’t get one, so it was a good event. Trying to do something every Thursday. This week will be at 750, then will have a band, then BlueChalk, and will be at CoHo Dec 11.
13) 7:40 New Business (Polina)
No new business, adjourned.
