GPSA Operations and Staffing Committee

1/31/2011 Charter Review Meeting, minutes created by Chris Heckman.

Members present are listed in the roll call sheet.

Meeting commenced at 5:33PM. Members made introductions. All standing committees of the GPSA are represented with their specified delegation or chair. Tom gave a general overview of the way this meeting will proceed and gave a brief summary of the communications that have already taken place.

Tom: OA is here to support us. Ari is our assigned contact when it comes to advice. Ari has expressed some, (comma) significant concerns in where this committee is headed. They come from a historical standpoint of having seen our Charter over the past 16 years. We might need to change some language as those issues come up. Tom will express the opinions of Ari and Mike Walsh throughout this meeting.

Clarke: Took out language with regard to voting and non-voting members. Added in “Cabinet” and “FPS” language. Everything else is very similar. Procedures are the same as before in terms of voting. The non-voting reps are FPS, voting is Cabinet. The current language gives an air of power asymmetry. Rights and repsonsibilities are named (explicitly?) for Cabinet members, in order to give folks a background on what they need to do. Tom: “Why FPS? Why Cabinet?” Clarke: It makes sense for FPS because that’s what they are. As for Cabinet, it’s because we have an effectively bicameral group. We want to dispel that impression. We want to give the idea that they do have similar responsibilities. Cortens: Currently we give them names negatively, i.e. “you don’t vote” for non-voting members. Also, we aren’t bicameral, because that implies parity. In fact what we have are two bodies, one of which is a subset of the other. It follows Canadian wording, where the Cabinet is a subset of the House. Tom: What about the term “board members?” Cortens: They’re not full members, so we’re departing from Robert’s Rules altogether. Heckman: Is it a problem to name them “non-voting?” Cortens: Some folks have given indication that ther is a problem with it. Baran: We are not attached to “Cabinet” and FPS. Billie: Maybe we should go with field/superfield representatives or something? Cabinet has a bit of a “priority” naming to it. Ari: CoR as Assembly were the former names of the groups. CoR was never meant to be part of the Assembly, it was meant to dispense information. We added non-voting membership naming because we wanted to show that other people had responsibilities in the Assembly as a whole. The intention never was to have the non-voting membership be part of the representative group of graduate students. This new concept is a shift from that, but it is a shift from how we’ve represented students for the past 20 years. Bob: We might want to move away from “Cabinet” and from anything with “Super” in it. I would encourage that we just call it “fields” rather than FPS. Cortens: We aren’t a board, though. Only a few folks can function as full members of the assembly, and those without a vote cannot. We have a group of folks that cannot engage, which no other assembly has. Baran: The spirit of what we’re doing with R16 and this was to make the body more inclusive. That is the spirit of these changes. There was a precedence that was previously set but we are trying to move away from that with this discussion.

Clarke: On meeting format. To encourage greater engagement between the non voting and voting members, we will still meet 7 times a semester but we will invite the field reps to join in all meetings. Concerned that we do not conduct enough business. There isn’t enough time to discuss things, and it takes a long time for resolutions to go through the stack. This would be a way to foster better engagement between voting and non-voting members. Meeting format change is common sense; the voting body is just too isolated from what we have currently, and then none of the non-voting members come to the business meetings. We just dont have enough time to conduct business. Tom: What do you say about that we need to have a smaller group to transact business? Ari: I just started reading this document today, so I haven’t completely absorbed the new process. However, the larger the group gets, the harder it is to form a consesnsus. 24 people to understand something like the GCI is doable, spread it out among 140 reps that may or may not show up and things get very tough. Small group that is always engaged is easier to move. Clarke: Voting members would still have all the privileges in this document, but debate would happen in all of them. They could come to our business meetings and they don’t. Ari: One thing that is particularly an issue for the SA is that folks don’t know what the Assembly wil be discussing it far enough in advance. Would the agenda have to be finalized a week before or something? Clarke: By virtue of having a bifurcated meeting structure, are we missing out on opinions that we could use? Nicole: To get non-voting members engaged in the passing of actual business would be good. Updating people is not helpful, we want to let them see what’s actually going on. It is kind of like a chicken and the egg problem; people don’t know what’s going on and there’s a barrier to entry because of it. Clarke: I’ve been frustrated by the two body system; why not just dismiss the non-voting members? Steven: The town hall meetings can stil be done. Cortens: We can relax how the meetings look explicitly, and let execs structure them as they may. Clarke: It would be good if we could just get more business done, and this would allow for that. Tom: We’ll be cut out all of section 7 and putting it in the bylaws. This would loosen the restriction.

