DRAFT Graduate and Professional Student Assembly Minutes Big Red Barn April 21, 2003 5:30–6:30 p.m.

I. Call to Order J. Moriarty called the meeting to order at 5:35.

II. Approval of 5 sets of Minutes A motion was made to approve all the minutes.

All 5 sets of minutes were approved.

III. Committee Reports B) General Committee Curtis said that they did save the student. Under the old system, if a chair resigns from a committee for academic reasons, they get kicked out of the grad school immediately. They allowed the student to stay the semester to find another committee. They decided to remove the clause about academic reasons and changed it to everybody gets a semester (or a reasonable time) to re-constitute a committee.

J. Moriarty said that they also discussed little things, like how Natural Resources wants to come up with a new name to call themselves.

C) Pay & Benefit Committee L. Mangiola thanked everyone for their help. She said the deadline for the web survey is this Friday. Joan will sent out an email to all grad students on Wednesday as a reminder. They need more input from the Vet, Law, and Hotel schools. 1283 responses have come in so far and a copy of the results is attached to the agenda. The highlights of the survey so far are: 91% don’t have dental insurance at all and 91.7% feel they would benefit from Cornell providing that; 73% have corrective vision and 94% don’t have vision insurance and 83.6% feel like they would benefit from Cornell providing it. This is not a final report, an official report will come out later. They will have another GPSA meeting around May 5 to pass out the final report and present a resolution.

C. Taylor said they have gotten good responses with the petition. She is concerned that not everybody is getting to see it and asked everybody to please get it around as much as possible. They are having people sit at popular grad school hangouts to petition, please sign up to help. They are going to have people in places such as the Alfalfa Room, Temple of Zeus, Green Dragon, BRB, etc. This Friday is the deadline.

J. Moriarty said she will send out a formal notice on the next GPSA meeting. It will probably be on May 5 at the same time, and consist of the old GPSA members.

H. Wynder asked how many people will be needed to be there?

J. Moriarty said quorum is half, which is 9.

D. Schmale asked how many grad school students can respond?

Tammy said 5,200, according to the registrar’s office.

J. Moriarty said they are beating the grad school survey, who put in a lot more money on it.

C) Other reports

S. Adam said that in regards to D Space, they need student volunteers to get it working and they are considering paying the volunteers so please contact him if you are interested.

IV. Business of the day

A) Professional Schools Election Resolution

G. Hurley said this runs along with the changes we made about elections. Initially, they were trying to get professional students to run elections the same way as everybody else but this resolution gets rid of that.

D. Schmale asked if this will work for the professional students?

B. Preston said yes, because the timing doesn’t work for them since they are here for 2 years.

J. Moriarty asked how the law school feels about it?

S. Schmid said it is good.

There was a call to question and it was 2nded.

The resolution passed.

B) AdHoc Events Planning Committee Resolution

J. Moriarty said that at the last meeting they thought to make the Events Planning but the resolution failed. They feel it is still important to have so they are trying to make it ad hoc and create it now so they can operate over the summer as needed, since TGIF at the BRB is happening this summer.

H. Wynder asked for a point of clarification: in the 2nd to last resolve clause, where it says academic year ‘03-‘04, is the budget June ‘03? When does the academic year begin?

G. Hurley said the payout for June ‘03 will be used for ‘03-‘04 academic year.

H. Wynder asked when does the new GPSA start?

G. Hurley said June.

B. Preston asked what is the difference in the resolution here as opposed to the last resolution?

J. Moriarty said this is not a charter change because giving the committee standing status made the committee appear to be too important.

B. Preston asked does an Ad Hoc committee live until somebody kills it? Because we’re attaching an endowment to it.

S. Adam said that ad hoc committees exist until it is killed and the GPSA can create as many ad hoc committees as it wants.

B. Preston said they should add a clause that if an ad hoc is killed, the money goes back to the endowment.

J. Moriarty said we should continue focusing on this point.

T. McConnochie asked what is the expected payoff from the endowment?

G. Hurley said they are not clear, they have been trying to find out for the past 6 months but they believe it to be $3,000 - $4,000.

T. McConnochie said to simply, we should say that while the committee exists, they should have the endowment as the budget.

D. Schmale said that B. Preston’s point is a good one, or we should make 2 separate resolutions addressing the issues.

G. Hurley said it appears implicit that if the committee dies, the money would go somewhere else because if the resolution kills a committee, it should address where the money is to go.

H. Wynder asked what if the money is not all spent? A potential solution is to give the ad hoc committee a time period and said budget. This accomplishes its existence and what happens to the money.

