Posts Tagged ‘Minutes’

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• Minutes

Agenda

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GSC Agenda: Dec 2nd, 6:00-8:00pm – FOOD @ 5:45!

Graduate Community Center – Nairobi Room
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1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Drew!)

2) 6:00 Welcome with introductions and Announcements (Nanna)

i. Please be aware that all meetings are audio recorded and will be made available on the GSC website.
ii. Huge thank you to Mary for organizing a great and successful Thanksgiving event!
iii. Please sign the holiday cards for the administrators.
iv. Please send items for Grad Announce to Nanna (notthoff@stanford.edu) by Thursday, 12/03, at noon.
v. Approve minutes from the last meeting (11/18/2009).

3) 6:05 Funding Request for Masquerade Ball (Nico & Nanna)

4) 6:15 Funding Committee Update (Ping)

* Persian Student Association
* Stanford Medical Students Association
* Stanford Know More
* Stanford Chinese Dance
* Hindi Film Dance Team
* Stanford Pre-Business Association
* Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics at Stanford
* Stanford Hellenic American Society

5) 6:40 ASSU Update (David)

6) 6:45 Programming Update (Jess)

7) 6:50 Vegas Trip (Hari)

8) 6:55 Funding SSE Office Computers (Tom)

9) 7:05 Assistant Elections Commissioner

10) 7:10 Update from GHAC (Nanna)

11) 7:20 Website Updating (Robert)

12) 7:30 New Business (Nanna)

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A Bill to Appoint the Assistant Elections Commissioner for Graduate Elections

Authors: ASSU Elections Commissioner, Quinn Slack
Co-sponsors: David Gobaud, Addy Satija, Zachary Warma
Submitted: December 1, 2009, to the Undergraduate Senate; December 2, 2009, to the Graduate Student Council
Action Request: 2/3 approval of each legislative body

WHEREAS Appendix I (Policies of the Association Elections), Section 2, Subsection C(6), of the Joint Bylaws states, “Any vacancies occurring on the Commission shall be filled by the Association legislative bodies by a 2/3 vote,” and

WHEREAS a committee consisting of the current Elections Commissioner (Quinn Slack), the current ASSU President (David Gobaud), the previous Assistant Elections Commissioner for Graduate Elections (Etosha Cave), the current Assistant Elections Commissioner for Undergraduate Elections (Cotis Mitchell), a current Graduate Student Council representative (Addy Satija), and a current Undergraduate Senator (Zachary Warma) conducted an interview with Ashwin Mudaliar, an applicant for the Assistant Elections Commissioner for Graduate Elections, and

WHEREAS the committee found Ashwin Mudaliar to be highly qualified for the position, and

WHEREAS Appendix I, Section 2, Subsection C1, of the Joint Bylaws states, “At least one Assistant Elections Commissioner must be a member of each Association population,” and Ashwin Mudaliar is a member of the graduate student population, and

WHEREAS the committee recommends that the joint legislative bodies of the Association appoint Ashwin Mudaliar as Assistant Elections Commissioner for Graduate Elections,

THEREFORE BE IT ENACTED BY THE JOINT LEGISLATIVE BODIES OF THIS ASSOCIATION:

THAT Ashwin Mudaliar is appointed to the role of Assistant Elections Commissioner for Graduate Elections on the 2010 Elections Commission.

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Attendance

Voting Members present:
Earth Sciences: Mary Van der Hoven
Education: Eric Shed
Engineering 1: Robert Hennessy
Engineering 2: Addy Satija
Law: Eric Osborne
Medicine: Jessica Tsai
Natural Sciences: Bryan Chen
Social Sciences: Nanna Notthoff
Business: Janet Zhou
At Large 1: Justin Brown
At Large 2: Ryan Peacock
At Large 3: Aleksandra Korolova
At Large 4: Andrew Kennedy

Voting members not present:
At Large 5: Noa Lincoln
Humanities: Unfilled

Other people present: David Gobaud (ASSU President), Andy Parker (ASSU VP), Ryan Woessner (ASSU Exec Official), Ping (Funding Committee Chair), Hariharan Vijay (Graduate Social Chair),Quinn Slack(Election), Adam Beberg, Crystal Yin (GSC Secretary), Fanuel Muindi (DAC), Peyman Kazemian (Funding), Joe Foley (Funding), Nicolas Grunnmann, Daniel Chang, Xinpeng Huang, Vicky Wen.

Minutes

Listen to this segment
1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Drew!)

2) 6:00 Welcome with introductions and Announcements (Nanna)

vi. Please be aware that all meetings are audio recorded and will be made available on the GSC website.
vii. Huge thank you to Mary for organizing a great and successful Thanksgiving event!
viii. Please sign the holiday cards for the administrators.
ix. Please send items for Grad Announce to Nanna (notthoff@stanford.edu) by Thursday, 12/03, at noon.
x. Approve minutes from the last meeting (11/18/2009) with correction of a spelling mistake.

3) 6:05 Funding Request for Masquerade Ball (Nico & Nanna)
This event was originally seen as a mixer among medical school, business school and law school. We are now proposing this to become a mixer among all the graduate students. It will be held in the alumni center on the fourth weekend of January. This is expected to be another formal event besides graduate formal.

It is going to be a relatively cheap event. The budget has been reviewed by the financial officer Ryan, funding committee, the co-chairs Nanna, Eric, and Jess from programming. The budget has been decided to be reasonable.

Q: The event is coming soon in 50 days, and what is the publication method?

A: The marketing is expected to be done electronically. Besides mass email, it will be put up in the bulletin as well. The room is reserved already.

Ryan: The funding sources will be split up among different budget items. If they sell more tickets than expected, we will fund less than planned here. The total budget is $25,250. Conservatively assuming 800 tickets sold, with $20/ticket and about 10% charged by the SSE groups, we need to fund the remaining $10,850. It is proposed to transfer $14, 250 from the reserve to the programming account to fund this, which will be given back to us. We will sponsor $2,500 from the remaining July 4th BBQ, $500 from Welcome back party budget, $2,000 from the whole budget of the major quarter events, $5,050 from programming discretionary account, $1,000 from GSPB co-sponsorship.

Bryant: When is graduate formal?
Answer: Spring.

Adam: There is no infinite demand on formals from Stanford. Is it going to reduce the turn out for the graduate formal?
Justin: Students do want more opportunities to dress up.

Adam: We already get some criticism about graduate formal. I do not think that we should sponsor another event, which is not self-sustaining. What is the budget for the graduate formal?
Nanna: The spring graduate formal budget $23,000. This event budget is based on very conservative tickets sales. I think it is pretty reasonable.

Ryan: We are supporting to get the whole thing started. If they get more tickets sold, we do not need to spend so much money. We can cut the budget next year.

Drew: Do you think general graduate students would go for this? It is a black pie right?
Answer: I can account for at least 600 if not 800 students coming from the three professional schools. If 10% of the students show up, we are completely out of problem for the ticket sale.

Adam: If you are so confident about the ticket sale, can you raise the price and make it self sustaining?
Answer: It is expected that the sustainability will go up next year.

Bryan: Do you think this event will decrease the graduate formal since it is cheaper?
Answer: The main argument is that the graduate formal is off-campus.

Eric: In the previous graduate formals, the turn-out of students from the professional schools was very low. I think that this will not affect the spring graduate formal turn-out since previously not many students from the professional schools go to spring graduate formal. On the other hand, this may even increase the graduate formal turnout of professional students since they see that the GSC is working with them.

Alexandra: Would it feasible to charge after the first drink?
Answer: The caterer of the event has to be a caterer approved by the Stanford alumni center. We can ask for the option but the current budgeted amount of $16/person is very reasonable.

It is proposed to transfer $14, 250 from the reserve to the programming account, and sponsor $2,500 from the remaining July 4th BBQ, $500 from Welcome back party budget, $2,000 from the whole budget of the major quarter events, $5,050 from programming discretionary account, $1,000 from GSPB co-sponsorship.

Approving the request passes by consensus.

[Finishes this item at 6:24 pm]

4) 6:24 Funding Committee Update (Justin)

* Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics at Stanford
There are 62% graduate students in their group. They are requesting funding for a guest lecture by a professor, whose blog was reported by Nature as the most read blog by a scientist. They are requesting $317 funding to reserve a room and publicity. The budget is split by 1:1:1 among GSC, Undergraduate Senate, and ASSU Speakers Bureau.

Approving sponsoring them $317 passes by consensus.

* Persian Student Association

They are having a traditional event on Dec 21st, which is at the longest night of the year. In the event, traditional music and food will be provided. They are requesting $800.

Approving sponsoring them $800 passes by concensus.

Indian Film Dance group is not present.

[Finishes this item at 6:27 pm]

5) 6:27 ASSU Update (David)

Andy is the new ASSU VP. The airport shuttle bus tickets are available for sale at http://assu.stanford.edu/shuttle.

Eric: In light of what happened last night, how do you perceive to proceed with your cabinet?
Answer: What happened last night was that the Senate voted Farah as 8:5, which is majority. But later some of them came back and suggested that Farah should have 2/3 votes to be officially confirmed. It seems that there is a disagreement in the Senate about whether Farah is officially confirmed or not.

Eric: Do you think it will be helpful if GSC write a resolution to the undergraduate senate that GSC believes that it does not require 2/3 votes.

Adam: They should not at the first place vote for your own cabinet. You can appoint your own staff.
Answer: The reason that we approve it is because the previous ASSU president did that. I do not know who started it.

Eric, Robert and Nanna: It is indeed very vague. The two parliaments can talk first before we send out an official letter to the Senate to suggest that we should drop it.

Next quarter the GSC parliament will talk with the Undergraduate Senate parliament first before an official letter being sent out.

[Finishes this item at 6:34 pm]

6) 6:34 Programming Update (Jess)

No

7) 6:34 Vegas Trip (Hari)
The other graduate social chair has settled the hotel booking, and they would love to involve us as well. It is a Vegas’ weekend. The “crammed” price would be $40/person for the whole weekend, which is very cheap. The transportation is going to be self-organized but some information should be provided. Hari will email out by this weekend and he hopes everybody can spread the word through GSC. If anybody has any suggestions/ tips about organizing a trip in Vegas, please let Hari know.

[Finishes this item at 6:37 pm]

8) 6:37 Funding SSE Office Computers (Tom)
We have a couple of computers in the office, which are very slow. The Capital Group has very minimal budget for the computers.

Ryan: We can pay out of our reserve or the programming discretionary technically.

Eric: How many computers in total are there?

There is lack of information because Tom is not here yet. So we move on to the Quinn’s item first.

9) 6:40 Assistant Elections Commissioner (Quinn)
There is one applicant, and we decided that he is very qualified. Unfortunately he cannot make it for the meeting tonight because he has a dinner scheduled long time ago. He is a co-term, who lived in graduate housing. He has many past experiences. He is very competent and enthusiastic. As a co-term, he understands that he needs to work harder to understand the graduate community.

Robert: Will he come to the meeting next time?
Answer: Yes. This is just a one-time time conflict, not long term.

The roll call results are 11 yes: 0 no: 0 abstention.

Ashwin Mudaliar is appointed to the role of Assistant Elections Commissioner for Graduate Elections on the 2010 Elections Commission.

Election Policy meeting will be on tomorrow night at 7 pm in old union room 104. If there are any people interested, please show up. If you cannot make it, please send out an email to Quinn and he will send out the details.

Eric: If we sync the professional internal elections with the ASSU elections, will there be any policy differences?
Answer: I think professional schools may want different things from ASSU. But if there are any suggestions on reducing the costs, please let me know.

[Finishes this item at 6:46 pm]

6:46. Tom comes in and we revisit item 8 Funding SSE Office Computers.

Tom passes down the copy of budget, which is passed by the undergraduate senate. They have checked the cheapest computer available and requested $ 1,600 in case 3. This will be a joint funding by undergraduate senate, GSC and Stanford enterprises. They budgeted three cases, and the Senate voted for case 3.

Q: What type of computers will be there?
A: Dell Insprion 507s.

Q: Are you sure it is a computer problem not software or surfer problem?
A: Yes.

Q: Can you spend the money on improving MyGroup system instead of computers.
A: MyGroup is a proprietary platform. It is a very complicated system and we pay about $30,000/ year for the service. We are figuring out ways to improve it but the short answer is no.

Q: In terms of longer term investment, the computers at such price may not last for long.
A: No, we are just spending the minimum to replace the whole system.

Tom adds that replacing the computers will greatly increase the efficiency of the financial officers, and will greatly impact how they are happy with their work.

We firstly proceed with voting for taking $400 out of web development budget. This passes by consensus.

Ryan suggested taking the additional $800 out of programming discretionary. But Justin and Ryan think that we should take the $800 out of reserve because it is a capital investment. Jess, Adam, Ryan and Nanna think that this is an operating expense and we should not take it out of reserve for better alignment with the budget.

We proceed with voting for taking additional $800 out of reserve.
The roll call results are 4 yes: 6 no: 1 abstension. This did not pass.

We proceed with voting for taking additional $800 out of programming discretionary account. This passes by consensus.

GSC is funding $1,200 to replace the obsolete computers at SSE, out of which $400 will be from web development budget, and $800 out of programming discretionary account.

[Finishes this item at 7:03 pm]

10) 7:03 Update from GHAC (Nanna)
GHAC are working on different types of contracts, rates and lottery. They are getting some more details from the housing department to have more informed discussion. Andy is concerned that the undergraduates moving back after coming back from the study-abroad program. Previously they threw out parties, which were disruptive to the graduate families nearby. They are going to have staff working on it to make sure everything go out smoothly. There are still 40-60 single student vacancy in the winter quarter assignment. There will be a new site for off-campus rental sorted out by Stanford Housing in Jan.

Eric: So now we have a housing shortage?
Answer: Slightly yes.

Addy: What is the current discussion about academic contract?
Answer: We need more information. We are looking into different options. Previously people do not necessarily want to rent the apartment for the entire year, and there have been some losses from the housing. So they are working on an academic year contract that renting out the space for conferences during the summer. One thing we made progress on is that the space is for graduate students, and the graduate students can want them over the summer.

