MINUTES
Graduate & Professional Student Assembly
GPSA Discussion Meeting
Monday, April 4th, 2011
Willard Straight Hall Memorial Room
5:30–7:00 P.M.

I. Area Designation Caucus Discussions

C. Mansfeldt called the group to order at 5:31 p.m. Everyone was broken up into groups based on superfield to discuss the upcoming agenda, including the voting process and the new way meetings will be occuring.

II. Welcome and Introductions

a. Roll Call of the Voting Members

Members Present: K. Albert, S. An, T. Balcerski, N. Baran, C. Clarke, E. Cortens, B. Gould, R. Hartshorn, S. Harya, B. Heavner, C. Heckman, Y. Izrayelit, N. Little, C. Mansfeldt, J. Swartz, M. Tootill

Members Absent: R. Adra, N. Yakubu

III. Approval of the Minutes

a. Minutes of the January 24th, 2011 Meeting

E. Cortens made amendments, first changing the number on the top of page 2 to “283 graduate student organizations”. This was accepted as friendly. He also amended his statement within the minutes to say “altered it to reflect the GPSA’s advisory role.” This was also taken as friendly. The minutes passed by a vote of 15–0−1.

b. Minutes of the February 21st, 2011 Meeting

B. Forster made an amendment under section 4b additional items, “For explaining resolution 5.” This was seen as friendly. There was no opposition and thus the minutes passed.

c. Minutes of the March 14th, 2011 Meeting

E. Cortens made an amendment to add “Absent — B. Heavner” and C. Mansfeldt and R. Adra under present and late members respectively. This was taken as friendly. There was no opposition and the minutes passed.

IV. Announcements and Reports

a. Executive Updates

• i. Update on Campus Transparency (C. Mansfeldt)

C. Mansfeldt gave an update. This will be going on for the next year, and they want communication to be more fluid. There will be changes in the future, some on the leadership side.

• ii.Expansion of Cornell University Applied Sciences in NYC, Invitation to Provide Input in the Process (Confidentiality Required) (C. Mansfeldt)

If you’re interested in serving on a very small committee, they’re interested in how it will impact engineering students and GPSA structure by expanding the Applied Sciences. This will be confidential. Approach him after the meeting if you’re interested. B. Heavner asked the time commitment. C. Mansfeldt said that it will be very minimal, 3–4 meetings in the time span.

• iii. Communications Committee (J. Swartz)

The committee’s next meeting will be Wednesday at 10 am in Duffield. They had their second Cornell Caring Community Celebration committee meeting. The event will be Tuesday, April 26 in the afternoon. J. Swartz has been talking to B. Forster and other individuals involved with mental health organizations which address issues in the grad community who should be involved.

b. Committee and Liaison Updates

• i. Events Committee

N. Baran said now that Grad Ball is over, and they are going to try to have a couple small events before the end of the year. They will be talking about the future graduate professional student programming board later in the meeting. They’re still collecting signatures to apply for byline funding to apply for student activity fee. They need 10% of grad student signatures, so they are looking for any help you might want to provide. The deadline for signatures is April 25.

• ii. Student Advocacy

The next meeting is April 13, at 4 pm in the Big Red Barn.

• iii. Ad-hoc Survey Committtee (E. Cortens)

The survey went out on March 24 to a random sampling of grad students. He urged you if you did receive it to respond. Reminders go out on a weekly basis. The survey will close a week after the last reminder. As of now there has been a 37.3 percent response rate. They are aiming for 60 percent.

• iv.GPSAFC (B. Hartshorn)

There will be an info session for annual budgets. Also, he asked for help from individuals to help go through the annual budgets on April 30th. They receive about 250 applications for student organizations and the more volunteers, the faster the process goes. There will be a seminar this Saturday. The April 30th meeting will be in B09 Sage Hall starting at 9 am.

• v.Ad-hoc Environmental Sustainability Committee (B. Gould)

They ran the poster contest last week. Great entries are all posted in the Big Red Barn. Next meeting is Friday at the barn at 8.

• vi.Ad-hoc Mental Health Committee (B. Forster)

Last year, the GPSA passed resolution 14, which called for the creation of a mental health website, which was delayed until this year. Within the grad school site, there’ll be a section entitled “Life at Cornell.” He discussed the formation of the site called “Success in Graduate School.”

• vii.Faculty Senate Liaison (C. Heckman)

The General Committee has been looking at the grievance policy and how all students can go through and see who to go to. Talk to him if you’ve gone through it and have input.

V. Business of the Day

a. Resolution 7. A Resolution to Revise the Funding Guidelines of the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly Finance Commission (K. Albert, Presentation Only)

He thanked members of the Appropriations Committee for their help. K. Albert gave a summary of proposed revisions. The biggest change is in the programming category. There is a lot more flexibility for how groups have proposals, making it easier. They have clarified points of confusion and made it into a more readable guideline. They eliminated funding limits for subcategories. All programming expenses will still be capped at $1500. This should ease review of annual budgets as well as reduce need for special project requests.

