GSC Meeting Agenda
7pm Wednesday July 25th 2012, GCC Nairobi Room
Attendees:
Karen Powroznik
Nipun Sarin
Adrienne Johnson
Alex Lovejoy
Hrishi Goel
William Kuykendall
Ateeq Suria
Daniel Bechstein
Daniel Cruz
Maggie Wells
Chris Frank
David Hsu
Michael Shaw
Proxies:
Krystal St. Julien for Roshan Shankar
Andrew Scheuermann for Puja Deverakonda
Jamaal Glenn for Tiffany Abdullah
Raymond Tambe for Camille Fletcher
Wendy Ni for Anne-Laure Cuvilliez
John Dodini for Ernestine Fu
Lewis Marshall for Eduardo Gonzalez-Maldonado
6:45 Dinner (Thank you Ray’s!)
7:00 Welcome! (Michael, David)
- Approval of agenda
-For whatever reason, the agenda was approved
- Welcoming Proxies and Attendees
- Introductions
- Approve minutes from 7-11-12
-In lew of consensus, minute approval was moved by David and seconded by Adrienne
7:05 UNAFF Sponsorship (Jasmina)
-Jasmina: For the last 15 years UNAFF (United Nations Association Film Festival) has been taking place. It is one of the oldest documentary film festivals in the US. Jury members for documentary selection are students, critics, professors and more, and 70 documentaries are chosen from nearly 700 submissions. Movies are predominantly civil rights based (more info about the movies can be found at unaff.org). Departments and student groups at Stanford support the festival. It includes 11 days of screenings in Palo Alto, there will be (for the first time) screenings in East Palo Alto, and screenings will take place at Stanford as usual. Attendees can speak to the film makers during panels where they can ask about the what they see in the movies, what other projects the film makers are involved in and more. The topic this year is “dignity.” I was a faculty advisor for the Stanford Student Film Association (an undergrad special fee), and a few years ago Raj Bhandari (SSE CEO 2010-11) mentioned that grad students should be free to attend (like the undergrads) and encouraged the GSC to offer financial support. The GSC has been providing money to this project for the last 2 years. Funds will go directly to SSE, who will do fliering (among other things). SSE will do the fiering for $2500, the exact number of the request. If the GSC provides the $2500, all grad students will be available to go to all screenings for the 11 days for free (not just the Stanford screenings).
-Ateeq – Do we have an idea of the number of grad students that show up?
-Jasmina – A lot of students are involved… thousands. In previous years grad students would come and complain about having to pay when undergrads don’t. The tickets are $10-15.
-Hrishi – You say student groups help with this event. Are “student groups” VSOs or individuals?
-Jasmina – Both: many VSOs as well as individuals are involved. Many international groups are involved since it’s films from all around the world. This is not like other film festivals, this is more than a screening, it is talking together in groups (panels).
-Michael – If it’s free for students, do we have to pick up tickets?
-Jasmina – No, no tickets are printed. We want to be green.
-Michael – Were tickets given to grad students last year?
-Jasmina – yes, probably about 300.
-Wendy – A lot of people don’t notice the fliers and don’t know that the event is happening, so maybe let’s use mailing lists?
-Jasmina – We were hoping for more fliers this year. We are increasing the amount of fliers. We’re also doing a special screening at the med school where we will have a panel about torture. We expect the majority of people to be grad students at that. We will have a schedule up in September.
-Michael – Do we have a budget item for this?
-Nipun – There is “international gala” and “diversity advocacy…”
-Krystal – No, it would come from discretionary.
-Michael – What’s the total budget? (directed to Jasmina)
-Jasmina – $250,000
-Nipun – How much money do you get from the UN?
-Jasmina – Actually, we don’t get any funds directly from the UN. We are not politically affiliated.
-Ateeq – Last year you had thousands of grad students, but before you had 300? Why would that be?
-Jasmina – We had more demand than tickets 2 yrs ago, so that’s why we scrapped tickets last year.
-Michael – I’m surprised by “thousands of grad students.” Do you have a true sense anyone who went? (directed to grad students in the room)
-Krystal – I think she was saying “thousands of students” not “thousands of grad students.” (Jasmina nods)
-Michael – Do you have an idea of grads? (directed to Jasmina)
-Jasmina – Not sure.
