GSC meeting 2008-12-03
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008Proceedings of the December 3rd 2008 GSC meeting
Agenda
1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Shane!)
2) 6:00 Welcome with introductions and Announcements (Polina)
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 (11/19/08)
iii. There will be a website update session next Tuesday, 12/9, at 6pm in the GCC. Food will be provided, but please bring your laptop. RSVP to Polina (polina@stanford.edu).
iv. Please remember to send Nanna items for the Winter 2009 GSC Bulletin by Wednesday, December 3, at 11:59pm. This is mandatory, especially if you have received individual instructions.
4) 6:05 Funding (Addy)
i. Romanian Student Association
ii. Nigerian Students Association
iii. Mexican Student Association
5) 6:10 ASSU Update (Jonny and Fagan)
6) 6:15 Senate Report (Justin and Ryan)
7) 6:20 Programming (Justin and Adam S.)
8) 6:25 Elections Commission (Etosha)
9) 6:30 Housing (Rodger Whitney, Sue Nunan, Jessica Engelson)
10) 7:00 Diversity Committee (Shane)
11) 7:05 Funding request ($1500) for comedy show (Melahn)
12) 7:15 Rec Swim Update (Nanna)
13) 7:20 Thanksgiving Dinner Update (George)
14) 7:25 Funding Policy Discussion (Polina)
15) 7:55 New Business (Polina)
Attendance
Voting members present:
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
Humanities: George Bloom
Law: Andrew Park
Medicine: Sean Young (proxy Maria Spletter present)
Social Sciences: Hanna Muenke
Voting members not present:
At large 1: Aleksandra Korolova
Business: Rick Thielke
Natural Sciences: Fen Zhao
Other people present: Zeng Fan, Fagan Harris (Exec), Jonny Dorsey (Exec), Daisy Chen (Daily), Pablo Garcia Del Real (Mexican Student Association), Daniel Lopez (Mexican Student Association), David Gobaud, Matt McLaughlin (Financial Manager), Andrew Danowitz, Shelley Gao (Undergrad Senate), Simone Manganelli, Sohan Dharmaraja, Etosha Cave, Clinton Buie
Minutes
1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Shane!)
2) 6:04 Welcome with 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 (11/19/08) by consensus.
iii. There will be a website update session next Tuesday, 12/9, at 6pm in the GCC. Food will be provided, but please bring your laptop. RSVP to Polina (polina@stanford.edu).
iv. Please remember to send Nanna items for the Winter 2009 GSC Bulletin by Wednesday, December 3, at 11:59pm. This is mandatory, especially if you have received individual instructions.
v. Holiday cards going around for people we work with in the University.
vi. Grad Announce going out soon, send Polina email ASAP.
4) 6:08 Funding (Addy)
i. Nigerian Students Association – not here
ii. Mexican Student Association – Presenting winter and spring quarter budget for various cultural and academic events, similar to those that they held last year. Increasing connections with Mexican Consulate to have more political speakers. Cultural events include Posada (Christmas celebration) among others. Recommended $2845. Giving $2845 passes by consensus.
iii. Romanian Student Association – Romanian National Day is Dec 1st, similar in importance to our 4th of July. Having a party with Romanian food this Friday, Dec 5th. Recommended $400. Giving $400 passes by consensus.
5) 6:13 Undergrad Senate Report (Ryan)
Talked about campaign financing for ASSU elections. There have also been separate meetings about this issues, which Polina and Etosha have been attending.
They also talked about 5-SURE again, which doesn’t seem in immediate danger.
Considered the possibility of co-sponsorship money as we have been doing in the GSC.
Another big topic was University Budget cuts, which Jonny and Fagan talk more about.
6) 6:15 ASSU Update (Jonny and Fagan)
We need to be proactive about budget cuts that the University is facing. All departments have been asked to make proposed budgets with decreases of 5/7/10%, so we will be impacted by this as well. We need to think about what we find particularly important and advocate for that. Want to have a joint meeting on Friday to make sure both Undergrads and Grads have appropriate input into figuring out priorities.
Based on Senate discussion, Ryan thinks it would be appropriate for us to propose a joint list of guidelines, rather than listing specific programs, because we probably can’t be exhaustive enough to meet cuts. Also, need to keep in mind that this is just year one of a 3-year rolling average endowment payout, so this is not a one-time cut, and thus having a strategy rather than specific programs will allow us to apply it again in future years if necessary.