Nicole: We will try to loosen the restrictions on absences, and give it more language. Requirement will be that everyone must attend 7 meetings every semester, i.e. every meeting. That will be a big difference from last year. This is for unexecused absences. Heckman: Is that needed? It seems like a lot of work to cut people out of the process. Baran: It’s already being tracked, but now we’re just increasing the number of meetings someone comes to. Heckman: I don’t know if we’re going to accomplish what we want by doing this, looking at the current list of people that go and how interested they are in the process. Clarke: We just need to do a better job at publicizing what we’re doing. Steven: Maybe we can ratchet down the requirements to 4 out of 7 meetings. Ari: We should try to identify what exactly the problems are that we’re trying to solve in order and then come up with solutions next.

Tom: Let’s move back to meeting format/membership conversation. GPSA charter review was not meant to be a massive reimagining of the GPSA. It was supposed to make it reflect the accurate business of GPSA. We have abused/misused the process this time. I think that the requirement to review the charter every two years is problematic. Albert: I made a recommendation to “make no mention” of a review, to avoid this conversation. We should have this discussed at the larger body level in order to move forward on it. I volunteered to be Appropriations Chair and this is not exactly what I had in mind. This is an ad nauseum process. We don’t want to fall into the cyclical process of the SA. Tom: If you try to pull a fast charter change, it’ll get shot down. If we try doing that here, we’ll probably have it pass simply because they trust us. What happened this time around was problematic. Steven: encouraged a collective procrastination. Nicole: It’s nice after a big overhaul to be able to tweak what we’re doing, and a lot of these tweaks are very important (e.g. EVP). But we don’t need to go through this process all the time.

Tom: Let’s move on to the less controversial stuff. Communications Chair discussion? Nicole: I have that slide. Takes away the responsibility of chairing the comm. committee from EVP to an elected chair. New chairperson over the summer will responsible to work with the EVP, etc. with other groups and orientation in the fall. They will need to be on the ball about that over the summer. Ari: This has largely already be done with other groups, there is some precedent. Nicole: Yes, other groups seem to have realized that communications is too big a responsibility for an exec. Tom: EVP is now in charge of meeting arrangements, circulating the agenda, and attendance. Will chair the executive committee. Ari: Maybe we should have another VP for communications rather than making it another Chair. Tom: Having the comm chair at the exec meetings is nice, but having it be the EVP is difficult. Making it for two people would be good. Nicole: Agreed, I’ll look into wording.

Nicole: Sustainability Committee issue. Billie: We’re currently an ad hoc group. We presented a resolution R17 last semester in order to make it a permanent committee. It passed, but it was overturned because of a procedural error in the vote. We went back to being an ad hoc committee, but we would like to include R17 in this process. Tom: Would this committee be seen as doing the same thing as the UA SC? Billie: I thought it was dissolved? Heckman: No, Mike Walsh said last time it was still alive. Ari: Yes they are currently. This would be the third committee on sustainability that we support through the OA; they haven’t produced much good results yet. Since there are three separate ones, all of them are trying to be acting as hubs. Billie: We just want to be a sustainability group for graduate students, not a hub. In our mission statement, we aim to help graduate students and their groups only. Also act as a liaison between other sustainability groups on campus. This would help connect all those groups that are sprouting up. We could alternatively make the SC a subcommittee of the Student Advocacy committee. Tom: We have no infrastructure to explain what subcommittees do. Brian has asked to do this with the mental health committee. It turns out that this would be something in the Bylaws, under the student advocacy committee. Nicole: This is a charter change, it will be formalizing this in agreement with Roberts’ Rules. Tom: Subcommittees may be destructive. Why not make them ad hoc every year? Billie: It takes time to make an ad hoc committee. Nicole: subcommittees would allow us to maintain a continuous system, but we’d still review it with the bylaws every year. Steven: how would subcommittees break us down? Tom: Probably not the best word choice I used, but the UA is trying to move away from subcommittees. Ari: The only one on the books right now is childcare and “that’s worked out swell” [sic]. Our experiences with that committee is a good example; the siloing of committees formed around one issue makes it so we can’t capture it in the largely assembly’s business and record. Childcare was the same thing; it ended up taking a position that was different than the constituency. It happens. Nicole: ad hoc committees would be voted on to solve a specific problem, not everything works in that framework. Ari: We could always use ad hoc groups inside committees to solve individual problems, subcommittees just add unnecessary structure. Billie: it takes time to make the committee, and we wanted to have sustainability as part of the GPSA itself (as the two reasons why it can’t be an ad hoc group). Steven: We want them in there so we have them in writing, so every year folks are reminded of it. Every year, they exist and then they’re gone. We might consider the compromise that in the Charter or Bylaws, we give the example of ad hoc committees that could be created (like, say “ad hoc committees may be formed at the will of the body to solve a problem, e.g. ‘sustainability’ or ‘diversity’ ad hoc committees”). Jolyon: We also can be staffed during the staffing process if we are not ad hoc. Ari: They would get a website, an array of mailing lists, and regular staffing support through the committee application system; the drawback that we’re drawing them away from things other than what they could be doing otherwise. Billie: Committee is currently 6, up from 3 or 4 at the beginning of the year. We have interest. Tom: Could we move this to the subcommittee type of group? Billie: I would be fine with that. Nicole: me as well. Evan: All members of a particular committee would be members of a larger committee and would be supported by OA; the subcommittee would be made up only of folks from the first committee. It seems like it would solve the siloing issue too; they would be meeting with the rest of the committee and would get updates from them. Ari: Simply add the responsibility of sustainability to a currently made standing committee. Evan: The committees themselves don’t have charge over their own governing documents though. Ari: Typically a standing committee has the ability to form its own subcommittees as long as they’re all members of that committee. Tom: maybe we should write into the bylaws the fact that committees can make their own subcommittees. Nicole: It should be one of the jobs of the SAC to make sure they’re addressing a variety of different potential issues. It shouldn’t be totally shaped by the whims of the few people that are in the positions of power of that particular committee. Giving the SC a subcommittee status that’s written into the bylaws would be a way to encourage the SAC to address sustainability.

