Proceedings of the April 15th, 2009 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 (4/8/09) with the following change.
– In the fall, the GSPB used $1350 from the co-sponsorship line item, not $3050.
iii. Please email your transition document to Polina (polina@stanford.edu), George (bloom@stanford.edu) or Hanna (hmuenke@stanford.edu), if you have not done so already.
iii. Thanks to Aleksandra for taking minutes today!
3) 6:05 ASSU Update (Jonny and Fagan / David and Jay)
4) 6:10 Senate Report (Ryan and Shelley)
5) 6:15 Programming (Justin and Adam S.)
6) 6:20 Elections Wrap up (Etosha)
7) 6:35 Vaden Health Fee (Polina)
8) 6:50 Public Service Events (Shane)
9) 7:00 Funding (Ping)
i. Romanian Student Association
ii. Chinese Language and Culture Network
iii. Cultural Interactions Club
10) 7:10 Confirm and Introduce New NomCom (Eric)
11) 7:20 Retreat/Transitions (Polina)
12) 7:25 GSC 2009-10 Budget (Nanna)
13) 7:45 New Business (Polina)
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
Humanities: George Bloom
Medicine: Maria Spletter
Natural Sciences: Fen Zhao
Voting members not present:
Social Sciences: Hanna Muenke
Business: Rick Thielke
Law: Andrew Park
Other people present: Adam Sciambi, Kyle Anderson, Drew Kennedy, Matthew Armstrong, Jessica Tsai, Bryan Chen, Noa Lincoln, David Gobaud, Zeng Fan, Donna Winstron, Daniel Bui, Ugur Pece, Matt McLaughlin, Adam Beberg, Adam R., Ping Li, perhaps others who missed the sheet.
Minutes
1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Shane!)
2) 6:02 Welcome with introductions and Announcements (Polina)
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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 (4/8/09) with the following change.
– In the fall, the GSPB used $1350 from the co-sponsorship line item, not $3050.
iii. Please email your transition document to Polina (polina@stanford.edu), George (bloom@stanford.edu) or Hanna (hmuenke@stanford.edu), if you have not done so already.
iii. Thanks to Aleksandra for taking minutes today!
iv. Email transition documents, gotten few of these so far.
v. from Adam B: There is a new version of by-laws ready to hand off. For the University Constitution, working with Stanford lawyers to make sure this is identical with what president approved. Encourages us to try to push funding caps next week.
3) 6:05 ASSU Update (David and Jay)
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David is very excited to be first grad executive. Cabinet application going out tonight, 4 grad specific positions, interested getting more grad students involved. Please forward email about positions to departments.
4) 6:06 Senate Report (Ryan and Shelley)
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Matt: only paid attention to the financial stuff.
David: welcomed new senators, talked about budget and NomCom. Phil Hon is the new NomCom deputy chair.
Matt: Budgets need both political bodies approval, so Matt is facilitating an open session on Friday at 4pm where everyone with specific complaints can come, but please let the appropriate chair for the GSC/Senate know any changes/concerns you have with that group’s budget.
Mary: What are the objections to the current proposed budgets?
Matt: Not clear, but thinks that there will be some objections. Will probably come out at next week’s Senate meeting, thinks they will shoot down the budget.
5) 6:10 Programming (Justin and Adam S.)
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Expecting the formal to be 5K cheaper this year than last year. Will have more food and booze. Need to sell 1000 tickets to break even at the current price of $25/ticket, but people usually wait until the price goes up to buy tickets, so actually need to sell fewer tickets.
Polina: How many sold so far?
Justin: 250. Get your constituents to go to formal.
Adam: Flyering went well. Everyone should now be emailing constituents, since this is a very effective way to get out the word. Also, looking for volunteers to do ticket taking. This is fun since you get to see what everyone is wearing. Elected members have a duty to help Programming Committee, but really, it should be fun anyway. If you volunteer, tickets are free.
Will be at the Computer History Museum, there will be live music, and buses driving loops. Last year there were 1200 people. Coming up soon! Saturday after next (April 25th)
Food will be pita, hummus, pastries, assorted chicken wings.
Polina: How are you under budget?
