Agenda
General Body Meeting
March 2, 6pm Havana Rm of the GCC
1. 5:45 pm – FOOD (thanks Ray!)
2. 6:00 pm – Welcome with Introductions
3. 6:05 pm – Announcements (Justin/Jess)
i. Minutes from 2/23/2011
ii. Meetings are recorded
iii. Proxies for this week
-Adeel Arif for Ping Li
iv. Joint Legislative Meeting, Tuesday March 8, 6pm
4. 6:10 pm – Bills
i. Solicitor’s General Bill Amendment (Angelina/Michael)
ii. Associate Financial Manager (Raj)
5. 6:20 pm – Funding (Krystal)
i. ASHA for Education
ii. Jewish Graduate Student Union
iii. Bengalis at Stanford
6. 6:30 pm – VPGE Update (Vice Provost Gumport)
7. 7:00 pm – Programming Update (Addy/Cathy)
8. 7:05 pm – Craft Brewery Bus Request (Annemarie)
9. 7:10 pm – GSPB Funding Approval (George/Krystal)
10. 7:15 pm – ASSU/SSE Update (Angelina/Raj)
11. 7:20 pm – Joint Special Fees Approvals for Ballot + GSC Opinion (All)
i. ASSU Speakers Burreau
ii. Club Sports (currently petitioning)
iii. ASSU Legal Counseling
iv. Flicks
v. Cardinal Free Clinics
vi. Stanford Outdoors
vii. Should ROTC Return to Stanford University?
12. 7:40 pm – Previous Noticed Bills
i. Constitutional Council (Samir)
ii. Nominations Commission(2) (Stephanie/Hilary)
13. 7:45 pm – New Business
Attendance
Voting members present:
Business – Ping Li (proxy Adeel Arif present)
Earth Sciences – Justin Brown
Engineering – Joanna Lankester
H&S – Natural Sciences – Erik Lehnert
Law – Thomas Spahn
Medicine – Jessica Tsai
At-large representative – Crystal Yin
At-large representative – Tao Chu
At-large representative – Krystal St. Julien
At-large representative – Fanuel Muindi
Voting Members Absent:
Engineering Rep – Yichuan Ding
H&S – Social Sciences – Salvador Zepeda
H&S – Humanities – Praveen Shanbhag
Education – Imeh Williams
At-large representative – Addy Satija
Non-voting members present:
Hilary Stone – NomCom
Ryan Peacock – ASSU Exec Grad Chair
Raj Bhandari – SSE
Stephen Trusheim – Elections commission
Ernestine Fu – SSD
Michael Cruz – VP ASSU
Aakash Basu – Bengalis at Stanford FO
Sonal Gupta Rahunandan – ASHA for Education
Sneti Karania – ASHA for Education
Havendra Guturu – ASHA for Education
Ninit A. – ASHA for Education
Anne-Laure Cuvilliez – Funding Committee
Xi Cheng
Bakke – Elections
Annemarie Baltay – Beer Bus proposal
Minutes
Listen to this first segment
Listen to this second segment
Constitutional Council Rules of Order
New Section 3 on the JBL
General Body Meeting
March 2, 6pm Havana Rm of the GCC
1. 5:45 pm – FOOD (thanks Ray!)
2. 6:00 pm – Welcome with Introductions
3. 6:05 pm – Announcements (Justin/Jess)
i. Minutes from 2/23/2011
ii. Meetings are recorded
iii. Proxies for this week
-Adeel Arif for Ping Li
iv. Joint Legislative Meeting, Tuesday March 8, 6pm
4. 6:19 pm – Bills
i. Solicitor’s General Bill Amendment (Angelina/Michael) – tabeled
ii. Associate Financial Manager (Raj) – ASSU has an FM who is also the SSE CEO. There is a committee that nominates someone. This year Naveen Mahmoud was nominated, I recommend her highly. She has great potential to improve SSE next year. If anyone has any questions, I’ll take them, but I don’t want to waste anyone’s time.
Confirmed 9 – 0 – 1.