7) 6:22 Programming (Justin and Adam S.)
No updates.
8) 6:23 Elections Commission (Etosha)
Have gotten applications for the positions they’re trying to fill (Undergrad Assistant and Media Director). Working on campaign finance reform.
9) 6:24 Housing (Rodger Whitney, Sue Nunan, Jessica Engelson)
Demand for fall housing is high and has gone up for single student housing, increasing by 100 people in each of the last two years, which is more than the increase in number of students. Right now they don’t meet the demand of all students who initially apply for on-campus housing for fall quarter. By the time they get to the third round of assignments at the start of fall, there aren’t as many unassigned people because many people have made other plans and taken themselves off the list.
Munger will be a net gain of 365 new spaces, which should allow them to meet most of the current need, especially for people who stick with the process.
We get handouts with listed first-choice housing preferences of applicants based on type and price of housing. Cost does not seem to drive people’s choices overall, based on the handout, with studios being very popular despite their higher cost.
Polina asks what the assignment mechanism is. They guarantee housing for new students who apply by the first deadline and accept any assignment, so they have higher priority than returning students in the lottery. However, returning students can resign full-year leases if staying put (avoid lottery), and also get some priority for staying within the same type of housing even if they enter the lottery. When assigning rooms based on the lottery, Housing goes through applicants in order of lottery number and assigns them their highest preferenced room-type that is still available. If not, move onto their second choice type of housing and so on.
In terms of ranking choices, the difference between selecting “put me anywhere I am eligible” or not does not impact initial odds of being assigned to a preferred space, given the assignment process as listed above, which just goes in order of lottery number and assigns the space that the person has ranked highest that is available. However, someone with a poor lottery number who does indicate “put me anywhere” will get assigned to an unranked choice if all ranked options are already full, while another person with the same listed preferences who does not choose “put me anywhere” will instead remain on the waiting list, but may then later get assigned to those preferred spaces if something opens up, because people who may have been ahead of that student in the lottery who selected “put me anywhere” have already been assigned elsewhere.
Disability process goes through in April, prior to general assignment, but is also done via lottery, so the students are given special accommodations if they are accepted to on-campus housing, but there aren’t guarantees of that (though can appeal that point if on-campus living is very important for mobility reasons). There are fewer requests for disability accommodations for grads than undergrads, given that Grad housing generally has more space and privacy per person than the Undergrad dorms. They have about 40 people who apply for this each year, including some rolling requests which they try to fill as they go.
Right now on-campus housing is completely full in fall and winter, expect to have 100 vacancies in spring, at about 70% capacity over summer. People who are unhappy with their current assignment have the best chance of switching in the spring, and can then resign that new location for the following fall rather than entering the lottery.
There are some small number of people who may have unusual enrollment pattern, such as starting over the summer or doing a part of the program somewhere else which means they aren’t technically new students based on Housing’s priority listings, even though they may be new to campus. Housing works with these cases individually.
Etosha asks about what the cost of Munger will be. It will be at a premium compared to others, but rates are not set yet. There seems to be some desire for nicer places despite the higher price, based on interest in studios. Factoring in furnishings and utilities, think it will still be below marked for the quality and location. Each bedroom has private bath, and 4-bedrooms have extra bathroom in the common space.
Housing is currently redoing Blackwelder into two-bedroom efficiencies, where they convert the original one-bedroom apartments (for couples) into two-bedrooms without a living room. Converting 126 apartments, which will then fit 252 people, comparable to the current 225 spaces in CroMem, and will be at similar price points.
Ryan thinks Rains is overpriced for what it is, and that especially for four-bedrooms it’s cheaper and nicer to live in an off-campus house with a group. Rains is on the Capital Improvement list, hopefully within the next 3-4 years. They’re also considering changing the price points a bit, increasing the 2-bedroom and lowering the 4-year, since they do need to keep their overall income the same.
Housing not sure yet what’s happening with off-campus rental market. While the economy is down, it could also be that more people are looking to rent than buy, which would increase demand. Next year’s on-campus rates won’t increase as much as they have the last two years, but this is more a reflection of their current costs, rather than expectations of the rental market directly, as they need to maintain their revenue neutral budget.
