Graduate and Professional Assembly
November 26, 2007
Clark Hall
5:30–7:00 p.m.

I. Call to Order and Welcome

M. Leinfelder called the meeting to order at 5:34pm. She explained that she is going to be running the meeting tonight because Y. Yu could not be present.

II. Approval of Minutes from 10/22/07

A typo in Section VIII was changed. A. Richter moved to approve the minutes. A. Cowan seconded. The minutes were approved.

III. Open Forum

A. Cowan said he is on the Codes and Judicial Committee. He said one month ago the revised Campus Code of Conduct was unanimously approved. For more information about this issue, he said to refer to the website. A. Cowan said the revised code of conduct is not in effect yet because it needs to be signed by the president and board of trustees. He said the meetings for the Codes and Judicial Committee have been suspended until January.

L. Diaz wanted to announce that the VET school is having its 13th annual auction on Friday starting at 6pm. She said it tends to be a very formal event. There will be music and live dancing at the end of the event.

C. Morales said he wanted to hear about the Ivy Summit. M. Leinfelder said Y. Yu talked about it at the last CoR meeting. Y. Yu is compiling a summary of the attendees reports.

A. O’Donnell wanted to poll whether or not departments would be interested in hearing a specific speaker: Trent Loose. She wanted to know whether or not people are interested in going.

A. Richter moved to take a 5 minute recess for dinner. M. Walsh seconded.

M. Leinfelder called the meeting back to order at 5:47pm.

IV. Executive Updates

A. Richter said Y. Yu is still working on the Ivy Summit report. She is compiling a report from everyone at the Ivy Summit. A. Richter said she is also still looking for people to fill in a few committees.

M. Leinfelder said there are still some open CoR seats especially in the humanities.

V. Committee Reports

a. Council for Mental Health and Welfare, Bethsabe Romero

B. Romero talked about the results of the mental health and well-being survey that was conducted. She said a lot of graduate students were discouraged from seeking help from CAPS because they were not taking anymore patients. B. Romero said she wanted to make the assembly aware of this issue.

K. Hubbell said there is another organization Minds Matter, which is a self-organized support group that the graduate students can go to. He said CAPS and EARS should be for all students, therefore we need to get the word out that it’s meant for everyone.

B. Wickes said she’s been working with an advisor for EARS to try and target and recruit graduate students�to have a graduate students only group. She said EARS is a volunteer group, so it is difficult to get volunteers. B. Wickes said the advisor for Minds Matter is also interested in getting graduate students to be part of it. She explained that CAPS has three components and gave details about each. She mentioned that graduate students are being seen in a greater percentage than undergrads. B. Wickes said there aren’t enough counselors to handle all of the students.

B. Romero said it’s good that we have all of these groups but its useless if we don’t hear about it.

M. Leinfelder said if B. Romero wants to write a short summary of the resources, she will put it onto GPSAINFO. B. Romero said she is definitely willing.

D. Proctor wondered what is the point of advertising resources that don’t have enough room for people? He doesn’t think it’s necessarily a publicity problem. K. Proctor gave similar comments about students feeling discouraged when being turned away due to lack of appointment spaces.

T. Pardo thinks it’s a campus/university issue, that there is not enough space for appointments. She said maybe graduate students tend to put problems off until it is critical and then it gets pushed off even more because a lack of available appointment spots.

M. Leinfelder said maybe next semester we can write a resolution concerning these issues and something can be done about it.

VI. Approval of Funding Policy Committee’s Line-Item Recommendations — Shawn Kong, FPC Chair

M. Leinfelder said four line items were sent back to the Funding Policy Committee to reconsider.

S. Kong explained the rationale of the amended recommendations:

Athletics didn’t include a budget or explanation of what money was needed. It is not a tradition of the athletics department to disclose their budget, it’s also not allowed by the university. The FPC concluded that athletics played a major role in the community. Graduates directly and indirectly benefited from athletics.

Cornell Cinema thoroughly explained at a meeting what they needed the money for and convinced the FPC that the money was being used efficiently.

The Cornell University Programming Board made a mistake and will make an amendment to make it from $4 to $3.55. If approved, the 45 cent difference will be given to the GPSAFC.

The Slope Day Programming Board requested money based on a survey conducted in 2007. There was a wide range of how many graduate students attended. The recommended amount was decided upon because the FPC wanted the overall activity fee to be less than $72.

M. Leinfelder explained the procedure for voting for the activity fee as outlined by the charter. Each group would be voted on separately. A yes vote will send the group’s recommendation to the final activity fee budget. No monetary changes can be proposed until the final activity fee recommendation.

A. Cowan made a motion clarifying the charter saying that if we vote “no” on any of the line-items the groups don’t get any funding at all and it does not get sent back to the FPC. B. Forster seconded.

Assembly members asked for clarification concerning this issue. If members are unhappy with amount the recommended amount, then vote “yes” and then ask to amend the amount.

J. Kupferschmidt asked for the other interpretation of the charter; which is the unapproved line-items would be sent back to the FPC and then an emergency assembly meeting would be held in order to approve the activity fee by Friday.

M. Walsh said he isn’t really interested in changing the rules last minute.

A. Richter said she is uncomfortable with the idea that if the assembly votes a “no” then the group gets no money.

The assembly voted on whether or not they are going to have A. Cowan’s interpretation of the charter. 8 were in favor, 9 opposed. The motion failed.

