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Voting Members Present:
H&S Natural Sciences: Michael Shaw
H&S Social Sciences: Roshan Shankar
Law: Johnny Giorgis for Camille Fletcher
Engineering: Ateeq Suria
At-Large: Hrishi Goel
At-Large: Nipun Sarin
At-Large: David Hsu
Earth Sciences: Sjoerd de Ridder
Engineering: Wendy Ni for Anne-Laure Cuvilliez
H&S Humanities: Adrienne Johnson
Business: Tiffany Abdullahi
Medicine: Eduardo Gonzalez
At-Large: Saad Bhamla

Voting Members Not Present:
At-Large: Puja Deverakonda
Education: Ernestine Fu

Other Members : Guzman Gonzalez Torres, Austin Hay, Fanuel Muindi, Leigh Stacy, Ira Friedman, Ron Albucher

5:45—6:00 Dinner and Conversation (All)

6:00—6:03 Welcome and Introductions (Michael Shaw & David Hsu)

6:03—6:05 Approve Minutes from 4-10-2013 (Roshan Shankar)
For the meeting on 4/10/2013, Johnny Giorgis was the proxy for Tiffany and not, Camille Fletcher. Minutes amended and passes by consensus.

6:05—6:10 VSO: Request (Funding Committee Recommendation) (Wendy Ni)

• Iberia, Spanish Association: $2200 ($2200)

- Fire on Fire ($1800) : $700 for drinks and $1100 for food

- Joint Event with the SGSA-Champions League Final: $400 for food

Requested and Recommended.
Passes by consensus.

6:10—6:45 Vaden and CAPS update: Discussions on international students and mental health (Dr Ira Friedman, Dr Ron Albucher)

Vaden Report is a health insurance report. Looking at benefit and costs next year, and the Affordable Care Act, and the impact the PPACA on the students and health insurance in the US.

Rob Albucher will talk about mental health and service utilization of international vs. domestic students conducted with Wendy and Sjoerd

The prospective picture for Cardinal Going Forward. Rates, benefits and contexts for Cardinal Care are discussed.
70% of graduate students are in Cardinal Care and current estimate is that 27% is in Cardinal Care.
Benefit plan and pre-packaged healthcare expenses in the premium which is mostly fully subsidized.
All RAs and TAs are getting 50% subsidy. Some departments and some schools fully cover it. Depends on individual or departmental fellowship.
Vaden Fee also qualifies.
Covering around 500+ dependents in the student dependent plan. Substantial number of people in the plan.
Key for the next year is that there will be a rate increase. There’s a 9.3% rate increase. Students must consider that in their budgets.

Why are the rates going up?
- Although this is an insured plan, payments are based on last year’s experience. Bid or accept renewals with the company. Closely reviewed by health benefits consultants. Vaden doesn’t make any money on this. It is based on actual cost and utilitization.
- Results of the Affordable Care Act and all its implementations and regulations. New benefits have been added. Pays a larger portion than most of the expenses when care is needed. Taking away of any lifetime maximums, addition of certain things like contraception at no pay, preventive vaccines like Hep B, HPV have been added and new taxes. It is long term affordable care. Employees, states and governments see that costs are going up. Somebody has to pick up the cost of healthcare for others.

Same story is true for the dependent plan. Number next year is 8.1% increase. Big chunk is due to the new requirements and benefits, and the other part is expenses.
Richer than this plan. Greater costs to be borne for student budget. There’s a slight change in the hospital outpatient visit. Change in the urgent care visit costs. Prescription drug pay has gone up and will be effective on September 1st 2013.

Undergrads don’t use services as much as graduate students. Undergraduates can buy alternatives in the open market. January 2014: there’s going to be health insurance exchanges.

Estimate of what fraction of total expenses that are covered? Affordable Care has standards: Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze. Students get Platinum Care. Coverage is the best and minimizes out-of-pocket. This doesn’t have deductibles.

There’s a plan for a complete assessment of healthcare needs of Stanford campus.

Tiffany would be happy to mine at Vaden/Healthcare data to see if she can provide any insights. The idea of different levels of coverage is difficult to implement since there will be adverse selection. Social function of insurance is to have people protected.

Is there a reason that Stanford Staff and Faculty have different experiences than Stanford students with health insurance. The employee plan is regulated differently and the disease burden is higher.