5. 6:22 pm – Funding (Anne-Laure)
i. ASHA for Education – This is a student non-profit group that celebrates the traditional Indian festival for the arrival of spring on the Sand Hill rd on campus. We give people paint and water to throw on each other and they have fun. We’re having this on April 3rd, and all the net proceeds will go to supporting underprivileged children in India.
They requested total $6827.50, and we recommend $6000.15. They requested $100 for honoraria, but they had matching funds so we increased it. They were over their hard cap though, so we reduced their funding for paint.
Raj – Do you have an idea of how many people show up to this because they know about the festival, and how many just show up for fun?
Rep – 40% non-immigrants who just know its fun, otherwise mostly community people who know what the festival is about.
Tao – Are you charging for admission?
Rep – We are planning to charge $10 for Stanford students, $12 for students, and $15 for everyone else. Then up by $2 if you buy on site day-of.
Justin – There are to Holis every year. Have the two groups ever thought about working together to have a single event? Do the two groups talk?
Rep – We had this conversation this exact discussion 3-4 years ago. One main reason is our objective is a benefit fundraiser. There is a disagreement on how to split the revenues. Since then, we asked for their help to publicize, but we don’t co-organize.
Fanuel – How much do you typically raise?
Rep – 60-70k.
Fanuel – In terms of what that money’s doing, do you track it?
Rep – 70-80% goes to education projects in India. We currently have 14 projects in India.
Fanuel – It would be awesome to hear about them.
Rep – I’d encourage everyone to go to our web-site to find out about these projects.
Crystal – Do you have plans about how to market to people outside of Indian ethnicity to make sure they’re welcome and know what the event is like?
Rep – We send things out on every e-mail list, and ~40% of admissions are non-Indian people.
Crystal – I think this is a great example of events that attract outside of ethnic groups and we might ask for advice for how you made this work.
Jess – 80-85% goes to India. Where does the rest go?
Rep – It serves as a buffer in case some projects go over budget.
Funding for $6000.15 passes by consensus.
ii. Jewish Graduate Student Union –
Rep – We’re the JGSU. We’re here to unite Jewish grad students across disciplines and plan events for them and the greater Stanford community. We want to have a Purim party in a couple of weeks – it’s basically a masquerade. People are asked to come dressed up. We’ll have a casual dinner and a band. We’d like to have it at the Treehouse. In May, we’d like to have a field day, have a BBQ and a bonfire. Have people bring instruments, have music.
Anne-Laure – They requested a total $1,930, $930 for purim party and $1000 for field day. We recommended the full amount.
Fanuel – Have you had these in the past?
Rep – We’ve had these in the past and gotten ~130 – 150 people. The other event has brought a fair number of people.
Fanuel – Do you have a sense of who comes?
Rep – We’ve never advertised to the greater Stanford community before, so we’re trying this to bring a wider group of people in.
$1,930 passes by consensus.
iii. Bengalis at Stanford – This is a student organization centered around Bengali culture. We’re not a super-active group. This is our first event of the year. We intend to serve dinner and show a classic Bengali film.
Anne-Laure – They requested $180, we recommended $180.
Funding for $180 passes by consensus.
6. 6:39 pm – VPGE Update (Vice Provost Gumport) We’re here to talk about VPGE. We have a game-plan that we cooked up with Justin because we weren’t sure what you wanted to hear about. We’re going to talk about diversity, and then we’ll talk about another area where we have a lot of innovative ideas and need your input.
In 2007, VPGE was created based on a commission on graduate education that would have a university-wide perspective on education across all seven schools. This was a bold and exciting initiative, and John and Sherry have been along for the last 3 years. The big priorities we’re working on are in the first slide. Diversity, strengthening current degree programs, and created inter-department and school programs to enhance your experience.
To give you some ideas of the big picture of grad life. Since 1985, grad enrollment has grown compared to UG growth (32% increase versus 4% increase). They’re distributed into 80 grad programs. Very decentralized, a lot going on. We have a lot of respect for peoples independence.