11) 7:06 Website Updating (Robert)
The winter break is the time for everybody to update the website. If there is any question, please ask Robert.

12) 7:07 New Business (Nanna)
No new business item.

Adjourned at 7:07

• Agenda
• Attendance
• Minutes

Agenda

***************************************************************
GSC Agenda: November 18th, 6:00-8:00pm – FOOD @ 5:45!

Graduate Community Center – Nairobi Room
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1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Drew!)

2) 6:00 Welcome with introductions and Announcements (Nanna)

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 (11/11/2009).
iii. Proxies for this week: Krystal St. Julien for Justin Brown; Hanna Popick for Nanna Notthoff; Crystal Yin for Bryan Chen.
iv. The last GSC Meeting of fall quarter will be on Wednesday, December 2nd. GSC Meetings will resume winter quarter on January 6th.

3) 6:05 Funding (Ping)
* Persian Student Association
* Islamic Society of Stanford University
* Stanford Know More

4) 6:15 ASSU Update (David)

5) 6:25 Programming Update (Addy)

6) 6:30 Approval of Selection Process for Assistant Commissioner for Graduate Elections (Quinn)

7) 6:35 Set the Date of the 2010 Association Spring Quarter General Election (Quinn)

8) 6:40 Exec Bills (David)
i. Confirming Andy Parker as ASSU Vice President
ii. Confirming William Slikker as Chair of Graduate Health & Wellness
iii. Confirming Farah Abuzeid as Joint Chief of Staff
9) 6:50 Diversity Action Committee Update (Fanuel)
10) 6:55 Thanksgiving Dinner Preparation (Mary)
11) 7:00 Funding for SSE Office Computers (Tom)
12) 7:05 Hacienda Party Funding (Addy)
13) 7:10 Tutorials on GSC website (Robert)
14) 7:25 New Business (Nanna)

Attendance

Voting Members present:
Earth Sciences: Mary Van der Hoven
Engineering 1: Robert Hennessy
Engineering 2: Addy Satija
Law: Eric Osborne
Medicine: Jessica Tsai
Natural Sciences: Bryan Chen (proxy Crystal Yin present)
Social Sciences: Nanna Notthoff (proxy Hanna Popick present)
Business: Janet Zhou
At Large 1: Justin Brown (proxy Krystal St. Julien present)
At Large 2: Ryan Peacock
At Large 3: Aleksandra Korolova
At Large 4: Andrew Kennedy
Education: Eric Shed

Voting members not present:
At Large 5: Noa Lincoln
Humanities: Unfilled

Other people present: David Gobaud (ASSU President), Andy Parker (ASSU), Farah Abuzeid (ASSU), Quinn (Election), Elizabeth Rosen (Daily), Ping (Funding Committee Chair).

Minutes

Listen to this segment

1) 6:00 Welcome with introductions and Announcements (Nanna)

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 (11/11/2009).
iii. Proxies for this week: Krstal St. Julien for Justin Brown; Hanna Popick for Nanna Notthoff; Crystal Yin for Bryan Chen.
iv. The last GSC Meeting of fall quarter will be on Wednesday, December 2nd. GSC Meetings will resume winter quarter on January 6th.

2) 6:05 Funding (Ping)
*Asian American Graduate Student Association
They are requesting funding for 3 dim-sum study break activities. They will bring dim-sum to campus at the end of dead week. This has been a tradition at the end of every quarter. They requested $1,500 for three quarters. They are expecting 65-70 people to attend in each event, with $8/person for lunch.
Q: Are you using it for dinner?
A: No, for lunch.
Q: Where exactly will be the activity location?
A: GCC.
Q: Where exactly in GCC?
A: Not confirmed, but we will send the notification by the end of next weekend.
Q: What would you do if you can’t have a room in GCC?
A: We will definitely find some place. Even if we can’t have it in GCC, we will definitely be able to have it in the Rains.
Approving $1,500 passes by consensus.

* Islamic Society of Stanford University
They have 50%: 50% undergraduate: graduate ratios. They are having speakers coming to the campus. They are requesting $1,400 for many events including intellectual forum and a speaker’s event. They are also holding an election night which welcomes everybody.
Q: For the election night, it seems to be a group internal event rather than an open event.
A: I think everybody is welcome.
Ping: This election night is actually open to everybody interested in Islamic culture.
Q: Are you getting money from the Undergraduate Senate as well?
A: Yes.
There is objection in funding this group $1,400. Robert has a proposal to fund everything except the election night, which is $700. Robert sees it as a regular organizational event, which cannot be funded through funding committee.
The request of funding $700 has passed by consensus.
We proceed with roll call for funding additional $1,400
0 yes: 10 no: 2 abstention

[Finishes this item at 6:18]

3) 6:18 Food (Thanks! Drew)

4) 6:24 ASSU Update (David)
Jay resigned the Vice President, David nominates Andy Parker as ASSU Vice President and Farah Abuzeid as Joint Chief of Staff.
[Finishes this item at 6:24]

5) 6:24 Programming Update (Addy)

No updates.

6) 6:25 Approval of Selection Process for Assistant Commissioner for Graduate Elections (Quinn)
GSC approved the committee to interview the Assistant Commissioner for Graduate Elections. We have one applicant. David Gobaud, me, Addy and two other people will interview him on Friday. Hopefully it will go well.
[Finishes this item at 6:26]

7) 6:26 Set the Date of the 2010 Association Spring Quarter General Election (Quinn)
The undergraduate senate passed the bill yesterday, which sets the date to be April 8th and April 9th. These dates are Thursday and Friday of the second week of spring quarter, which has been the best date from past experiences. This is not very different from past years. We need to approve it.
We proceed with roll call, and the results are 13 yes: 0 no: 0 abstention.
[Finishes this item at 6:29]

8) 6:29 Exec Bills (David)
There are two people who can quickly assume as ASSU Vice President. They know what is going on in the Undergraduate Senate, GSC, and ASSU. The other person is a senior and has many other commitments, so we decided to nominate Andy to be the Vice President.
Q: What is the deal with the Senate? Did they not want to approve?
A: It was reported in the Daily that “the Senate declines to approve…”, which is not true. There were no votes in the Undergraduate Senate; they only asked a bunch of questions.

i. Confirming Andy Parker as ASSU Vice President
Q: Do you think that Senate will have big problems in approving Andy?
A: Not really.
The roll call results are: 13 yes: 0 no: 0 abstention.
Andy Parker is approved as the new ASSU Vice President.

ii. Confirming William Slikker as Chair of Graduate Health & Wellness
William Slikker is extremely qualified, we are very impressed by his skills, dedication, and especially his experiences in the health care.
The roll call results are: 13 yes: 0 no: 0 abstention.
William Slikker is approved as the new Chair of Graduate Health & Wellness.

iii. Confirming Farah Abuzeid as Joint Chief of Staff
She will facilitate the communication among Senate, GSC, and ASSU. Her leadership skills, communication skills have been evaluated and the team is very excited.
Q: Have you considered the Senate’s concern about going out.
A: Everybody in the team is having numerous projects in hand right now. It is more practical to have someone outside the team to come in.
Q: Why do you think that the Senate may have a problem?
A: They may just want to ask questions. They are worrying about lack of ASSU experience for Farah, but we actually need more leadership skills rather than ASSU experiences.
Farah comes in and she expresses her excitement. She is very excited to give back to Stanford community, and she feel that she has the managerial skills after nearly 4 years time in Stanford.
Q: Is it the right of the president to choose the cabinet? If it is his privilege, why are there so many discussions?
A: Yes, it is the tradition. The constitution does not explicitly said that the legislative body would choose the cabinet; it does also explicitly said that if the vice president leaves, the president would have the right to select. It is just different ways of interpreting it.

The Roll Call results are 13 yes: 0 no: 0 abstentions.
Farah Abuzeid is the new Joint Chief of Staff

David: We are still looking for two people. We are looking for a Chair of Graduate Life, Academics, Cost of Living, and Equality and a Co-Chair of Marketing and HCI.
David has no idea about Jay’s issue until late summer. I do not think anybody else know earlier rather than Jay and Judiciary Affairs.

[Finishes this item at 6:43]

9) 6:43 Diversity Action Committee Update (Fanuel)
They have been working on mainly three projects:
Diversity project: We are thinking about having faculty members appointed to the schools and hope that they will be more approachable for information. We have mixed feedback but mostly encouraging.

Grad advising project: We hope to have graduate students to advise the mentees, we will give money to the mentors. The response has been very encouraging.

Yearly Diversity week: We will have some celebrity to the campus to talk. We may have Michelle Obama to come down and we will keep you guys updated.

Q: The graduate mentor is a very good idea. What do you mean by telling them what professors would want?
A: For example, as a freshman coming in to biological department, he or she may not have an idea about which professors to talk to, which classes to take, which professors to approach as mentors. The graduate students can tell or encourage students to approach professors.

[Finishes this item at 6:48]

10) 6:48 Funding for SSE Office Computers (Tom)
They are not here.

11) 6:49 Thanksgiving Dinner Preparation (Mary)
About 900 adults registered for Thanksgiving dinner and they have food for 1,500 people. Many people registered for volunteers. Tomorrow I will have a Google doc with works for 60 volunteers, and I have 75 volunteers, which is fantastic.

[Finishes this item at 6:50]

12) 6:50 Hacienda Party Funding (Addy)
We are having a famous band coming down on Dec 4th. It will be a party with live band. They are requesting $500 from programming discretionary account for food and drink, to the Rains’ CA.
Q: Is it near the exam period, will the noise affect the students?
A: The Dec 4th is the last day of the class, which is a traditional party day.
Q: Will the event be on campus or off-campus?
A: We have not confirmed yet.

[Finishes this item at 6:55]

13) 6:55 New Business (Nanna)
i. Big Game Tailgate
Robert: The Big Game Tailgate is going to take place in white plaza soon. GSPB will prepare lots of food.

Q: Will you check Stanford student ID?
A: Every student will be able to bring a non-Stanford guest, but honestly we do not check.

ii. Transfer from Reserve to Funding Committee
Ryan: Our finance is kind of tight. We need to start cutting down the findings for VSO. He requests to take $1,800 from reserve to the funding committee for this fiscal year, with expectation to match to the student group amount.

Q: Why do you think that we need to do the transfer right now?
A: I just got the number of take backs so I want to get this done as soon as possible.

The roll call results are 12 yes: 0 no: 0 abstention.

Approving transferring $1,800 from reserve to the funding committee passes by consensus.

iii. Quinn: We are looking at election policies in the spring soon. It is most concerned with the undergraduates. What would be the best way to get you guys involved? I will have a meeting with the undergraduates. Do you need a separate meeting? The election policies have been something like the restrictions of the flyers to be sent out. Does anybody object that they go to the undergraduate meeting if they are interested?

Q: When exactly is the time?
A: Should be some time after the thanksgiving week. I will check it out. I will also make sure that it is compatible with the time of this GSC meeting.

iv. Alexandra: The entire electronic dissertation submitted will be given to Google to index them. This may be something that students might be concerned about.

Q: Does student have the option of submit in hard copy?
A: Students have the option of submitting the hard copy in the short term. However, even in hard copy, it will be indexed by Google.

Mary: I have read something related to partnership with Google and libraries. Eventually your paper will be in Google doc any way.

Alexandra: Yes, in the long term. But this is relevant to whether in the short term your papers would be immediately available in Google.

Ryan: We should be aware that if your research is funded by federal grant, technically the dissertation may actually be the public property to begin with.

Alexandra: My personal opinion is that students should have their own choice. I want to see whether anybody else is concerned with it.

Mary: I think we should talk about it more. I do not have a strong opinion, but your point is very well taken.

David: I have a relevant meeting over the summer. The current system is that when you request, you can actually have options of time delay before people to access.

Alexandra: Yes, you can have some option that they have only 20% of the dissertation accessible for 5 years.

Drew: Why don’t you want the dissertation to be accessible by others.

Alexandra: I do not necessarily have strong objection, but I want to have control of my dissertation.

Mary: I can imagine that international students may have trouble with their home country for the type of stuff they are working with. There should definitely be exceptions.

Alexandra: It is a partnership between Google and Stanford. Everybody has the best intention.

Ryan: Before we actually start perusing it, we need to make sure we have taken care of the details. Perhaps we can have different arrangements for different disciplines.

14) 7:10 Tutorials on GSC website (Robert)
Robert teaches people to log in to GSC website and use the features.

Adjourned at 7:21

• Agenda
• Attendance
• Minutes

Agenda

***************************************************************
GSC Agenda: Nov 11th, 6:00-8:00pm

BCSC Community Room
***************************************************************
Part I Joint Legislative Meeting

1) 6:00 Introductions

2) 6:05 President Hennessy opening remarks

3) 6:10 Q&A

4) 6:50 Executive Briefing

5) 7:00 Q&A

6) 7:10 New Business

Part II GSC-only Agenda

7) 7:20 Funding Committee Update (Justin)
*Romanian Student Association
*Persian Student Association
*Stanford Alpine Project
*Hindi Film Dance Team
*Stanford Materials Research Society

8) 7:45 Thanksgiving Dinner (Mary)

9) 8:00 Announcement for Elections Web sites (Quinn)

10) Approval of Selection Process for Assistant Commissioner for Graduate Elections (Quinn, 5 mins) (If time permits)

11) Exec Bills (Ryan, 10 mins) (If time permits)

12) New Business (Nanna)

Attendance

Voting Members present:
Earth Sciences: Mary Van der Hoven
Engineering 1: Robert Hennessy
Engineering 2: Addy Satija
Law: Eric Osborne
Medicine: Jessica Tsai
Natural Sciences: Bryan Chen
Social Sciences: Nanna Notthoff
Business: Janet Zhou (Present during joint legislative meeting)
At Large 1: Justin Brown
At Large 2: Ryan Peacock
At Large 3: Aleksandra Korolova
At Large 4: Andrew Kennedy

Voting members not present:
At Large 5: Noa Lincoln
Education: Eric Shed
Humanities: Unfilled

Other people present: David Gobaud (ASSU President), Jay (ASSU Vice President), Andy Parker (ASSU), Farah Abuzeid (ASSU) and many others.

Minutes

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Part I Joint Legislative Meeting

The video of this part will be available on the ASSU website.