Ron Albucher talks about mental health issues. He’s the Director at CAPS.
International student make 22% of total population. Made progress over time. Data from number at CAPS and sessions/visits. Participated in a broad campus study in 2010 called the Healthy Minds study. 2000+ students participated in that study. International students report less well being than US well-being overall.
Less awareness of campus mental health services. True for physical health services at Vaden as well. Affected by stigma than their US counterparts. In general, international students affected by more students.

Once they are in treatment, the variety and amounts of sessions all look pretty similar. Fewer people going through the system. If you look at mental illness systems, rates of symptoms are about the same. Culturual issues were not dealt with as well. Satellite office in the medical school and engineering school. Staff at all the on-campus community centers. This has gotten the faces out and over time there have been slight increases in utilization. Problems with how the system is working and at that time, 10% to 15% utilization rate. Ron is now also the co-chair of a task force for a Mental Health Initiative on campus.

CAPS issues are not acknowledged on campus and could be spread out through CA events. The CA program could grow and be better at doing these mental health events. Fanuel asks if there is enough data to break it down by one specific group. Certain cultures are much less open with these issues.

Wendy talks about peer counselling and requests an update on the same. Any student at Stanford has access to the Bridge. Bridge is primarily staffed by undergraduates. In order to qualify and be a peer counsellor, people need to do a core course taught by CAPS and then apply to get hours at the BRIDGE. Recently on the issue of diversity, there’s a core training that everyone must go through and then 5-6 1 credit courses which is supplemental to that training on different communities. This is an issue that has been discussed at Bridge. There should be campus wide initiatives to talk to people at the Medical School and see if psychiatrists or doctors in training would like to do something as a peer counsellor.

There is a Women in Science and Engineering discussion group which is moderated by a psychiatry resident. There is some professional help used, which could be a possible model.

Adrienne is curious if support groups have been offered to students. There is a procastrination group, group for eating disorders and a grief group. There have been groups for behavioral therapy. They sort of follow the same pattern: excitement, attendance and then it goes down.

Vaden needs a much better website with more personalized stories, images and Facebook page. Saad Bhamla volunteers to help them out with suggestions on the prototype. Eduardo suggests a compulsory training before students at Axess.

6:50—7:00 Update on VSO Receipt Audits (Wendy Ni)

Wendy was the internal auditor for the last 2 quarters. The receipt audits are done and looks at the types of problems found. Only processed reimbursements are in the audit.
113 reimbursements of around $35,000.
28 unique problems are in 38 reimbursements and 24 events are involved.
Amounts in dispute are around $4203.12 involved in total.
Mygroups is to blame at times.
10 problems are with reimbursed amounts exceeding normal accounts.
6 incorrect line items and 10 problems with no event funding application.
Financial Officer training needs to be improved.
There might be a possibility of a video that the Funding Committee might make a video on similar lines as Hrishi and Ateeq.

7:00—7:10 Advocacy Updates (All)
BBQ pit that was brought up has a preliminary design. $35,000 is the total cost but the GSC could fund upto $5-$10,000. David could bring back a breakdown.
Diversity Advocacy Committee has a Diversity Day where there’s a mixer. There’s a plan to do it every quarter. May 5th activity for Latino Graduate students in Science and Engineering.
President Hennseey gives his annual address to the Academic Council at the CEMEX Auditorium at 3.30 pm.

7:10—7:20 GSC Budget (David Hsu)
Budget has been put on previous notice.

Also, May 4th 2013 is the GSC retreat.

Next Meeting:
Wednesday April 24th, 6:00pm,
GCC Nairobi Room.
Special Guest: Vice Provost Patti Gumport

Voting Members Present:
H&S Natural Sciences: Michael Shaw
H&S Social Sciences: Roshan Shankar
Law: Johnny Giorgis for Camille Fletcher
Engineering: Ateeq Suria
At-Large: Hrishi Goel
At-Large: Nipun Sarin
Education: Ernestine Fu
At-Large: David Hsu
Earth Sciences: Sjoerd de Ridder
Engineering: Wendy Ni for Anne-Laure Cuvilliez

Voting Members Not Present:
At-Large: Puja Deverakonda
H&S Humanities: Adrienne Johnson
Business: Tiffany Abdullahi
Medicine: Eduardo Gonzalez
At-Large: Saad Bhamla

Other Members :

5:45—6:00 Dinner and Conversation (All)

6:00—6:03 Welcome and Introductions (Michael Shaw & David Hsu)

6:03—6:05 Approve Minutes from 3-13-2013 (Roshan Shankar)
Passes by consensus.