I’m going to move to talk about diversity. We have a broadly defined view of diversity that includes many categories. We are excited about this because it gives us many avenues to maximize the benefits of diversity. A priority is to recruit diverse grad students. There are areas where we have not improved in diversity outreach (Native American, African-American, and Hispanic students). We’re concerned about this lack of progress and want to know about what’s going on. 1995 was a peak in enrollment of URMs, and then it declined. We’ve got some challenges across the groups – what you don’t see here underlying these boxes is that we’ve had 4.5% increase in URM. That’s a 1.5% increase since 1995. We’re doing much better in percentage.
We’ve broken down URM participation by school, as well as by gender. There’s a lot to think about in here and talk to each other about. Education is doing the best, but other schools have some issues.
You can see that a main focus for us is to seek advice across campus, including the grad steering committee. We also have diversity officers in each of the schools.
All our programs are new because we’re new. But we need prospective students and the provost will be speaking about it.
We also have a slide on DARE, which is a fellowship to help diversify faculty. Many of our PhD students go on to academic careers to improve diversity in faculty. There’s a lot of interest in this program and we’ve had some great success with these people getting jobs. DARE is based on national and Stanford research based on what helps people succeed, and we built the program to address each of these components.
There is also a video on diversity for students to explain what faculty diversity means for them.
One emerging initiative we’re really excited about – for the first time we have data on doctoral student completion rates and degrees going back to 1985. Our first look at it, we completed the report late last summer. We follow cohorts based on the year they enter. The most current one is 95-99. Their modal/mean year for graduation is year 6. The table that corresponds to it, the median time to degree for the whole university is 5.9 years. A number of our peer institutions actually have much longer tails – more part-time students who aren’t as well funded.
Sherri – Thanks for the setup regarding the questions of diversity. One of our themes is on leadership and professional development. We want students to have access to more comprehensive programming. We’ve been piloting a number of programs around the different professional skills. We want feedback to check to see if we’re on the right track. I’m going to ask John to talk about what we’re offering, and then we can get feedback. If you had to list the top 3 professional skills that are critical to your success and are not being met. Also, what are really good venues for offering these things. We want to pack a lot into a fairly short time.
John – On the left-side of the brochure, we have something called Leadership and Professional Development. We have a management matters workshop. We have a lot of workshops on people management, working with your advisor, opportunities to meet with local leaders in government and sports. We want to hear from you guys about what resources you need that your departments can’t efficiently do.
We want to hear from you about what our top priorities should be to improve these experiences.
Sherri – The question on the table is regarding professional development? What do you need for your careers?
Tom – I split my time between the law school and MS&E. Do you guys integrate with Stanford entrepreneurship network? It might be good to link in with that.
Sherri – We could also have a list to help people find out about what’s going on from different groups.
Tom – There also aren’t a lot of of nuts and bolts workshops on how to go from academic to university.
Erik – How well do these workshops transfer between departments?
John – The talks are about communication and people management, so they tend to be generally applicable.
Jess – I’m in the neuroscience program. We have a required professional development course. We’ve learned how to file patents – something useful for students. It would also be good to have things specifically for dual-degree students.
Ryan – Having just gone through job-search, one thing I noticed was that Stanford is really great to help you look for faculty and industry positions, but there are a lot of weakness for atypical jobs in policy for example.
Bakke – What do you think the VPGE’s role is to change the university’s view about developing student’s abilities to do research into developing intelligence and long-term skills?
Patti – The provost and I were explaining the federal government’s investment in education post-WWII. And the provost said the best transfer of value was the students. What was in our best interest was to produce people who would be leaders and problem-solvers with a wide range of skills.
Sherri – There are a lot of resources on campus that are focused on solving big problems like food security and K-12 education. There’s the Haas Center with public service and the D school. I’m hoping there’s a shift in helping people figure out how they’re going to have an effect on changing the world.
John – It’s the role of the university to provide a really solid foundation of education and it’s up to you to go out into the world and figure out how to solve problems. A lot of industry people want us to train researchers – the industry wants to establish the culture.
Patti – One thing we’ve heard is that some students as partake of our programs in secret because they don’t feel supported by their department. But we’re trying to persuade faculty that our programs are in the best interests of the students.
