GSC meeting 2008-11-19
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008Proceedings of the November 19th, 2008 GSC meeting
Agenda
1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Shane!)
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 (11/12/08)
3) 6:05 Funding (Addy)
i. Russian Student Association
ii. Comedy Club
4) 6:15 Proposal to allocate more money for co-sponsorship (Addy)
5) 6:20 ASSU Update (Jonny/Fagan)
6) 6:25 Elections Committee Update (Etosha)
7) 6:30 Public Safety (Chief Laura Wilson)
8) 6:50 Undergrad Senate Update (Justin/Ryan/Shelley)
9) 6:55 Programming (Justin/Adam S.)
10) 7:00 Faculty Senate Update (Adam B.)
11) 7:05 Funding Request ($400) for Grad Diversity Leaders Dinner (Justin)
12) 7:10 New Business (George)
Attendance
Voting members present:
At large 1: Aleksandra Korolova
At large 2: Adam Beberg
At large 3: Nanna Notthoff
At large 4: Ryan Peacock
At large 5: Mary Van der Hoven
Earth Sciences: Justin Brown
Education: Shane Moise
Engineering 1: Polina Segalova
Engineering 2: Addy Satija (proxy Andrew Danowitz present)
Humanities: George Bloom
Law: Andrew Park
Medicine: Sean Young (proxy Maria Spletter present)
Social Sciences: Hanna Muenke
Voting members not present:
Business: Rick Thielke
Natural Sciences: Fen Zhao
Other people present: Ping Li (Funding Committee), Melahn Parker (Comedy Club), Sohan Dharmaroya (Comedy Club), Simone Manganelli, Matt McLaughlin, Daisy Chen (Daily), Daniel Change, Matt Turk, Alex Naxlobin (Russian Student Association), Adam Sciambi, Irene Chu, David Gobaud, Alex Ene, Etosha Cave, Lan Wei (Funding Committee)
Minutes
1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Shane!)
2) 6:06 Introductions and Announcements (George)
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 (11/12/08) by consensus.
3) 6:10 Funding (Lan)
i. Russian Student Association – Requesting money for two events. First is a Dec 6 welcome back party with $550 requested for that. Second event is Orthodox New Year on 19th of January, with $600 requested. For one other event they wanted to do, they missed the deadline for advertising, so could not get funding for that. Total recommended is $1150. Giving $1150 passes by consensus.
ii. Comedy Club – Two applications. First for three events in winter quarter. BGSA, Stanford Indian Students and Muslim Students Awareness Network would like to work with Comedy Club to put on co-sponsored events. First two in early February. Are also getting money from Undergrads and Speakers Bureau. Each event will be a comedy show, with comics potentially reflecting some of the experiences and cultures of those groups. Comedy Club has already hit their group limit, so this money would come from co-sponsorship. $3250 is currently left in that account. Each show costs about $1000, asking us for half of the total amount, $1500. Have one comic in mind already, think they could get other good ones as well. Plan to rent out a larger space on campus that can hold a larger crowd than the 750. All the groups are predominantly grad students, so this should be reflected in attendance at the event. Giving $1500 passes by consensus.
Also requesting $3000 from us for a big event, which would come from the Big Event fund. Plan to have it Dec 5th at Kresge, which can hold 600 people. Expecting $6000 cost total. It will be a similar Hypnotist/Comedy Show as they’ve held in the past. Last time, they got good attendance in MemAud.
Reminder of how our funding works.
About $95K from GSGF, we added $50K from our reserves to that, for $145K total for funding for events. $135K is for VSOs (with line-item caps and $8000 limit), $10K for co-sponsorship (VSOs working together). We later approved $10K from the reserves for big events.
Matt McLaughlin thinks we should overdraw co-sponsorship if anything, so money could come from anything left out of the $135K at the end of the year, rather than taking from reserves directly.
Adam B. thinks that Comedy Club is requesting too much money overall (hit their $8000 cap, now requesting $1500 for co-sponsored events and $3000 for big event for $12500 total), and that although they fall within the guidelines for co-sponsorship and Big Event, it’s still a lot of money overall which is then not going to other student groups. Some others agree.
