MINUTES
Graduate & Professional Student Assembly Meeting
Monday, November 17, 2008
Big Red Barn
5:30–7:30 P.M.

I. Welcome

M. Leinfelder called the meeting to order at 5:35 p.m. Two new members introduced themselves.

II. Open Forum

B. Forster encouraged people to contact him for issues regarding Childcare and the grant. M. Leinfelder said there has been a discussion about going paperless for meetings. She said they would need everyone’s cooperation to read documents ahead of time.

She also said that The Student Leadership Institute of Cornell would be held on February 8th.

III. Old Business

1. Approval of Minutes — October 20, 2008

J. Kupferschmidt made a motion to make changes to the minutes. M. Leinfelder asked for a motion to approve the amendments. The minutes were voted on and approved 11-in favor, 0-opposed and 1-abstention. M. Leinfelder then asked the members to approve the minutes as amended. B. Forster made a motion to approve the minutes. C. Mansfeldt seconded. The minutes from October 20, 2008 were voted on and approved.

2. Budget Review - J. Kupferschmidt

J. Kupferschmidt explained the budget chart and said they should talk about how they wanted to allocate their budget. He defined two goals with the budget a) pass the budget and b) keep in mind what the process was like now because the budget process will be put in a resolution and then in the Charter. He would first talk about operating expenses, then about the committee expenses and then about the special funds.

V. Andrews reported that SA talked only a little bit about the Slope Day. They have seen statistics from last year. The SA will be asking the GPSA for special funding to Slope Day this year. M. Leinfelder said Slope Day is by-line funded and at the CoR meeting in December they will have a presentation on the statistics from last year.

J. Kupferschmidt proposed to go over the operating expenses. He said the GPSA could reduce the expenses for copying, postage and office supplies from $356 to $300 if they become more conscious of how much paper they use. As for the expenses for meetings, he suggested they order less from Wegmans since they charge higher delivery charges than their competitors. S. Pardo said there were options on campus to save money on food. M. Leinfelder opened the floor for the members to make a motion to amend the items on the operating expenses. B. Forster made a motion to amend and K. Capossela seconded. The motion was voted and approved with 9-in favor, 0-opposed and 4-abstentions. The members further debated on whether they should use some money for operating expenses or to create incentives to cover for extended meetings, etc. N. Evensen made a motion to amend the budget for executive meetings from $75 to $150 and A. Richter seconded. The motion was voted on and approved 8-in favor, 0-opposed and 6-abstentions. N. Evensen made another motion to approve the operating expenses with the amendments as discussed. The motion was voted on and approved 11-in favor, 0-opposed and 3-abstentions. J. Kupferschmidt continued with the 2nd column, committee expenses. He explained the events committee had a large budget because of the Grad Ball. He said that out of $450 for Finance Commission, $150 was for the food for the big funding day. Another $300 was for copying and office supplies. He said even though they were trying to reduce the amount of paper copies, it would be very unlikely that they could get this below $300 since a significant part of the year had already passed. They made budget packages in the past, but now the committee is looking into stopping this.

J. Kupferschmidt said that another big expense in the budget draft came from giveaways. M. Guerrero said the GPSA could distribute grocery shopping bags with GPSA log on it. They are environmentally friendly and a great advertisement for those who were not previously familiar with GPSA. K. Capossela asked J. Kupferschmidt to re-title the 2009 Ivy Summit special project column the 2009 Ivy Summit Discretionary Fund because it was unclear. M. Leinfelder said her point was taken but they would have to come back to that after the discussion on committee expenses. M. Guerrero said the budget was very constrained this year. He made a motion to remove the canvassing money because they could not just allocate money to canvass just one event. M. Leinfelder said that since M. Guerrero’s motion was considered as a friendly amendment, it did not need to be voted on. The budget for Communications would go down from $3696 to $811. There were discussions and questions directed at this. A. Richter made a motion to approve the committee expenses as in the first column of the budget sheet. B. Forster seconded. The motion was voted on and approved 7-in favor, 0-opposed and 6-abstentions.

J. Kupferschmidt proposed that if committees need to exceed what was allocated to them, they had to come before the assembly to present how much money and for what reason they were asking for budget increase. N. Evensen made a motion to vote on J. Kupferschmidt’s proposal. A. Richter seconded. The motion was voted on and approved 9-in favor, 0-opposed and 4-abstentions. In response to this motion, M. Leinfelder said committee chairs would be responsible for keeping track of their spending and come before the assembly if they had any further requests later in the year. C. Mansfeldt made a motion to approve that committees be responsible for allocating their funds for different purposes. For example, they will be keeping their Advocacy funds separate from money for food. J. Kupferschmidt advocated and commented on the motives of keeping them separate. The motion was put on the table for further discussion. M. Leinfelder asked for a motion on this. A. Richter made a motion to keep food expenses separate from rest of the operating expenses. M. Guerrero seconded. The motion was voted on and approved 9-in favor, 0-opposed and 4-abstentions.