6:05—6:15 VSO: Request (Funding Committee Recommendation) (Wendy Ni)

• Arab Studies Table: $560 ($560)
$560 requested and recommended.
Visit of Sonallah Ibrahim-famous Egyptian writer
Co-sponsoring with History Department, Abbasi program and Comparative Literature Program
6th/7th May 2013
Lunch with students interested in Egyptian/Arabic literature, lecture at Stanford Humanities Center and attending a class.
Passes by consensus.

• German Student Association: $1500 ($1192.50)
Tabled for today.

• Turkish Student Association: $1407.50 ($1407.50)
Same as before with a shift of $40 from food to programming. Amended
Passes 9(FOR)-0(AGAINST)-0(ABSTAIN)

• Persian Student Association: $1100 ($0)
Amount not recommended because Persian Student Association has hit their hard cap. This funding was for fire on fire and will be applied for later by Iberia, the Spanish Association of Stanford.
It is probably worth noting that Fire on Fire is a yearly event and the next GSC might consider making Fire on Fire a separate line item event.

6:15—6:25 Advocacy Updates (All)

Wendy wants to know when the next International meeting is there. Ateeq will let her know.
Health insurance update and mental health of international students will be one of the main agenda items for next week’s meeting with Ira Friedman.

6:25—6:35 GSC-2013-1: Updated GSC Funding Policy (Wendy Ni)

There was a discussion last week on whether Funding guidelines perhaps favour large vs. small events. There was an issue raised by the Stanford Brewing Club on clubs where there’s a number of fee paying members, which is larger than the average attendance. This is due to differential interests within the same group.

Broadly, there have been 2 friendly amendments to the funding policy:
1. Broadened the calculation of soft caps to include groups that have >=10$ a year as dues.. They can give us the membership lists of those who pay that due. The soft cap number (n) will be calculated based on the the maximum of this number and the average attendance number.
2. Another line to make this list auditable.

There’s a motion to vote which is seconded.
Passes by consensus.

6:35—6:40 GSC-2013-2: $5000 from buffer fund for Marketing for the Frost Concert (Ateeq Suria)
Bill put on previous notice last week.
750 tickets reserved for graduate students till May 5th. SCN marketing expenses.
Passes by consensus.

$1000 from GSC Discretionary 2640 pending the possible failure of GSC-2013-2 in the Undergraduate Senate which is unlikely.
Passes by consensus.

6:40—6:45 New Business (Michael Shaw & David Hsu)

Hrishi and Ateeq bring up the video that is to be done by incoming international students. It will contain information sent out to students before they board their flight.
One overal video from the GSC.
4-5 different modules of about 2-3 minutes each.

The different threads of discussion brought up on this subject were as follows:

1. Too expensive as it is upfront heavy but will be useful in the future
2. Contributions from different communities and offices involved should be taken to ensure they take ownership of the project, while GSC funds the majority.
3. Close captioning is important for international students.
4. Close attention should be paid for each of the scripts. For example, the Vaden video could have the officials speaking or more practical things about things to do if hurt or about health insurance.
5. We should brand it as a GSC video to get the new students involved.
6. Ensure that all the offices have it on their main page and that Bechtel sends it out to everyone.
7. Get a sample video from the person who did this video.

Voting Members Present:
H&S Natural Sciences: Michael Shaw
H&S Social Sciences: Roshan Shankar
Law: Johnny Giorgis for Camille Fletcher
At-Large: Puja Deverakonda
Engineering: Ateeq Suria
H&S Humanities: Adrienne Johnson
Business: Tiffany Abdullahi
Medicine: Eduardo Gonzalez
At-Large: Nipun Sarin
At-Large: Saad Bhamla
Education: John Dodini for Ernestine Fu
At-Large: Wendy Ni for David Hsu

Voting Members Not Present:
Earth Sciences: Sjoerd de Ridder
Engineering: Anne-Laure Cuvilliez
At-Large: Hrishi Goel

Other Members : W. Zhu, Scott Dobbins, Bryce Andelms, Mericcan Usta, Billy Gallagher, Dan Ashton, George Karakonstantakis, Justin Li, Linsey Seitz, Bill Noderer, Kunal Sahasrabuddhe

5:45—6:00 Dinner and Conversation (All)

6:00—6:03 Welcome and Introductions (Michael Shaw & David Hsu)

6:03—6:05 Approve Minutes from 3-13-2013 (Roshan Shankar)
Passes by consensus.