Ryan thinks we should have a discussion about what we would like to do with co-sponsorship before we overdraw it. For example, perhaps agreeing ahead of time on a higher firm limit, rather than just agreeing that $10,000 may be too low.
Alex would like to see us be more clear how we treat requests from other VSOs with overlapping populations (given the goal of using the money to reach as many students as possible), for example, Chinese Students overall, and Chinese Women’s collective.
Adam B. says they used to have a cap of $30 per student actually in the group (not just on the mailing list), but we’ve used different systems lately, perhaps not working terrifically either.
George reminds us that the point of co-sponsorships is to get more and different students involved.
Representative of Comedy Club thinks that this is a good chance to get new students involved, for example, some of the students in those cultural groups might not feel comfortable in bar scene (where weekly comedy nights are held), so it’s nice to give them a chance to attend a show in a different setting.
Nanna asks what else they have considered for funding, especially since they do have this trouble every year with wanting to put on more events than their caps allow. For the Big Event, Speakers Bureau is giving $1000, Execs giving $1000-$1500, and Undergrads are giving $1000.
Polina thinks we should table this discussion about the request in particular in order to come up with clearer expectations about how each of the pools of money should be distributed in general.
However, the event is coming up soon, and there’s no meeting over Thanksgiving, so they cannot wait for us to have a separate discussion.
Matt reports that we have about 60K left for the remainder of the year, having already allocated more than half of our budget in the first quarter alone.
Melahn says that this Comedy Show/Hypnotist was a successful event in the past, and was then seen as a good chance to get away from the weekly events. Requests that we consider $2000 instead of $3000, and they could ask the other sources for more money.
Objections to giving $2000 from Big Event fund, so move to roll-call vote.
5 for, 7 opposed, 1 abstaining. Fails.
4) 6:37 Proposal to allocate more money for co-sponsorship (Lan)
Tabling this.
5) 6:37 Public Safety (Chief Laura Wilson)
Sent out the latest safety report in October via email to all students, and now has paper copies of it for us.
Chief Wilson is a 1991 Stanford alum, Human Biology Major. Stayed in Police Work because she likes managing big events, liked the chance to do training and impact how the police interact with students.
Some of the units: Patrols, Traffic/Parking (can’t arrest, but can cite), Event management (ranging from our parties to visiting dignitaries, about 400 per year).
One thing they’re working on is reaching out to International Students, who may not understand the policies of the US or are afraid of approaching the police.
The police put on workshops for groups, which include Identity Theft, Gun removal, and Safety techniques. A group can get in touch with them to request these.
Winter quarter offer Police Academy, meets 1 night a week, get some experience about parts of the police job, like driving the car, responding to threats, etc.
Polina asks about the sexual assault numbers, which have increased over time. Polina wonders whether this is due to underreporting or actual increasing. Chief Wilson thinks that the increase is more about reporting. Polina asks about Grad/Undergrad split for the documented instances. Chief Wilson thinks it’s 70% undergrad, 30% grads, with instances reported by undergrads more likely to be fueled by alcohol and those reported by grads more about relationships.
David asks about 5-SURE and it’s role. Chief Wilson not sure how much it decreases incidences of sexual assault, given that many assaults occur between two people who know each other.
At their recent meeting, the Undergrad Senate discussed use of 5-SURE, wondering what the most effective way of allocating money is to prevent assaults, and whether awareness programs might have more impact.
Mary asks about the increase in liquor and drug offenses and arrests- much of this is a change in the classification of violations.
Nanna asks about their work with other units on campus. For example, students who were concerned about safety in lower levels of buildings asked for suggestions from Police, but it seemed difficult to coordinate with housing the costs of recommendations.
Justin asks about response to large scale emergencies. They do have prioritization of buildings, with student residences high on the list. Have set up a system of Campus Safety Partners, who work in buildings around campus and might be able to help. Self-sufficiency always important though.
Adam wonders about impact of economy, given that they will have fewer resources and crime tends to increase in downturns. They do outreach, working with communities to help them protect themselves (such as trying to spread the message among Undergrads that it’s important to lock doors). With the downturn, they have seen increases in bike thefts mirroring unemployment, and thieves now also doing things like taking copper plating from old buildings. We can always give the police a call if we see instances.