1) 6:00 Introductions

2) 6:13 President Hennessy opening remarks

After last year when we are acting quickly to cut down the costs without harming the long-term sustainability of the university, we have achieved good balance. A very important aspect is not cutting undergraduate financial aids. Other things on the key agenda are that there are several buildings that we have not finished fund raising. We are looking for small gifts for the buildings, which are several millions left to each building. Stanford deserves a world class concert venue. The art building will solve the primary limiting factors for the art courses. The biology building will improve the undergraduate labs, which are not in good shape currently. We are half way towards our total goal of the graduate fellowship. We will need to fill about 50 faculty positions, which require funding.

[Finish this item at 6:18]

3) 6:18 Q&A
Nanna: Could you please elaborate on the economic crisis impact on the graduate fellowship?
A: For graduate we are working on the three-piece support: professorship, fellowship and scholarship. We are about half-way to the goal for graduates. We are also half-way to our revised goal of undergraduate scholarship.

Eric: Where does most of the donation come from, undergraduate or graduate?
A: Generally not from people with a phD. It may come from people who are on track to a phD, but not for those people already have a phD. Undergraduate alumni generally give a lot to the university. Graduate alumni tend to give individual schools. Law school alumni tend to give to law schools, business school tend to give generous to the university. Many successful entrepreneurs in the Engineering give a lot to the engineering school.

Eric: Does that affect how the fund is spent?
A: Not really. For business school, we are leveraging its capability to the rest of the university body.

Nanna: What is your vision of graduate financial aids?
A: We see a long-term partnership with the federal government as necessary. Our goal is to boost funding to inter-disciplinary research, humanity and other departments where university is the primary financial sources. We are also trying to build more funding to the diversity to encourage people to further pursue education. We will also attach different things in different ways.

Eric: I am a bit concern about the increasing costs of professional schools. The students generally rely on loans; however, the loans in the downturn are not stable.
A: We have substantial resources for law schools and business schools, but things are different in the medical schools. We may see the drop number of law students, which may not be a bad thing since less than half of the students actually pass the bar exam in their first attempt. This indicates a more than necessary student amount. Many engineering phD are going to the industry.

Q: In the future, if you are not able to replenish the fund for undergraduate financial aids.
A: If we sustain another financial downturn even worse than the last one, we might need to do something there. We will have deficient fund for a couple of years, but not too long.

Q: Do you see the expansion of undergraduate class size in the near future?
A: Generally yes.

Q: Will it actually increase the costs?
A: It is complicated.

Q: Could you please talk more about the endowment?
A: The endowments assets are those that would have higher return than public market. For illiquid portion such as private equity and venture capital, it is not possible to sell the next day. The endowment can come from the illiquid assets. However, if all your assets are illiquid, you will need to borrow money when you need money. For Stanford, 800 million is borrowed to be a safety net. Right now is not the worst endowment performance. The worst was in the 1970s.

Q: Can you please talk more about undergraduate international financial aids?
A: We will be slowed down by the financial crisis. I wish it would not be the case. However, it will be the case. International students have a very different social-economics demographics compared to the US students. Some international students do not need any but some need lots.

Q: Can we have Stanford self-assured dependent healthcare?
A; It will not work because of negative election. The only way it might work is to pool the dependent healthcare in the whole student pool which will increase everybody’s cost. The dependents will only have healthcare if they sign up from day one they come to the campus.

Q: Can we have fund-raising for health care?
A: No, I do not think that will work.

[Finish this item at 6:54]

4) 6:54 Executive Briefing (David)
There are mainly three projects we are working on:
A) Sustainability. We will focus on three areas:
1. Academic research: we will research on the best strategy;
2. Educations: we will educate the leaders of tomorrow;
3. Infrastructure regeneration: we are calling for everybody in the community to get involved.
B) Sexual assaults:
There has been increased number of sexual assaults on campus, not only in Stanford, but also in other campuses. This is not a topic that can be easily talked about. We will have a student government to work on ending the sexual assaults and relationship abuse.
C) International students
When international students get home and come back, they need to be checked for 1 week, which is very troublesome. The dependent healthcare has been a big problem as well. We are wondering whether we can make it happen for Stanford self assurance for dependent healthcare.

5) 7:10 New Business

Q: SSE computers are not going to be funded by GSC?
A: They are suggested to come to the GSC meeting to discuss because this should be decided by the entire GSC.

Jay officially announced to resign from the ASSU. He passes down the official resign letters, as required by the joint by-laws of ASSU. Andy Parker is appointed as the new ASSU VP and Farah Abuzeid as an Executive Cabinet Joint Chief of Staff.

Q: How is the new appointment decision made?
A: Andy is very qualified and has many experiences in the leadership team.

Q: What is your plan?
Andy: The resignation of Jay is a huge loss to the ASSU team. But the overall picture will not change. I have worked closely with Jay for quite a long time.
Farah: This is my fourth year in Stanford and I have been greatly benefited greatly from Stanford so far. I feel that this is the opportunity to contribute back to Stanford.

[Finish this item at 7:31]

Part II GSC-only Agenda

Listen to this segment

6) 7:31 Funding Committee Update (Justin)
*Stanford Alpine Project
They are having a chili cook-off event this Friday, expecting many people to come. The group is requiring $600.

Approving $600 passes by consensus.

*Romanian Student Association
They will have a combined celebration of Romanian national day and Christmas. They are requesting $500.

Q: How many of the students expected are graduate students?
A: More than 90%.

Approving $500 passes by consensus.

*Hindi Film Dance Team
They are asking for funds for a workshop they have. The event is mainly for graduate students. They are also having a friend and family night. They will perform the item for the first time before they go for competitions.

Q: May I know what will happen in the workshop and who will be eligible to join the dance team?
A: The workshop will be free and open to everybody. We hope everybody will come to learn more about ballroom dance. We are expecting 20-35 people to come.

Comment: The group is 50% undergraduate students and 50% graduate students.

Q: You did not answer the previous question. Who will be eligible to become part of the dance team? Also, some of the workshops have been taught in Stanford, why should GSC sponsor this workshop?
A: The food gives some incentives for people to stay back later for socialize. We will have some other workshops in the winter quarter. We have 20 people currently on the team now and everybody is welcome to join.

Q: What is the average attendance for your workshop?
A: 20 -35, majority of which are girls.

Q: Why is cosmetics capital?
A: It is a mistake. It should be a programming expense.

After adjustments, they are requiring $468.

Approving $468 passes by consensus.

*Stanford Materials Research Society
They are initiating some mixers. They also have connections with an elementary school and they will offer tutoring after school. They are also working on bringing back alumni. The group is all graduate students.

Q: How many people are on your mailing list? Your expected number is greater than the number in your mailing list.
A: They are doing publicity outside the mailing list. The expectation is a conservative number.

Justin and Mary suggest that material science is actually very interdisciplinary.

Q: How many people in your mailing list are from material science?
A: Not clear about the exact break down, but there are many people coming from other departments.

Robert has a motion to cut the funding down because he has organized similar events with great publicity effort but poor turned out. The motion was seconded by Ryan.

We proceed with approving outreach for $700 first. This passes by consensus.

We proceed with approving $1,450, passes by consensus. We proceed with approving additional $1,450, which is objected.

The roll call results are 6 yes: 4 no: 1 abstention, which indicates a majority.

Approving $ 3,600 to Stanford Materials Research Society

[Finish this item at 7:45]

7) 7:45 Thanksgiving Dinner (Mary)
Mary says she previously failed to recognize some programming expenses, such as a table for kids, gifts for volunteers. Mary is requesting another $400 to cover that.

Q: There used to be a policy from funding committee that we are not buying gifts to volunteers. But of course, this is not funded under funding committee.
A: But it is a holiday and the volunteers deserve something for sacrificing the precious holiday time.

Approving funding additional $400 to thanksgiving dinner passes by consensus.

[Finish this item at 8:00]

8) 8:00 Announcement for Elections Web sites (Quinn)
The election website is out, and the deadline of application for the assistant graduate election commissioner is Thursday. Are there volunteers to help with the interviewing process? Nanna suggested Quinn to send out the email to GSC members tonight. Justin volunteered to be the designee.

9) 8:01 New Business (Nanna)

David requests to confirm Tommy Tobin and Mateo Wilmott to be the two New Members of the Constitutional Council. These nominees have demonstrated the skills, background, and interests necessary to serve as judicious and objective members of the ASSU Constitutional Council

The Roll Call results are 11 yes: 0 no: 0 abstentions.

This reaches the requirement of 2/3 Approval, therefore Tommy Tobin and Mateo Wilmott are confirmed to serve as members of the Constitutional Council.

David requests to confirm Sonali Chopra and Leslie Cachola be confirmed as Executive Cabinet’s Sustainability Co-Chairs.

The Roll Call results are 11 yes: 0 no: 0 abstentions.

This reaches the requirement of majority, therefore Sonali Chopra and Leslie Cachola be confirmed as Executive Cabinet’s Sustainability Co-Chairs.

Adjourned at 8:05

• Agenda
• Attendance
• Minutes

Agenda

***************************************************************
GSC Agenda: Nov 4th, 6:00-8:00pm – FOOD @ 5:45!

Graduate Community Center – Nairobi Room
***************************************************************

1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Drew!)

2) 6:00 Welcome with introductions and Announcements (Nanna)

i. Please be aware that all meetings are audio recorded and will be made available on the GSC website.

ii. Please send Grad Announce items to Nanna (notthoff@stanford.edu) by Thursday at noon.

iii. Proxies for this week: Krystal St. Julien for Justin Brown; Ping Li for Janet Zhou.

iv. Approve minutes from the last meeting (10/28/2009).

3) 6:05 Funding Committee Update (Ping)

*Sarvodaya
*Islamic Society of Stanford University
*Stanford Alpine Project

4) 6:20 ASSU Update (David)

5) 6:25 Programming Update (Jess)

6) 6:30 Announcements from Elections Commission (Quinn)

7) 6:35 Sustainable Alternatives for VSOs (Bryan and Dean Young)

8) 6:45 Budget Update and Special Fees Reform Discussion (Ryan)

9) 7:05 GSC Retreat (Eric)

10) 7:15 New Business (Nanna)

Attendance

Voting Members present:
Earth Sciences: Mary Van der Hoven
Education: Eric Shed
Engineering 1: Robert Hennessy
Engineering 2: Addy Satija
Law: Eric Osborne
Medicine: Jessica Tsai
Natural Sciences: Bryan Chen
Social Sciences: Nanna Notthoff
Business: Janet Zhou (Proxy Ping Li present)
At Large 1: Justin Brown (Proxy Krystal St. Julien present)
At Large 2: Ryan Peacock
At Large 3: Aleksandra Korolova
At Large 4: Andrew Kennedy
At Large 5: Noa Lincoln

Voting members not present:
Humanities: Unfilled

Other people present: David Gobaud (ASSU President), Jay (ASSU Vice President), Eliu Titus (Daily), Liz McNaughtan, Adam Beberg.

Minutes

Listen to this segment

1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Drew!)

2) 6:00 Welcome with introductions and Announcements (Nanna)

i. Please be aware that all meetings are audio recorded and will be made available on the GSC website.

ii. Please send Grad Announce items to Nanna (notthoff@stanford.edu) by Thursday at noon.

iii. Proxies for this week: Krystal St. Julien for Justin Brown; Ping Li for Janet Zhou.

iv. Approve minutes from the last meeting (10/28/2009).

3) 6:03 Funding Committee Update (Ping)

The overall budget is tight because more students decided to withdraw their activities fees because of the bad economy, while more student groups are coming to GSC due to the university level budget cut. Funding committee has come out with three ways to solve the challenge.

a. Focus more money on events with more graduate students; encourage big events and joint events.
Joint events and big events are clearly defined here: joint events should be the ones co-hosted by at least three different groups; big events should have at least 500 participants. This year we are going to put the account for joint events and big events together, since there are many overlaps for the two categories. We are allocating extra money into the account in order to encourage students to hold larger scale events.

b. Cut some line items
For example, cut the traditional marketing expenses to more economical ones such as email and Facebook. For the food cap we may adjust them according to the event scale. We also cut the transportation costs. We will not fund for the gas, encouraging the events to be held on campus. In addition, we are not going to sponsor any conference fee, because of the limited impact.

c. More communication with VSOs through feedback forms
We have made the feedback forms voluntary instead of mandatory, and we have changed the form to more detailed questions. It was found that many events are small scale. However, there is not pattern observed from the equipment rental, which means we cannot decide which equipments to purchase to cut the rental costs now. The feedbacks will be useful in the bylaw change.

Nanna: There will be about 10% taking off at the end of the fiscal year.

Q: Why is the cut-off percentage of graduate students is 35% since more than 50% of the students in Stanford are graduate students?
A: There are natural variations in graduate percentages among different student groups. The undergraduate senate has a similar standard. This cut-off has been historical.

Q: We should collect the attendance information now.
A: Yes, we can make that mandatory.

Q: Is there a way for us to make the feedback forms mandatory?
A: After the money is approved, the funding committee has little control on the money. But we can tell them that if they are not sending the feedback, we will not sponsor them again. However, we need another person to help with funding committee with the feedback analysis.

Ryan: Generally we are doing fine this year compared with historical data. The key problem is the system we are working with is very inconvenient to use. But we cannot take back the funding from a group because they did not fill up the feedback forms. The people spent money for group events will expect reimbursements. we should not screw up groups/ individuals.

[Finish this item at 6:26]

4) 6:26 ASSU Update (David)
The town hall went well. We will have a joint legislative meeting with President Hennessy next week, location to be confirmed.

Q: Is there any confirmed agenda item in the legislative meeting?
A: We will probably confirm some new counter numbers and constitutional council nominees, and sustainability co-chair.

Q: How many people came in the Town Hall? How many of them are graduate students?
A: Around 40. We did not track the graduate students.

[Finish this item at 6:29]

5) 6:29 Programming Update (Addy)
The San Francisco City Hall is tentatively out because of the budget constraints. The tentative venue will be Computer History Museum Mountain View.

Nanna expresses a public thank you to Addy and Jessica for their effort.

