Graduate and Professional Student Assembly Minutes

Big Red Barn Greenhouse November 26, 2001 5:30 - 6:30 p.m.

Attendance: 2001–2002 GPSA Members 4/23 8/27 9/24 10/29 11/26 1/28 2/25 3/25 4/22 Shaffique Adam P P P P E Virginia Augusta P P P P P Pat Carr P P P P P Rob Chesley A A P A A Tyrell Haberkorn P E P P P Karsten Hueffer P P P P P Gavin Hurley P P P P P Bhaskar Krishnamachari A A P P E Joan Moriarty P P P P P Aaron Saathoff P P P P A Elisa Salas P P A P A Outi Salminen P E P P P John Sebastian P P P P P Jeff Siegel A A A P A David Toomey P P P P P Others Present: Phil McPheron and Bonnie Bailey

I. Call to Order Pat Carr, President of the 2001–2002 GPSA, called the meeting to order at 5:38 p.m.

II. Open Forum There were no items for open forum.

III. Approval of GPSA Minutes The GPSA minutes of September 24, 2001 were approved by acclamation. The GPSA minutes of October 29, 2001 were approved by acclamation.

IV. Announcements P. Carr announced that he needed someone to volunteer for the Diversity Council. He stated this is a recently formed committee and it has not yet met. He explained it sounded very similar to the Campus Climate Committee (CCC) and it would be meeting weekly. Apparently the CCC has been meeting only once per semester.

P. McPheron, Director of Graduate and Professional Student Housing, remarked that his understanding is that the Diversity Committee will be more “hands on” than the CCC has been.

P. Carr concluded that the first meeting for the Diversity Council would be December 6. He asked if anyone was interested in doing this.

V. Augusta, CALS (Social Sciences) representative, said she was mildly interested.

P. Carr said he could e-mail GPSA-L@cornell.edu to see if anyone had strong interest in this committee.

V. Augusta responded that if no one came forward in response to P. Carr’s e-mail that she might consider it more seriously.

V. Committee Reports A. Executive Committee This item was not discussed.

VI. Business of the Day A. Student Activity Fee G. Hurley, Engineering representative and Funding Policy Committee (FPC) Chair, distributed a paper outlining the FPC’s recommendations for the graduate and professional student activity fee.

Current

Allocation Request Increase % request increase Recommendation Increase % Increase Cornell Cinema Concert Commiss. CUPB Big Red Barn CUEMS ISPB GPSAFC Athletics GPSA (*) GPSA Club

      Insurance

GPSA Orientation

      Program
$7.00

$5.75 $3.05 $4.00 $1.00 $0.70 $17.50 $6.00 $1.05 $3.30

$0.65 $9.00 $5.75 $3.05 $4.50 $1.50 $1.05 $16.00 $6.00 $1.05 $3.45

$0.65 $2.00

$0.50 $0.50 $0.35 -$1.50

$0.15

29%

13% 50% 50% -9%

5%

$9.00

$5.75 $3.05 $4.25 $1.50 $0.80 $15.00 $6.00 $0.55 $3.45

$0.65 $2.00

$0..25 $0.50 $0.10 -$2.50

$0.15

29%

6% 50% 14% -14%

5%

Total $50.00 $52.00 $2.00 4% $50.00 0.00 0%

NOTES: Current Alloc. Amount that the groups are getting for the F’00-S’02 cycle Request Amount that the groups requested for the F’02-S’04 cycle Increase Increase over current allocation being requested %-Increase Percentage increase from current allocation being requested Recommendation Funding Policy Committee recommendation for funding Increase Increase over current allocation being recommended %-Increase Percentage increase from current allocation being recommended

(*) - The GPSA will receive the equivalent of $0.50 per year from the $100,000 recently transferred from the GPSAFC

G. Hurley said they have already covered the majority of these recommendations at meetings earlier this semester. He noted he has some concern with Cornell Cinema as the FPC is recommending that they receive the $9.00 allocation they requested, but the undergraduates are only giving $8.00. He expressed worry that there won’t be a tiered ticket price acknowledging the difference paid in the activity fee by the grads and undergrads.