Matt would like to see more information in the brochure about how students can get help if necessary in order to respond to citations.
George asks about how they plan for budget cuts. They’ve been running about 7 people behind already, and low economy is a good chance to get good candidates, which the University seems to be aware of. They may cut out a lieutenant position, and may not fill new positions for 1.5 they were considering. They haven’t really increased their staff since 1970, but we can see how much campus has changed and law enforcement has changed.
They currently have 33 sworn officers, 6 community officers, and 10 focused on parking enforcement. The rest are civilians who work on risk management issues among others. Also have casual employees who work for particular events.
6) 7:04 Elections Committee Update (Etosha)
Having meetings coming up, including Thursday 8pm in ASSU office in Old Union, about campaign finance reform. Hope to have a bill by the beginning of next quarter that we can vote on. Execs have spent up to $7000 on campaigning; students without those financial resources might then not choose to run.
It is Maria’s birthday, so we take a break to sing.
8) 7:06 Undergrad Senate Update (Justin/Ryan)
Undergrads discussed 5-SURE, which started as discussing about whether they wanted to pass a resolution supporting it. It was started to prevent forcible rape, question of how much it does so, many rapes are by people known to assailant. There are likely to be budget cuts, so they had a discussion about how money should be allocated.
Also discussion on the use of teddy bears and how they’re treated prior to Big Game. Pointed out that there are probably better ways to use bears, such as donating them. Perhaps have students buy two bears, one to keep and one to give away. This year there doesn’t seem to have been a mass selling of teddy bears, though it ahs happened in the past.
Undergrad Senate is doing survey about fostering relationship between ASSU and Undergrads.
9) 7:13 Programming (Justin/Adam S.)
Tailgate happened, was fun.
5) 7:14 ASSU Update (George for Jonny/Fagan)
Put in request for busses to Big Game this weekend, have already put down a deposit, but don’t know total cost, because athletics departments have varied deadlines about ticket sales so they don’t know how many tickets are being sold and thus how many students will be able to go to Berkeley for the game.
They think at least 50 grad students have signed up so far for the busses. Asking us for $500. Each student pays $10 for their ticket on top of the money from other sources to help meet costs. Think total amount of bus cost will be about $30,000.
No objections, giving $500 from programming discretionary passes by consensus.
Hanna requests that the Execs be reminded about our policies about submitting requests for money ahead of time. They had a hard time working with athletics, which probably explains the delay in this case.
ASSU may well be running shuttle busses to the airport in winter, but there seems to be general consensus that we don’t wish to support this anymore.
10) 7:18 Faculty Senate Update (Adam B.)
They talked about libraries, and they’ve now made a committee to talk more about this issue. Due to budget constraints, libraries being taken down or rebuilt is unlikely to happen soon. However, they are still working on moving books to off campus storage facilities. Their plan is to digitize at least the cover and table of contents of all books that are moved. Would be tough for people in humanities who use books a lot, and also general trouble with the technology for searching that will need to be improved.
11) 7:20 Funding Request ($400) for Grad Diversity Leaders Dinner (Justin)
On Jan 14th in Havana Room, Justin would like to gather a group of targeted student group leaders over dinner to talk about how to throw good large scale events and how the GSC can support these efforts. It’s good timing in that February is Black History Month, and there are various VSOs that might want to do something, so they could get together to plan something larger. Plan on having about 30 leaders, inviting representatives of about 20 groups, which is the approximate number of large student groups.
Aleksandra asks whether email with the appropriate info might be effective. Justin thinks the OSA doesn’t disseminate knowledge well, thinks this will be a good investment to help other groups to do their funding effectively.
Giving $400 from Programming Discretionary passes by consensus.
12) 7:26 New Business (George)
Are having a GSC website party Monday evening, 6pm, there will be some food. Want volunteers to come and start putting together the new website, giving feedback about what aspects are most important. Nanna, Justin, Lan, Mary, Andrew volunteer to show up. Matt has given us all accounts in the past in order to get into the current website and make changes, but people haven’t taken the initiative to update, perhaps too complicated for us. Plan to make a flatter website that will hopefully provide more incentive and be easier to add updates.
