Graduate and Professional Student Assembly
Council of Representatives
285 Myron Taylor Hall
November 13, 2006
5:30–7:00 p.m.

I. Call to Order

M. Walsh called the meeting to order at 5:34p.m.

II. Open Forum

A COR member said Dec. 4 is the Vet School annual auction. He said you have to pay for a ticket to get in, but there will be free food and free drinks. The COR member said they are raising money to send students to the student symposium.

III. Executive Reports

J. Vertesi said she made changes to the Hasbrouck resolution which will include 2 parts: to tell Cornell to go back to the drawing board to think of a way to lessen the burden on students at Hasbrouck, and if that proves impossible, follow other guidelines listed in the resolution.

J. Vertesi also talked about a resolution on transportation. She said it was about parking on campus and it was written to the transportation and parking services asking to please not make new changes before the survey is released. J. Vertesi said the results of the survey is back and they are about to make it public.

J. Vertesi said they are trying to call a graduate school community initiative�trying to put together an initiative to stand up for grad students on campus and to coordinate events that are going on.

M. Walsh said he and J. Vertesi are going to the graduate ivy summit at Dartmouth on Friday and that they will give an update at the next meeting.

IV. Committee Reports and Announcements

a. Collegetown Fitness Center — K. Thomison

K. Thomison from the SA came to the meeting to ask if there was anyone interested in helping to sign a petition to establish a fitness center in collegetown. He said the petition is just to show possible interests and then maybe the university might establish or consider establishing a fitness center. K. Thomison said he is trying to get signatures from all different communities.

An assembly member mentioned that he should pay attention to how much student activity fees might increase if this fitness center were to be built.

b. Cornell Master Plan Report — A. Beggs

A. Beggs said the master plan is to come up with an overall strategy for Cornell’s development as Cornell grows. She said we are currently near the end of phase 1 of the planning process including the gathering of the background of Cornell and the history of Cornells development by looking at the archives. A. Beggs said they had many interviews with university leadership, students, neighbors, etc. about how they see Cornell and what the values are.

A. Beggs said based upon the collected information, the consultants will make drafts of the principles guiding what the master plans will be. She said what consultants have heard in meetings have been that campus developments are not meeting the demand for general teaching and other cross-disciplinary and social spaces. A. Beggs said this means the grad concerns are actually being represented.

A. Beggs said they are ending phase one, so they will have an open house in January. She said Phase 2 involves putting together various concrete options on how to deal w/principles outlined.

A. Beggs said the website to read about the master plan is at www.masterplan.cornell.edu

c. Cornell Libraries — L. Sansoucy

L. Sansoucy introduced herself and said she is on the student advisory library council. Three members of the senior library administration came. She said they are looking for feedback on how grad students are using Olin library, how adequate/inadequate they are, and how they’re using the grad study rooms.

L. Sansoucy introduced the members of the senior library administration and their titles/jobs/duties.

Ann said she wanted to know what are the important things.

John Hoffman said he had been part of renovating Olin for a long time. He said a lot of things need to be updated in Olin and that they are concerned w/the lack of heat and lack of cooling in the building. He also said they wanted an addition of sufficient lighting in the grad carrel.

Pat said she also worked w/John on Olin renovation. She hopes the renovation gets done b/c they have been working on the renovation for too long. Pat said some things that graduate students wanted changed are according to surveys and feedback from grad and. She went through surveys and feedback and there are interesting results: the top issue for grads and undergrads is quiet in the digital studies space. Pat said Olin is not satisfying the need for group study space. She said undergrads are saying they need more group study space while the grads are also saying undergrads need more group study space.

Pat said brought a long survey, really do want to hear what people have to say/ask.

Tamara asked if there will be money go towards cleaning books. Said often she’s gone to Gannett from taking books out from olin and her allergies are only from the main stacks.

John said if they are having a full renovation, and if they are taking away books and have the books put back; they will be cleaned.

Another assembly member said electrical outlets, and space reserved for grad students specifically would all be a major help. She said copy machines aren’t mentioned that frequently, but machines on the 4th floor are broken or have problems. She said in GS some machines have a PDF scanning option, she thinks maybe they can have it in Olin because people find that useful.

John said the machines will be replaced and it is already on the agenda.

Assembly member said that they would love to have separate undergrad and grad areas. But they asked how feasible is it.

John said internally they are debating that issue. He said some strongly support separate spaces and others say they cannot push the undergrads away.

K. Falinski asked if there is a more centralized way of changing libraries by checking out all of the other spaces/available resources. She suggested to open up the first floor as group space since it is not quiet.

An assembly member asked about renovation related to upgrading the media center.

Ann responded that they’re working on it.

J. Vertesi said she wanted to hear about the caf�. Said there are undergrads everywhere and no place to sit. She said it is also difficult to meet people.

Ann responded by saying they are also thinking about a space in the 7th floor which can potentially be a space for grad students.

Pat said they are thinking of creating it as a people space on the 7th floor. It has a nice view. She said they also have schematic designs to create large reading room spaces, lecture spaces, group study spaces, or to relieve the space on the 1st floor.

John said if they don’t get faculty or student support, then the university will say it cannot change it.

Another assembly member asked, specifically what does the graduate student need to do to show the university what they need.

John said a resolution would help and it needs to really focus on “I can’t do my work in this area.”

Tamara wanted to know if there is a place where she can search for the types of resources that are available in each library.

John said she can go to the library gateway and click on the individual libraries. He said the most recently renovated spaces have the most information about that. John said he is actually pushing for web development.

J. Vertesi mentioned that the student library council has spaces for more grad student representation.

V. New Business

a. Resolution 5. — J. Vertesi, D. Mitarotonda, K. Thomison

D. Mitarotonda said this is a joint resolution between the SA and the GPSA. He said it is to address the allocation of the student elected trustees seat. D. Mitarotonda said historically the seats were filled in by the undergraduates. He said this resolution is basically saying that both the GPSA and SA recommend the board of trustees to allocate one of 2 seats to a grad student, and the other seat to undergrads. D. Mitarotonda said that elections will alternate every year, so that one student is elected every year.

An assembly member asked if grad students would vote for the undergrad seat and vice versa.

D. Mitarotonda said yes, everyone would get to vote. He said only students in Ithaca get to vote, not students in the medical college because all NYC students have a representative on the board of overseers.

J. Vertesi said it poses a problem for students from Qatar and the Geneva campus. Therefore resolution will state that there is an evaluation period.

Z. Wang asked what the time period is for this resolution.

D. Mitarotonda said basically both assemblies will vote on the resolution the last week of classes. If it is passed by both assemblies, this will go into effect this coming spring which is a time to vote for an undergrad.

An assembly member asked about Mao since (2 grad students are currently trustees) since undergrads and grads voted for him.

D. Mitarotonda responded by saying that it’s hard for grads to know the undergrad perspective, even if they were an undergrad at Cornell once before.

K. Thomison agreed and said that sometimes he cannot know graduate perspective on the issues.

J. Vertesi said that communities can be better represented (with grad and undergrad representatives) and people will no longer be fighting each other for the empty seats.

VI. Election of At-Large Representative

Y. Yu nominated Z. Wang. Janet second. Z. Wang accepted. G. Curtis made a motion to have her elected __ second. There was no dissent, Z. Wang is the new at-large representative.

VII. Adjournment

M. Walsh adjourned the meeting at 7:04 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,
YuhLi Tsuei
Office of the Assemblies