AGENDA
Graduate & Professional Student Assembly
GPSA Business Meeting
Monday, January 24th, 2011
Big Red Barn
5:30–7:00 P.M.

I. Welcome and Introductions

a. Roll Call of the GPSA Voting Members

Present: K. Albert, S. An, T. Balcerski, N. Baran, C. Clarke, E. Cortens, B. Gould, B. Hartshorn, B. Heavner, C. Heckman, Y. Izrayelit, N. Little, C. Mansfeldt, A. Sikora, S. Harya, J. Swartz,

Absent: R. Adra, G. Choko, N. Yakubu

b. Introduction of the GPSA Non-Voting Members

People who were present but were non-voting members or otherwise introduced themselves.

II. Approval of the Minutes

a. October 18th, 2010 GPSA Business Meeting

E. Cortens motioned to approve the minutes. B. Heavner seconded. The minutes were approved.

b. November 15th, 2010 GPSA Business Meeting

N. Baran motioned to approve the minutes. C. Clarke seconded. The minutes were approved.

III. Business of the Day

a. R.3: Addition of Environmental Impact Statements to By-Line Funding Process

(M. Walsh, C. Heckmann) M. Walsh explained the proposed change to the byline funding process. He said this statement is a one-sentence change that will require groups to include a brief explanation of how they will affect the environment.

• i. Discussion

B. Gould said as the chair of the Sustainability committee, this is something they discussed a lot. She said the general consensus among the committee members is it may be a good thing, but it doesn’t involve a lot of power, enforcement or follow-through. They would eventually like to see a “green fund” where they can financially back the statements.

B. Heavner said in response to conversations with various people, he’s changed the resolution so it’s not a stand-alone document. The intent is to get the groups to think about sustainability. He emailed Brenda Wickes and Kris Corda from the BRB. They both supported the change.

C. Heckman moved to amend the resolution to correctly spell his name. It was accepted as friendly.

C. Clarke said this is the first step and asked the status of the SA’s R 45. M. Walsh said there were two different resolutions going forth, this and a more authoritarian one. He noted there was no considerable support for the latter.

E. Cortens remarked while it said the fee was distributed to over 600 student organizations, this isn’t directly done. C. Heckman motioned to amend the resolution to remove the number. This was taken as friendly. B. Heavner motioned to amend the word use to used. This was taken as friendly. C. Clarke motioned for another minor grammatical change. This was accepted as friendly.

E. Cortens motioned to close debate and move to vote. S. An seconded.

• ii. Voting, 2/3 Majority to Pass

By a vote of 13–0−2, the resolution passed.

b. R.4: A Resolution Opposing the Proposed Changes to the Cornell Council for the Arts (CCA) (E. Cortens)

He has been approached by several people, and he has reconsidered the second resolved clause and altered it to reflect the GPSA’s advisory role.

He then explained the CCA was founded in 1965 to be a university-wide support system for the arts on campus. The idea of the CCA was so people can come together to recognize the arts. In recent years, people have decided things aren’t working as well as they could. There is a lot of administrative overhead to the CCA. He noted they have a $250,000 dollar per year budget. A good share of the money pays for staff support. A working group met last year, several times. They proposed to take the funding, pool it together and perform one “common project” but eliminate the individual grants. They do not make up an enormous portion of the budget but they provide the only opportunity for students not in the arts college to get money to do a project. He would suggest they not vote on the resolution this week, because the resolution is already having the desired effect and there is a meeting this Thursday to discuss.

• i. Discussion

B. Heavner said the key concern is the loss of the individual grants, so he asked if there was something the GPSA could do to help? E. Cortens replied part of the appeal to the program is the funding, but it also provides an opportunity for people to go through the process of writing a grant. The proposed alternative is go to the department. The GPSA could help with providing the funding for the projects, but not the grant writing opportunity.

B. Gould asked if there was any idea of the statistics behind the current number and why they feel justified making the decision. E. Cortens said in the report he sent, there were numbers on this. He said it is a handful of grants, under 100. C. Heckman said he really likes where it’s going, it’s a good idea to talk to the provost if there’s concern.

B. Gould motioned to close debate and table for another meeting. C. Heckman seconded, and the motion passed.

c. Election of a New Student Advocacy Chair

C. Mansfeldt explained G. Choko will not be here this semester because she is studying and interning in Washington DC. C. Heckman nominated B. Heavner to be the new chair of the committee. Ben declined the nomination. B. Forster then nominated N. Little. Neith also declined the nomination. N. Little then nominated Marquis Hawkins. Marquis accepted. The nominations were then closed and Marquis was named the Student Advocacy Chair. Marquis Hawkins then introduced himself and said a few words about the issues and took questions.