J. Moriarty asked for more information about the EMS recommendation.

G. Hurley replied that a proposal was brought out at a COR meeting to allot GPSA funds to EMS instead of raising their activity fee allocation. After much consideration, the FPC felt that raising the allocation amount for EMS would actually be a simpler approach. He told members he welcomed discussion with the group.

P. Carr added that this would also be the preferred method as it they are encouraging groups to put capital equipment depreciation in their budgets.

K. Hueffer stated he felt the group should definitely get the money and this seemed the safest way to ensure that is done. He asked about discount cards for graduate and professional students with Cornell Cinema.

D. Toomey asked if there is a real worry that Cornell Cinema won’t follow-through with what they say they’ll do.

G. Hurley responded that nothing has been said to make him worry. He simply worries about it.

P. Carr added that Cornell Cinema is supposed to get GPSA approval before raising their ticket prices.

V. Augusta expressed annoyance that Cornell Cinema doesn’t seem to have seriously listened to their recommendations to seek outside help. They seem to have some organizational issues. She asked what if Cinema has another bad year? What kind of plan are they going to implement to help them better manage themselves?

Members questioned how Cornell Cinema would differentiate between the graduate and undergraduates to ensure that they are properly charging for the tickets.

P. McPheron answered that it would be up to the ticket taker to determine. He said new ID’s were to be issued next year that would work as “smart cards.” However, he didn’t believe that Cornell Cinema would have the technology necessary to benefit from the new cards. The ID cards don’t seem to be color coded according to constituent group any longer.

G. Hurley commented that if the GPSA chose to give Cornell Cinema $8.00 instead of $9.00 from the activity fee that their individual ticket prices would definitely raise to $5.00 per ticket.

V. Augusta asked if there has been any distinct course of action for looking into starting an endowment with the GPSA money. Should the GPSA firm this up before they vote on the activity fee recommendation?

J. Moriarty inquired if the GPSA could vote on the activity fee recommendations and then consider how to handle the money at a later time.

The GPSA voted on the Funding Policy Committee’s proposal for the 2002–2004 Graduate and Professional Student Activity Fee. The recommendation passed by a vote of 8–0.

B. GPSA Reorganization P. Carr said he would bring this up at a COR meeting before it is brought to the GPSA for a vote. He stated this issue originally came up due to confusing field clusters and mentioned the curiosity regarding the name of the “Other” cluster. He stated he also noticed last year that there was only one humanist on the GPSA and that seemed disproportionate. He elaborated that he’d like to consider thinking about groupings in a format similar to one used by the Graduate School. He suggested getting three GPSA representatives from four major groupings: Biological Sciences, Hard Sciences, Social Sciences, and Humanities. One representative from each professional school would complete the GPSA membership to give a total of fifteen members. The one potential drawback is that this would eliminate the At-Large seats on the GPSA.

J. Moriarty proposed expanding the membership of the GPSA.

P. Carr replied he would not feel comfortable with a larger GPSA group. He stated the ideal board size is reputed to be twelve people. If they get much bigger than twelve, their ability to get work done is proportionately reduced. He stated another logistical problem might be that electing people from a group of 30–40 people would be harder. It would need more coordination from the GPSA to successfully run their elections.

J. Sebastian stated that the At-Large seats had more difficult representational problems than the other GPSA seats.

J. Moriarty observed that the “Hard Sciences” grouping would presumably include engineering. She noted that group would be huge. What if one of the three selected GPSA members wasn’t in engineering?

J. Sebastian wondered if they could specify that one of the seats had to be filled by an engineer as they seem to stand to lose the most.

P. McPheron commented that the current structure of the GPSA seems to be very similar to that of the Faculty Senate. They also have a very large group that breaks down into a smaller group.

K. Hueffer stated he liked the current GPSA structure.

J. Sebastian noted that if he had lost the At-large seat last year that the current GPSA would have no representative from the Humanities.

P. Carr agreed, saying the current set-up makes it worse off for humanists.

K. Hueffer commented that one could argue that graduate veterinary students are also in a special category. He stated uncertainty that this proposal would really be better.

J. Sebastian replied the current clusters don’t make sense.

J. Moriarty volunteered to work on this if she could get more information such as the number of students in the different areas.