-Hrishi – The money we give is $2500 for fliers, would it really be worth our while to give that much money for fliers?
-Krystal – The purpose of the money is to add to the whole budget and make it free for grads, not simply to pay for fliers.
-Adrienne – The fliers would actually be good for us to be able to know about the event.
-Hrishi – Are the undergrads paying?
-Jasmina – We get $5000 from the Stanford Film Society (special fee).
- Micheal – The proposal is $2500 for UNAFF to provide to SSE for marketing expenses. Are there any objections?
(no objections: passes by consensus)
-Jasmina – We also have year round screenings, so if you want to do any screenings on campus at any time, just contact me.
-Michael – Just one more thing, please post your events on the grad student calendar.
-Jasmina – Yes, we were planning to do that.
7:15 Funding Requests – German Student Association-($4807.50 total = $362.50 Honoraria + $4185 food + $260 programming)
-Daniel – We are hosting 3 big events: Feuerzangenbowle, Oktoberfest, Spring Welcome back BBQ mixer. We also have some small events like the coming Summer BBQ and we have a World Cup soccer showing when it happens. The biggest event in the budget is Oktoberfest, since it’s not just group member attending that.
-Krystal – This group requested $4,872.50 and we recommended $4,807.50 based on the fact that two food requests were just slightly above the funding caps. The other requests were well within the caps.
-Michael –Are there soft cap issues here?
-Krystal – Nope, the Oktoberfest event is so large that it bypasses the soft cap.
(No objections: passes by consensus)
7:20 TopCorner.Org Presentation (Maggie, Ernestine)
-John – Our program is a community based tool that can be applied within Stanford, reaching out to Palo Alto. It’s completely online and set to launch soon. We’re trying to get people interested in upcoming projects and get people mobilized on their topics of interest.
-Chris – This is basically about kickstarting political action. We want to make it easy for people in communities to make themselves heard to community leaders and decision makers. It can an be useful on campus to mobilize behind certain ad-hoc issues. Some people may not want to come to a GSC meeting or start a VSO, but they will probably want to say something or do something offline. It might be more powerful to say “we have 300-500 student online supporters” rather than just bringing a request to higher up without any support. We don’t want to change anything that already exists, we just want to add a way for students to show support and get involved.
-Hrishi – How are you going to market this?
-Chris – We don’t expect you to do the marketing, if that’s what you’re asking. Although if the GSC leaders could spread the word by mouth, that would be great.
-Hrishi – Let’s say, for example, we put something on your site about healthcare, how do you market it? It seems you would only draw interest from those who are already kind of involved.
-Chris – This may not end up being statistically representative of the student body, but it might be a way to get more people involved who might not otherwise get involved.
-David – Do you have an idea of the numbers of people who are already interested?
-Chris – We do have some numbers based on Facebook polls, but we wanted to mobilize student groups like the GSC before moving forward with advertising.
-Andrew – So it’s like kickstarter, but only for students?
-Chris – We’d like to do bigger things (getting involved with the larger Palo Alto community and then globally as well), but we’d like to start smaller and get going with students.
-Adrienne – Do you edit and select “global warming, animal rights?” or do you just let anybody add anything “I want people to come to my bbq?”
-Chris – At the beginning it would be vetted by us, but we’d see over time. We would want to make sure for Stanford that posts are all related to the Stanford community.
-Nipun – Do you have an online platform built, or are you still testing?
-Chris – You can go to dev.topcorner.org. This is our beta site, so a lot of the pages won’t work yet.
-David – What about political issues? Is that something you will be tackling?
-Chris – Yes, we are coming at it from several different levels: Stanford, Palo Alto, and national. We’d choose the issues based on what’s important to what’s going on in those corners.
-Wendy – Say we have an issue like problems with grad housing. What then?
-Chris – If money is an issue, we might be able to crowd fund things through our site, but the real strength would be to say “we have 200 students behind this issue” and it might help be able to kickstart some things for your issue.
-Maggie – One idea is an airport shuttle during high use times. It would possibly be quick to spread the word and crowd sourced. Another issue is handicap access, which would take a longer amount of time to figure out, but it would be great to get people involved.