J. Kupferschmidt went over the Special Funds Expenses. He made a correction and explained the sheet line by line. He explained the plaque was one time expense. M. Guerrero made a motion to increase the budget for End of year award ceremony to $600 so that it could also include the larger CoR body. N. Evensen made a motion to discuss it more. A. Richter suggested staying with the current budget and M. Guerrero withdrew the motion. C. Mansfeldt wanted to have the budget for Ivy Summit clarified. E. Gainor explained funding available for traveling. Regarding the budget for Visit to Satellite Campuses, J. Kupferschmidt wanted to know if there was any reason to go up to Geneva again. B. Forster said it would be nice if they could have money available for that since the Geneva campus invited them to come up.

M. Leinfelder said that for the next year’s Ivy Summit that CU was going to host, the graduate school had about $6000 allocated to them and $3000 of it has been spent on reserving a conference room and paying for two of the meals for the main day. This year’s host, Harvard spent roughly $18,000 on the Ivy Summit. Their graduate council has a much larger budget to begin with, but they spent about 2/3 of their final budget on this event. K. Capossela suggested that Events Committee might increase the Grad Ball ticket price to leverage more money. J. Kupferschmidt said they decided it was not a good idea to raise the ticket price for Grad Ball. N. Evensen made a motion to approve the Special Funds budget with the two modifications. B. Forster seconded. The motion was voted on approved with 10-in favor, 0-opposed and 3-abstentions.

2. Ad-hoc Committee on Charter Review M. Leinfelder announced that C. Mansfeldt and A. Richter would be chairing this committee and most work would be taking place next year.

IV. New Business

1. R.1 Regarding Health Care and Health Insurance for Cornell Graduate Students Studying at Geneva — Submitted by: B. Forster

B. Forster explained the resolution. C. Mansfelt made a friendly amendment. B. Forster accepted. A. Richter made a motion to approve the resolution. J. Kupferschmidt seconded. The resolution was voted on and approved with 10-in favor, 0-opposed and 3-abstentions.

2. R.2 Regarding Graduate Student Housing at Schuyler House, Thurston Court, and Hasbrouck Apartments Submitted by: D.Rose, N. Brideau, and M. Leinfelder

D. Rose explained the resolution. M. Leinfelder explained a bit of the background on this issue. She said the resolution re-emphasizes the housing problems introduced in the Graduate Community Initiative. N. Evensen asked for history and B. Wickes gave a bit more history. J. Kupferschmidt suggested an amendment to the resolution and M. Leinfelder accepted it as a friendly amendment. M. Guerrero made a motion to approve the resolution. D. Rose seconded. The resolution was voted on and approved with 10-in favor, 0-opposed and 2-abstentions.

3. R.3 Regarding Communication with Graduate and Professional Students Submitted by: M. Guerrero

M. Guerrero explained the resolution. B. Forster proposed to add wording and M. Guerrero accepted it as a friendly amendment. J. Kupferschmidt made a motion to change the wording from “requests” to “urges.” M. Guerrero did not accept it as a friendly amendment. The motion was put on discussion. M. Leinfelder asked the members to vote on the amendment made by J. Kupferschmidt. A vote was held on the motion for amendment and the motion failed (0–10–2). B. Horgan proposed to use M. Leinfelder’s suggested wording. M. Guerrero accepted it as a friendly amendment. B. Wickes proposed to change the wording from “e-mails” to “net ID” and it was accepted as a friendly amendment. N. Evensen made a motion to approve the resolution with friendly amendments. A. Sikora seconded. The resolution was voted on and approved with 11-in favor, 0-opposed and 2-abstentions.

4. R.4 Regarding the Cornell Academic Calendar Submitted by: M. Leinfelder

M. Leinfelder explained the resolution. She then took some questions and comments on this. She said this did not need to be voted on now, but wanted to bring it up for discussion/debate. J. Kupferschmidt asked M. Leinfelder to state intentions of the motions on the resolution. M. Leinfelder explained the main sentiment among the faculty was that fall orientation was too long, at least for the undergraduates. They felt there was too much time in orientation and they did not know how to fill it up. The members further discussed the resolution. M. Leinfelder asked the members’ opinions. Starting on Wednesday was favored over starting on Thursday. C. Mansfeldt made a motion to take it to the next meeting in January. J. Kupferschmidt seconded. The motion was voted on and approved with 12-in favor, 0-opposed and 1-abstention.

M. Guerrero announced there would be an election of an “at-large” assembly position at the next CoR meeting.

V. Adjournment

N. Evensen made a motion to adjourn the meeting. A. Richter seconded. The meeting was adjourned at 7:33 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Elly Shin Office of the Assemblies