[Finish this item at 6:31]

6) 6:31 Announcements from Elections Commission (Quinn)

We are continuing searching for a graduate assistant for election. Anybody interested please talk to Quinn. The elections commission now has a 100% turnover rate for staff, and there is no overlap of terms. Quinn is working on giving more institutional memory to the structure, and starts looking for staff in the next term now.

Addy: We should find the new person before the special fee discussion.

[Finish this item at 6:35]

7) 6:35 Sustainable Alternatives for VSOs (Bryan and Dean Young)
Bryan hopes that the funding committee would encourage the VSOs to purchase event supplies from the Green Store. Dean is from the Green Store and they offer delivery with supplies such as recyclable cups and plates, which are environment friendly and affordable. For example, for any student group who wants to have BBQ tomorrow, they can just call in or order online (http://greenstore.stanford.edu) and get the supplies delivered.

Q: The price is going to be better than the other green stuff, how is it compared with the cheap cups from Costco?
A: We are twice as expensive as the red cups.

Q: Is this something that we should make it compulsory for the VSOs?
A: Not necessarily. But we should at least make it aware.

Q: If we make every VSO buy supplies from you, will the economies of scale make your price go down?
A: No.

Q: Since you have recycled cups, do you have trash bins to take care of them?
A: It is a good point.

[Finish this item at 6:43]

8) 6:43 Budget Update and Special Fees Reform Discussion (Ryan)
There are mainly 3 funding sources. In FY 10, which starts from July 1, 2009, the amount split is mainly as follows:
a. ASSU endowment, which may be affected by the economy. The amount is $46,005, which goes to GSC political budget.
b. Student Fees (aka General Fees), which is less affected by the economy. However the students can request refunds and the percentage of requests will go up as the economy goes bad. The fee amount is difficult to change. The amount is $237,572, which goes to GSC programming and funding committee.
c. GSC reserves: subject to spending restrictions. The amount is $50,000 out of total $481,109, which goes to funding committee.

GSC political budget are fine now, except that the legislative action part is a little tight.

Q: How is the $500 spent for the tax information session?
A: Buy nice thing for the speaker.

The GSC programming account in the programming, the money has been spent very well, but we should continue to carefully use the money.

For the co-sponsorship, stipends, and discretionary, we are doing well.

For the funding committee, considering 11% take-backs, we have about more than 46% remaining.

For the GSC reserve, we should slowly cut down the funding committee money for VSOs and GSC programming before we reach the threshold.

Q: Do you think that we should convince the graduate students to increase the activity fee?
A: In order to get it pass, it is going to be difficult. We should start cutting now, when people feel the cut, they will understand the reason behind fee increasing.

Adam: We have increased our spending in funding committee greatly. The cut of budget is very necessary.

Mary: I think asking for increase in activities would be disaster. We will expect a huge percentage in the people requesting money back.

Special fees: the undergraduates are very concern that they are paying $120 on top of the activity fees. The undergraduates are trying to renovate the special fees.

We are running behind reschedule so we will discuss about special fee particularly another day.

[Finish this item at 7:25]

9) 7:25 GSC Retreat (Eric)
We will leave Stanford at no later than 8:45 because it is a 35 minutes drive. If you are carpooling, you will get $20 reimbursement. We will discuss about the goals for the rest of the year. We will also discuss about funding, international affairs, and health care. We will meet until 1pm and then have very nice lunch, followed by socializing and golf.

[Finish this item at 7:28]

10) 7:28 New Business (Nanna)
Robert proposes to increase the budget of Graduate night tomorrow from $300 to $350.

Approving passes by consensus.

David: The HAAS center service team is going to have a town hall on Nov 10th, 7:00 pm-8:30 pm at the Old Union Room200. All the people interested in public service are encouraged to enter.

Mary: Thanksgiving dinner is coming up. I would like to see how many people are not available to volunteer in the Thanksgiving dinner.

Eric: I met the California State Senator and he is happy to come to a meeting or a lunch time in Saturday.
Ryan: I would suggest not to bring him to a meeting but a separate meeting.
Eric: I will invite him to a meeting on any Saturday in January.

[Finish this item at 7:33]

Adjourned 7:33

• Agenda
• Attendance
• Minutes

Agenda

***************************************************************
GSC Agenda: Oct 28th, 6:00-8:00pm – FOOD @ 5:45!

Graduate Community Center – Nairobi Room
***************************************************************

1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Drew!)

2) 6:00 Welcome with introductions and Announcements (Nanna)

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 (10/21/2009).

iii. Proxies for this week: Amy Askin for Mary Van der Hoven; Crystal Yin for Alexandra Korolova.

3) 6:05 ASSU Update (David)

4) 6:10 Programming Update (Jess)

5) 6:15 Confirmation of Exec Graduate Social Chair (Ryan)

6) 6:25 Swearing in Janet (Nanna)

7) 6:30 Art Project Funding Request (Sarit and Micha)

8) 6: 40 Stipend for Calendar Development (Robert)

9) 6:50 New Business (Nanna)

Attendance

Voting Members present:
Earth Sciences: Mary Van der Hoven (Proxy Amy Askin present)
Education: Eric Shed
Engineering 1: Robert Hennessy
Engineering 2: Addy Satija
Law: Eric Osborne
Medicine: Jessica Tsai
Natural Sciences: Bryan Chen
Social Sciences: Nanna Notthoff
At Large 1: Justin Brown
At Large 2: Ryan Peacock
At Large 3: Aleksandra Korolova (Proxy Crystal Yin present0
At Large 4: Andrew Kennedy
At Large 5: Noa Lincoln

Voting members not present:
Business: Unfilled
Humanities: Unfilled

Other people present: David Gobaud (ASSU President), Janet Zhou (Swearing for Business Representative), Hariharan Vijay (Application for Graduate Social Chair), Steve Schooff, Steve Erlien (SCC Facilities Rep), Krystal St. Julien.

Minutes

Listen to this segment

1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Drew!)

2) 6:00 Welcome with introductions and Announcements (Nanna)

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 (10/21/2009) including correction for the expected number of people attending the Thanksgiving dinner from 15,000 to 1,500.

iii. Proxies for this week: Amy Askin for Mary Van der Hoven; Crystal Yin for Alexandra Korolova.

3) 6:04 ASSU Update (David)
The R&DE, Transportation and Sustainability Town hall is going to be held tomorrow at 5:30pm. The new social chair is coming for approval from GSC soon.

Q: How many people are expected at the Town Hall and how big is the room?
A: We are expecting about 50-100 people.

Q: In your budget, how come the number expected is different?
A: We estimated the maximum in the budgeting. But realistically it should be about 50 people.

Q: What is the food for the Town Hall?
A: Pizza and soda.

[Finish this item at 6:10]

4) 6:10 Programming Update (Jess & Addy)
The transportation fee would be $700/bus and the bus would run continuously from 8:30pm to 1:00am. If we use 8 buses, the transportation will only be $6,000. Therefore the budget of the entire Graduate Formal will be within $35,000. So even if we retrieve money purely from the tickets, which means $35 ticket for 1,000 students, this is entirely viable. On top of that, we still have funds of $23,000 as a budget line item for this Graduate Formal. Jess and Addy think this is entirely viable and suggest we still hold it in City Hall.

Robert: How to solve the bus problem? It takes about 2 hours to run the trip. If we expect 1,000 people attending, we should at least have 700 seats, which require 15 buses to come back.

Answer: We can have at most 8-10 buses. We have 550 seats on 10 buses, which is significant.

Robert: The main issue is that we are bussing people back. We need to group people that coming back on 11pm and 2pm. We can only solve this problem by greatly increasing the number of buses. We hope to see the rough budget based on different scenarios.

Ryan: Instead of having buses coming and going back continuously, we can have buses going on one goal and then buses coming back at 1pm.

Krystal: We can simply keep things in Mountain View. Many people had fun last year and people would not care about the location.

We proceed with straw polls to help the programming side to roughly know how people are feeling about different locations and prices:

1. Prefer City Hall: Prefer Mountain View: Indifferent between the two options = 10: 5:5
2. Willing to pay $40 to have the Graduate Formal at City Hall: Not willing to pay $40 to have the Graduate Formal at City Hall: Indifferent between the two options = 15:0:5

Bryan: There might be intermediate locations. I believe we can collect ideas now.

Janet: Cantor Arts Museum can be a good option.

The straw poll results and people’s suggestions will help the programming committee on their further planning.

[Finish this item at 6:23]

5) 6:23 Confirmation of Exec Graduate Social Chair (Ryan)

Hariharan Vijay has relevant experiences before and would love to make a difference.

David: We are very glad that he applied. He is only first year, and he is very enthusiastic.

Robert: What exactly are you going to do?
Hariharan: I am sharing responsibilities with John. I am already in contact with Law student government, and hopefully also with GSB student governments. I hope to be the bridge of all the graduate communities. Maybe we can organize the campus-wide happy hours or other similar events. We can also try to share information/knowledge throughout the entire campus. For example, we can ask graduate students to share with the undergraduates more about the graduate schools.

I have many experiences before, ready to serve as a resource to help anybody.

Justin: Will you be willing to clean up after parties?
Answer: Yes.

The roll call results are: 13 yes, 0 no, 0 abstention.
Passes by majority, and Hariharan Vijay is the new Exec Graduate Social Chair.

[Finish this item at 6:30]

6) 6:30 Swearing in Janet (Nanna)
Janet swears and officially becomes the GSB representative. She will be a voting member starting from the next meeting.

[Finish this item at 6:33]

7) 6:33 Art Project Funding Request (Sarit and Micha)
Sarit passes down the artworks. She has been interested in exploring relationships between people and spaces. EV is an excellent place to explore the opportunities: they are living in the same type of apartments; however they represent great diversity, which would affect the way they make use of the space.

Sarit has taken and chosen pictures from 25 families. She believes that there are 2-ways relationships: people customize the space and the space would change the people’s experiences and their relationship with people. She believes it would be very interesting to present such exhibition.

They are requesting $5,525 for printing and framing the pictures together with books, or $4,425 without books.

Q: where would be the exhibition?
A: First floor or 2nd floor.

Q: How are you going to do with the pictures after the exhibition?
A: It would be ours.

Q: The portraits are only for families?
A: Yes. The families living in mid-rises have very different experiences, with stronger feeling of community.

Q: Are you now going to other funding resources?
A: No.

Q: Are you fine with using the photos for other purposes such as advertisements for housing?
A: Yes, as long as it is mentioned that there are taken by us.

Q: Have you received the approval about putting up the pictures?
A: We have talked about the graduate life office, and they showed enthusiastic.

Q: Have you considered funding by other organizations such as Housing?
A: Not much.

Comments:
Ryan: We still have some money from the programming discretionary account for EV family events. But for this event, we need to have more conversations with other organizations such as Stanford Housing.

Nanna: I have talked with Ryan about this. It is a very big budget as a project, and it is an interesting project. If we get approval, we can have art exhibition in the building. We need to talk to office of Housing whether they will be interested in the funding. We can take charge of the costs of the actual projects, such as printing.

Robert: My building is Allen building, and they change the painting every 6 months. It is a lot of money, but it is worth it.

Justin: I propose that we take a table voting about how much we will fund this project.

Eric: I think it is a great project. We need to know what happens after the exhibition, which is more important.

Answer: Yes, we can leave the photos as part of the GCC building.

Amy: We need to make sure that there is a home for the photos to stay. John Arillaga gets very nervous when things are put on the wall.

Eric: I think it is a wonderful project. I am also optimistic that there are many other organizations would be interested, such as CA program, art department, alumni magazine. This is an interesting group project.

Nanna: I am happy to help you get in touch with various organizations.

Eric: It is very clear that we will support you somewhere somehow.

Question from the organizer: Can we talk to the other organizations that we have GSC back?

Eric: Perhaps we can vote on we supporting them, but not specifying the amount.

Ryan proposes to sponsor 25% of the project.

Nanna: We can help in any way, but I would prefer not to give specific amount at this moments.

Justin: If you go to the Alumni Magazine now, they may write you check on the spot.

Resolution: GSC supports this project and we will come back to decide the specific funding amount after they approach other organizations.

Approving this resolution passes by consensus.

[Finish this item at 7:03]

8) 7:03 Stipend for Calendar Development (Robert)
We need to hire somebody to write out the script for the calendar on the GSC website. Robert proposes $800.

Nanna: Based on the fact that we spent $400 for somebody to set up the thanksgiving registration. I propose a one-time $800 for the website.

Janet: What is the roughly time required for them to finish?
Robert: Perhaps 10 hours maximum.

David: Is it just adding in a field?
Robert: Also enabling people to adding graduate events.

Approving $800 for Robert to hire a person to build up calendar passes by consensus.

[Finish this item at 7:10]

9) 7:10 New Business (Nanna)

GSC retreat will be on Nov 7th, things are going to be amazing. We will send out a survey for RSVP tonight. We will have food in a very nice Restaurant at 9:30, followed by a meeting, and very nice lunch. After that, we will go for golfing. It is a very good opportunity for people to know each other. It is a day-long retreat, but not too long. We need to know the food allergy. We may ask the presidents from the professional schools as guests to the lunch. Please let us know if there are other people that you think should be present in the retreat. Please feel free to let us know if you have any questions about this retreat.

Robert requests funding for the Grad night from GSPB Co-sponsorship.

Approving this request Passes by consensus.

Ryan: The undergraduates want to tighten the special fees. If we want to see the adjustments to the special fees, let me know.

Justin: The Mausoleum party is not a graduate event, and GSC should not fund them again.

Due to the fact the president fails to publicize the event to the graduate students as promised, we rescinding the $500 money we funded.

Roll call results are: 11 yes: 0 no: 1 abstention.

We are rescinding the $500 and the money is returned to our programming discretionary account.

Adjourned 7:21

• Agenda
• Attendance
• Minutes

Agenda

***************************************************************
GSC Agenda: Oct 21st, 6:00-8:00pm – FOOD @ 5:45!

Graduate Community Center – Nairobi Room
***************************************************************

1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Drew!)

2) 6:00 Welcome with introductions and Announcements (Nanna)

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 (10/14/2009).