Krystal – If I’m doing outside of the lab, I don’t want to tell my PI. Not because he wouldn’t be supportive, but because when something needs to get done, he’s always going to prioritize my lab work. It’s easier for me to keep my nose to the grindstone when I’m in lab and then do things on my time. A lot of your offerings are during the day, which I can’t make.
Anne-Laure – For engineering, it’s better during the day. We have a lot of project meetings in the evenings.
Patti – We can do a range of times. We were thinking about doing a half-day event on Saturday as well. We also keep hearing that writing is a skill students need developed, as well as speaking to non-specialist audiences.
Joanna – The one thing I was thinking about was that sometimes we don’t know the skills we’re going to need later – even technical skills. It would be great to talk to more people who are from a particular field to get ideas about what skills students need.
Patti – Things like time-management, budgets?
Sherri – We also realize that there is a time-course, some things are useful early on, some are later.
Erik – I think budgeting early on is important – I know several students who went over-budget their first-year because they’d never had to plan out costs-of-living in an area like this before. If there’s were guidelines for how much people should be paying in food, rent, etc… that might be helpful.
Bakke – I think your office is great and you guys do a great job. I did have one question about time to graduation – I think it’s something that prospective students might want to see. But what can the university really do with this information?
Patti – Next Thursday, we’re having a meeting with all department chairs to discuss practices in different departments and how they can support students.
Erik – I wanted to go back to some of the diversity issues you were talking about, because I feel like it’s an issue where it’s difficult to make meaning full headway. First, looking at this data you supplied, it’s clear that different departments have different issues. Have you looked at ways to get departments to focus on specific issues – reward them if they improve, let them know where they are failing? Is there the possibility of tracking applicant pools versus admitted students to see if there’s a large discrepancy? I don’t get the impression that a lot of departments are tracking this seriously.
Patti – We’re going to be discussing this at the meeting on Thursday to try to get departments to tackle this.
Erik – I think it might help them to almost have a diversity check-list, because I know for a lot of departments the broadly defined diversity categories aren’t even on their radar. I’ve had to argue with my department and the med school to try to get them to actually start doing LGBT outreach during interviews because in their minds, if it wasn’t a box someone checked, they didn’t need to be invited to events.
Secondly, diversity here is broadly defined, but it’s very narrowly measured. There’s no way here for departments to track sexual orientation, first-generation status, etc…so they have no measurable feedback.
Patti – We don’t track sexual orientation because of privacy issues – probably not in our lifetime. We do try to keep reminding people to improve on it…
Erik – I think it’s becoming less of an issue for people, and even if it underestimates the number, it could still be useful.
Justin – Thanks for coming, we really appreciate you guys coming here.
7. 7:25 pm – Programming Update (Addy/Cathy) – tabled
8. 7:26 pm – Craft Brewery Bus Request (Annemarie) – Grant new ideas. Got rejected from grant process. It’s a beer bus. Includes breakfast, lunch, 3-4 tastings. Participants would pay for tasting, bus, breakfast, lunch included. 55 person bus.
Tom – Is this just beer drinking?
Annemarie – No, there are explanations of breweries and how beer is made.
Krystal – Only people who taste pay. I don’t drink, but I went with my boyfriend and had a good time.
Fanuel – How many people are interested?
Annemarie – All the wine-trips were full, so I think there’s a lot of interest.
Erik – It seems like we’re spending a lot of money for 55 people. Is there a way to make a co-pay? Or to get two busses if you have a lot of people interested?
Annemarie – We can do a co-pay.
Jess – I propose that we take $2000 this out of programming discretionary.
Passes 4 – 1 – 4.
9. 7:33 pm – GSPB Funding Approval (George/Krystal) – tabelled
10. 7:33 pm – ASSU/SSE Update (Angelina/Raj) – tabelled
11. 7:38 pm – Joint Special Fees Approvals for Ballot + GSC Opinion (All)
i. ASSU Speakers Burreau
ii. Club Sports (currently petitioning)
iii. ASSU Legal Counseling
iv. Flicks
v. Cardinal Free Clinics
vi. Stanford Outdoors
vii. Should ROTC Return to Stanford University?
v. Cardinal Free Clinics
Jess – Approve all six joint-special fees on the ballot. Passes 6-0-3, they are on the ballot.