6:05—6:20 VSO: Request (Funding Committee Recommendation) (Wendy Ni)

• Stanford Ballroom: $3600 ($3428)
April 13th 2013
Classes throughout the year to help raise money for the collegiate ballroom dance competition. 48 grad members out of 146-> 33%
200 graduate students Stanford out of 1000 people.
Arrilaga Center
TSF(The Stanford Fund) for honoraria, ASSU for Labour Costs and GSC for Equipment Rental.
$3600 requested
$3428 recommended conditional from $2572 from ASSU.
Passes by consensus.

• IV Graduate Christian Fellowship: $575 ($575)
Justin-Ivy Grad-Annual Event-Science and Faith Seminar-Speaker on graduate studies and belief-Physics professor from MIT.
Joint event between 5/6
150 graduate students out of 600 people
30:70 rule needs to be satisfied
Proportionate funding asked from the Undergraduate Senate
$575-> $475 for auditorium and $100 for food
$575 recommended conditional on confirming attendance numbers which is now 200/600.

• German Student Association: $1500 ($1192.50)
Requested $1500 for Fire on Fire.
Recommended $1192.50 since they have hit their hard cap.
May 25th 2013
Fire on Fire
1000 guests 90% graduate students, 5% undergrads and 5% teachers.
Passes by consensus.

• Hellenic Association of Stanford: $1520 ($1520)
$1520 requested and recommended Hellenic Association.
Fire on Fire: $1100 requested for food and gyros.
Joint event with the Turkish Student Association: Expecting 40 people in total: Dinner $400 and $20 =$420
Passes by consensus.

• Turkish Student Association: $1827.50 ($1827.50)
Joint event with the Turkish Student Association: Expecting 40 people in total: Dinner $400 and $20 =$420
Fire on Fire: $1407.50($307.50 for beer and $1100 for food)
Passes by consensus.

• Stanford Brewing Club: $55 ($55)
Homebrew competition. Finger food, cups and ice for the event.
Passes by consensus.

6:20—6:25 ASSU Exec Platform (Najla and Elizabeth)

Three pillars are advocacy, serve the student body and celebrate the diverse student body on campus. Want help the ASSU become the hub of advocacy.
Make sure the students represented are given the power and remain accountable.
Serving with mental health and sexual awareness on campus with Vaden, CAPS and other offices.
Address issues faced by international students.
Talk to more graduate students.
Increasing the number of TAships. How can students advocate for what is needed on campus.
Approaching the administration from many different ways
Faculty Diversity: Undergrads and graduate students needed from different backgrounds.
More collaboration between Undergraduate Senate and GSC.
Two women of colour from low income families. Working for different campus initiatives and would love to talk to any and all graduate students.

6:25—6:30 ASSU Exec Platform (Dan and Billy)
Making the ASSU more effective for the average Stanford student.
Need to meet with Undergrad Senate, ASSU and Exec.
Lot of collective experience in working with high-level administrators.
Increase funding to Bridge and lobby the Vice Provost.
Wait time is long at CAPS-try to reduce that.

6:30—6:35 Funding Request: $3500 for Grad Family Carnival (Andy Hernandez)
Carnival in EV for the last 35 years. Aimed towards small kids living in the EV Couples living. Ponies, petting zoo, train, face painters, magician and a lot of fun stuff.
$3500 requested.
Passes by consensus.

6:35—6:40 Funding Request: $465 towards an AED in the GCC (Michael Shaw)
Discussed in the GCC Operations meeting. Defibrilator in the GCC. Split between Graduate Housing, Graduate Student Council and Graduate Life Office.
Come out of the Chair’s Discretionary Fund.
Not responsible for its maintenance work.
Passes by consensus.

