MINUTES
University Assembly Meeting
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
4:30 - 6:00pm
316 Day Hall

I. Call to Order

M. Lukasiewicz called the meeting to order at 4:33 p.m.

Voting Members Present: Kyle Albert, Ramsey Ataya, Jim Blair, William Candell, Evan Cortens, Philip Goldstein, Tanya Grove, Howard Howland, Robert Kay, Ned La Celle, Melissa Lukasiewicz, Sean Murphy, Randy Wayne

Voting Members Absent: Bridget Cristelli, William Fry, Natalie Raps, Bridget Schaffner Also In Attendance: President David Skorton, Tommy Bruce, Amy O’Donnell, Ari T. Epstein, David Martin (Reporter from the Sun)

II. Approval of the minutes from October 4, 2011

M. Lukasiewicz called for a motion to approve the minutes from October 4th. E. Cortens had a question, M. Lukasiewicz clarified. M. Lukasiewicz and E. Cortens suggested minor changes to the minutes. J. Blair motioned to approve the amended minutes. E. Cortens seconded. Seeing no opposition, the minutes from October 4th were approved.

III. Call for Late Additions to the Agenda

There were three issues brought up for discussion later: � E. Cortens had an update on a resolution discussed at a recent Board of Trustees meeting. � R. Ataya had an update from the Cornell Store. � R. Ataya raised the issue of a centralized website

IV. Committee Updates (5 minutes each)

a. Codes and Judicial Committee

W. Candell said the CJC had established a regular meeting time, Wednesday afternoons, 4 pm. J. Blair asked if there would be a meeting tomorrow, W. Candell said no.

b. Campus Welfare Committee

R. Ataya said he sent a doodle asking for availability. Only 3 people responded and out of those 3, only 2 were available. S. Murphy suggested sending out a doodle with only two options to choose from. R. Ataya agreed. J. Blair asked R. Ataya to inform the rest of the UA on meeting info. E. Cortens asked if they had agenda items yet. R. Ataya said they had-diversity, inclusion, census of community, Class Council initiatives among other things. J. Blair said childcare should be added. E. Cortens said issues of community had come from a GPSA survey. J. Blair said a survey had been conducted among staff members recently also. R. Ataya asked who was in charge of the surveys. T. Grove said Marin Clarkberg from Institutional Research.

c. Campus Infrastructure Committee

S. Murphy said the committee held a meeting last week and was off to a good start. J. Blair asked if they had any issues for the future. To this, S. Murphy said he was going to talk to David Lieb about transportation issues on campus. They were also looking at issues of sustainability. J. Blair said it was decided the proposed new humanities building and the NYC tech campus would be designed in an energy-conserving manner. M. Lukasiewicz spoke about students being more involved in sustainability initiatives like parking, public transportation, recycling, IT, among others.

J. Blair spoke of a meeting with the CJC soon. P. Goldstein elaborated on the meeting and its agenda. He said he is meeting with Mary Beth Grant in the next week and has reached out to professors in the Law School (like Professor Clermont) on these issues. Regarding the committees, A. Epstein said there were mailing lists and info lists online anyone can subscribe to for information on various committees.

Additionally, J. Blair said he felt they were off to a slow start and the UA needed more resolutions and issues being discussed. R. Ataya agreed with the fact that they were of to a slow start. At the same time, he said the various committees were collecting information and would be fully functional bodies soon. J. Blair was concerned they would face a time crunch at the end of the semester and he asked the various committees to meet at their first opportunity.

T. Grove spoke of an issue brought to the attention of the EA. This was regarding a change in the TCAT schedule. This would affect a number of staff members and faculty as they would no longer have transportation to and from campus. T. Grove said the EA was trying to figure how to help with this issue. M. Lukasiewicz said this issue was brought up at the Infrastructure Committee meeting. J. Blair said since it was an issue affecting staff and faculty, the UA should look into it.

V. New Business

a. Discussion with President Skorton (40 minutes)

President Skorton started by talking about the main projects they are focusing on-

• i. Student need based financial aid
• ii. Faculty Renewal
• iii. Public engagement in a strategic manner
• iv. Internationalization at Cornell

He said the new building for the Humanities will be located on the other side of Goldwin Smith Hall. This was primarily going to be built on funds received by philanthropy and he hopes it will be done by Jan 1, 2015. He also said the Board of Trustees gave approval to increase philanthropic funds for the Cornell NYC Tech campus so they could keep student financial aid secure. They also planned to use this extra money to hire more staff and faculty. President Skorton said the university was at about a 90% balanced budget at the moment.

R. Wayne brought up the issue of shared governance and said there was a lack of transparency in the past. He gave examples of the Africana Center and the Cornell Center for the Arts. R. Wayne wanted to know how these departments would handle issues in the future and whether people involved would be consulted before decisions were made. President Skorton said it is the aim of the administration to maintain transparency in decision-making. However, in the past, they had to implement some decisions due to unusual circumstances. They had to undertake these decisions independently to avoid hindrances and inefficiency due to conflicting opinions. He felt these decisions have led to Cornell’s high performance rates at the moment. He spoke of some of these decisions undertaken.

• Shrinkage of the Provost’s office
• Salary Cuts
• Not taking on more debt for construction

President Skorton felt decisions like the Africana had ramifications but they were needed at that time. The only argument he got for Africana was traditions the organization held. He said this year the administration would communicate openly with the assemblies on the decisions.

