Graduate and Professional Student Assembly
Council of Representatives
Notes
Big Red Barn
February 9, 2004
5:30–7:00 p.m.

Attendance:

Present: Larry Boyd, Harley Etienne, Brian Holmes, Gavin Hurley, Curtis Jirsa, Timothy McConnochie, Joan Moriarty, David Schmale, Susannah Schmid, Cate Taylor, Ariana Vigil, Farbod Raiszadeh, Karen Trainor

Excused:

Unexcused: Dan Marques, Kurt Massey, Mark McGuire, Anne McNeil

Others Present: J. Nelson, D. Agruss, H. O’Neil, A. Poduska, D. Mitarotonda, J. Lloyd, P. McPheron, V. Blodgett, S. McConnell, X. Pei, B. Goehring, D. Nowak, E. Coryell, A. Rachamim, K. O’Neill, S. Munro, K. Crowely, K. Bedell, H. Wu, E. Stephens, J. Comeau, S. Ghosh, S. Braig, A. Martin, J. Kers, M. Leinfelder, R. Hallenbeck, A. Felkey, O. Chini, E. Furlan, T. Wall, T. Bishop, T. Tseui, H. Mandeville

I. Call to Order

D. Schmale called the meeting to order at 5:35pm. He introduced the executive officers to the group, since this is the start of a new semester and there might be new members present. He said that President Lehman will be joining the meeting later after he is done with the meeting he is currently at.

II. Open Forum

V. Blodgett said that Rebecca at Career Services will be hosting a non-profit career fair on March 9. There is also a new advisor at Career Services for international students.

III. Discussion with President Lehman

D. Schmale said President Lehman proposed the Call to Engagement to everybody back in November. The Call to Engagement is where everybody shares their thoughts and ideas for Cornell’s future.

President Lehman feels that he needs to first acknowledge that the molding of graduation and professional education is in part about age — there is a shared level of maturity but many differences exist as well. He understands the existence of graduation and professional education differences. He is interested in each group’s sense of how the process of education works (is it too long/short, too early/late, too broad/narrow). The call to engagement is intended to focus not just on Cornell but undergraduate education overall. He would like grad students to bring their undergraduate experiences to Cornell.

E. Coryell asked what does he hope to achieve by having the Cornell community respond to the Call to Engagement?

President Lehman said he has ideas but they are held with varying degrees of conviction — he is not completely vacant of ideas. He can be persuaded that he’s off-base on some ideas. He hopes to have a firmer sense of what complexities are in every terrain he goes to (i.e. needing a stronger influence in India and China). He wants a sense of breadth of reasons to do/not do something and also wants to catalyze conversation on long range issues because usually not everybody is looking up to have such a conversation at the same time. He can use his new presidency as an excuse to all to look up at the same time. It is important for such institutions to have this kind of talk.

T. McConnochie asked what were his thoughts on the academic integrity situation at Cornell? His experiences are worse here than in his undergrad experience, and his graduate friends agree.

President Lehman said this is news to him and he appreciates Tim shedding light on the issue. He doesn’t believe that plagiarism is a substantial issue and asked is there conversation gong on on campus in regards to this? Is technology facilitating? (i.e. Google, text messaging on cell phones, etc.)

T. McConnochie said that technology makes plagiarism easier to find.

President Lehman asked for rates of plagiarism.

T. McConnochie guessed 1 out of 100, or 1 out of 50, he said he really doesn’t know, this is all hearsay.

M. McGuire said that faculty members in his department (Asian Studies) are reluctant to follow up on plagiarism because it is time and effort consuming. It has happened several times in his department.

A student in Computer Science said that there have been instances in his department where students were found to have copied computer codes. Another problem is the citing of internet articles — books need to be used more.

B. Holmes said that he wants to address the issue of the Code of Academic Integrity - student rights are an issue because the accuser is also the judge and he doesn’t feel that is right. The code doesn’t specifically outline offenses, just what could be wrong and the GPSA doesn’t have any jurisdiction over academic matters.

A student in Math said that lots of students cheat and professors are encouraged to brush it under the rug. The process of accusing a cheater is very long, he knows because he is personally involved in the case.

V. Blodgett said that Dr. Berline Carlson hosted a workshop on academic integrity. They invited the Director of the Center for Academic Integrity to it.

President Lehman said that he wants to learn more about that.

V. Blodgett said that there are lots of cultural aspects to it and it all goes back to the issue of ambiguity of what counts as cheating.

D. Schmale said that everyone here at the GPSA are volunteers and are interested in many issues. He asked President Lehman how the GPSA can better serve him.

President Lehman said this kind of conversation is extremely helpful. He doesn’t know to what extent the GPSA is structured to discuss policy questions with administration and faculty. He asked if they knew who their primary contact with the administration was, and hopes that the GPSA has many points of contact.

H. Etienne asked what positive things does he want to hear from graduate students about their time at Cornell?

President Lehman said he wants to hear that students feel they received the best preparation for their academic lives that Cornell can give. An undergrad’s education covers many things at once and it helps them prepare for adulthood and to be mature. A graduate/professional education is narrowly focused. He doesn’t want to hear that a Cornell grad’s co-worker has skills that they didn’t have that were vital to their success. He also hopes that they have found a professional identity for themselves. He understands that professional students have a fear of not finding it. He hopes they have a good strong mentoring relationship to find it.