E. Cortens said that the single largest change is the program category. If the event is going to cost me 800 dollars for the speaker, I could apply for 500 dollars for the speaker and 300 for lighting and then spend freely within the category. This way they can spend the whole 800 dollars on the speaker. The allowed guidelines to reflect the process we were encouraging.

T. Balcerski said that the limits that have been maintained within the document, most of the numbers, the ultimate caps kept the same. What is the rationale, since the SAF has increased by about 8%. K. Albert said that is a good question. He thinks they didn’t see it as a major problem, and it was not something organizations were complaining about.

b. Resolution 8. Adoption of a Graduate & Professional Student Assembly Orientation Guide (B. Forster)

They have been discussing this throughout the semester. They acknowledge people who helped him write it, D. Evensen, C. Clarke, C. Mansfeldt, E. Cortens who helped nitpick, S. An, N. Baran, and K. Albert for cosponsoring. Because of ongoing questions, the guidebook was created. The purpose is to allow people to see how things run. B. Forster explained what the guidebook contains. The resolution has added an amendment to the bylaws to say that it’s the operations and staffing committee’s job to update it. It also says the guidebook should be available on the website.

T. Balcerski spoke against the resolution in formal debate. The change to the bylaws seems to put an undue burden on the operations and staffing committee and he asks for it to be struck and put under the counsel’s office.

E. Cortens noted that they don’t always have a counsel. He suggested putting it under the counsel and then Operations and Staffing in case the counsel isn’t in existence. B. Forster noted that the charter states that the counsel does not have to do anything he doesn’t want to.

E. Cortens motion to move to informal debate. C. Clarke seconded. They moved into informal debate. B. Heavner said that they mentioned a wiki. Is that something you decided to move forward with? B. Forster said that he sent an email saying the wiki statement should be removed.

C. Heckman thinks if we want to focus on this question, we’re going to have to move it away from the guidebook and it’ll get mired. If this is going to be a community document, a wiki would be the best form. But at the same time, it will take a lot of effort to get a pdf into that sort of format. If we want this ready by the end of the year, he urged to move away from this question.

B. Heavner did agree that it added new responsibilities to op and staff. Does anyone have any ideas about who would be best to have ownership and how as a body?

After more discussion, E. Cortens motioned to close debate and move to vote. It was seconded by S. An.

By a vote of 13 — 1 — 2, resolution 8 passes and will be incorporated into the bylaws.

VI. Elections of the GPSA 2011–2012 Voting Members

There are 3 biological sciences, 3 humanities, 4 social sciences, 4 physical sciences seats to be allocated this evening. They broke up into caucuses to vote for new voting members.

New Voting Members for Physical Sciences are Steven An (ssa38), Yevgeniy Izrayelit (yi62), and Yan Jiun Chen (yc462).

New Voting Members for Biological Sciences are Erik Smith (eas56) and James Keach (jek288).

New Voting Members for Humanities are Evan Cortens (epc44), Bryan Alkemeyer (bca8), and Mia Tootill (mst88).

New Voting Members for Social Sciences are Nicole Baran (nmb68), Rebecca Robbins (rsr38), Marquis Hawkins (mlh259), and Kyle Albert (kwa23).

There was one seat remaining because Biological Sciences did not allocate all 3 seats. The floor was open for an At-Large. Alison Nash (agn2) was nominated. She accepted the nomination. The nominations were closed by C. Clarke and seconded by E. Cortens. By acclimation, she was elected as the last remaining GPSA voting member.

VII. Open Forum

a. Resolution 9. Formation of a Graduate Student Programming Board

N. Baran explained the resolution and the fact that they still need signatures.

C. Clarke said that they asked for 2.50, but it would also remove the Events Committee funding from the GPSA budget, so it might not increase the activity fee.

B. Gould asked what percentage of grad students participate in events. N. Baran said that they’ll get that information from the survey. There is variation depending on the event. The grads nights out are packed bars but are a very different crowd than bowling or ice skating. Similarly, grad ball sold 350–400 tickets. Emails go out to everyone here and hopefully are forwarded to fields and also go to the facebook group people.

This will be voted on at the final GPSA meeting of the year.

b. Other Items

T. Balcerski raised the question of the GPSA’s town hall and to point out that we haven’t yet held this town hall and is there interest or movement to do so.

M. Hawkins said that this was supposed to be held during the means restriction meeting but there were some technical issues that occurred. He would still like to get that done, and plans to talk to Brian as well as Nicole in depth to have something in the next few weeks.

B. Forster reminded newly elected voting members to give him your email in order to receive the handbook.

E. Cortens noted that if you’re on the mailing list, you got an email from D. Evensen about Andrew Brokman’s convention. H e’s soliciting grad student input. If there are questions, ask him.

C. Mansfeldt asked if there was inclination to go somewhere other than the Memorial room for meetings. There was and Malott Hall was suggested.

E. Cortens motioned to adjourn. It was seconded by C. Clarke. The meeting was adjourned at 6:58 p.m.

Respectfully Submitted,

Brittany Rosen