Adam: Location rental gave discount, insurance is cheaper, band is cheaper. Planned budget includes deposit, and money to hire people to clean up.
Andrew K: What buses?
Justin: Large coaches, picking up at Tressider, will try to make them run continuously between there and the museum.
Erik: Food vendor?
Justin: “Just catering” from downstairs.
Adam: Buying our own liquor, which saves tons of money. Without that, the cost would be double,
Adam: Last year ran out of booze and had to buy more from Safeway. Hiring professional bartenders this time.
6) 6:17 Retreat and transition (Polina)
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Retreat is Sunday April 26th, and a draft agenda will be sent out by the end of this week. Send any feedback to Polina.
As of now, plan to swear new members in at the next meeting. Adam B doesn’t think we can do this because elections won’t have been approved yet. Polina will plan as of now to have swearing in next week, but will let us know if changes.
Also next week (22nd), we’ll give an overview about different officer positions, and then talk more about them at the retreat. At meeting after the retreat (29th), we will be holding internal elections for elected GSC positions.
Fen: Do outgoing officers have to go to retreat?
Polina: Please do, to contribute your institutional memory. Won’t start until 11am, hopefully allow people to go enjoy the formal fully the night before.
7) 6:20 Public Service (Shane)
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Relay or Life will be May 22-23, a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. Shane passes flyers around to distribute.
Polina asks for update on diversity week.
Shane: tomorrow is the last day. Events for the week were as follows:
Monday: Two guest lectures, George Liptiz and Donna Watson, who talked about diversity in faculty, and highlighted female faculty in the sciences. A lot of the data she presented is shocking.
Tuesday: Lunch panel, with faculty from new VPSA and others, including Sally Dickson, Patti Gumport, and Noe Lazano, who gave candid answers to questions.
Today (Wednesday): Working lunch about where we want to go next year in regards to diversity, and how to incorporate more groups. Two ideas for projects to work on were a series of videos that get out facts about diversity to address issues for why diversity is important, and also working on faculty and grad student recruitment.
Tomorrow (Thursday): big rally in White Plaza.
Friday: wrap-up in 750 at 5:50.
8) 6:25 Vaden Health Fee (Polina)
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Ira Friedman (Vaden Director) and Greg Boardman (VPSA) talking about Vaden Fee.
Polina: A lot of talk over email lists about the new fee from concerned students, would like to hear the historical perspective from Ira and Greg, and talk about steps for the future.
Greg: We really want to entertain your questions and give opportunity to listen to your concerns. The budget reduction process continues to be a difficult, and has included 350 layoffs of staff members. Continue to have additional cuts, including staff reduced to part time status. Overall, there need to be millions of dollars of cuts.
Health Fee was brought up on occasion in the past, based on issues of equity with the idea of everyone helping in some aspect to reduce budget. General fund previously supported vast majority of Vaden expenses, which is derived from everyone, including students who are not on campus, and is derived through tuition. Want to be much more transparent, and think the health service fee meets this and is also more equitable. Will continue listen to students, although they’ve heard a lot a feedback. They are continuing to update and revise the process. The intent is to communicate directly with students. The email for staff was to start giving them the information that was available, but there’s a lot more work to do, and many details that haven’t been flashed out yet.
Ira: It’s been hard to explain — the model for next year is different than this year’s model. Going to a model in which it is much more clear what’s in the Health fee, what’s in Cardinal Care, and what’s out of students pocket.
Eric Hall (Chemistry): students all understand that budget is very tight. If fee due to the cuts why is there no extinguishment cause for when things get better? The way the fee is spelled out it looks it’s here to stay.
Ira: The fee/budget is subject to annual review, but thinks it’s here to stay. It’s a more general matter of where expenses are relative to sources of funding. The University is now in a different framework for funding for services.
Eric: Why is that the case? If it’s because of budget crisis that is not going to last, then it seems that the fee shouldn’t last either.
Ira: New funding model is a more equitable one. Charge the folks who can use the service, don’t charge the ones who can’t.
Mary: Should charge students who use the services versus the ones who don’t!