M. Walsh made a motion to vote for athletics. A. O’Donnell seconded. 16 in favor. 0 opposed. 1 abstain. Athletics passed.

A. Cowan moved to approve Cornell Cinema. M. Walsh seconded. 15 in favor. 1 opposed. 1 abstained. Cornell Cinema passed.

M. Walsh moved to approve GPSAFC (the 1 line item that can fluctuate up/down, used to buffer up/down to whole number). B. Romero seconded. 17 in favor, 0 opposed, 1 abstain. GPSAFC passed

M. Walsh made a motion to approve Slope Day at $2.90. A. Cowan seconded.

T. Pardo said she is not comfortable with giving so much money to Slope Day since the numbers aren’t definite.

A. Richter said at this point it’s better to approve the amount first and then discuss and amend the amount.

M. Leinfelder clarified that right now the assembly can’t change the dollar amount or make amendments.

14 in favor. 0 opposed. 4 abstain. Slope Day passed.

VII. Approval of Graduate and Professional Student Activity Fee

A. Richter moved to approve the activity fee. M. Guerrero seconded.

D. Proctor thinks Slope Day is a bad idea being on a class day and that students are losing money and education they have paid for. It should not be funded at all.

S. Kong said there are two sides, some people want to give no money to Slope Day, and others think the recommended amount is not enough. Therefore the amount decided is a compromise although there are many ambiguities in the survey like the estimation of the number of graduate students that attended.

J. Vertesi said she is overwhelmed at the jump of money recommended for Slope Day.

K. Proctor thinks if we want to have a say in Slope Day then we should be funding it. She said maybe give them a little more money than previously but less than the $2.90 that is recommended.

M. Ramon said he has a huge problem with funding money for Slope Day using his experiences as an undergraduate at Cornell as background for this opinion. He thinks the undergraduates have not tried to use all of their resources to get funding for Slope Day.

A. Gay from the SAFC said their whole goal is to make Slope Day an equitable event that serves the needs for the entire university. They decided that $7 was an equitable contribution per head. He said undergrads fund $15 per student and that they are trying to protect undergraduate students on financial aid. A. Gay said there exists no accurate measure of whether or not grad students benefit from this event. They are basically funding this event per student and that the assembly needs to think about the statistics.

J. Kuperschmidt thinks that Slope Day could be a great community event and that $1–1.50 would be more appropriate.

L. Rapoport said they are trying to think of many other ways to get funding for Slope Day and listed some things they have been working on.

M. Guerrero said he would like to make a motion to change the dollar figure for slope day to $1.50. T. Pardo seconded.

A. Cowan gathered some numbers from the Slope Day Programing Board and Office of the Dean of Students of how much money is contributed to Slope Day and what money was used for.

M. Guerrero made a motion to extend the meeting by twenty minutes. R. Harbison seconded.

M. Walsh said Slope Day is an expensive event and initially agreed that the graduates should give $1.50. However, once he started to attend the Slope Day Steering Committee meetings he learned that they are trying to take the burden away from the university and trying to pay for Slope Day on its own. He said they are also trying to find alternative sources of funding.

E. Greenburg the SA President said he is mainly concerned with the per head price for Slope Day. He stated that the undergrads will pay $15 per student for Slope Day and stated there was a disparity because the grads are paying $2.90 per student. A solution suggested was that if the recommendation was reduced, then the graduate students would be charged a fee to attend Slope Day.

B. Forster just wanted to make it clear that the numbers concerning how much should be charged per head is based on numbers that were biased.

N. Brideau said that $70 as the activity fee would be fine. He said there is no point in fighting about money because it is not that big of an increase from $68.

J. Vertesi said the funding for Slope Day used to be hidden in the GPSA funding, it was raised so that the money would be given to Slope Day. But now Slope Day is its own byline group, so why is the number for the GPSA is not lower. M. Leinfelder answered that they are making sure there will be money for the Ivy Summit and that’s why the GPSA amount has not decreased. She said that the money that was initially given to Slope Day is now given to the Ivy Summit, which Cornell will host in 2009.

M. Guerrero said he would like to call to question. A. Richter seconded. There was no dissent.

12 were in favor of amending Slope Day from $2.90 to $1.50. 5 opposed. 1 abstain. The recommended amount for slope day is now 1.50.

A. Richter move to amend CUPB from $4 to $3.55. 17 in favor, 0 opposed, 1 abstain. The amount is changed to $3.55.

E. Greenburg said now that Slope Day funding has been reduced, they are going to try and charge graduate students.

M. Walsh said it is not within the SA’s jurisdiction to do so.

E. Greenburg explained how it is.

A. Cowan motion to extend meeting by 10 minutes to 7:30pm. B. Romero seconded.

A. Richter said Slope Day is more important to undergrads so that’s why they chose to give $15 to Slope Day. She said she is glad that the assembly decided the money allocated is decreased to $1.50.

T. Pardo asked if graduate students are going to be charged to attend slope day along with the $1.50 that is already allocated. A. Richter said it can be changed in appendix B in the Spring. T. Pardo said she is uncomfortable with having this possible problem unresolved.

A. Cowan called the motion to question. A. Richter seconded. There was no dissent.

The assembly voted on $70 to be the activity fee. 16 in favor. 0 opposed. 2 abstain. The activity fee passed.

VIII. Adjournment

M. Leinfelder adjourned the meeting at 7:27pm.

Respectfully submitted,
YuhLi Tsuei
Office of the Assemblies