3) 6:05 Selection of new GSB Rep (Nanna)

4) 6:10 Funding (Ping)

* Bengalis at Stanford
* Stanford Management Operations Research Engineering Students

5) 6:20 Confirmation of Names to BJA (Eric)

6) 6:25 ASSU Update (David)

7) 6:30 Programming Update (Addy)

8) 6:35 Thanksgiving Update (Mary)

9) 6:40 Adjustments to Funding Committee Guidelines for Food (Bryan)

10) 6:50 Stanford Cycling Team Loan Approval (Kate)

11) 6: 55 Mausoleum Party (Junior Class Presidents)

12) 7:00 NomCom Update (Jonathan)

13) 7:10 Town Hall Funding (David)

14) 7:15 Update from GHAC (Nanna)

15) 7:25 New Business (Nanna)

Attendance

Voting Members present:
Earth Sciences: Mary Van der Hoven
Education: Eric Shed
Engineering 1: Robert Hennessy
Engineering 2: Addy Satija
Law: Eric Osborne
Medicine: Jessica Tsai
Natural Sciences: Bryan Chen
Social Sciences: Nanna Notthoff
At Large 1: Justin Brown
At Large 2: Ryan Peacock
At Large 3: Aleksandra Korolova
At Large 4: Andrew Kennedy

Voting members not present:
Business: Unfilled
Humanities: Unfilled
At Large 5: Noa Lincoln

Other people present: Ping Li (Funding Committee Chair), Crystal Yin (GSC Secretary), David Gobaud (ASSU President), Jay de la Torre (ASSU VP), Jenet Zhou (Applying for Business Representative), Jonathan Bakke (NomCom), Ryan Woessner, Krystal St. Julien, Michael Miller (Cycling Team), Hanna Popick, Serena Faruque.

Minutes

Listen to this segment

1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Drew!)

2) 6:02 Welcome with introductions and Announcements (Nanna)

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 (10/14/2009) including correction for the amount of money that funding committee has spent so far from $8,400 to $84,000.

3) 6:05 Funding (Ping)

* Stanford Management Operations Research Engineering Students

They are requesting funding $2,200 for seminars. Last year they had about 40-45 people coming to the seminar series, and about 10-20% attendees are from outside the department.

Approving $2,200 passes by consensus.

* Bengalis at Stanford

They are requesting $450 for a welcome meeting and a Karaoke night.

Approving $450 passes by consensus.

[Finish this item at 6:07]

4) 6:07 Confirmation of Names to BJA (Eric)
Adhoc committee interviewed 26 people, and managed to get three graduate students, one of whom is a female graduate student. There are 4 out of 6 students are students of color. We have achieved very good diversity.

Robert: When was the email with names sent?
Answer: Sent on Sat and published on Daily on Sunday.

Roll Call results on approving the names to BJA: 10 yes: 0 no: 2 abstentions.

[Finish this item at 6:10]

5) 6:10 ASSU Update (Jay)
The confirmation of Social chair is postponed to next week. There are two graduate students helping in the Outreach right now. The R&DE, Sustainability, and Transportation Town Hall is coming on Oct 29th.

[Finish this item at 6:12]
6) 6:12 Programming Update (Jess)
Jess is still waiting for callback from City Hall. Although City Hall is a nice place, it is much easier to just hold it in last year’s venue, Computer History Museum. We have cooperated with them before.

Ryan: Maybe there can be other venues that are nearby and cheap.

Jess: There are some alternative locations, but there are Pros and Cons respectively.

Eric: Maybe for this event, we can go for the last year’s venue. We can save City Hall to other future event.

[Finish this item at 6:14]

7) 6:14 Selection of GSB Representative (Janet)
Janet has been a MBA and a GSB phD student. She will try to bring the MBA and phD students together, will also try to connect GSB with the rest of the graduate community.

Robert: What are your goals?
Janet: I have many leadership experiences. Since undergraduate, I have involved in a lot of clubs, student organizations before. I mainly want to organize social events to connect GSB and the rest of the graduate community.

Rollcall vote: 12 yes: 0 oppose: 0 abstentions.

Passes by majority, and Janet is the new GSB Representative.
[Finish this item at 6:19]
8) 6:19 Thanksgiving Update (Mary)
Mary has tried to hold the dinner it at the Alumni Center, but that is not going to happen. Last year we spent $45,000, and this year’s budget is $30,000, which is not enough. Mary is requesting extra $5,000 from programming discretionary account, mostly to improve the ambience and food, with china and silver utensils. We are expecting 15,000 students to come, all of whom are graduate students.

Nanna: The dinner is provided by the President’s office. They have been really helpful in updating the information and negotiating with the Alumni Center. However, the Alumni Center has been reluctant to hold this.

Approving additional $5,000 from programming discretionary account to graduate Thanksgiving dinner.

[Finish this item at 6:23]

9) 6:23 Stanford Cycling Team Loan Approval (Kate)
They are requesting to loan the money from the club sports reserve to buy the bikes, and sell the bikes at the end of the season to get the money back.

Approving the loan request passes by consensus.

[Finish this item at 6:26]

10) 6:26 Adjustments to Funding Committee Guidelines for Food (Bryan)
Bryan: The current guidelines for funding committee are: $10 for dinner, $8 for lunch, $4 for snacks. However, there are a lot of events with very large amount of turn-out. I believe that when the event is large-scale, there are economies of scales. Therefore I believe that

Ping: The $10 is just a cap. Normally the student organizations only apply well below the cap.

Ryan: It is a worthwhile conversation. Maybe we can have rules with lower cap for larger scale events.

Ping: We also need to decide case by case. For the events that are mainly for food, we can spend more on food; for the events mainly for information or other purposes, we need to be more careful.

Ryan: But we need to be impartial.

Eric: Do we need to tighten the belt? We need to know exactly where we are, we can decide whether we need to spread the burden.

Ryan: The reason resulting in “financial tightness” is the university budget cut. More people are coming to ASSU and GSC for money now. We should come out with ways to encourage the groups to cut down about 5% – 10% in their spending.

Justin: We cannot change the policy now because it might be unfair to some of the student organizations. But this is definitely something we can consider in the next fiscal year. Maybe we can start collecting ideas now. For example, last time Mary brought up a good idea about buying sound equipments instead of spending heavily on renting them.

Robert: I hope that we can get the number of how much we have spent from the funding committee. Although we cannot adjust retrospectively, we can have new funding policy applying for any new requests coming to us. Perhaps we can say that we can have $10 cap for the first 30-40 people, but less for the additional students. We should slowly cut down the expenses.

Justin: We can hold brainstorming sessions for money-saving ideas.

Nanna: I suggest the funding committee provide statistics in the sessions as well. I would suggest hold such sessions every other week.

Ping: We can also give feedback forms to VSO for ideas.

Ryan: MyGroup is not convenient for statistics retrieve. Maybe we can talk to Gary, who is the technical support.

Addy will show the funding committee how the data retrieving and slides were done last year. We will discuss about the funding guideline changes in two weeks’ time.

11) 6: 55 Mausoleum Party (Junior Class Presidents)
They are requesting $1,000, for Mausoleum Party. This is a very traditional event in Stanford. The event was originally fully funded by ASSU. However, this year, they have cut down the budget from $14,000 to $10,000. They have been working since Aug to find out all kinds of funding; however the attempts have not been successful. There are about 10% graduate students consistently coming to the party.

Q: What is the cost of transportation? Is it necessary?
A: We are providing buses to pick up people. This may be potentially cut. However, previously we have feedbacks from the students that buses are recommended.

Comment: This party is twice as expensive as Graduate Night Party, which normally costs about $6,000. And there are more graduate students in Graduate Night Party.

Q: What is the maximum expected number of people?
A: 3,500.

Q: Have you considered charging the students for tickets?
A: We hope not to charge the students.

Comment: If there are 3,500 students coming, you can simply charge each person $0.25 to make up the fund you are asking from us.

Q: If we give you the fund, how are you going to publicize and make the graduate students feel welcomed?
A: Nothing more than email.

Q: What is your long-term goal?
A: The ASSU and undergraduate side has been very stringent. I believe this is not going to happen next year.

David: We can send emails to the graduate schools, especially the professional schools, since they are cancelling some parties.

Jay: Undergraduate senate is working on the fund existing in the past. They are trying to create another type of fund for VGO to apply for campus-wide parties.

Bryan: I feel that at most 5% of the party was graduate students.

Addy: It was a good event. But many expenses can be further cut, like buses.

Answer: We have worked on the party since Aug, and have exhausted most funds.

Eric: Because of the huge age difference, it might be hard for graduate students to socialize with the undergraduate students in the party.

Nanna: You are working very hard. Maybe you can explore to more options, such as tickets, charges for drinks.

Comment from the organizer: We may need to consider the co-terms as well.

Bryan proposes to fund them $500.

Ryan: We still have money.

We proceed with voting for funding $500 first and then for the additional $500.

There is opposition for funding $500.
Roll Call results for funding $500 are: 6 yes: 3 no: 1 abstention. Passes by majority, approving funding them $500.

There is opposition for funding additional $500.
Roll Call results for funding $500 are: 1 yes: 8 no: 0 abstentions. The results fail to reach majority.

We are funding $500 for Mausoleum Party.

[Finish this item at 7:09]

12) 7:09 NomCom Update (Jonathan)

The spreadsheet with names of Nominees has been sent out, now seeking the approval.

We proceed with roll call voting for approving the NomCom Nominees.
Roll call results are: 9 yes: 0 no: 1 abstention.

Approving the NomCom Nominees passes by consensus.

[Finish this item at 7:10]

13) 7:10 Town Hall Funding (David)

The budget was sent last night, with $7/person. We are splitting the cost equally between the GSC, UGS, and the Executive and therefore are requesting 7*600/3 = $1,400 from the GSC for food for the event. This is a
high estimate but since the GSC does not do retroactive funding we are requesting what we believe is likely to be the maximum cost and will return any leftover funds to the GSC.

Justin: how was the food managed last year so that nobody would grab the food and run?

Drew: We have food to prevent people from leaving early.

Nanna: It is a good idea to attract students to find out what is going on in the campus.

Hanna: I was working on an info session on health insurance, expecting 40 people. They managed to get pizza, snacks, drinks for $250. I do not think that we need to spend so much for food. $800 would be enough.

Eric and Bryan suggest that the turn-out would not be greatly affected by the food. We can solve the leaving early problem through other means.

Justin: It maybe more reasonable to have $2,400 split by 3.
Nanna: Town Hall is more of an informational event. Food is not so important for the event.

Nanna suggest we can have two votes, for $800 first and additional $600 from programming discretionary.

Approving funding $800 from programming discretionary passes by consensus.

Funding additional $600 is opposed, so we proceed to roll call.

The roll call results are: 2 yes: 6 no: 1 abstention. The result fail to reach the majority.

Justin: This may weird because we cannot tell the senate and ASSU how much money to be put into.

We can compensate retrospectively, but hopefully David can make the whole thing work under $2,400.

Robert: We should be very clear that we expect you to finish the thing by $4/person. I do not think retrospective funding is a good idea.

We will fund the Town Hall $800 from programming discretionary account. If dramatic changes happen, we may reconsider.

[Finish this item at 7:26]

13) 7:26 Update from GHAC (Nanna)
GHAC stands for Graduate Housing Advisory Committee. All the assignments of graduate housing are going very well. Every single student has been allocated, with 20 vacancies. There are 5 couples are waiting, who only applied in October. There are 5 families currently waiting for housing, but they are very selective. They decided not to take the offer because of some renovation going on. People in the Munger studio are feeling that the studios were not equal to others. They have been helping the students to negotiate with the housing side. If anybody feels that their studios are different from others, they can approach Nanna to be directed to the housing.

Some undergraduates are staying in the graduate housing again. They have been having too many parties, which disturb the kids in some graduate family. They are trying to put the undergraduates into the heat buildings that are being renovated so that they will move.

There are some disagreements in GHAC about couple housing. Some think that couples can stay in studios. But some think that the studios are too small for the couples.

Addy: It is not a good idea to have couple in such small space.

Ryan: There are quite a lot of students having moving-in in Rains, which would create problems for their roommates. It might help if there are studios for the couples.

Addy: If there are different configurations in the studio, maybe we can have more differentiated pricing.

Alexandra: If a couple really wants to live in Studio, they should have the legal option to do it.

Ryan: Maybe we can have a certain range for the housing, but we can take off some depending on the detailed situation.

Nanna: We have collected quite useful comments and suggestions. They are also thinking of renewing contract instead of going through the whole lottery system.

Addy: Renewing contract is keeping other students from applying.

Nanna: The concern has changed now, because the demand of the graduate students has almost been met.

Justin: The heating is not up yet.

Nanna: Last year they get workers for the heating, but this year they are not able to do so. If there are really problems, we can approach the Housing supervisors.

15) 7:42 New Business (Nanna)
Requesting $300 for the GSPB Grad night from co-sponsorship (Robert).

Approving funding $300 passes by consensus.

Ryan: We can have food from the Ray’s Pub.

Justin: Nov 7th is the retreat.

Adjourned 7:42.

• Agenda
• Attendance
• Minutes

Agenda

***************************************************************
GSC Agenda: October 14th, 6:00-8:00pm – FOOD @ 5:45!

Graduate Community Center – Nairobi Room
***************************************************************
Agenda

1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Drew!)

2) 6:00 Welcome with introductions and Announcements (Nanna)

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 (10/07/2009).

3) 6:05 Funding (Justin)
* Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics at Stanford
* Sarvodaya
* Hindu Students Association
* Sanskriti
* Stanford India Association

4) 6:30 ASSU Update (David)

5) 6:35 Programming Update (Addy)

6 )6:40 Funding R&DE, Sustainability, and Transportation town hall (David)

7) 6:50 GCC Keys Update (Nanna)

8) 6:55 Selection of Business Representative (Nanna)

9) 7:00 Selection of Stipends Advocacy Committee Chair (Nanna)

10) 7:05 Duke Conference (Eric & David)

Attendance

Voting Members present:

Earth Sciences: Mary Van der Hoven (Proxy Amy Askin present)
Education: Eric Shed
Engineering 1: Robert Hennessy
Engineering 2: Addy Satija
Law: Eric Osborne
Medicine: Jessica Tsai
Natural Sciences: Bryan Chen
Social Sciences: Nanna Notthoff
At Large 1: Justin Brown
At Large 2: Ryan Peacock
At Large 4: Andrew Kennedy

Voting members not present:
At Large 3: Aleksandra Korolova
At Large 5: Noa Lincoln
Business: Unfilled
Humanities: Unfilled

Other people present: Crystal Yin (GSC Secretary), Jay de la Torre (ASSU VP), Ryan Woessner, David Gobaud (ASSU Present), Daniel Eistein (Funding), Chris Hillier (Applying for Business Representative), Eddie Truong-Cao, Xinpeng Huang, Dan Chang, Adam Beberg, Ashutosh N. Bagaria, Thomas Haymore (Applying for stipends advocacy committee chair).