Ira: Philosophical difference to have a fee for service vs. distribute costs among the entire population. Arguments can be made for both approaches but he thinks there’s a good reason to favor the second set of values, which the University has chosen to employ in this case. One reason is that charging people at the time of service heightens the penalty of being injured.
Someone emailed suggesting that we could cut down on over-utilization if students were asked for fee, but Ira reports no evidence for that.
Also doesn’t feel that that’s an effective way to measure utilization. Vaden provides many things that aren’t evaluated on the basis of the visit, including extraordinary non-public things to support students. For example, a psychiatrist spent 2.5 hours in a meeting concerning discharge of a particular student from a hospital, even though hospital staff was already there; it’s incredibly time intensive. Just being there is a service. We provide a community good that is appropriate to continue community’s well being. Thinks a firehouse analogy is fitting here – it’s not seen as appropriate to charge the family that has the fire to put out the fire. Among other services, Vaden provides consultation and liaison to departments, which is not appropriate for fee-for-service billing. Overall, Ira is very convinced about the second option of spreading the cost among all students in the community, and this is what the university has selected.
Mary: Would not want students paying $60-$100 per service at Vaden, but charging something like $5/10 for a visit is more equitable for the students that are not using the services.
Ira: Will not rule this out for all time. Shied away from using those kinds of fees, because they only contribute a little to the economics, but it’s not part of economic model right now.
Maria (biology):
Students in bio argued for stipend increase because of this new fee. Result was only $86 dollars because of the way the fee will come out of stipends. Also, there are other Grad students whose fee will not be covered by anybody. For Undergrads it can be rolled into financial aid, but Grad students don’t have this benefit. Were those considerations taken into account, and could this fee be covered by fellowships, money from schools, etc?
Greg: In communications to departments: some will decide if they will pay some or all of fee. Ongoing process. Continuing to work on the details. Made note of this and will continue to discuss. Nowhere near the final resolution, the email sent out was more of an announcement to the staff. Take a lot of input from a lot of folks, most departments starting just now to figure out what to do.
Fen: Ira said division between Vaden and Cardinal Care will be much more clear, wonders what the increase in fee for Cardinal Care will be.
Ira: 5.8% increase in Cardinal Care cost for next year.
Fen: Complaints from students who don’t use Vaden at all, live off-campus, people who have private health insurance. Fen wouldn’t personally want to see services reduced, but thinks there needs to be more direct communication with students about what students would want to have from Vaden.
Ira: This fee is an agreement to engage in the discussion with students about what services students want at Vaden. Thought the discussion with Mental Health task force was very effective in working with students. There is an existing review committee of health insurance, but it’s sometimes hard to get people to participate.
Fen: Talked to UC Davis — their fee $44 plus $10 co-pay. A lot of people would be happier if there was a smaller fee and some sort of co-pay. Davis was able to put fee to be cut out of grant (not out of disposable income). Is there a way to make this fee payable by grants for us as well?
Ira: in the past, hasn’t worked, but they will look into it.
Nanna: If she wasn’t involved with campus groups, wouldn’t even know about the fee because they never got info from the department. Really a lack of choice, since because of department-funded health insurance, have to take Cardinal Care; students don’t have the $800 to take any health insurance they want.
In regards to cost of running Vaden, thinks we need to ask students what things they need For example, do we need special services and web-based appointments? Also, wondering how they arrived at a cost of $167/quarter for the Fee. Would have to go twice a week per quarter to make it worthwhile, based on current co-pay rates for outside visits.
Ira: As Greg said, the notification sent out was for administrators. We would not do this without notifying students, but this is months away. Because the news did spread beyond administrators, we are now working to tell everyone. Every student will be notified.
Nanna: Doesn’t agree that they spread news about this fee to students effectively.
Ira: Won’t be on the bill without you knowing about it. In regards to working with students to figure out which services would be desired, will continue getting student comments on what we offer and what’s in the fee. Students may not know what they will need tomorrow, so can’t be completely based on student feedback.
In regards to the cost of the fee, we arrived at $167 based on trying to get a certain amount of revenue.
Greg: Fee reflects the actual cost of running Vaden, what was previously funded by general funds, and is needed in order to continue the services. Trying to be transparent – fee specifically reflects the cost of student health on campus.