6:40—6:45 GSC-2013-1: Updated GSC Funding Policy (Wendy Ni)
70 dues paying members. Beer enthusiasts and brewers. Average event size is smaller than it seems. There’s a discussion on what might be the best way of defining a group’s size since groups with small number of people tend to not host events for their groups. And the current funding policy rewards consistent events. So a group will find it difficult to have big and small events.
A proposal is made to have a dual definition of group membership where active membership is either the running average group attendance or is the number of active dues-paying members for that group with minimum dues at $10/year. This exhibits interest from the students at having the group, gets some money to them and also allows them to do events of different kinds.
There’s general consensus in the room over this and thus, it will be included in the new funding policy.

6:45—6:50 Update on Grad Formal Planning (Adrienne Rose Johnson)
635 tickets have been sold out. If anyone does 2 shifts, they get their money refunded. Catering and venue has been sorted out. Kunal will be sending out the volunteer email at night.

6:50—7:00 Advocacy Updates (All)

John Dodini is the co-chair of Nomcom and would like to advertise that there are lots of positions that require graduate student seats, and encourages GSC members to apply for it.

7:00—7:05 Funding Auditor and Funding Committee Meetings (Wendy Ni)

Wendy Ni is the new Funding Committee chair and would like to advertise the Monday Funding Committee meeting. Anyone who’s interested in the Funding Committee, its working and a job in it should let the chairs know asap.

7:05—7:10 Faculty Senate Presentation (Michael Shaw)
Michael Shaw has gotten the space for a 5 minute speech at the Faculty Senate meeting on May 2nd. He looks for suggestions on what to say there and what issues to advocate on? Email Michael if there are thoughts.

7:10—7:15 Update on GCC Redesign Ideas (Puja Deverakonda)
Tabled for next meeting.

7:15—7:20 GSC-2013-2: $5000 from buffer fund for Marketing for the Frost Concert (Ateeq Suria)
Bill put on previous notice for upto $5000 towards marketing expenses for Frost. SCN will have 750 tickets at minimum reserved for graduate students.
Open to everybody. Room to reach out to more people.

Apply to SERVE on University committees for the 2013-2014 academic year.

Deadline to Apply: Tuesday, April 2 at 5PM

Apply here: http://bit.ly/W4ud0U

List of Committees: http://bit.ly/YzATTs

List with Descriptions: http://bit.ly/Zxoeyd

Voting Members Present:
H&S Natural Sciences: Wendy Ni for Michael Shaw
H&S Social Sciences: Sreenath Krishnan for Roshan Shankar
At-Large: David Hsu
Law: Camille Fletcher
At-Large: Puja Deverakonda
Engineering: Ateeq Suria
H&S Humanities: Adrienne Johnson
Business: Tiffany Abdullahi
At-Large: Hrishi Goel
Earth Sciences: Addy Satija for Sjoerd de Ridder
Medicine: Eduardo Gonzalez
At-Large: Gaurav Mahajan for Nipun Sarin
At-Large: Saad Bhamla

Voting Members Not Present:
Engineering: Anne-Laure Cuvilliez
Education: Ernestine Fu

Other Members : Wendy Ni, Justin, Ryan Nicol, Dan Ashton, Billy Gallagher, Tiffany Williams, David Rasch,Johnny Giorgis

5:45—6:00 Dinner and Conversation (All)

6:00—6:03 Welcome and Introductions (Michael Shaw & David Hsu)

6:03—6:05 Approve Minutes from 3-6-2013 (Roshan Shankar)

Passes by consensus.

6:05—6:08 VSO: Request (Funding Committee Recommendation) (Anne-Laure Cuvilliez)

- Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship: $0 ($1170 requested) -no FC recommendation

Event is run by different Christian groups. Chi Alpha is 90% undergrad. Funding guidelines follow the 30:70 rule. Thus, FC couldn’t offer a recommendation.
Expected graduate student attendance is >30% graduate students.
Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship has 6 groups working together on this event. Christians in Business and IV Grad are the two graduate student bodies. It should be greater than 30% of the event’s capacity.
IV Grad did this event last year. Each group rotates in a particular year. ASSU Undergraduate advisors advised them to apply to the Funding Committee.

The Funding Guidelines talk about membership of the VSO and we need to talk about the interpretation of the 30:70 rule.

Requested $1300 from the undergraduate fees. Requested $475 from the GSC. Some outside grants as well.