Nanna asks about the Crothers to Munger transition for students currently living in Crothers. It’s pretty well on its way. They also gave students in Crothers the option to move into open spaces elsewhere on-campus (and did need about 50 people in Crothers to choose somewhere other than Munger, based on available space), which worked out well. Most people who wanted to try Munger got it for now. They did room assignment already as well.
Question about the off-campus subsidized program and the likelihood of it continuing. President and Provost supported it for awhile, but the plan is to end it next fall, with the idea that Munger can meet the need. If there’s a lot of excess demand for housing, they could potentially extend the program (and Housing would be supportive of this extension), but it does depend on funding from the University, difficult in current budget situation.
Polina looking at some of the numbers of assignments to housing. At end, 93% of students who apply get on-campus, though there are a number of students not assigned for awhile, suggesting there is still some need for the off-campus program. Right now there are 130 off-campus spots in use. Polina thinks that some off-campus people right now will try to come back to live in nicer Munger, and thus there might be higher demand for on-campus housing than they’re expecting, in which case Munger might not meet the current waitlist needs, which the off-campus program could continue to help with.
Started off-campus program during dotcom boom, when you literally couldn’t get off-campus housing at any price, which is why Stanford getting leases helped. At that point had 1000 students in it.
Last year had 5.25% increase across the board on on-campus housing prices. Off-campus market increased more than that in the same time. Increase based on debt-service for studios, new housing, services, maintenance, facilities staff, utilities, etc. What it takes to run the system drives the rate increase because Housing is a revenue neutral operation.
Housing does actively look at rental listings from Mountain View to Redwood City, and do think they offer a good deal.
10) 7:05 Diversity Committee (Shane)
Finalizing questions for student survey, zeroing in on mentorship questions. Having a hard time with their budget for the year, trying to prioritize. Working on Townhall meeting. Diversity Week will have the same format as last year, will ask VPGE for money. Things are moving along.
11) 7:07 Funding request ($1500) for comedy show (Sohan)
Asking us for $1500 for end-of-quarter show which will take place this Friday. Will have three comedians and a hypnotist. It’s the second time the hypnotist has been here.
Show will be at Kresge starting at 7pm, going till 9pm or so.
Reasons Sohan thinks we should fund this: We did fund this last year, there are 1500 students on Comedy Club mailing list, indicating potentially high interest, and there is money from other sources, also suggesting appeal to a sufficiently broad audience.
Nanna thinks request is somewhat last minute given that this is their big event. Wonders why they didn’t put this in their full year request and reduce some of the weekly shows instead. Sohan thinks demand is there for the big show.
Event will cost $5400-$5500 total. Have $1500 each from speakers bureau, Execs and Undergrad Senate, so at $4500 so far, need another $1000.
Justin thinks this event is more undergrad attended.
Mary saw posters advertising the performers will be “uncensored”, which doesn’t give her confidence that it will be particularly appropriate.
Undergrads give $120 per weekly show apparently, while we give about $220.
Ryan thinks it’s not a good argument that we gave money to this event in the past. Obviously relevant to other groups as well, especially since money is getting tighter, not a good assumption that it will continue to be available.
Reached VSO cap for $8000, and already got other co-sponsorship money.
Daisy thinks it’s a lot of money for one event, and notes that despite her general involvement in on-campus life she had not heard of this event yet.
George asks about content of the show. Sohan says that last year was pretty raunchy, but they’ve requested a cleaner show this time, which the hypnotist does say he can do.
Polina thinks they should have budgeted for this event in their yearly budget, especially since this is not a new event, which is generally what we use discretionary money for.
Brief discussion on possibility of doing a budget mod to use their existing money (originally approved for the weekly shows) for this instead. This would need to go through Funding Committee chair.
There are objections to giving additional money for this event, so moving to roll call vote.
0 yes, 9 no, 2 abstaining. Does not pass.
12) 7:20 Rec Swim Update (Nanna)
Had another meeting with the Recreation folks involved in running the pool (Rebecca and Eric), which Shelley also attended. Rebecca and Eric agree to bring this up next Tuesday at their senior staff meeting. Asked students to collect data, have some of it from the survey, trying to get more.
Even with some of the proposed increases in swim hours or amount of space available, still wouldn’t be at the level of other schools.
Pool management has not been forthcoming in costs, but did say that it costs $60,000 a month to heat one pool, and would be $120,000 year for additional staffing for the proposed increase in availability, which is fairly neglible in comparison to the already set maintenance costs which don’t change much based on recreational use.