Ira: Would have to have a lot of co-payments to have an impact on the budget. In the outside world, primary care does not cover costs, and is usually subsidized by specialty care.
Noa Lincoln: Mentioned that fee meant to be more equitable among those who have access, but wonders how they assess who has access? For example, those doing field research won’t be around campus to use Vaden.
Ira: Some students are in groups that can be defined in PeopleSoft as not being on campus, such Hopkins, or Stanford in Washington, will be excluded from the fee automatically. For those with other circumstances that keep them away from campus, will have a process in place where students can apply online, with some verification with department, and then be excused of the fee.
Noa: Would like to point out that 9.7% of total post-tax income going to health fee.
Ryan: Involved in NAGPS as well as GSC, and feels that student input was not sufficiently sought, and it looks like this fee will just be in place in August as announced, not reflecting student opinion. Were not consulted prior to the announcement of the fee and is disappointed that we were not involved. Concerned about general healthcare on campus. For example, don’t have dependent health-care, and students with dependents need to go to community programs. Feels that for issues related to healthcare there hasn’t been enough discussion, and would like to see administration address these issues.
Greg: Points well-taken. Given lots of thought to this, and agrees that as an institution we have responsibility to look more broadly. Ira meets with his peers monthly.
Ira: Doing a lot of work on student health, including a mental health task force cutting new ground. Ira spent years on issues of financing, quality, access. In regards to Dependent healthcare: not gone, actively working on it, including some GSC leadership on active task force. Will be surveying your support soon. Hampered by lack of data, such as how many dependents there are, but still actively involved in trying to bring it back to campus. Ryan’s observations don’t match with Ira’s experience.
Ryan: Administration is not alone in this.
Ira: Administration is interested in this and very committed to services for students. All levels of administration would like to solve the dependent health-care problem.
George: Would like to see usage statistics on Grad vs. Undergrad, students here 3 vs. 4 quarters, and summer students. Not convinced about equity.
Ira: 67% of visits to Vaden are by Cardinal Care members (55% of student body), which are predominantly grad students. Undergrads use Vaden episodically, but Grads use the services the most, especially those around for the full year
George: How does this fee enable the idea of dental services? What are ways to outreach to students in ways that couldn’t happen before?
Ira: Getting input from students. Primary care dentistry is a service that loses money, and have looked at dental almost on yearly basis, but it does not add up financially to pay for it. The new fee is to support services that currently exist, does not include mechanism for growing the services at the current price point.
George: If there were a petition for dental services, would Vaden cooperate to define the exact increase in fee if were to offer dental?
Ira: In the past, priced out what dental insurance would cost, and our own insurance committee said it doesn’t make economic sense.
Adam B: After we pay taxes, means need to make $700/year more in order to pay for this fee, but stipend increases were calculated before the cost of fee. Losing ground again in stipends, which hurts. Can you help communicate to the departments that next year this will be fixed? People are upset, and everyone assumes that it’s a done deal, so if that’s not the case, need to communicate that. People also still upset about the lack of dependent healthcare.
Fen: At the Easter Egg Roll, Grad students were talking about efforts to call rallies, inform prospective students about the new costs, who are planning for student loans. Students would be a lot happier if you presented a plan for getting student input about this fee, since there is no way to give input right now.
Polina: Proposes forming Vaden advisory committee.
Ira: Yes, let’s come up with something and a structure for discussions.
Justin: Going off of what Adam said, Greg, what else might be a surprise fee for the coming year?
Greg: Hasn’t heard of anything. Nothing from VPSA.
Justin: Ira, can you give an example of services that we don’t know about that Vaden provides that is not related to psychological services? Is CAPS the big ticket item and how much does it cost? Would also like to hear a non-mental health related example of what Vaden provides students.
Ira: CAPS is smaller than medical services, but a lot of students use it frequently. There is a lot of prescribing of psychotropic medication in primary care (prescribing about a quarter of anti-depressants). They deal with students who are stressed and have intestinal problems, back pain, fatigue from anti-depressants. Those students don’t go to CAPS, they go to primary care, a big ticket item is stress-related conditions. Physicians and nurse practitioners are seeing a large number of patients.