The decision was made to get Ivy Grad to come back on April 1st and 3rd, as the event is on April 15
Passed without objection

- 49ers Academy Teaching Team
Group of graduate students who go to 49ers Academy who teach students in East Palo Alto
Science Lesson: Egg Drop competition-Also provide rewards for the students.
End of School Year-7th graders are brought onto the Medical campus and visit different labs like the surgical simulation lab-Food and snacks for the students
8th graders are taken to California Academy of Sciences or Exploratorium: They’ve gone up.
$640 for Stanford Visit, $2007 for End of Year Trip and $1200 for Science Lessons
Total: $3847 requested
Recommended: $3847
Passes by consensus.

6:08—6:20 Stanford University Ombuds Office (David Rasch)

David Rasch from the University Ombuds Office. Not many people know of the Office. Open to suggestions on how the word can be spread on the graduate population.
Confidential and neutral office for anyone in the University for Informal Conflict resolution.
Created around 1970 to address conflicts especially around Vietnam.
Not part of any grievance redressal mechanism.

Grad students issues:
Useful mechanism for where information can go on confidentiality regarding a professor or advisor and is helpful in delicate information handling
Credit or Authorship or status in the degree program.
Civility, respect or sexual harassment.
Policies and procedures related to the issue are discussed and provides general help on finding pros and cons of steps taken.
Conduit on trying to find information out.
Mediator for difficult conversations in a variety of stakeholder combinations.
Bureaucracy issues on fees, money and can be a channel to get through the red tape.
Concerned about termination or disciplinary stuff or abuse of power can come to the Ombuds.
Within students, 50% undergrad vs. 50% grad students who use the service. Plenty of international students come in to discuss issues as well.
Report through the Office of the President.
Worked with the Graduate Life Office for outreach, publicity in the Stanford Daily and is listed in all the bulletins.
There is one table at the GOALie lunch. It is housed in Mariposa House near Bechtel and Faculty Lounge.
There’s some mailing lists that could be sent to. Message through GLO or grad-announce.
Video package to send to international students. Different auxilliary departments. Ombud would be interested in this initiative.

6:20—6:30 Funding Policies for 2013-14 (Sjoerd de Ridder & Anne-Laure Cuvilliez)
Postponed until next meeting.

6:30—6:35 UGS-W2013-11, Bill to Amend the ASSU Constitution to Create the Undergraduate Fee Reserve Fund (Dan Ashton & Billy Gallagher)

Removed from the agenda.

6:35—6:40 UGS-W2013-12, Resolution to Amend the ASSU Constitution to Create Upperclass Senate Seats (Dan Ashton & Billy Gallagher)

Put on previous notice last week. Redefining upper class senate seats and create upperclass Senate seats. Section of the undergraduate Senate by-laws. Allows for number to set based on the year. There aren’t enough people representing upperclassmen.
Senate was under the impression that it passed but it hadn’t. Online meeting in 72 hours.
Motion to vote called.
Passes 12(FOR)-0(AGAINST)-1(ABSTAIN)

6:40—6:45 Grad Formal Funding Request for $12000 (Cathy Jan)

$15000 to keep Ticket price to keep the ticket prices down.
Main costs are catering, open bar and food.
Large costs are venue and buses.
Nipun informed David that discretionary funding isn’t there with only $18000 left. In order to keep the prices down to $30+eventbrite, this amount is needed.
Is there a rationale to keep it down? There’s a fairly inelastic demand and it seems that ticket prices don’t matter that much.
Tickets costs have been $20 to $50 and attendance has been between 1100-1400.
Motion to vote to give upto $15000 to keep prices at $35.

Motion passes with 11(FOR)-0(AGAINST)-2(ABSTAIN)

6:45—6:55 Funding for Frost Concert ($5000) and Ghostface Killah Concert ($5000) (Roshan Shankar)

Frost Amphitheatre concert. Frost wants to become a yearly thing. Want to make $5000 for graduate student marketing. We want more people to attend.
Ghostface Killah concert to be done by SCN. $5000 to fund the second event. It is the differential of the amount required to sign the artist.

Straw Poll taken in the GSC. This vote is to get a general sense of how and whether the GSC would like to help with these SCN initiatives.

$5000 for Frost concert: 9 votes in favor (from buffer fund)
$5000 for Ghostface Killah concert: 9 votes in favor (from discretionary funding pending Grad Formal return)

There’s generally a positive response on helping SCN with both these initiatives. They will be put to vote in the first meeting of the spring quarter.