Minutes

Listen to this segment

1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Drew!)

2) 6:04 Welcome with introductions and Announcements (Eric)

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 (10/07/2009) with corrections.

iii. Proxies for this week: Amy Askin for Mary Van der Hoven

3) 6:05 Funding (Ping)

i. *Diwali
Diwali is the biggest festival of Indian, and this event is co-organized by Hindu Student Association, India Student Association and Sanskrititi. India Student Association is requesting for $8,075 in total.
Q: How many people are expected to this event?
Answer from Ping: 600 people.

Q: How many of the students attending are graduate students?
A: At least 80%.

Q: Is the food for dinner?
A: Yes.

Q: Is it the same amount as last year?
A: Approximately the same.

Q: Are you getting money from undergraduate sources as well?
A: Yes, India Student Association asked $575 from ASSU, there may be money support for the other two organizing groups from the undergraduate sources.

Q: How much of our money is left for the funding committee this year?
Ping: We have total around $160,000. We should have used about 50%, which is about $84,000. There are many more applications in fall quarter, compared to winter.

Nanna: Last year by now we have used about 80%- 90%, so we are doing well.

Robert opposed because he thinks that we have spent a lot of money already, and this amount is too big.

Nanna: We should not judge based on how much money is spent. The student groups do not know how much money that the funding committee has spent. So this should be approved.

Eric: They are actually a very diverse group of students. I attended the event last year. It was a very good event. We have sponsored comparable amount of money on things like “shaking the foundation conference”, so I believe it would be arbitrary for us not to sponsor this.

Representative from Sanskrititi: This year we are brining additional undergraduates.

Robert: I feel that there is huge discrepancy between the funding from Senate and funding from GSC, we should sponsor about $6,000.

Justin: Sanskrititi is a very good group, which helps with lots of Asian groups. Although it is an undergraduate group, it is very helpful to graduate community. This sponsorship is fair.

Addy: The event itself is mainly a graduate event. The previous year the money given to them was used very well.

Answer: This is the first time we are collaborating with Sanscrititi. We think that this is a festival of happiness. It will not be good for them to have a small celebration themselves.

Adam: The other comparable event would be Lunar New Year. But I feel that they are more coordinated and more effective in acting together. We should not compare this with law conference, but we should compare this event with Lunar New Year.
We proceed with a roll call for the $8, 075 sponsorship, and the results are: 8 yes, 3 no, 0 abstention.
Approving $8,075.

ii. Sarvodaya
They are requesting $1,573 for a talk by Dr. Ariyaratne, with dinner served. The requested marketing printing expenses was cut to $10 by the funding committee according to the bylaw.
Approving $1,573 passes by consensus.
Question from Sarvodaya: Our marketing expense was cut, then how should we put a poster?
Addy: Go to the website and submit the event, or talk to the Daily.

iii. Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics at Stanford

They are a student group with 55% graduate students. They are requesting $1,118 for a book signing event. The professor is from Harvard University and is well-known in this field.

Eric: how much are the funding from undergraduate sources?
A: Yes, $1326.29.

Approving $1,118 passes by consensus.

iv. Vegetarian for Conscious Living:

Ping: According to the funding committee bylaws, it is not possible to fund their event from funding committee because there is less than 35% graduate students in their group description. However, they insisted that there is decent percentage of graduate students in the event, so maybe we can see whether we can fund them through programming expenses. They have approached Undergraduate Senate multiple times, but their rules have been changing and finally asked them to go to GSC for the funding.
Ryan /Addy: We can rewrite the funding committee bylaw. We can vote now to rewrite, and the money would be from funding committee.
Q: What is this event?
A: This is a talk by an ultra-marathon champion, who is also a raw food vegan.
Addy: Did you organize similar events before?
Answer: Yes, we had a nutritionist coming on campus before, in which 60 people turned out. But this event is expecting more attendants.
Nanna: Do you collaborate with Vegetarians and Animal Livings?
Answer: We are essentially the same group. We have changed the name.
Amy: Why we are changing the policy simply for a group? There should be a reason for the policy.
Addy: The number in the policy was just arbitrarily set. If there are 35% graduate students in the group, it is beneficial to graduate committee, we should change the rule.
We proceed on voting on overwrite the funding committee rule of only funding 75% graduate students.
The roll call results are: 7 yes, 4 no, 0 abstention, which fails to reach 2/3 majority. Therefore the request of overwriting the rule was not passed. At this point the group don’t manage to get funded.
[Finish this item at 6:32]

4) 6:33 ASSU Update (David)
We now have @stanford.edu email address for life, back to the graduates in spring 09.

We are going to have the Residential and Dining Enterprises, Transportation, and Sustainability Town Hall on Oct 29th, 5:30 pm. The topics have been selected based on the survey results from the summer graduate student town hall.

We are working to amend the Stanford student enterprise charters to say that Nomination commission has the right to nominate the two at large positions.

The website Studentjob.stanford.edu is built up with information to show the students and employees about how to make use of CDC website to find jobs/students.

A new Social chair is now on board, which needs approval from GSC.

In the coming Saturday until Friday, ASSU are going down to the undergraduate dining halls to listen to them. Maybe GSC would consider having similar things in the graduate locations. But the locations may not be easy to find.

Addy: What would the role of social chair be?
David: Basically working with GSC, getting professional schools and departments together on happy hours, and other events.

Eric: Is there funding for social chair?
David: Yes, there might have.
[Finish this item at 6:35]

5) 6:35 Funding R&DE, Sustainability, and Transportation Town Hall (David)

David suggests Senate, GSC and ASSU split the cost of Town Hall. The cost for the previous Town Hall event was $900, which includes food, audio equipment and wireless microphone. David is now requesting $650 from the GSC to the Town Hall.

Eric: Do we currently have money in the advocacy account? This may be counted as an advocacy event.
Ryan: We currently have $3,100 at advocacy, $20,300 on programming discretionary.

Nanna: It would be better for us to see more concrete numbers in the budget.
David: The calculation of $650 was based on the last event.

Nanna suggests David to come out with a detailed budget and then come back next time.
[Finish this item at 6:44]

6) 6:44 Revisit to Vegetarians for Conscious Living

Ping suggests revisit the funding request from Vegetarians for Conscious Living. In their group description, actually there are about 40% graduate students and 20% stuff in this group, and the rest would be undergraduates. Last year the event was fully sponsored by ASSU, but ASSU this year changed the rules. If we do not fund them at all, this is not fair for them.

Ping makes a new recommendation to just fund them from the GSC Programming account, believing that the groups satisfied the 35% requirements.

Addy: All the policies are subject to funding committee judgment.

Justin actually disagrees with the new recommendation. Nanna suggests the vegetarian group to count clearly with updated percentage and come back for sponsorship for the future events.

Addy suggests us to just fund from programming discretionary, which are seconded by many others. There was opposition from Amy.

We proceed with a roll call, and the results are: 7 yes: 4 no: 0 abstentions.
Approving funding $370 from Programming Discretionary account passes by majority.
[Finish this item at 6:52]

7) 6:52 Programming Update (Addy)

We can have graduate formal at San Francisco City Hall at the price of $15,000 on Feb 20th or 27nd 2010 . But we needed to stop at midnight. If we want to extend the hours, we need to pay higher charges.

Q: How much was spent last year on the venue?
A: Around $10,000 for venue and transportation.

We need to consider the transportation fee to San Francisco. Last year the ticket price was $25. Addy asks the opinion of the people about marking up the price of formal ticket.

Justin clarified the number of people allowed for the venue, which is capped at about 1,000 -1,500. Justin suggests that we should set hard date for early bird prices and mark the formal price up.
Nanna: Can we have earlier time?
Answer: Yes, we can have from 4pm -12pm.
Amy: If the ticket price is lower, and the location is closer, we may get more people last minute want to go. Although it is a very awesome idea to have the formal at City Hall, but we should consider that the show up number might be low.
Robert: We should run the numbers, and come out with different scenarios and to see the possibilities.
Drew: Do we have statistics of graduate students living in San Francisco? They might show up high.
Addy: We should be able to get good number show up, about 1,000.
Ryan: What are the hours of bus last year?
Justin: 8:30-1:30.
We need more buses and longer hours if we are having this in the San Francisco City Hall. We will discuss more about the location selection laster.

[Finish this item at 6:58]

8) 6:58 GCC Keys Update (Nanna)

The GCC building would be rekeyed. We are now having the access to the rooms within the building, but not from the outside. Nobody expressed concerns on the arrangements.

[Finish this item at 6:59]

9) 6:59 Selection of Business Representative (Nanna)

Chris is a first year MBA, who is excited about the contributing opportunity to Graduate community. He would love to represent the business school.

Robert: Is there any issue on your mind you want to work on?
Answer: No.

Addy: Do you know anybody on business school student government?
Answer: No.

Somebody oppose on approving Chris as the business representative, so we proceed with voting.

The roll call results are: 10 yes, 0 no, 1 abstention.

Passes by majority, and Chris is the new business representative for GSC.

10) 7:02 Selection of Stipends Advocacy Committee Chair (Nanna)
Thomas Haymore is a phD student, and he has been involved in Student government at law school. He feels excited about the opportunity because he thinks that it is important to have somebody advocating for the stipend and talk to the university.

Addy: Have you done advocacy before?
Answer: Yes, negotiating the budgets in the law school.

The roll call results are: 11 yes, 0 no, 0 abstention.

Passes by majority, and Thomas Haymore is the new Stipend Advocacy Committee Chair.

[Finish this item at 7:03]
11) 7:04 Duke Conference (Nanna)
David: This conference will bring student governments in the country together, to discuss about share structures, and share ideas about collaborations. The tentative date is Nov 13th, but may be pushed to Feb 2010.

Nanna: Last year we sent people to a similar event, which was very expensive and time-consuming. George told that they feel that it might not be the best way of spending money and time. How do you think that this conference is different?

David: I did not go to the previous concert and thus cannot compare, but I personally is very excited about the event.

Since the event details are not confirmed, we will come back for discussion when the date is confirmed.

[Finish this item at 7:10]

12) 7:11 New Businesses (Eric)

Quinn passes out the flyers for application of Graduate Assistant for Election for people to put up, and he will send emails to GSC.

Amy: Ray’s is opening on Monday.

Eric asks for comments before conducting the interviews for BJA. Addy comments that we should not select based on demographics.

Robert: The GSPB BBQ location will be changed from Munger to Rains because of the construction going on in the Munger.

Adjourned at 7:15.

• Agenda
• Attendance
• Minutes

Agenda

***************************************************************

GSC Agenda: October 7th, 6:00-8:00pm – FOOD @ 5:45!

Graduate Community Center – Nairobi Room

***************************************************************

1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Drew!)

2) 6:00 Welcome with introductions and Announcements (Nanna)

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 (09/30/2009).

iii. GSC Retreat will be on November 7, further details TBA

3) 6:05 Funding (Justin)
*Pakistanis at Stanford
*Turkish Student Association
*Bengalis at Stanford
*Scandinavians at Stanford
*French Stanford Student Association
*Stanford Men’s Club Soccer Team
*Sanskriti
*Spicmacay
*Stanford Solar & Wind Energy Project(revisit from last week)

4) 6:30 ASSU Update (David)

5) 6:35 Programming Update (Jess)

6) 6:40 Parking & Transportation Talk (Mr. Madou)

7) 7:00 Funding Committee Food Request (Justin /Ryan)

8) 7:10 Discussing funding rules for conference (Justin)

9) 7:15 Legislative Action Trip Debrief (David & Justin)

10) 7:30 ASSU preliminary elections calendar presentation (Quinn)

11) 7:45 New Bylaws regarding GSC Finance (Ryan)

12) 7:50 Speaker’s Bureau (Nanna)

13) 7:55 BJA Selection Committee (Nanna)

14) 8:00 New Business (Nanna)

Attendance

Voting Members present:

Earth Sciences: Mary Van der Hoven
Education: Eric Shed
Engineering 1: Robert Hennessy
Engineering 2: Addy Satija
Law: Eric Osborne
Medicine: Jessica Tsai
Natural Sciences: Bryan Chen
Social Sciences: Nanna Notthoff
At Large 1: Justin Brown
At Large 2: Ryan Peacock
At Large 3: Aleksandra Korolova
At Large 4: Andrew Kennedy
At Large 5: Noa Lincoln (Proxy Justine Kimball present)

Voting members not present:
Business: Unfilled
Humanities: Unfilled

Other people present: Crystal Yin (GSC Secretary), Jay de la Torre (ASSU VP), John Ten Hoeve (Funding), Rian Woessner, Miles Penn (Funding), Larisa Masalimova (Funding), Rumses Mudou, Diana Lin, Kesav Rayhavan (Funding), Vyjayanthi Kesisaju (Funding), David Gobaud (ASSU Present), Vincent Le Chenadec (Funding), Vgur Pece (Funding), Shrpi Gupta (Funding), Sami Shad.

Minutes

Listen to this segment

1) 5:45 FOOD (thanks Drew!)

2) 6:06 Welcome, introductions and announcements (Nanna)

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 (09/30/2009), ) including the correction of spelling mistakes passes by consensus.

iii. GSC Retreat will be on November 7, further details TBA

3) 6:08 Funding (Justin)
The projector was not ready, so we visited it later.

4) 6:08 Parking & Transportation Talk (Mr. Madou)
Mr. Madou is here to introduce the Parking &Transportation department of Stanford, they are in charge of renting out the Marguerite shuttle and renting out the coaches.