Justin: So medical conditions mostly related to people being stressed out.
Ira: Also viral disease and skin disease. Offering primary medical care on the medical side. A lot of visits are stress related, some diabetes, asthma, arthritis, seizure disorders. More based on the kinds of patients that we see.
Ryan: Thinks Vaden could save a lot of money if departments get rid of qualifying exams.
**Recorder batteries replaced during this following segment**
Aleksandra: Can you give some statistics? How many students are not enrolled in Cardinal Care? How many students out of the entire student population used Vaden at least once in the last year?
Ira: 14K students total, 8K in the plan (75% of graduate students, 30% of undergraduates). Utilization of Vaden: more utilization among Cardinal Care. Last year saw 1600 students in the counseling center (12% of students), in line with other schools like us, proportionate among grads and undergrads. Undergrads are not as comfortable going to get psychological help. The more years they are here, the more likely to use it. Students are in the age group with highest rate of incidence of mental health conditions. More than 2/3 of students used Vaden in the past year, with 30,000 outpatient visits. Heavily utilized, although the building doesn’t seem crowded. Web-based appointments are extremely popular.
Aleksandra: Has heard from many students that some doctors and practitioners are much better than others at Vaden. Given that the fee is essentially forcing everyone to use Vaden, is there a plan to have student feedback on particular practitioners, and act according to that feedback (i.e. fire people who are not performing).
Ira: They do a monthly survey among students, once every year, give the feedback to providers.
Addy: I go to Vaden more than once a month, never filled out a single survey.
Ira: Finding a primary care provider is very hard in this area, so this system is an advantage in that students don’t have to have a primary care provider in order to get service.
Mary: Office mate is single-mother, divorced. Low disposable income, paying 10% of her gross income towards this fee, and her son still has no insurance. She makes too much money to qualify for healthy families. Hope to get health care from department: 2% raise was announced on March 4th and retroactively represented as if it will cover that fee. Wonders if the children can be seen when the doctors are not too busy.
Ira: Appointments are gone in the morning, so doctors are busy. Dependent-health care is not a closed question but the solution is not to have pediatric care in Vaden, but would rather be to have pediatric in a designated facility.
Mary: It’s nerve-wracking to have no insurance, which is what she did when she was a single mother putting herself through college.
Ira: surprised to hear Mary’s officemate makes too much for healthy families on grad student stipend. Have her email me, get help from insurance office on finding a healthcare plan.
Eric: Would like exact details of the plan for the new advisory committee. Also, how much does Vaden cost? How much is supported by Cardinal Care?
Ira: $7.5M Vaden cost. There will be much more clear distinction between fee and Cardinal care.
Erik: Rough calculations for the new fee suggest the revenue this brings in will exceed $7.5million (about $10 million dollars), so why the difference?
Ira: Fee will generate slightly more than $7.5M, and the cost of Vaden that has been picked up by general fee is more than that.
Eric: Would like advisory committee to evaluate how this figure was arrived at.
Ira: Won’t know exactly until we experience it.
Jessica (Med school). Thinks the fee will overburden the physicians at Vaden. If I’m paying more, I’ll go more. How will they deal with more people going, and still having quality control.
Ira: We are being as efficient as possible and putting more physicians. Web support will also be used. Concerned that we’ll be busier.
Jessica: Questions about incentives for physicians, quality control in diagnosis, for example, overuse of antibiotics in things that are viral.
Ira: Have a quality control system and quality improvement program, with a half-time quality improvement manager, who is focused on that.
Polina: Remaining issues can be handled on advisory committee. Thank you to Ira and Greg for coming.
Polina: would like volunteers to get more information about how this is being handled by various departments and schools. The following students will check in and update for next time:
Engineering: Addy, Adam B.
Humanities: Ugur Pece
Medicine: Jessica
Law: Eric Osborne
Sciences: Bryan
Social science: Nanna
9) 7:41 Funding (Ping)
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i. Association of Chinese Students and Scholars at Stanford
-Advisory event communication workshop focusing on how to improve communication skills of Chinese students. Expect 80 people.
– 2 Happy hours, with 100 students.
– Movie screening, with 80 people.