Tom: Division Summits. We mandate that they must have a superfield summit every year at least once. This should be in the bylaws, not the charter.

Nicole: Mike Walsh proposed that the Events Committee would be spun off into an independent, byline-funded organization. The GPSA’s goals are to govern and make policies, not plan parties. The changes required are actually very minimal. Recommended that we make up a “programming board,” would be staffed the same way as before. Removed “GPSA sponsored events,” but “Activity Fee sponsored events.” Everyone seems to be in support of this, saying that there should be a separate programming board. Could also become a University organization which would give us all the benefits of being affiliated with Cornell. Much work needs to be done to move us in the direction of accomplishing this. Ari: There are a bunch of offices that support activities related to undergraduate events; there are none that I know of doing GPS events. OA supports this in line with new changes they are considering from their own docket.

Tom: Timing of election of officers. Everyone seems to be in agreement on this; should we elect the voting members and the officers at one meeting, i.e. a Discussion meeting, and then have everyone elect both of them too? That would allow non-voting members to vote on executive members. Steven: Agree completely. There are some folks that don’t even know our executives, and that’s a problem. Nicole: What about people that don’t know if they’re going to run for executive position? Tom: it’s not required to be a voting member to become a committee chair. Nicole: Yes, but it may be too much responsibility to take on at one meeting. Tom: It’s not required by text right now, we’re just looking at changing the convention. Bob: Agrees with Nicole that we shouldn’t have so much responsibility assigned at one meeting. Tom: Well, if we absorb with Clarke’s recommendations, then it won’t be a problem. Clarke: Three degrees of separation from the executives, not something that I would want to preserve. Tom: Yes, there are a lot of dependencies in the Charter that make it so we can’t take some and not others. One of them would be the meeting structure changes; if it changed, we could keep the current wording and still allow execs and chairs to be voted upon by everyone. Tom: If we don’t take Clarke’s suggestions on changing meeting structure, then we’ll have to revisit this.

Marquis: Tom, Steven and I met to discuss the situation with diversity seats. It is built on the idea of at-large seats. Assuming we will move forward with having at-large seats, we’ll create a system whereby folks from certain backgrounds of diversity will be particularly encouraged to run for those positions, rather than having set seats for minority students. This works significantly beter than what was proposed last semester, and isn’t as divisive. It allows us to include more people in the voting structure. Diversifies the GPSA, causes the GPSA to directly reach out to HUGs, and takes one huge step forward at engaging more communities within the graduate student population. It does not set up those seats based on biological background (i.e. Garance’s POV). The Diversity Commission would ensure that this body’s makeup is diverse, and ensure that there is adequate communication between us and the HUGs’ clubs. It would be a subcommittee of the Communications Committee. EVP would work between comm, SAC, and the comm’s DC in order to make sure diversity issues are considered. Diversity would be added to the SAC’s charge. Tom: some concerns are present. Preample of the charter already includes diversity, and subcommittees are something from which we should shy away. Nicole: why can’t we just encourage students in HUGs to run in general, rather than just for those three seats? Tom: I’ve moved it out of that myself so it may be encouraged outside of just those three at-large seats. What about the DC? Nicole: What about the fact that the comm committee isn’t staffed until after those three seats are already voted upon? Tom: I moved it so that those three seats are voted upon during the second meeting, not the first. Steven: The purpose of this wasn’t to get a group of people to run for those three seats at the beginning of the semester. It was to consider the breakdown of the membership of the voting body and the GPSA, because frankly it doesn’t currently reflect the graduate student population. Tom: would the communications committee be the correct group to house this subcommittee? Clarke: Yes, it has communications in the meeting. Ari: I would say the same thing about this group as the other subcommittees. Why not allow the committee to make it on their own volition? I would admonish the formation of particular subcommittees to a particular committee.