6:55—7:00 Update on Write to Read write-a-thon fundraiser (Roshan Shankar)

Group wants to do Relay for Life but for Writing. They’ve chosen the Oak Room in Tressider. They’re in talks with SAL. Not a VSO, the charge is $550 but for a non-VSO is $80.

There is consensus in the GSC helping to book the room. Addy Satija will help in booking the room.

7:00—7:05 Advocacy Updates (All)

Well-attended tax sessions held. Ateeq, Tiffany and Hrishi went to the tax session.
No mention on increase in housing and insurance.
We need to talk to SSE about the endowment. The money may possibly already be in an endowment.
Hrishi has been speaking to all departments to get them on board for the video project.
Food truck policy is being understood by Saad and Puja. Setting up an appointment with them.

Voting Members Present:
H&S Natural Sciences: Michael Shaw
Engineering: Anne-Laure Cuvilliez
H&S Humanities: Adrienne Johnson
At-Large: David Hsu
Engineering: Ateeq Suria
Education: John Dodini for Ernestine Fu
Earth Sciences: Sjoerd de Ridder
Business: Tiffany Abdullahi
At-Large: Hrishi Goel
H&S Social Sciences: Roshan Shankar
At-Large: Saad Bhamla
Medicine: Eduardo Gonzalez
At-Large: Puja Deverakonda

Voting Members Not Present:
Law: Camille Fletcher
At-Large: Nipun Sarin

Other Members : Bassel Birri, Johnny Giorgis, Stephen Trusheim, Dan Ashton, Atul Gupta, Erik Madsen, Wendy Ni, Bharad Raghavan, Aditya Gudipati, Megan D’ Errico, Mairi Litherland

6:00—6:15 Dinner and Conversation (All)

6:15—6:18 Welcome and Introductions (Michael Shaw & David Hsu)

6:18—6:20 Approve Minutes from 2-27-2013 (Roshan Shankar)
Passes by consensus.
6:20—6:30 VSO: Request (Funding Committee Recommendation) (Anne-Laure Cuvilliez)

• Stanford India Association: $1170 ($1170)
Bollywood Party Bash
250 people expected. EV Village Center. March 8th. 9 pm to 1 am.
$900 for food
$200 for programming
$70 equipment rental: Lights from the ELS
Requested and recommended $1170.
Passes by consensus.

• Asha for Stanford: $3268.52 ($3268.52)
Annual Holi event.
Requested and Recommended 3268.52
They will also be using unused amounts previously recommended for their Scavenger Hunt towards this event.
Passes by consensus.

• Stanford Alpine Project: $450 ($450)
Stanford Alpine Project
Annual Pi Day Event 3/14
Paying for people’s pies and programming.
$400 for food and $50 for programming
$450 recommended
Passes by consensus.
• Stanford Ceili Dance: $581.34 ($581.34)
Annual St. Patrick’s Day Dance
$581 conditional on receiving $200 matching funds from Bechtel, if not $381.
Passes by consensus.

• SpicMacay ($1000)
Came to funding committee the week before for approval. It is an Indian Music Organization which is getting a renowned musician to perform at Stanford. Matching funds from ASSU
Passes by consensus.

6:30—6:40 Funding Policies for 2013-14 (Anne-Laure Cuvilliez)

Shared on gsc_members. Send her an email if you can’t find it in your email or would like access for feedback.
Sjoerd has also shared a document on the bylaws and funding policy. There should be one document that VSOs look at: Funding policy.
On discussion, it was found that the document needs to be re-read and edited well.
The policy changes that will be implemented are as follows:
VSOs can only collaborate with a given VSO once a year.
Purchasing capital equipment is allowed if it can be shown to be necessary for VSO and if purchasing is cheaper than renting. The VSO can be store it in the GSC space
Snacks at 4$ for any number of students, BBQ $8 for first 50 and $6 for any purchases after that. For dinner, for events of 50 people or less, it will be the graduate meal plan number and for over 50 students: (Graduate Meal Plan-2) $
Soft cap is defined as $30 * n(active graduate membership)
Active graduate membership-using average GSC funded event attendance. There seems to be agreement that we can change the term active membership to average event attendance. It needs a method of calculation or estimating these numbers.
Some options including getting groups to record and report their attendance. Nancy Howe at SAL might be able to get a student ID scanner. A trial run in spring quarter may be of considerable use.
The goal should be to minimize VSO burden. The general agreement seemed to be to trust VSOs on past event numbers, ensure a fair and transparent auditing process and in case, it is required we can get people
6:40—6:45 GSC Elections (Michael Shaw)

April 11/12 is the election date. Declare as soon as possible at http://petitions.stanford.edu/issues/gsc

6:45—6:55 Advocacy Updates (All)

GLO(Graduate Life Office) needs help with volunteers for Easter Egg Hunt. You might to help out at the event.