R. Wayne agreed with the President but noted there is a culture of fear at Cornell where people do not speak up when they should. President Skorton agreed and said he asked student, faculty, staff, alumni and others to share with the administration, any information they wanted to draw attention to. He felt the worst situation would be when people didn’t express their thoughts and opinions. He said they could do it anonymously but they should still put their issues across so the administration could solve the problem. President Skorton further reiterated the gentleness of the Cornell atmosphere. J. Blair said he felt there should be more of an effort on the part of deans to organize open discussion. He also felt the administration, staff and faculty needed to be more approachable. President Skorton agreed with J. Blair on these points. He said he would make sure these points were put across to the deans.

E. Cortens agreed with President Skorton’s point of increasing philanthropic efforts while not taking on more construction debt. He asked for assurance that philanthropic projects will not affect the Ithaca campus. He spoke of the Big Red Barn and Maplewood, two grad student buildings that are not in good shape due to inadequate funds. He asked the administration to provide some sort of a commitment these buildings would be looked into. President Skorton said the administration was struggling with the expense the Big Red Barn involved. It seemed efforts would be made to restore it about 3 years from now, with assumptions on tuition increases and more philanthropic projects. He said the NYC campus was top priority at the moment but they also need to prioritize issues that were important in terms of student and faculty life. He would consult members of the administration and report back sometime in the spring semester.

After President Skorton left, H. Howland acknowledged he had a lot of changes in mind, regarding to the campus climate. R. Ataya also wanted to know how the tech campus plan fit in with the plan of the new building on the Arts Quad. He also asked how faculty would be organized, whether they would commute or if some faculty would be moved. J. Blair said the level of commuting had not been worked out yet, but they had a concept in mind if Cornell wins. His concern was if the university wanted to start classes in 2013, they should have a schedule worked out. W. Candell asked when the winner would be declared. J. Blair said there would be “Black Out Period”, during which New York City would decide the winner based on the finalists. A. Epstein said alumni and students not paid by Cornell could talk about the idea during the black out period. J. Blair further voiced other concerns about finances, faculty, administration and students for this campus. He had some concerns about the project being funded by philanthropy and student tuition. P. Goldstein said there should be a mechanism where aspects of the campus are shared. J. Blair agreed and said there should be a public forum where people could express their ideas about the NYC Tech Campus. E. Cortens said he could email the Provost and ask what info they were willing to publicize about the NYC campus. J. Blair wanted to know if Stanford had their plans online. R. Kay said no electronic versions of plans were available at present.

IV. Late Additions to the Agenda

E. Cortens’ update about the Trustee Resolution

E. Cortens said the Board of Trustees had met last Friday, where they discussed a number of issues, among which was the role of student representatives on the Board. At present, the Board is not considering the addition of another seat. However, they did discuss the suggestion of a member having “Observer Status” and will look into it. E. Cortens said what the Board saw as a problem was not an issue of adequate representation but inadequate communication. The Board is interested in finding ways to make themselves and their work more visible. One way was to invite students to their meetings and events. E. Cortens said the GPSA was willing to recruit student leaders for such meetings and encouraged the other assemblies to do so. J. Blair said there should be a website to publicize the Boards work so the students were better informed. E. Cortens clarified the Board wanted to be more open in the decisions they had already implemented, vs the decisions they were planning to undertake. E. Cortens noted last week’s listening session hosted by the Board of Trustees was poorly attended, and the meeting was mostly trustees.

R. Ataya’s update from the Cornell Book Store.

R. Ataya had met with the Bookstore recently. They said they could not significantly reduce the price of books or they would go into a loss. They do not get funds from Cornell, and they have to pay Cornell portion of their profits. Regarding R. Ataya’s question of distribution of booklists, the store said they made booklists, but they are unwilling to disclose the lists to other vendors since they work hard preparing it and distributing it to other sellers would cut into profits. R. Ataya said he understood. However, he also felt the store should be open with students about booklists and put pressure on professors to release the lists sooner. E. Cortens asked what “pressure” would be. He said he feels there is already pressure on instructors for booklists. R. Ataya said he meant better advertising and publishing of the lists. H. Howland said to communicate with the deans and department heads to pressure professors to release the book lists sooner. He suggested the UA contact the Faculty Senate about this. R. Ataya also suggested looking at informal alternatives for the problem. P. Goldstein felt informal methods were not going to work and they needed a formal mechanism. R. Ataya said he was open to a formal approach but wanted a step-wise approach of

• Publicizing the lists
• Then having the lists up on the Cornell Store website,
• And then having the tentative booklists communicated to students

J. Blair said it was a faculty issue, and asked to hear from the Faculty Senate. R. Ataya agreed. H. Howland asked R. Ataya to draft a resolution. R. Ataya said he would.

R. Ataya’s suggestion of a centralized website for all student government issues

R. Ataya had spoken to A. Epstein about a centralized site for student governance. He said this will help foster communication, transparency and accountability. R. Ataya said he could create and design this. R. Ataya said he was looking at a comprehensive website for all bodies of student governance. E. Cortens said the GPSA maintained a website, but said he felt a more effective way to publicize events was on Facebook. P. Goldstein said class councils publicize events on Facebook also. J. Blair said since they were running out of time, those interested in the issue should discuss it after the meeting.

VI. Adjourn

E. Cortens motioned to adjourn the meeting. S. Murphy seconded. Seeing no objection, the meeting was adjourned at 6:02 p.m.

Respectfully submitted, Shriya Patnaik