-Hrishi – Say we have 300 peoaple involved in my cause, do I get demographic data about those people?
-Chris – We do login through Facebook, so you’d have that app sign-in info, but no specific demographic data is collected.
-Andrew – Are you a non-profit, for profit?
-Chris – We are a benefit corporation, so we are for profit.
-Maggie – A benefit corp is “for profit,” but it’s also held accountable to social and environmental obligations.
-Michael – Would anyone like to be the point person for the GSC’s involvement with topcorner?
-David – What would you like from us? (directed at the topcorner group)
-Chris – We’re looking to build student support.
-Maggie – Yes, building community consensus.
-Chris – We would like to build a community here rather than just have people taking surveys.
-Michael – Do you have a marketing budget to keep attracting people, or are you looking for funds?
-Chris – Yes, we have marketing resources and money, but from you we’d like someone to just come up with a few lines of information for us to use showing your support.
-Hrishi – It does expose us to some amount of risk if we put up an idea and it does not get support. For example, if we want to do something and we don’t get support, the administration might be able to say that based on our lack of support online, they will not be interested in doing something.
-Michael – So am I hearing that people don’t want to support this?
-Krystal – I think we want to support this idea, we just don’t want to spend any time on it.
-Adrienne – We could easily put a link on the GSC website.
-Andrew – Roshan and Ernestine have already taken interest in this topic in the past, we should allow them to take point.
-Adrienne – Can we put link up now, or should we wait?
-Michael – Maybe we should wait until we have a GSC-relevant issue on the table before we decide whether or not to put up a link.
-Nipun – Let’s let Ernestine and Roshan get some issues together and then bring this topic up again.
7:30 NGSO Funding Request (Karen, Cathy)
-Karen – We’re looking for speed friending money. The event will happen in the Hacienda, it’s one of the first events, and we are asking for $2000. That money would go toward food and security. We decided to cut the event “pints and leaders,” so we’ll push up speed friending and add more snacks to that event. Last year there were 550 frienders.
-David – last year I went and they said they were full.
-Karen – Yes, this happens every year, so this time we’re trying to hold more than one speed friending. It’s a good time to meet people even if you don’t do the actual speed friending. Just hanging around outside with other people while you are in the “networking mood” seems to do the trick, too.
-Adrienne – Is it open to all student?
-Karen – We don’t close it to other students, but it’s geared toward new students.
-David – Did anyone else go? (directed toward the people around the room)
-Hrishi – (Nods “yes”) It was fun.
-Karen – Was there enough food?
-Hrishi – Wait, was there food?
-Karen – We’re thinking of increasing the amount of the food this year.
-Krystal – I just want to point out that this is an additional $2000 to the money that you have already allocated to Cathy to run your GSC NGSO events.
-Nipun – Yes, we gave Cathy $6000.
-Krystal – I know. I’m saying that this $2000 does not come out of the $6000. In other words, if you give Karen her requested funds, you are now looking at $8000.
-Nipun – Yes. So you’re saying we should give the NGSO coordinators the $2000 that is in the NGSO byline, and use different money for the $6000.
-Michael – I think that would just be easiest.
-Hrishi – We should consider whether or not we want to revise the $6000 we are using for GSC events.
-Michael – Are there any objects to funding NGSO for $2000?
(No objections: passes by consensus.)
7:40 NGSO Event Planning Discussion (All)
-David – Jamaal will discuss the Business School and afternoon tea conflicting schedules, and we should talk about potentially increasing resources toward the mock meeting.
-Jamaal – The primary reason tiffany wants to be on GSC is to bridge MBAs and the GSC. We’re insular because we have resources and money of our own, and we don’t need to lean on the GSC in those ways like other grad groups. We are also fairly secluded in our own corner of the campus. The GSC events during NGSO often conflicts with the Business School’s week zero events, but these NGSO events provide a great opportunity that we should work to take advantage of. Our students are a captive audience during that time and we’d like for them to be able to get to know the rest of the grad community. Tiffany proposes that we move the tea on the 16th to a couple hours later (from 2 to 4-5?) so that MBAs can attend. The other idea is to market the NGSO events toward 2nd year MBAs, since we still are not really plugged in to the rest of campus.