Nanna and Alex have been trying to get publicity going in the Daily, have been frustrated in that attempt.
May run a survey to try to get more information before the meeting.
13) 7:24 Thanksgiving Dinner Update (George)
Had 1500 people total, which was about 890 grad students and their friends and family. Everything went smoothly, no lines, good food. Thank to Matt for website, Karukas for collaboration in catering. For next year, think the tent isn’t quite the way to do it, given that it is outdoors, and splits the group in two. They in the past held it at dining halls which were big enough to accommodate everyone, but then needed to go through dining for the food. Decorations were bland (=non-existent), and would like to improve on that for future years.
Adam didn’t think the food was that great, especially the bread-type items.
Vegetarian options were lacking.
14) 7:30 Funding Policy Discussion (Polina)
Want to talk about Big Event Item and co-sponsorship item.
There’s been some lack of clarify about Big Event money. Last year, we had two groups ask us for money beyond FC, one of which we gave one of which we didn’t. So, we tried to write down what it was about the two requests that was different.
Currently, the Big Event fund is $10,000 per year, in place for two years, this being the first. Money comes straight from reserves.
In the past, we did sometimes give extra GSC money to particular things, but without writing down why it is that we went one way or another. This is what we trying to alleviate by writing it down, but it doesn’t seem to have helped clarify the situation, and we’ve seen increases in requests from groups beyond what we had given out before trying to write the policy down.
Justin thinks we could just go back to the way things were, where we just separately considered ideas that we really like that don’t fit other models of funding that are already in place.
Nanna points out that Grad Challenge is coming up, so some new events will be able to get money from there.
If we go back to the way we were, groups above their VSO cap or individuals with good ideas could apply to Programming Discretionary or Grad Challenge in order to get funding for their events.
Matt thinks we’re better off as a five-year plan of overspending a particular line-item out of General Fee (such as programming discretionary), which avoids each time trying to think about Reserves versus other sources. In the end, it’s all the same money anyway.
No objections to take away this separate special category of money for ‘Big Events’. We will use Programming Discretionary instead, with agreement to overdraw it for ideas we like.
Matt gives a presentation about the reserves and what strategy he thinks we should take to overspend GSO partition (from GSGF money).
GSGF gave 95K to Funding Committee to distribute to VSOs, which we’ve already spent more than. We’ve also put in 50K from reserves to get a total of 145K for VSOs. Of that, 135K is given under normal caps for VSOs, and 10K is the co-sponsorship (multiple VSO groups) money.
So far, 110K have been allocated of 145K. Based on last year’s spending for winter (16K) and spring (24K), at this rate, we’ll spend 150K total. Allocating 160K will probably actually get us to about 145K that groups actually use.
Recommendations:
Increase the Multiple Group (co-sponsorship) funding bucket by 10K
Develop a 5-year-plan for spending down the reserves to an adequate level.
Tighten-up GSC bylaws surround reserve expenditures.
Thinks getting Reserves to about the same amount as the yearly GSGF intake would be good.
Mary thinks we could do something larger with the money, but some of the big things like buildings are too big and would just wipe out. Generally, others have paid for some necessary big things, like the GCC.
Undergrad Senate did go bankrupt recently, so Matt as FO encourages us to gradually spend money slowly rather than investing in something too large that would be too much responsibility later when we wouldn’t have the reserves anymore
We’d like to increase the amount that we can allocate for the multiple groups by $10,000, which is not new money from reserves but rather just shifting the accounting to allocate more, with the goal that the end about actually used will not be higher.
Justin concerned that particular groups with connections might jump on available money. That’s why the GSC is ultimately responsible for checking.
Adam thinks writing down the specific policy has unnecessarily increased requests from groups, rather than them working particular events within the 8K VSO cap, or finding outside sources of funding.
Right now, Funding Chair recommends whether something goes through co-sponsorship or not, or whether individual groups should get the money under the standard VSO cap. GSC approves at end anyway, so we do monitor how money is spent.
15) 8:02 New Business (Polina)
i. Need to approve nominees to NomCom committees. Justin wants to confirm that everyone is a student and Grad/Undergrad appropriate when that is designated for a particular position. This is Joint Association Bill 4. Approving those students as members of NomCom committees passes by consensus.
ii. January 21st will be our dinner with Greg Boardman.