V. Augusta stated the Annual Report of the Graduate School would have relevant information.

J. Moriarty stated they would need to decide if they want the groupings to be proportionate or not.

P. McPheron suggested that the GPSA consider ways to ensure stability from year-to-year and ways to encourage succession in leaders. For example, perhaps they’d like the Vice-President from one year to automatically move into the position of President the following year. He stated some boards incorporate this concept with success. He noted there were problems, such as if a person couldn’t serve for two consecutive years. He said it might be worth the GPSA considering and perhaps they could think of other ways to work with this idea.

P. Carr noted he had once thought that it would be advantageous for the COR to be the body and vote on everything.

J. Sebastian stated it would be hard to get anything done with such a large group.

P. Carr agreed, saying that’s why he wasn’t bringing that as a suggestion now.

J. Moriarty noted it would also be hard to make quorum.

G. Hurley stated that one reason the engineering group is so large is because it has a lot of 1-year students. He noted this is a category that is bypassed with the GPSA structure.

P. Carr replied that because this group is in and out in one year that they may not have a lot of the same issues as the longer-term graduate students. It would be hard to devise a way to incorporate this particular category in the GPSA.

G. Hurley noted he wasn’t really sure what issues they might have.

P. Carr replied they always have the option of approaching the GPSA with any concerns.

J. Sebastian brought out his copy of the Annual Report of the Graduate School and shared it with members.

P. Carr noted that the number of COR seats is currently based on the number of students in a particular field. Fields get 1 COR representative for up to 100 students in a field. If there are more than 100 students they get two representatives.

J. Moriarty read from the Annual Report: Humanities had 440 students Biological Sciences had 900 students Physical Sciences had 1450 students Social Sciences had 1300 students

She noted she was rounding the numbers as she read them. She also said she thought that engineering had approximately 1000 students and approximately 500 of those are PhD’s.

V. Augusta suggested waiting until the GPSA has had more time to thoughtfully consider the issues before taking it to COR.

P. Carr agreed, saying they would draw up a proposal and bring it back to the GPSA.

B. Bailey, Office of the Assemblies, asked for clarification regarding what they are considering. She summarized that they had two strong options. The first involves restructuring the clusters internally. The second would involve making Charter changes to re-vamp the way the GPSA membership is comprised.

P. Carr affirmed this was what they were considering. He stated he’s inclined to favor the second option, which would eliminate clusters.

K. Hueffer pointed out that a lot of students are confused about where they fit. Can they work to help make this clearer?

J. Moriarty noted the General Committee of the Graduate School is trying to deal with this. It gets confusing.

O. Salminen stated that the field of Environmental Toxicology is unique in that it has no department.

Other members noted this is actually not uncommon.

P. Carr stated that it can get confusing as fields and departments can differ.

K. Hueffer stated that it is sometimes a good thing as they can be more interdisciplinary. However, it becomes a problem when no one explains it to the students and if they don’t know where they belong.

J. Moriarty said part of this is due to the culture of Cornell. Cornell doesn’t want to impose restrictions on its students in this area.

K. Hueffer replied that he does like the flexibility that exists.

V. Augusta stated she felt the fields need to be responsible for their students. This seems it should be covered in new student orientation.

O. Salminen elaborated that funding can be problematic if they don’t have a department.

P. Carr stated this needed to be made clearer to students.

K. Hueffer noted a lot of people don’t understand the difference between departments and fields.

P. Carr stated the Graduate school should list this information on their website.

J. Sebastian stated that if the GPSA was going to hold these late night meetings and run over their time that the least all the GPSA members could do is attend.

V. Augusta said that someone needed to look into the $100,000.00 transfer. She wondered if they should add a footnote to the FPC recommendation related to this. She stated concern about the president needing to approve the transfer.

P. Carr told members the GPSA does not need approval from the president for the transfer of funds from the GPSAFC to the GPSA. How the GPSA chooses to spend money in its account is also at their discretion and not subject to the president’s approval. He agreed to look into information related to endowments.

P. McPheron suggested contacting the investment office as they would be a good resource for this type of thing.

K. Hueffer requested that P. Carr inquire about different endowment options that the GPSA could consider.

P. Carr agreed to do this and bring information back to the GPSA.

VII. Adjournment P. Carr adjourned the meeting at 6:38 p.m.

Respectfully Submitted,

Bonnie Bailey Office of the Assemblies