Graduate and Professional Assembly
October 22, 2007
Big Red Barn
5:30–7:00 p.m.

I. Call to Order

Y. Yu called the meeting to order at 5:32 p.m.

II. Approval of Minutes from 9/24/2007

A. Richter moved to approve the minutes. R. Harbison seconded. There were no objections. Y. Yu moved to have unanimous consent. R. Harbison seconded. The minutes were approved.

III. Open Forum

A member asked for a general background of the Slope Day issue. M. Leinfelder indicated they went over it at the last CoR meeting. She said the open forum was intended more for more specific issues.

There were no other issues.

IV. Executive Updates

A. Richter said a few more committee spots were filled, but they still need more representation from the humanities.

M. Leinfelder said the GCI working group has been meeting and has good recognition. She says more members should get involved with these committees. They are still recruiting COR members but there are still a lot of fields in humanities not represented.

Y. Yu said last Thursday to Friday was the annual trustee meeting. She said usually many trustees go to TGIF and people can get a lot of information.

Y. Yu said she talked with somebody from the Weill Medical School and he said he could provide housing at the recreational center while they visit Weill students. However, they will not provide transportation. Y. Yu said people can carpool to NYC and the GPSA can fund it. She said this opened up an opportunity beyond academic exchange.

V. Committee Reports

a. Funding Policy Committee-Budget (Shawn Kong)

S. Kong asked if there were any questions about the paper copy of the budget.

M. Walsh asked about room rental money. M. Leinfelder said they are using it as a safety because the location for the other meeting times are not finalized yet.

M. Walsh wanted to make it known that there were changes for housing and the amount of money spent on food was reduced.

S. Kong said he went to a funding committee meeting two weeks ago. He said they rejected a lot of funding because organizations needed to specify exactly what they were going to spend their money on. He said if they weren’t specific, they were rejected.

A. Cowan said the funding committee website is still not updated which makes it difficult to advise the law school people. He also mentioned that somebody in the law school had their funding rejected because they didn’t know they had to provide specific information. A. Cowan wanted to know whether or not this was a policy change.

M. Leinfelder said sometimes when they fill in the forms they only list possible speakers and aren’t specific because depending on how much funding they receive will determine which speaker they can invite.

M. Guerrero asked if there was a form to fill out, as opposed to guidelines since there is a misunderstanding of what the committee is looking for. He said maybe the form needs to be updated.

S. Kong replied that the instructions say to “specify” what speaker etc.

Y. Yu added that the organizations need to provide as much information as possible. She thinks there is no information in the bylaw on how specific it needs to be. Y. Yu said it depends on whoever is running the committee to decide what they are expecting. She is suggesting maybe if L. Chen has an info session it might be helpful.

A. Cowan said if every year the applications are judged differently depending on who’s in charge, maybe it needs to be somewhere as a written policy.

S. Kong said he will let Leon know about their comments and if a group is unsatisfied with its allocation, they can always appeal.

R. Zhang on the Pay and Benefits committee said she had students sign petition forms. They got about 400 signatures from grads and undergrads on Ho Plaza.

VI. Election-Events Chair

Y. Yu opened the floor for nominations. Girija Gholkar nominated herself. An assembly member seconded. Girija said a little information about herself. M. Guerrero wanted some more information about this position. M. Leinfelder replied that they’ve talked about the annual Ball and grad night out events. She said there are some ideas the committee would like to continue, but there are also more events for the chair to create.

A. Richter emphasized that there is a committee and the chair will have people to help. M. Leinfelder said had helped plan two out of the three grad balls and is willing to help as well.

Y. Yu moved to close nominations. B. Forster seconded. Y. Yu moved to unanimous consent. A. Richter seconded.

Girija Gholkar is the new events committee chair.

VII. Resolution 4-Support T-GEIS (Tamara)

T. Pardo read the resolution aloud and said a brief summary. A. Richter moved to open the floor for discussion. A. Cowan seconded.

A. Knapp asked for a two-sentence summary of the resolution. T. Pardo said the resolution basically officially says that the GPSA supports the TGEIS project and the 10-year plan to research long-term sustainability for transportation and ecological commuter capacity on campus. It will also try and resolve the long term problem of parking with hopes of long term benefits and improved pedestrian transportation. Overall, by giving official support, the GPSA would have an interest to give voice to TGEIS, and therefore TGEIS should continue dialogue with the GPSA. The resolution also gives some accountability to the GPSA.

C. Morales asked how often do we get feedback about the project. T. Pardo replied it’s usually once a year. She said if we want more regular updates its negotiable; it hasn’t been set yet how often they would come. C. Morales asked what T. Pardo prefers. She said currently once a year is good enough. She said the transportation committee would be getting more updates about this than from TGEIS.

M. Guerrero agrees that the resolution is great. But he said maybe the 10-year plan is too far, he’d rather see some sort of results or small things happen sooner.

T. Pardo said if he want more information he can go to the TGEIS website for Cornell. She said it is a very useful and informative site.

Y. Yu asked for a motion to move to vote. A. Cowan made the motion. A. Richter seconded.

15 were in favor. 0 dissent. 0 abstentions. The resolution passed.

VIII. Activity Fee Recommendation (Shawn Kong)

S. Kong said the funding policy committee met last week. He said three groups didn’t get money they requested because they failed to persuade the majority of the members that they needed all of that funding. He said while deciding on allocating funds for Cornell Cinema, they compared it with other cinemas and didn’t think Cornell cinema did a good job with cost control. He said they actually used more money to do less. S. Kong said it doesn’t make sense to keep the same amount for less service. He said the average is 1.5 movies per student.