– Spring social mixer, with 100 people.
Giving $1000 passes by consensus
ii. Romanian Student Association
Event this Sunday to mark Orthodox Easter. Group rep wasn’t sure if it was advertised on Grad Events, but someone else confirms that it was. Giving $300 passes by consensus.
10) 7:46 Elections Wrap up (Etosha)
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2 major problems: thought co-terms should be included to vote as grad students but some were actually sophomores declaring their co-term intent early, etc. Changed on morning of elections to let people choose whether to vote as grad or undergrad. Two grad students made known their names wasn’t on the list.
Voting numbers: 33% decrease. Theories: had more of a top-down approach, but maybe the psychology is to force people to vote through their friends. Suggestion: army of voters. People on the ground is what matters.
Mary: everyone on the GSC should be poking constituents to vote, Mary personally emailed people in her school. Hence the 8% increase.
Ryan: in the future, important to make people aware about who everybody is so that it’s informed voting. Maybe emailed voting guide out beforehand?
Adam: sends a guide to CS students, thinks it does help.
Fen: turnout is down maybe because we didn’t have a Go-pass?
Donna: No one was running for education, so people in the school don’t know anybody running, so people don’t vote.
Etosha: For Special Fees, according to the ASSU constitution, the requirement for passing doesn’t mean that 15% of grad students have to vote, but that 15% of total student body has to approve. So the conventional wisdom is wrong.
Adam: Every other thing needs 15% grad student approval, that’s why we represent Special Fees that way too.
Eric Osborne: KZSU got de-listed last year. Speaker’s Bureau was close. What would happen if they weren’t approved?
Polina: They’d have to find other sources, or we’d have to fund them.
Election reform: Proposed bill for caps before the election didn’t pass, but both slates voluntarily adhered to caps this year.
Ryan: Did caps take away from competitiveness?
David: No
Addy: Need the candidates of that particular year to agree to it.
Etosha: Thinks there should be negative marks for not following fair campaign (not just a positive indication for a fair campaign), and also that there should be a way to disqualify candidates if necessary (although nothing came up this year that would have warranted that).
Special thanks to: Mary, Nanna, Robert, Adam B, Matt M., and phenomenal web-developers.
10) 7:59 Confirm and Introduce New NomCom (Eric)
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Conducted interviews of 16 students, impressive slate of candidates, interviewed everyone for 20 minutes. Extremely qualified NomCom, chose Jonathan Buckey (EE, served on committees for 2 years) as chair, with deputy chair Philip Hon (ran for ASSU last year, his task is to help work with UG senate). George and Polina were involved. Met with Jonathan and Phil, dinner at Eric’s place, imparted the institutional process, they are ready to hit the ground running, would like to encourage grad student participation. Another person on NomCom this year is Ethan Almond, who is a head CA. George and Polina have the full list of the committee, and some members will come in next week.
Approval is delayed for a week, so next week GSC will officially approve the members of the committee.
Eric: Addy and Nanna were the only ones on NomCom committees this year, while from UG senate they have more reps.
Adam: convention that GSC members were not allowed to serve on committees.
Eric: think we should discourage that convention, since a University committee is a great way to leverage influence.
Reminder that NomCom is in charge of choosing students for University committees.
12) 8:05 GSC 2009-10 Budget (Nanna)
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Matt: Doesn’t make sense to approve this budget today because this will change. Then need to inform senate. No idea what will happen on Friday.
Polina: Friday will be a budget feedback session at 4pm in ASSU offices in Old Union.
Matt: Learned from previous SSE Manager Matt, to give Ex-com the figure for the amount of money that they have, and then let them do whatever they want to do with it in terms of a budget for the year. Send completed budget to John Hennessey for approval. However, UG Senate apparently has some concerns about our budget. Matt expects this to be no more than formality, in that historically each body sets its own budget.
Polina: Should we do discussion on budget?
Ryan: Our own budget.
Nanna: Joint fees.
Ryan: Does anyone have a problem with NomCom maintaining their current budget?
Adam: There was a training budget change.