-Karen – We cannot advertise any events outside of the official NGSO calendar, so moving the event up to the 15th wouldn’t be an option that we can officially support. Also, we promised that we would not have any unique events (only one of them) during Rosh Hashanah after sundown, so if it ended prior to sundown (on the 16th), that would be a possibility, but it would conflict with Grad 101.
-Michael – When is the MBA event?
-Jamaal – The event would wrap by 5-5:30pm.
-Michael – It seems like we are trying to accommodate one small grad student group. Why would we change the NGSO events rather than get the Business School to change the MBA event?
-Jamaal – I don’t thing there is really any flexibility to our changing our event (referring to the Business School event).
-Hrishi – Saturday is CA training, so that is a possible conflict if we hold the event early.
-Karen – Also it’s the USC game, so we will probably lose a lot of students to that.
-Michael – What’s the issue with conflicting with Grad 101?
-Karen – It’s the first Grad 101, so it’s just that it is usually the most well attended.
-Michael – Could we switch the event with the Grad 101?
-Will – My understanding was that this event was going to be a “snacktime.” If it’s run during dinner hours, people will want a dinner.
-Nipun – What’s the budget (of tea time)?
-David – People are conflicting over what we want to really spend money on. Some people want to put more resources into the mock meeting.
-Nipun – If we don’t have an agenda, why would we have a mock meeting?
-Krystal – The point of a mock meeting would is to simply show people what the GSC is about. You wouldn’t use an agenda. You would just go in with a couple of things to show students: one example of a funding request, one example of an advocacy update, and so on.
-Wendy – Having sat through a mock meeting during NGSO, I learned that it was not super professional, no-nonsense, people just trying to get things done. It reset my idea about student government.
-David – If they hadn’t have publicized the food, would you have gone?
-Wendy – Not necessarily me, but other people probably went for food.
-Krystal – Some of you already saw my email, but for those who didn’t, I sent an email describing the fact that I don’t think the GSC should strive to ONLY invite those students who are already interested in student government. Sure some people will annoyingly just attend for the food, but maybe one of those same people might be surprised that they are interested in what is being said in the mock meeting. Why would you want to eliminate those attendees?
-David – We have many options here, what do people think?
-Nipun – Why can’t we make the afternoon tea into a dinner?
-David – It just might not work with the amount of funds that we have.
-Jamaal – I don’t understand the issue here. Why would my event change request be affected by the funding problems of the mock meeting?
-David – If we change the “tea” to a “dinner” we would have less money for the mock meeting. I want to take a straw poll – how many people are for moving the tea to 5pm? (For: 9 Opposed: 1)
-Hrishi – What’s the budget breakdown?
-David – It hasn’t been decided.
-Karen – If the gsc is going to do this event with food, then be serious about actually doing food, don’t wimp out at the last minute. This has been a problem in the past.
-Michael – So it sounds like most people want to move the event back to 5pm. We’ll see if grad 101 is willing. Who is running our events?
-David – Event Coordinators?
-Adrienne – We are focused on the BBQ right now, we won’t be thinking about these events until after this weekend.
-Hrishi – Okay, so do we want to move the “tea” to 4-6pm, 5-7pm?
-Krystal – What is best for the b-school?
-Jamaal – Something after 5:30 would be ideal.
-Hrishi – 4:30-6:30?
(Consensus around 4:30-6:30pm – Karen will ask Grad 101 if they are willing to switch times.)
7:55 Equipment Policy Update (Eduardo, Krystal) – moved to the next GSC meeting
8:05 VPSA / VPGE Meeting Updates (Michael, David) –
-Michael – we had a meeting with the VPSA and VPGE, but unless there are burning questions, we will move the discussion to the next meeting.
8:10 New Business
-Adrienne – I just want to encourage people to volunteer for the BBQ. There’s a google doc, please sign up!
-Nipun – Are we advertising any more?
-Adrienne – The publicity people will be consulted.
-Wendy – I’m the only one manning activities… is that going to be a problem?
-Adrienne – There will be people hired to help with sno cones and other things like that, so there will be extra people around to help.
-Hrishi – Can we use fridge in office?
-Krystal – Yep.
-Adrienne – We also have the fridge in Rains to use.
8:15 End Meeting
Tags: Minutes