Jess – Cardinal free clinic has UG, grad, med students. They run clinics 52 times per year. They’re first-come, first-serve.
Fanuel – Largest expenditure is food. Why is that?
Jess – To feed volunteers who work from 7 am until 5 pm once a week.
7 – 1 – 1. Recommended to voters.
i. ASSU Speakers Burreau
Justin – Speaker’s bureau coalitions with people to have funds to bring in high profile speakers. They also coalition with student groups if they have a speaker they want.
9-0-0.
vi. Stanford Outdoors
Anne-Laure – SO are an umbrella group for a bunch of outdoors organization. They are requesting funds to help lower the cost of attendance for events.
Passes 8-0-1.
iii. ASSU Legal Counseling
Jess – Flicks shows movie.
Erik – What is grad attendance at Flicks?
Justin – It’s pretty low. They didn’t pass last year, but they’re coming back this time.
Ryan – They passed last year.
Krystal – Last year we canned grad night at Flicks because we got really low attendance.
Ryan – I go enough to justify the fee, so I don’t think it’s a terrible thing. If you go a couple of times a year, it’s a free movie.
2 – 6 – 1. Not recommended.
iii. ASSU Legal Counseling
Justin – ASSU Legal counseling. They help you out if you need to get into the legal process. They have attorneys.
9-0-0, recommended.
ii. Club Sports (currently petitioning
Krystal – Club Sports fosters a lot of the club sports on campus. Competitive sports groups. If you want to play with them, you still end up doing a lot of fund-raising and paying yourself. It basically subsidizes things.
Ryan – I’ve been talking to club sports this year, they’re also starting to look at getting under athletics.
9 – 0 – 0. Passes unanimously.
vii. Should ROTC Return to Stanford University?
Jess – ROTC tabled.
12. 7:50 pm – Previous Noticed Bills
i. Constitutional Council (Samir) – SG wants to propose two new bills. Our amendments do four key things. The first one is it includes a rules and evidence section to decide what is acceptable evident. Second, it defines how two parties can agree on facts. Third, it puts forward reasons why a constitutional council member should recuse themselves. Fourth, it should give the ability to the respondent the option to respond before we hear the case. Constitutional council and solicitor general both agree on this.
Jess – Motion to table until next week.
Move to table passes.
ii. Nominations Commission(2) (Stephanie/Hilary) We’ve come to a consensus of people who can represent the whole student community on next year’s NomCom, grad and undergrad, and who can definitely make the time commitment.
NomCom people are approved 9-0-0.
iii. Michael – Motion to suspend rules of order during joint bylaws during so that people can have a free discussion. It simplifies things like assigning floor, etc…
Passes 9-0-0.
Michael – Propose to approve NomCom bill
13. 7:45 pm – New Business
SSD Rep – SSD is Student Services Division that was created three years ago under Fagan and it was originally created to sustain ASSU executive projects that were well received. Currently under SSD is tutoring for community, Wellness Room, etc… we recently got back Speaker’s Bureau, SCN, etc…
You can pretty much imagine it as a wing of the ASSU that manages things during the incubator stage.
Ryan – Just to add to that, SSD was just created 2 years ago to run things like airport shuttles. There’s opportunity to expand it to grads as a special fee.
Stephen – Quick elections update. Currently we have three candidates declared. We are extending the deadline for declarations of intent until the end of winter quarter. It also makes sense because GSC candidates do not need to declare.
We need people to run. We look forward to GSC elections.
Bakke – To start, I’m going to try to get a flyer together soon to make people aware of it. Talk to people you think would be good for this.
Justin – If you’re in a district, find someone.
Krystal – I found the pro/con statements. If something has to be changed, IT HAS TO CHANGE and I will send it to Stephen and Bakke ASAP.
Ryan – I’m trying to get the registrar to reduce the late registration fee more reasonable. At a minimum, I’d like to get TGR late fee reduced since it’s so easy to forget.
Adjourned 8:08 pm.
Tags: Minutes