Eric: Old money went away because of July 1 budgeting last year, which is why NomCom asked for more training money this year, because they had budgeted for having that old amount. The budget amount is the same as last year, but money for recruiting and a training dinner have been moved to a discretionary amount rather than line-items.
Most of our GSC budget is the same as last year. Changing the stipend of PR coordinator, because it was factored in that there might be two people (and food czar is weekly commitment, so not fair to pay PR more).
Fen: Are GSC stipends transferable between different operations budgets?
Matt: Requires a budget mod from different bodies.
Nanna: Would discourage this, since it’s already hard to find people.
Fen: These seem to be as the most flexible to change
Nanna: The new budget is mostly reductions in Operations. Money going to retreats is somewhat decreased. Also, some decrease in meeting food, and office supplies which are not used that much. Marketing spent a lot at beginning of this year, but perhaps can reduce that.
Discretionary: Increased advocacy for next year, and decreased constituency outreach. The numbers are what we budgeted last year, before we moved money for food.
George: Separate line item for legislative action?
Fen: NAGPS is a good connection but maybe going to trip to Berkeley would be good too.
Justin: Diversity folks would ask for the same if we did this for legislative action.
Adam: Agree that need to leave this as general, otherwise this becomes 8 line items.
Ryan: Legislative action is a bit different because to do it need to go to DC. Would be good to encourage repetition of going and institutional knowledge. Can arrange a meeting on campus for free.
Justin: A lot of advocacy folks could argue the same thing.
Nanna: Didn’t do legislative for a while.
Fen: That was the problem – when there’s no item, it reduces an institutional knowledge. Diversity committee needs more support but that can come out of programming.
Nanna: Keeping it general leaves more flexibility.
Fen: Have a good idea of what the budget would be, so having specificity is great.
George: Diversity committee is a special case; along with VPGE being active, this is an important item to have as something we are committed to.
Nanna: Why not have healthcare advocacy? Is that more important than diversity?
Adam: DC trip should be in the budget, everything else shouldn’t be
Addy: Legislative action shouldn’t have to compete with other advocacy committees since they have a fixed cost.
Donna: Likes idea of putting line item for DC trip, but then same for Diversity committee.
Justin: For diversity, big goal next year is recruitment push. We should table this to wait for Courtney or Shantal
Adam: Have to make up our minds by Tuesday.
Justin: A lot what will happen next year in diversity is not programming.
Fen: Ryan is going for sure to D.C. for Legislative Action, so why not confirm that now?
Polina: Clarifying that we’re thinking about DC fixed costs for legislative action, and diversity committee. Also, reminder that right now we’re making guidelines, but the incoming GSC has power to change the budget as well should needs change. Should trip to DC be a line item, rather than just part of advocacy discretionary?
Ryan/Fen: 2 trips, but if we join the NAGPS board they’ll cover the trip. Costs are primarily hotel and flights.
Polina: 1K to put for DC trip?
Ryan: More than that. $1500.
Nanna: Suggestion to use $1000 from advocacy, but find another place to get the rest of the money. Say $500 from Marketing.
Programming section of budget:
Mostly the same as this year, but reduce Thanksgiving because Provost can cover some, get rid off grad-sendoff and leave the money open for whatever big party someone is inspired to run, and increase grad-events at Flicks.
This is money is comes from the general fee that students pay each quarter.
Matt: This year took GSC out 115K from this year’s General Fee, next year taking 119K.
Nanna: Some of that 115K was from Reserves for the Grad Formal (though that started as General Fee money as well).
Donna: Question about pay for chair and deputy programming coordinators should be rewritten as equal funding for co-chairs.
Fen: Some years there are deputy/main coordinators, other years there aren’t, might as well keep the suggestion for how they could split it if they weren’t doing it evenly.
Mary: Agrees with Fen to kill the bulletin. Would like to see that go away in favor of website that works and does a fantastic job.
Addy: Kill the bulletin.
George/Addy: Twitter updates.
Nanna: Linda introduced her to coordinator of advertising at SSE. We could have the bulletin and cover the cost with high-end advertising.
Matt: First time I hear about this.
Addy: Thinks people treat bulletin like spam; anything on paper is counter-productive. And it’s a lot of money.