Addy: If we are planning on a trip with buses, how long in advance do we need to book with P&T in advance?
Mr. Madou: Two weeks because it needs to be arranged. If you book within a week, the arrangements cannot be guaranteed, and extra charges would be required. If the trip is around the Bay area, we can use the Marguerite shuttles, which are cheaper. If the trip is outside the Bay area, which will require outsourcing, and will be more expensive. The renting time should be of 4 hours minimum.

Ryan: Do we have new hybrid buses?
Mr. Madou: Yes, we have 2 new hybrid buses. We are now still testing some buses with new technloy, but they are very expensive.

Addy: Is it possible for the interactive bus stops to be published?
Mr. Madou: They were published before, which was never used. I will get back to you on that.

Question: There is lack of parking slot for off-campus people.
Mr. Madou: Yes, we are aware of that. Currently the city of Palo Alto is planning to get a new parking system, which is expected to drive a lot of people who used to park illegally in the city of Palo Alto to park inside campus. Therefore we are expecting a great flux then. Please write an email in for the answer at the end of November.

[finish this item at 6:16]

3) 6:16 Funding (Justin)
i. Turkish Student Association (6: 16)

They are planning an event with Sunday breakfast, expecting 100 students with 90% to be graduate students. In the similar event last year, there were only 20% non-graduate students present. They are requesting $830, with food of $8 /person and $30 for other expenses.

Approving $830 passes by consensus.

[finish this item at 6:17]

ii. French Stanford Student Association (6:17)

They are requesting funding of $500 for a BBQ tomorrow, to buy meat, bread, salad and other expenses. They are expecting 70-80 people coming; with 80-90% would be graduate students. They are also requesting $650 for another event before thanksgiving.

Approving $1150 passes by consensus.

[finish this item at 6:20]

iii. Scandinavians at Stanford (6:20)

They are requesting approval for their annual budget of $2375. They will have a welcome BBQ and another event inviting speakers to the campus. Everything is within cap.

Approving $2375 passes by consensus.

[finish this item at 6:22]

iv. Pakistanis at Stanford (6:20)

They will have a Pakistan documentary screening, expecting large audience. It is an advanced screening, which means the documentary is put up in Stanford before being publicly released. They are requesting $1000.

Q: What type of documentary is that?
A: It is about life of middle class people in Pakistan.

Q: Is the documentary going to be publicly released in Bay area?
A: Yes, but not sure about the details.

[finish this item at 6:23]

v. Stanford India Association (6:23)

They are a group representing Indian graduate students. They are requesting funding for Deepavali celebration, which is the biggest annual festival of Indian students. They are expecting 600 people in this event, with 70% to be graduate students. They are going to hold this event, coordinating with the Indian associations in undergraduates.

There were some misunderstandings regarding the requesting amount, the meeting moves on and they will come back next week.

[finish this item at 6:25]

vi. Russian Student Association (6:25)

They are requesting approval for their annual budget of $4950. They are holding events for around no more than 100 people; approximately 80-90% of the Russian graduate students will come.

Approving $4,950 passes by consensus.

[finish this item at 6:25]

vii. Spicmacay (6:25)

They are a group of students for International South Asia Art, holding big concerts and events every year. They invited artists from Asia and India to present the Indian music,

They will hold 3 concerts, and most of the audience is graduate students. They are expecting over 300 people to each concert. They are requesting $2130 of fund for each concert, the fee of which is mainly for the renting of sound equipment.

Comments: They should encourage the Undergraduate Senate to sponsor.

Mary: How much is the fee for sound?

Answer: It is actually the equipment fee, including paying the technician, lighting, rental of the system in auditorium and the microphones.

Mary: If renting equipments is so expensive, we may consider buying equipments.

Nanna: Agrees.

Addy: Where are the concerts held?

Answer: Annenberg Auditorium

Drew: Have you considered approaching Stanford Concert to borrow the equipment?

Answer: We did not know that, maybe we should consider that.

Addy: actually there is pretty much nothing to reduce the costs because it is required by the Union to use their technician and equipment in the Annenberg Auditorium.

Mary: maybe we can approve the equipment rental of the first concert first, and see whether we can get the equipment bought for the latter 2 concerts.

Question to Addy: how do we reduce the costs?

Addy: the only way to reduce cost is to change the venue of the concert.

Justin: Maybe your group can ask Drew to direct them to the right people for cost reduction.

Approving $3,830 passes by consensus.

[finish this item at 6:36]

viii. Stanford Men’s Club Soccer Team (6:36)

They are a soccer team consisting of 26 guys, and 7 of them are graduate students. They play twice a week. They are requesting $650 in total for the season. They will have 2 home games in spring, and they are also requesting to buy new soccer ball.

Question: Not high percentage of the team are graduate students right?
Answer: That is right. That is why we are only requesting money from GSC for only a small percent of our budget

Q: Do other sports team also coming to GSC for funding?
A: Most of the other teams have special fees, but Men’s Club Soccer Team does not have.

Addy: How is your team relevant to graduate students?
Answer: Anybody who is a Stanford student can join.

Approving $650 passes by consensus.

[finish this item at 6:40]

5) 6:40 ASSU update (David)

There will be a sustainability event, maybe at Munger.

6) 6:41 Programming update (Addy)

7) 6:41 Funding Committee Food Request (Justin)

Some time back, funding committee requested food to GSC, for several reasons:
1. To attract people to join funding committee because it is a large commitment
2. It is nice to have food, because a lot of meetings last for 2-3hours and it is lunch time
3. GSPB has lunch meetings, so hopefully will have lunch meetings for funding committee as well
The Funding Committee had $600 to start with for food; they are now down to $494. We have two options here:
1: Leave as it is and only get food for the people running the meetings
2: Buying food for everyone (includes the VSO leaders who are applying for the funding)

Ryan: there is GSC vertical budget from ASSU, which is general fee every year for grad formal and welcome party, etc. The Reserves can be for VSO or programming.

Addy: I want everybody to get food. Support option 2.

Q: Is there a formula for the food money request?
A: $5/person , and usually there is 12 people/week. Of course there are variations as well.

Nanna: To clarify, option 1 is leave as it is, option 2 is approving an additional $1,000

Approving $1,000 passes by consensus.

12) 6:46 Speaker’s Bureau (Nanna)

Addy volunteered to take charge. For the person in charge, he needs to help with advertising events to the graduate students and then feedback to them what we want to see. Nanna will pass the contacts to Addy.

13) 6:49 BJA Selection Committee (Nanna)

Last week we made the decision to reject both slate, and now we start new board election. We have 2 GSC members right now, who are Eric and Bryan, and we are now asking for another volunteer.

Ryan: We should agree on what is important to GSC, the grad: undergrad balance is the most important.
Nana: agree. There will be questions regarding how to contribute, should have data to back up.

Ryan: I still favor a graduate: undergraduate ratio over gender ratio

Question: How is the procedure going to be like?
Eric: we are now sending out application, and the ad-hoc committee will meet on Sunday to screen. We will then conduct interviews to select.

Mary: I think it is extremely important to have balanced gender ratio, especially to address some of the sexual harassment issues. It can be slightly uneven, but we should have at least 2 women on the board.

Addy: I counter the view of demographics; we should choose the best applicants, regardless of the demographics.

Ryan: we should encourage a female GSC member to apply on the selection committee, given the current composition.

Nanna: I agree. I will send another email to encourage.

8) 6:59 Discussing funding rules for conference (Justin/ Ryan)

The discussion is about whether we shall come out with new rules. Last year we did fund the representatives 100% of the registration fee, but then the issue was addressed afterwards: Anybody can come to GSC with funding request for conference, and say how it is relevant to the graduate committee. We are now suggesting funding them 50% registration fee.

Eric: we should set a policy to justify the reduced registration amount this year.
Robert: we should just reject this funding request and set a policy that in the future we should not send people to conference anymore.

Ryan: just to clarify, what is the plan now?
Answer: We are going to drop the 1st conference, now requesting $520 for 2 representatives for
the 2nd conference.

Mary: we should not fund students to conferences.

Eric: we funded them last year and sustainability is extremely important. I think that we should fund them and then set a policy not to fund conferences anymore in the future.
Answer: there are different rules between GSC and ASSU, ASSU funds trips to conference.

Q: if we are sponsoring them, should they report back to GSC in a certain way?
A: yes, they are obligated to give presentation. But last year, the people attended turned out to be mainly from the related field.

Eric: I think that we should go for the 50% funding. This can be our last funding, and then we set a rule.

We proceed with roll call voting for 50% funding first and then for the remaining 50%.

Rollcall results for 50% funding (sponsoring them $275) were: 8 yes, 3 no, no abstention. Passes.

Rollcall results for 100% funding (sponsoring them $550) were: 0 yes, 10 no, 1 abstention. Fails.

The results are funding $275 for Stanford Solar & Wind Energy Project.

Eric: we can make a policy, but if there is a special reason, they can apply for majority votes process.

Q: Going to conferences generally benefits the graduate community, if GSC is not funding them anymore; is there other options for funding such trip?

Nanna: they can ask VPGE for funding and of course their own advisor as well.

Rollcall results for adding the funding policy of not providing funds for any private conference/registration: 11 yes, 0 no, 0 abstention.

9) 7:14 Legislative Action Trip Debrief (Justin)

A very concise debrief document has been sent out. The trip consisted of meeting with the States department of Foreign Services, and officials, and selected legislators.

Policy changes regarding the international student visa: it can be a very long procedure because there are so much have been changed over the last several years and we should not expect anything until 2011. But for the international students having problem with getting appointments at the counselor when coming back to US, they can email the counselor and cc John Pierrson.

Health care reform: California representatives are trying to come with the bill, which can be very relevant to single graduate students, graduate students with dependents. In short, they will make sure everybody to spread the pool and reduce the risk.

Something interesting about DC is that things changes within weeks, and people can ask Justin/David/Ryan for the updated resources.

Nanna: Would it be a lot of work for you to compile the updated resources and send out the GSC lists?

Justin: Yes, good idea.

Ryan: We do not know for sure where we are going to go next, but stay tuned for the many exciting things are taking place, and hopefully next Feb we will see some big changes.

Eric: Thank you Justin, David, Ryan for taking 1 week for this important trip.

10) 7:18 ASSU preliminary elections calendar presentation (Quinn)

I sent out the calendar, there is no major change from last year. Is there any question about calendar sent out? Graduate assistance elections, there are flyers printed out, which will be put up on the CS building.

Nanna: Any publicity resources?

Answer: I have been talking to the people around regarding the posts. If there is anyone you guys know who would be suitable for the positions, please let me know.

Robert: Can you send out the emails to GSC?
Answer: Yes, I will do that.

Q: Open to co-term?
A: Yes

Eric: If you can make the flyers less text heavy, it will be better

Ryan: I think you should mention the reward, which is $1,500.

Ryan: For the election reform, do we have general idea about timeline?
ASSU: we do not have a timeline yet, but hopefully at the end of this quarter, will get back to you.

11) 7:22 New Bylaws regarding GSC Finance (Ryan)

Ryan passes down the copies with the GSC budget.

Ryan: The reason to bring out this is because although there are bylaws about how the funding committee deal with VSO, there is no discussion about higher level how GSC operate as a unit and how to split the budget. I hope to tailor what we put into the bylaws and how we operate. There are some recurring charges like survey monkey, which is important, but we do not have a body dealing with such money per se. We approved the budget back in spring last GSC with general numbers, but we hope to have by-laws specifying these details. I want to hear everybody’s ideas before writing out the by-law.

Basically there are 4 conceptual kinds of budget items. The first one is allocation, which requires approval from GSC. This is more for programming. Line item is in the budget which is already approved, which would not be approved in GSC meetings. It is the Financial Officer’s responsibility to make sure spent correctly, and he will bring to GSC meeting if there are disagreements. For the Discretionary item, it is really an allocation that needs to be approved by the GSC. Stipend is the funds set aside to pay individuals.

I am now calling an administrator, in charge of that money. For the allocation, it is approved case by case, by default the Financial Officer to administer and make sure the money is spent correctly. But for other items except stipend, there would be people in charge, for example, the secretary would be in charge of the office supplies. I am trying to go through the responsibilities and to make clear who is in charge of the budget item.

Ryan suggests taking $500 out of programming budget to Misc. programming expenses, to pay for items such as survey monkey.

Nanna: survey monkey money can add up to big amount, maybe we can discuss about alternatives in the meeting.

Robert: currently the financial section bylaws is messy, we need to improve it. If there is any suggestions, please send Ryan or me an email.

Eric: Ryan, Can you please send out the excel regarding financial details

Ryan: Yes.

Nanna: Maybe we can have one week time to look at this and suggest to Ryan/Robert, and we will move forward from that.

14) 7:33 New Business (Nanna)
i. Jutin: GSPB co-sponsorship (7:33)

We are planning for $600 for sausages and beers, and another info-session. We planned to be less formal this time. We had a meeting before with low turned up, so we are going to do it again next Thursday.

Mary: We are passing GSC t-shirts as well.

Approving $600 from co-sponsorship passes by consensus.

ii. Mary: new bar (7:34)

The bar is open by this week, it is very nice.

Adjourned 7:36.

• Agenda
• Attendance
• Minutes

Agenda

*****************************

Attendance

Voting members present:
Earth Sciences: Mary Van der Hoven
Education: Eric Shed
Engineering: Robert Hennessy
Engineering: Addy Satija
Law: Eric Osborne
Medicine: Jessica Tsai
Natural Sciences: Bryan Chen
Social Sciences: Nanna Notthoff
At Large: Aleksandra Korolova
At Large: Drew Kennedy
At Large: Justin Brown
At Large: Noa Lincoln
Proxy: Adam Beberg
FO: Ryan Peacock

Others present:
David Gobaud – ASSU President
Jay de la Torre – ASSU VP
Kacey Sachen – BioAIM
Joachum Gomsemom
Antonio Gomez – BioAIM
Krystal St. Julien
Andreas Zoellues – SGSA
Yu-Hung Li – STSA VP
Louis Fernandes – BioMASS
Sohan Dharmaraja – Comedy Club
Quinn Slack – ASSU Election Com.
Zeng Fam – Hicks Co-Coordinator
Dareed Shamsi
Crystal Yiu – Secretary Application
Nate Chambers – IVGCF
Izumi Hinkson – 49ers Academy
Peyman Razemian – Persian Student Association
Xiaoyu Liu – ACSSS
Sundar Chan – Sarvodaya
Yuankan Ge – ACSSS President
Amit Desui – ION

Minutes

Listen to this segment

1) 6:00 Welcome with introductions and Announcements (Nanna)
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 (09/16/2009). Minutes were approved with the addition of Crystal to the Attendance list.
iii. Please email Grad Announce items to Nanna (notthoff@stanford.edu) by Tuesday, 09/29/2009 at midnight.