J. Moriarty said it also re-authrorizes.

H. Wynder said that next year’s GPSA can make it a standing committee if it goes well.

L. Mangiola asked how much money would the committee get? We should make the amount less, to “cost $300 or more” for authorization from GPSA.

G. Hurley said he finds that friendly.

S. Adam asked please articulate why the committee shouldn’t be standing.

H. Wynder said that she didn’t want it to be standing because charter changes should be taken seriously and right now it’s nice to have people who take initiative. She doesn’t want the GPSA to go in this direction.

D. Schmale said he thinks the committee is a good idea and proposes the committee bring every request to the GPSA for approval.

J. Moriarty asked are there any other concerns in regards to funding?

K. Massey asked what is the annual GPSA budget minus the surplus?

J. Moriarty said $2500.

K. Massey said he is concerned that so much money is going to just this committee and wants it to be ad hoc because that’s a lot of money.

G. Hurley said they initially cut the GPSA budget in half to $2500 due to the surplus and they decided to use the endowment to keep the student activity fee down — they still have the operating budget of $5000.

S. Flaxman said if the GPSA has to approve everything, then the committee will be hampered this summer because they won’t be able to get approval for anything for TGIF since the GPSA won’t be in session.

Tammy said they also can’t do anything without her around to pay the bill. The Office of Assemblies is closed from mid June to August, but she can be reached by e-mail.

H. Wynder asked will the ad hoc committee have to give money to the standing committee? If it’s just a one year committee, we should give them a fixed budget.

G. Hurley said that the money hasn’t been earmarked due to the overpaying in the student activity fee so he felt it should be right to use the surplus the benefit the students. It is easier for the GPSA to control the money spent if they can see it in the beginning of the year.

Amendments were made on the time and budget.

B. Preston said that getting GPSA approval is a good checks and balances on priorities.

T. McConnochie said he is happy with the amendments.

Kurt said he is happy too.

D. Dadoyan said that he had a comment on why the committee shouldn’t be standing. The events usually end up being just about food, drinking, etc. and they have opportunities to do this already. The committee should have a mission or intent.

H. Wynder asked who determines the chair? The last ad hoc committee had the GPSA appoint it.

J. Moriarty said chairs should be approved, not elected by the GPSA.

H. Wynder said last time it said appoint.

G. Hurley said the committee doesn’t just feed grad students. It helps get the GPSA name out and publicizes and raises awareness that we exist.

S. Flaxman said if the budget is set, our priorities do shift. The money is already in the budget so how do we address the priority shift?

J. Moriarty said we can disapprove any large event.

B. Preston said that rather than $2000, we should say “spend no more than last year’s accrued interest.”

L. Mangiola said the money spent on events usually goes to advertising and paying for the event, like renting for Ice Time. Grad students want to get involved but don’t know how, and these events help get the name out.

A call to question was made and 2nded.

There was dissent.

T. McConnochie said we should consider B. Preston’s amendment.

The call fails.

B. Preston asked are we moving the money around, or just having access to it?

B. Holmes suggested we just give access.

H. Wynder said the money automatically goes into our budget and $2000 is nice to have because we already know the money is there.

B. Preston said he withdraws his amendment, $2000 is fine.

A call to question was made and 2nded on the resolution.

The resolution passed.

C) New Business

L. Mangiola said that she was thinking that for the first even for next year’s GPSA they should go to the Hoffman Challenge Course, which is a rope course nearby that is a team building event. It is $30 per person for half the day (3hrs) or $40 for the full day (6 hrs). We can do it in either August or September. She described the program. She said that t-shirts will not be happening because not enough orders were made so we can put that money towards this.

G. Hurley said he is grateful that L. Mangiola is taking initiative but is concerned with spending so much money on ourselves.

H. Wynder said it is an interesting idea. She would really like to see money go to a workshop on parliamentary procedure for the new incoming GPSA because that would be the most helpful and next year’s GPSA would greatly benefit.

G. Hurley said that the Office of Assemblies is looking for volunteers for Hats Off to Hunter.

T. McConnochie said that if the GPSA wants to sponsor the end of the year barbecue, this is the last chance because Chris needs to know soon. He doesn’t want to be in charge, but he will volunteer.

Tammy said Chris needs to know if the GPSA will provide funds for it like they did last year.

A motion was made to give them $1000.

The motion passes.

V. Adjournment

J. Moriarty adjourned the meeting at 6:40.

Respectfully submitted,

Tyng Tsuei Office of the Assemblies