Ryan: We should use an electronic distribution system for bulletin. Shares the concern that we need to improve the website. Need static information that is correct, before we do Web 2.0.
Adam: Wants a minutes directory on the website. Thinks we should keep the bulletin coordinator but remove the rest of the money, and put the money into making the website work.
Matt: Presence on the web will not solve publicity problems. Need to develop something that will drive traffic to the website.
David: working on getting from the registrar a new email list, for grad, and for undergrads, and will take info from GSC. Can advertise through that in one of the monthly emails.
Donna: Need a good website. Now ashamed of the website. Keep coordinator in a partial position, could still make a beginning of the year leaflet.
Maria: In welcome packets from housing was the only time when I took the time to read through handouts. Really cheap to do it this way, and Housing even stuffs the packets. School of Medicine has Dean’s newsletter, as one way of reaching students in at least that area. Think we should keep bulletin coordinator, but send it in electronic form.
Addy: Nothing on paper.
Fen: Beginning of year bulletin on paper is a good idea, because people don’t read Grad Announce. Need a third way, maybe a Daily page once per quarter.
Ryan: Question for Nanna, are electronic sendouts a good idea? For David: suggestion to get someone to maintain all the three ASSU body websites.
Nanna: This body has been the most uncooperative in writing even 100 word summaries. Also, need to budget for a designer if want to have a bulletin in any form, paper or email.
David: can add GSC to the ASSU website maintenance.
Polina: For now, wants to keep bulletin coordinator, and have 4K budget line item for beginning of year Bulletin, and then 8K go else-where.
Co-sponsorship section of budget:
Plans are to keep the lottery dinners, restructure GOALIE into NGSO, give families an increase from $6500 to $9000 because not many of GSC planned events are targeted to families and so it’s good to work with Andy on putting some events on for them. Take out Halloween and Valentines parties since we didn’t really do those this year. Correction that Fen did run a Valentine’s party this year, but given how close it was to the stoplight party, may not need to do both of those.
Justin: The Programming budget has money for an unspecified large party, which could be done for Valentine’s Day if we want.
Nanna: Not sure if I-Gala will be happening, so not budgeting money for them.
Polina: How much did we sponsor diversity week for?
Nanna: $1300 the second request, but there was a bigger request first. Not sure what the total amount is.
Polina: Suggestion to give 2K out of the 8K that freed up from the Bulletin to co-sponsorship with Diversity committee for Diversity Week.
Fen: Robert sent out an email saying that GSPB won’t have any money for next year, wonders if we should take this into account when planning our co-sponsorship budget.
Justin: Not certain yet.
Nanna: Doesn’t want to assume anything yet, and we could always change the budget later if this ends up being true. $10,000 in Discretionary could also be used to work with GSPB.
Ryan: Can do away with grad challenge in these economic times. Not enough demand.
Polina: Let’s cut it.
Nanna: Not coming out of reserves again directly, but instead are over-allocating General Fee. This year we used 35K for Funding, 15K for Grad Challenge.
Adam: Don’t think we should give more money to funding committee – the budget for them has increased a lot in the last couple of years.
Ryan: Don’t want to drastically increase the money allocated one year and then cut it, because that means that people unexpectedly don’t have what they thought they would, for example, can’t repeat events they did in the past. Should still spend the 15K extra somehow and stick to our plan of spending down the reserves, even if reallocated.
Matt: GSGF income for GSC is about 98K. Overall, then we plan in the budget to overspent that by about 50K, which then gets drawn from the reserve. Last year we did spend almost all of that planned amount, using $49,734.85 from the reserves.
Ryan: Should keep the amount in the budget, but reallocate it.
Justin: Thinks especially with budget problems and likely upcoming surprises, best place for money would be Discretionary.
Fen: If we do a rally, can we take out of programming?
Nanna: Yes, that could come out of programming budget. Suggestion to increase programming discretionary increases by 15K to 25K total. General agreement to this.
13) 8:50 New Business (Polina)
Listen to this segment
Adam: need people to go talk to the people who do the stipends, in your school. Now is the time to do it. Departments/schools are setting them now for next year.
Justin: Grad night tomorrow (Thursday) at NOLAs.
8:53 Adjourned.