2 Constitutional Amendments that were proposed were brought up for discussion.

a) Amendment about the Buffer Funds and Reserve Policy: Groups tend to accumalate vast reserves of money in their account. This bill specifies a method to take that money and put it into the account to use it for student events here.
For undergraduates. Specifically deals with undergraduate money. In order to get on the ballot, it needs â…” approval from both bodies.
Policies for buffer and reserve funds needs to go through both GSC and Undergrad Senate to keep a check on each others. However, this is undergraduate money which needs to have their discretion on the method to spend it.
It doesn’t set a precedent on how the GSC spends its buffer funds.
An argument is made that money from special fees should go to special fees and shouldn’t go to other general events, since the students voted for an amount to go towards that special fee. A suggestion is made that it could lead to lower special fees.
A motion is suggested to suspend rules of order and put this bill on previous notice. It passes 10(FOR)-0(AGAINST)-3(ABSTAIN).
The bill is, thus, put on previous notice.

b) Since there is no upper class representation in Senate, this allocates upto 5 seats for upperclassmen.
A motion is suggested to suspend rules of order and put this bill on previous notice. It passes 13(FOR)-0(AGAINST)-0(ABSTAIN) and is, thus, put on previous notice.

6:55—7:00 Frost Ampitheater Concert (Ateeq Suria)
Met with Frost people-Katie and Haley. Organization and ticket sales. Subsidized for all students.
2 funding requests that will put up next week is to approve a marketing budget for advertising this to the graduate students going to the event upto $5000.
Another possibility is to fund in-part a Ghostface Killah concert at Stanford. Roshan is interested in being the graduate student on board. More graduate students are invited. Anyone else interested should contact him.

7:00—7:10 Buffer Fund Plans (Tiffany Abdullahi)
Puja has been speaking to Ken Hsu and Mike Von Fossen on making GCC a better co-working space. She will get numbers when an estimate can be put on it.
The Challenge proposed last time could be something that students might end up expecting. So it might be worth looking into creating an endowment.

7:10—7:30 The Housing Office (Mike Van Fossen, Rodger Whitney)
Last year first-year graduate students didn’t get campus housing. Challenge because they’re trying their best to keep a policy on graduate housing consistent on letting people continue and also getting first-yeat students guaranteed housing.

New housing open in Fall 2014. 436 new beds. It buys housing time.
Graduate enrollment slowing down will help

A suggestion was made that if housing can help with the deposit that locations off-campus require, a lot of students might be interested in moving off campus. This can be paid back over time as the student continues to study on campus. David’s going to bring it up in the Monday G-HAC meeting. It might be a good alternative since there’s already housing that is being used to purchase off-campus apartments which might go into this program.
The Housing office could send out a survey or questions to see interest in the area.
Since there’s new housing coming in Comstock, it could be one-time only initiative for 2013-14-> Other possible options are to make it available only for the first 50/100 people.

Things to consider are that housing is subsidized on campus and that any rent losses are built into the revenue stream.

The Community Housing website needs to publicized.

Housing tries to accomodate family housing as best as possible and has shown flexibility on the 1+5 rule on the few instances that there’s been a requirement for a quarter or two of extra housing.

Pets won’t still be allowed on campus due to it being unsafe and inhumanity shown to pets. Pest Control has managed to do a pretty decent job in managing the rodents, skunks and raccoons. If there’s a persistent problem somewhere, you should let housing know.

A final suggestion made to Roger and Mike was to possibly reopen graduate dormitories like the ones in Crothers which attempted to give graduate students, a more undergraduate experience.

Once again, Roger and Mike invite everyone to the G-HAC meeting to discuss and carry forward any of the issues discussed in this GSC meeting.

Next Meeting:
Wednesday March 13th, 5:45pm,
GCC Nairobi Room.
Special Guest: Stanford Ombuds David Rasch