J. Moriarty said that grad students at University of Michigan have benefits that Cornell students don’t — i.e. day care, dental and eye, health insurance) and she asked is this a priority?

President Lehman said that he is not aware of the significant different in benefits packages and will try to find out why.

J. Nelson from the English department said there needs to be a focus on underrepresented minorities. He advocated faculty to participate in recruitment efforts and hopes President Lehman will advocate it too.

President Lehman said the challenge that Cornell is facing is the applicant pool. They need to take seriously how we present ourselves to the world (i.e. Cornell is not in an urban area). Studies show that minority students don’t like rural areas because they feel the area might be less hospitable. We need to focus on who applies.

M. Leinfelder said that the land grant extension is important and she is concerned with cuts being made to it.

President Lehman said he was in Albany on Thursday testifying in front of legislature because last year $2 million was cut from the land grant extension and he was asking for that $2 million back. The committee recognized the important of this to the state and he is cautiously optimistic that things will turn around.

M. McGuire said he’s had a few questions about academic freedom and the security of international students. He wants to have a conversation/open discussion/forum about bill HR3077, the Patriot Act.

President Lehman said that the AAU presidents are interested in this and they will meet in April in DC. He believes this is important to academic freedom. They need to be sensitive to homeland security. He is concerned about seeing willful disinterest on the impact to universities and function as a research institution since the Patriot Act was enacted. He is interested in speaking but will wait to see where things are first at AAU before making a formal statement.

D. Schmale said he understands President Lehman is a busy man and bid him farewell.

President Lehman thanked the GPSA for their time and encouraged all to email him. He explained that the Call to Engagement emails are all collected and put into binders that are given to him to look through.

IV. Bylaws for Finance Committee

L. Boyd thanked the committee members for their hard work. The bylaws are a proposal to improve and streamline. He thinks they made fundamental but conservative changes to streamline. The old version of the treasurer’s handbook is online. 75% of it is old rules, 25% is new stuff. He explained how the bylaws and appendices are set up. The appendices are the meaty part of the guidelines. The handbook’s guidelines are becoming bylaws to make them official. The rules are in appendix A, and the maximum numbers are in appendix B. The committee thought of a 3 tiered structure: 1) finance committee appointed by GPSA 2) finance policy as oversight for the finance committee 3) standing body of GPSA. Appendix A, Section 5 has the buckets argument. Groups are currently allowed to line item transfer amongst 8 categories. This results in gaming of the system. There is a new system of 4 categories that are mutually exclusive. There are 2 exceptions and both go through special project requests: 1) club sport tournament on campus 2) publication bringing a speaker to campus. They will still require clubs to line item but they will give money to just the category and allow the money to be spent on any/all of the line items within the category. The committee cares about staying within the money requested, they don’t care about how the money is being distributed once allocated. Please pay attention to the description of the buckets.

B. Holmes said they are trying to clarify the rules because the current system had loopholes and it was unclear. They decided it was a good idea to limit new group requests so that they can have a track record and have some control of them.

K. O’Neill said that the new rules facilitate categorizing clubs and eliminate superfluous money requests.

L. Boyd said they want to reduce money in budgeting but having money available for special project requests.

J. Moriarty pointed out that the finance committee is required to renew the maximum money amount each year.

L. Boyd said they need to drive the point home that the money won’t be reimbursed if the money is improperly spent due to not reading the code carefully.

K. O’Neill said they will produce a handbook to make the code easier to understand.

D. Schmale suggested that people take it home to read and review and will allow people to comment on the list serve until Monday.

C. Jirsa asked how will an organization prove the popularity of old speaker events?

B. Holmes said self-reported numbers.

A student asked is GPSA able to increase the money assigned to GPSAFC?

L. Boyd said they didn’t address the question specifically.

B. Holmes said they did that in the fall with the student activity fee.

A student asked what is the rationale for setting a maximum amount of money?

L. Boyd said they didn’t want the student activity fee to cover stuff like feeding people. They want to encourage alternate funding sources.

V. Business of the Day

A) Online Course Registration
M. Leinfelder said that students in her department have noticed courses getting full and there not being a wait list. It is more based on chance. She wanted to survey the group to see how they felt.

L. Boyd said he was head TA for Wines last semester and he had no say in regards to who could get into the class.

M. Leinfelder said she was trying to get into a Spanish class.

E. Coryell said that if she had to handwrite add/drop with professor signatures, she was told to do it on a computer but there were no computer terminals. Advisors also don’t tell students to have everything done on computers.

H. Etienne said the pre-enrollment is a problem also, because enrollment starts at 8am and courses are full by 10am.

B. Holmes said he understands it is up to professors whether a wait list exists.

D. Schmale said that lots of faculty are still unfamiliar with the online practices.

B) Trustee Nominating Committee
S. Schmid said if anybody wants to run, go to the website for important dates. And election packets can be picked up now.

VI. Adjournment

D. Schmale adjourned the meeting at 7:00.

Respectfully submitted,
Tyng Tsuei
Office of the Assemblies