IV. Open Forum

a. Announcements and Reports

• i. Executive Updates
  • 1. Formation of the GPSA Handbook (B. Forster, C. Mansfeldt)

C. Mansfeldt has no updates except to tell everyone to look at cornellgpsa.com and please update your profile if you haven’t already.

B. Forster said the next meeting for the Mental Health Committee is next Monday, 5:30–6:30 in 325 Caldwell. Last fall, the SA passed a mental health resolution and the committee has been reworking the resolution so they could pass a GPSA version. He reminded everyone that last year, the Mental Health Resolution called for a pro-active mental health website to be housed under Brenda Wickes’ student life website and will be done before March.

He said the GPSA handbook is still in progress, and he noted it will be available after the charter review is completed.

J. Swartz said the Communications Committee had ordered some GPSA items. C. Heckman explained they had red bottle openers and stickers with “cornellgpsa.com” on them to give away.

• 2. Staffing Vacancies (T. Balcerski)

T. Balcerski said there is an opening for a grad student on the Academic Integrity committee that has not been filled for several months. He explained it is a very minimal time commitment. D. Evensen volunteered to serve.

He said the next meeting of the Charter Review committee would be on January 31st from 5:30 — 7 in the Barn. He said all suggestions and comments will be compiled into a document. The biggest change is in membership. There will also be an expansion to the voting membership. There is an issue on defining membership to include Geneva and Ithaca campuses. The absence policy for members and voting via proxy. The second biggest issue was how to represent students who are identified by minority. Garance worked on that through December and Marquis has picked up where she left off. The language has only been seen by the group, the wider body hasn’t seen it yet. The money for SuperField summits. They wanted to have new subcommittee of advocacy, mental health and wanted to define the role of EVP to be more in line with employee assembly as well as other changes.

S. An suggested there be 2 resolutions, one for big discussion and one for little.

C. Clarke suggested to take up a few issues each meeting.

• ii. Standing Committee, Liaison Updates, Other Updates
  • 1. Events Committee

N. Baran said the first event is going to be ice skating at Lynah Rink which will be similar to last year. The event will run from 10–11:30 p.m. but she recommended if anyone needs skates to show up early. The first “Grad’s night out” this semester is at Bandwagon Brew Pub on February 3. She said they’re working on a ski day at Greek Peak. The Grad Ball date is April 1 at Willard Straight. Mid-April they are working on planning a cooking competition. They’re also discussing more interschool mixers, a ropes course, coffee hour with President Skorton and several other events.

• 2. GPSAFC

There was a current status update on the available funds. The last meeting on December 7th they fielded 12 requests. The next meeting to allocate is Tuesday, February 1 and the deadline to submit applications is this Friday. They will have two more meetings-March and April.

• 3. Appropriations Committee

They scheduled the next meeting for Friday, February 4th at noon. They will be sending out an email to invite people. It will be a formal meeting to discuss reviewing the FC guidelines and procedures.

• 4. Sustainability Committee

Their next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, February 2. The official announcement for the barn art show was already announced and put on the blog.

• 5. Student Advocacy Committee

There were no updates.

• 6. Ad-hoc Survey Committee

They are working to schedule their first meeting of the semester. Mike Genkin is chairing and they intend to put together a first draft of questions. By the time there’s another report, lots of things will happen.

• 7. Graduate Student Elected Trustee Update

D. Evensen explained his position of SET to the people in the room who were new. He then explained at the most recent meeting, the BoT set tuition levels for next year. He said the good news is that the Graduate school research degree is going up zero percent for endowed and contract colleges. They will also see a stipend increase of around 2%. Professional schools did increase tuition of variable amounts. Vet was the lowest at 2.5%, while the highest was 4.9% for the LLM law degree. JGSM was around 3.9%. If you have any specific questions, email him at dte6@cornell.edu. Rankings were being discussed by the board right now. The Strategic Plan said we wanted to be widely recognized by a top ten university in the world. Presently, the board is considering ways to marry goals in strategic plan with rankings. If anyone has suggestions, the board will be looking at in depth in breakout meetings.

V. Good and Welfare

S. An said the Society for Asian-American Graduate Affairs is doing a film festival. The first film is this Friday at Cornell Cinema with professors introducing films. There is more information at blogs.cornell.edu/saaga T. Balcerski said the humanities grad students are having a field organization interest meeting on Thursday, January 27.

C. Heckman said he had updates from the last Faculty Senate Calendar Committee. They’re considering starting classes one week earlier and possibly expanding Thanksgiving or fall break to a full week. They could also be starting classes 1–2 weeks earlier in January and consequently graduating 1–2 weeks earlier. There has also been talk of eliminating “Senior Week” and making the exam period six days instead of seven.

VI. Adjournment

E. Cortens motioned to adjourn. A. Sikora seconded. The meeting was adjourned at 6:58 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Brittany Rosen