2) 6:09 Funding (Justin)
i. Stanford Taiwanese Student Association
Holding welcome party for old and new students, providing dinner and presentations next Sat. in Oak lounge. Request a total of $2350 for food, programming, and facility. Approved by consensus.

ii. Persian Student Association
Holding welcome dinner, expecting 100-150 students. Requesting $1200 for food. Approved by consensus.
Holding a mixer event. Requesting $500 for honorarium and food. Approved by consensus.

iii. Black Graduate Student Association
Holding an event. Funded primarily by other sources. Requesting $200 for programming expenses. Approved by consensus.
Holding a welcome BBQ. Requesting $300 for food. Approved by consensus.

iv. BioAIMS
Submitting annual budget. Holding banquet, BioAIMS homeroom event, Black History Month Party, Fall Quarter Workshops, Holiday Dinner Party, Poster Symposium, BBQ, SSRP summer workshop, Welcome back fiesta, Winter Workshops, and Cultural Awareness. Requesting $5585 for food, programming, and gas. Questions were raised about the applicability to the broader graduate community, specifically with the workshops, with advertisement, and with joint funding. Agreement was made to remove the funding of the poster symposium and the homeroom events. $3960 was approved by consensus. An additional $150 for the homeroom events was denied by majority vote: 3 in favor, 6 against, 2 abstained.

v. InterVarsity Graduate Christian Fellowship
Holding a presentation symposium. Requesting $1225 for partial funding of honorarium, venue, and refreshments. Passes by consensus.

vi. BioMASS
Holding a monthly series of social hours and an end of year BBQ. Requesting $4400 for food. Approved by consesnsus.
vii. Stanford German Student Association
Holding Octoberfest event. Requesting $2367.50 for food, venue, and equipment. $2368 was approved by consensus.

viii. 49ers Academy Teaching Team
Requesting $3475 for food, equipment, and travel. $3475 was approved by consensus.
ix. Association of Chinese Students and Scholars at Stanford
Funding for Autumn quarter for advising sessions and mixers. Requesting $3750. Since welcome back event was not advertised in grad events there can be no funding for that event. $2150 was approved by consesnsus.

x. Sarvodaya
Requesting funding for activities fair. Request $175 for printing and distribution of fliers. Passes by consesnsus.

xi. ION
New student group. Holding mixers and workshop series. Requesting $2400 for food and marketing. Approved by consensus.

3) 6:59 ASSU Update (David)
Meeting with Trustees on either October 11 at 5 or 9, 12th at 7, or 13th at 9.

4) 7:05 Programming Update (Jess)
15 Kegs for Welcome back party and snack taken care of.
Still need GSC members to sign up for slots to work the welcome back party.

5) 7:09 Pub Update (Mary)
Expect to be open next week.

6) 7:14 Flicks (Zeng & Drew)
GSC votes on the movie list to determine which movie has sponsored snacks as follows:
The Hangover – 3
Transformers – 4
Harry Potter – 5
The Soloist – 3
Twilight – 0
Inglorious Bastards – n/a

7) 7:29 Secretary Position (Nanna)
Crystal is applying for the secretary position. Has been in similar positions and has extensive experience in writing groups, collecting agenda, ect.
Crystal is approved to secretary position by consensus.

8) 7:33 Legislative Action Days Agenda (Justin & David)
A coalition of graduate students governments across the nation goes to DC to advocate for graduate student issues. There are four main issues:
1) university health care in taken into consideration in health care reform, with specific focus on international students
2) problems with visas for traveling students, lobbying for pre-approval for return from foreign
3) support dependent health care reform in general
4) advocate for continued research funding
If people are interested they can attend a preparatory meeting. Contact Ryan Peacock for more information.

9) 7:46 GSC Fall Retreat Discussion (Nanna)
This is an annual retreat where we focus in depth on issues. Two proposed dates and locations. Oct. 10-11 and Nov. 7-8; SF, San Jose, Napa and Sonoma and the proposed dates and places.

10) 7:51 Budget Policy Discussion (Ryan)
Wants to streamline and rewrite some aspects of the budget policy. Will revisit this topic when a draft revision is available.

11) 8:01 New Business (Nanna)
Munger grocery store is open. Please go to store and make recommendations as this store is run by Stanford and meant for graduate students.
Need someone to be on the elections commissions for the ASSU. Contact Quinn Slack for more information or to express interest.

Adjourned at 8:05

• Agenda
• Attendance
• Minutes

Agenda

***************************************************************
GSC Agenda: September 16, 6:30-8:30pm – FOOD @ 6:15!
Graduate Community Center – Havana Room
***************************************************************
1) 6:15 FOOD (thanks Drew!)

2) 6:30 Welcome with introductions and Announcements (Nanna)
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 (09/02/2009).

3) 6:35 ASSU Update (David)

4) 6:40 Programming Update (Jess)

5) 6:45 Funding Request for Family Events (Andy Hernandez)

6) 6:50 Funding Request for Equipment Organizing Supplies (Mary)

7) 6:55 GCC (Nanna)
i. Keys
ii. Sound System
iii. Operations Committee

8) 7:05 Pub Update (Mary)

9) 7:15 GOALIE (Nanna)

10) 7:20 Funding (Ping)
i. Comedy Club
ii. The Science Bus
iii. Scandinavians at Stanford

11) 7:30 Funding Request for Comedy Club (Sohan)

12) 7:35 Open Positions (Nanna)

13) 7:45 New Business (Nanna)

Attendance

Voting members present:
Earth Sciences: Mary Van der Hoven
Engineering: Robert Hennessy, Addy Satija
Law: Eric Osborne (proxy Mira Serrill-Robins)
Medicine: Jessica Tsai
Natural Sciences: Bryan Chen
Social Sciences: Nanna Notthoff
At Large: Justin Brown, Ryan Peacock, Aleksandra Korolova, Drew Kennedy, Noa Lincoln

Voting Members Not Present:
Business: Unfilled
Humanities: Unfilled
Education: Eric Shed

Other people present:
Adam Beberg, David Gobaud, Jay de la Torre, Heidi M. Lubin, Amy Askin, Chantal Marshal, Jon Bakke, Yu Xiao, M. Usta, Jessica B., Mike Shu, Wenli Wang, Annie Wu, Jaclyn Lee, Chris Li, Bipin Suresh, Jeff Mehlman, Raman Talwar, Jon McNaughtan, Steve Erlien, Ehsan Sadeghipour, Ben Kessel, Ian Schultz, Tom Duncan, Mairi Litherland, Jian Bai Li, Chafic Nourad, Tao Chu, Linda Wan, Anthony Sven, Adam Forbes, Trevor Cloud, Cynthia McClain, Jason Davison, Jared Lee, Rob Cosgriff, Meiling An, Elisha Tan, Mehak Duneh, Yin Yanjing, Johanna P., Jian Yu Fung, Andre Ma, Anthony Ng, Michel H., Eric Chu, Charles Feng, Yng Lei, Ryan Bloom, Amy Askin, Justin Wu, Karim Farhat, and others who did not sign the roster, or who did so illegibly. Thank you to everyone who attended.

Minutes

Please listen to the two segments.
Listen to this segment
Listen to this segment

1) 6:15 FOOD (thanks Drew!)
Food catered by The Coho.

2) 6:30 Welcome with introductions and Announcements (Nanna)

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 (09/02/2009). No objections, passes by consensus.
Before we go onto the agenda, Nanna explains a little bit about the GSC for those are new.

3) 6:35 ASSU Update (David)

Welcome to so many new faces. You can get involved with the GSC, and you can also get involved with the ASSU executive. If interested in one of the ASSU committees, contact David. Email address available at assu.Stanford.edu/contact. David introduces Jon McNaughtan, the executive’s Graduate chair of outreach. His job will be to get groups of people working together.

In 2 weeks, David and Justin Brown are going to DC for legislative advocacy. Contact us any time assu.Stanford.edu/contact or /agenda.

Another way to get involved in by sitting on a university committee, or by sitting on the nominations commission (NomCom). Contact Jon Bakke, the NomCom chair (bakke@stanford.edu).

4) 6:40 Programming Update (Jess)

Welcome back party is next Friday. Expect an email very soon to ask you to signup to help during the party. Party will be in Hacienda commons. There will be kegs and food (from Ray’s). Please send song requests to Jessica (jestsai@stanford.edu). Justin promises to provide more music. The Facebook page is up. Addy will have flyers available at the next GSC meeting, and will need volunteers for flyering on campus. Justin will work with Addy on flyers.

5) 6:45 Funding Request for Family Events (Andy Hernandez)

Funding request for $2000 for two events. Andy works with families on campus, and off. There about about 400 kids ages 3 to 5. The request is for (1) graduate family welcome book event on October 3, and (2) Graduate Family Pumpkin Patch on October 17. There will be co-sponsorship from the GSPB. This is a great opportunity for families to get to know other families.

Ryan: Funding should come from the co-sponsorship budget item. We spend a lot more than this request for non-family, and this is very reasonable. We are having a baby boom. We will break the record of 85 babies in one year.

Giving $2000 from co-sponsorship passes by consensus.

6) 6:50 Funding Request for Equipment Organizing Supplies (Mary)
$100 for cable wraps, etc for taking care of the wires, mics, connectors, etc. Ryan recommends it coming from programming discretionary (there is about $23,000 left in that budget).

Spending $100 from programming discretionary passes by consensus.

7) 6:55 GCC (Nanna)

i. Keys

The building will soon be re-keyed. We will get new key for our office, but we will no longer be able to have a master key because some people have been abusing the privilege and using the building after hours. We won’t even have a key to the Havana room, which is problematic.

ii. Sound System for the GCC
The sound system in the building needs to be serviced. Works properly, but is complicated. We need someone to write a user’s manual. Sohan says that we just need some cables.

iii. Operations Committee
We need someone to be on this committee. Programming coordinators historically are those people, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. Jess and Addy are not interested. Meetings during the regular school year are bi-weekly. Jon McNaughtan expresses his interest (thanks Jon).

8) 7:05 Pub Update (Mary)

The new pub name will be “Ray’s” because the equally popular name “The Pub” presented insurance problems. There is still no clear date for the pub opening because the public are renovations have not yet been approved by the donor. Ray is anxious to open ASAP, and has completed the kitchen renovations. Mary will update the GSC website as news becomes available. On a more fun note, student bartenders are needed. If interested fill out the bartender application survey at: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=6kdk2M6dqpM_2bhyP_2feo74lA_3d_3d.

9) 7:15 GOALIE (Nanna)

GOALIE will be in Canfield court on Friday. This NGSO event gives new students an opportunity to learn about clubs and activities. Lunch will be served, volunteers needed. A sheet is passed around for signup. Justin Brown and Drew Kennedy volunteer.

10) 7:20 Funding (Ping)

i. Scandinavians at Stanford: request $780, recommend $650. Difference is due to food caps. $4, $8 and $10.
Giving $650 passes by consensus

ii. ACSSS: Request $150, recommend $150. $150 passes by consensus.

iii. The Science Bus: request $5,325 recommend $5,325 . $5,325 passes by consensus.

11) 7:30 Funding Request for Comedy Club (Sohan and Ryan)

Comedy club is requesting $900 for yesterday’s show This is not a funding committee request. There was a misunderstanding about whether this event was to be funded as a part of NGSO. This money would come out of programming discretionary.
Amy states that the NGSO coordinators didn’t consider it an NGSO event, and Sohan agrees with this assessment. The event was advertised in the NGSO calendar, and was attended by a standing-room-only, overflowing crowd of approximately 300 to 400 grad students. However, Sohan thought that the GSC was going to pay for the event because we did last year, and we requested the event.

Nanna feels the misunderstanding was on the part of the GSC, and therefore we should do the right thing and pay for it. Justin

Justin explains that he and Nanna realized the mistake shortly after the last GSC meeting, and explains that from re-reading the emails, it is clear that this is our fault.

Addy and some others are concerned with the potential precedent of retroactively funding anything.

Justin points out that we do occasionally retroactively fund things, but this is reserved for times like this when there has been an error of some sort. Mary and Ryan agree.

Noa has no problem with funding it, but would like to make sure we do a better job communicating in the future.

Ryan moves to cut of discussion in the interest of time and vote, and it is seconded. Nanna asks if there are any objections to passing this by consensus. Addy objects because he would like it to go to a roll call vote.

Giving $900 to the comedy club from programming discretionary passes with 8 yes, 3 no, and 0 abstaining.

12) 7:35 Open Positions (Nanna)

Business representative still needs to be filled, as does Humanities. We also need a new secretary (a paid position), and a parking and transportation advocacy chair. If you’re interested, contact the chairs. Keep in mind that there are many other ways to get involved as well.

13) 7:45 New Business (Nanna)

Justin: tomorrow is grad night out all over Palo Alto. You should totally go. Dance: Rudy’s. Wrist bands at GCC at 9, or Nola or Old Pro.

Ryan: Next week will go into more detail about budgets, so if you have a question about how the budget works, come to the next meeting. The Diversity advocacy committee is going to spend $100 to $150 for advertising.

David: forgot to mention online room reservation system. Assu.Stanford.edu/oldunion

Jonathan Bakke: Nomcom is going to meet soon. They are the committee (made up of undergrads and grads) that puts students on University committees. Most spots are filled, but there will be some recruiting to fill the few open spots.

David: Will be asking Jonathan to facilitate finding board members for the SSE. We want to make sure all students know about this.

Adjourned at 7:47.