S. Kong said athletics gives free passes to all graduate students. He said only 450 free student passes were claimed. S. Kong also said it doesn’t specify whether it was grad or undergrad students. e said they presume undergrads have more interest in athletics.

S. Kong said Slope Day was given less because they didn’t give enough persuasive data.

A. Richter said she is frustrated with the amount recommended to Athletics and Cornell Cinema. She said athletics and cinema can provide community, and our goal is to provide community. A. Richter said to cut funding for these organizations is sending the wrong message.

A. Richter wanted to move a motion to send Cornell Cinema and athletics back to the committee to look over it again and give them the amount requested. M. Guerrero seconded the motion.

A. Cowan said under the charter, the motion is out of order. He clarified and read over the charter. A. Cowan and A. Richter went aside to discuss this matter.

Y. Yu said they are discussing the budget today and voting next time.

M. Walsh wanted to talk about Cornell Cinema and he said two years ago they voted and discussed the issue. Therefore he hopes it stays at $11. M. Walsh said he thinks athletics is a great deal.

N. Brideau asked whether or not we get charged to watch a movie. S. Kong said it’s $4. T. Pardo said $4 is the same price whether it’s a late release of Hollywood film or documentary talk with a film producer.

M. Leinfelder said she received numerous e-mails from grad students saying not to reduce funding for Cornell cinema and to continue funding them at $11. She added that the funding policy committee cannot make assumptions about the free athletics passes and that we need actual numbers/proof. M. Leinfelder said this is because grad students get the passes for free and undergrads must pay for them. So, it would be wrong to make an assumption that the segment of the population which has to pay for the pass is actually picking up more passes.

J. Kupferschmidt said he has also gotten e-mails saying they don’t want to funding for Cornell Cinema to be cut.

M. Guerrero wanted to openly say his appreciation for the work of the FPC.

C. Morales said maybe we need to discuss how things are utilized before figuring out funding. A. Richter said the cinema does have numbers. T here are about 6–7,000 grad students which is 20% of the total attendance.

The executive board had an emergency meeting at 6:42 p.m. to discuss procedures. The meeting was called back to order at 6:46 p.m.

A. Richter said they misread the charter, they thought they had to approve recommendations all at once. She said the assembly needs to vote on each organization’s recommendation from the funding policy committee to be considered in the final budget. And if the assembly votes no, the votes trigger a second vote to see whether or not to remove them from consideration of byline funding all together or send it back to the funding policy committee. A. Richter said we need to have this done by the end of the calendar year.

Y. Yu asked for motion to extend the meeting by 10 minutes, T. Pardo seconded.

J. Kupferschmidt wanted to understand why funding for some groups was increased and not for others.

B. Forster said Slope Day is an event a lot of grad students go to. He said maybe $7.50 is too much, but $1.50 might be too little. B. Forster suggested maybe we look to give them a little more funding.

Y. Yu said she received more complete survey results about Slope Day: half of the people liked Slope Day and think we should keep funding at its current level, 1/4 would like to see a decrease, and 1/4 would like to see an increase. She said if we give $1, it is more than the current funding level of usually $4,000. Y. Yu said if we increase funding we are going in favor of 1/4 of the votes but against 3/4 of the population.

M. Leinfelder said Cornell will be hosting the Ivy Summit in the next few years. Therefore, we are increasing GPSA funding so they can fund the Ivy Summit.

Y. Yu moved to vote on each and every item:

• Athletics: 13 opposed, 0 in favor, 2 abstentions. Y. Yu asked who is in favor of sending it back to FC for consideration: 14 in favor, 0 opposed, 1 abstention. Athletics will go back to the committee.
• Big red barn: 13 in favor, 0 opposed, 2 abstentions. The recommendation was approved.
• Cornell Cinema: 0 in favor, 11 opposed, 3 abstentions. Y. Yu asked who is in favor of sending it back to the FPC: 12 in favor, 1 opposed, 2 abstentions. Cornell Cinema will go back to the committee.
• Concert commission: 13 in favor, 0 opposed, 2 abstentions. The recommendation was approved.
• Emergency Medical Services: 14 in favor, 0 opposed, 1 abstention. The recommendation was approved.
• CUPB: 12 in favor, 2 opposed, 1 abstention. The recommendation was approved.
• Club Insurance: 12 in favor, 0 opposed, 3 abstentions. The recommendation was approved.
• Grad and Professional Student Orientation: 12 in favor, 1 opposed, 2 abstentions. The recommendation was approved.
• International Students Programming Board: 14 in favor. 0 opposed. 1 abstention. The recommendation was approved.
• GPSAFC: 2 in favor, 10 opposed, 3 abstentions. Y. Yu asked who is in favor of sending it back to the FPC: 13 in favor, 0 opposed, 2 abstentions. GPSAFC will go back to the committee.
• GPSA: 14 in favor. 0 opposed. 1 abstention. The recommendation was approved.
• Slope Day: 0 in favor, 13 opposed, 2 abstentions. Y. Yu asked who is in favor of sending it back to the FPC: 12 in favor, 0 opposed, 2 abstentions. Slope Day will go back to the committee.

IX. Adjournment

Y. Yu adjourned the meeting at 7:10 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,
YuhLi Tsuei
Office of the Assemblies