GSA Assembly Meeting Minutes

Friday, November 6, 2015

Husted Hall, Amitheater Room 106A

Speaker Caitlin Janiszewski called the meeting to order at 6:06 pm.

  1. Items Added to the Agenda: Add to Old Business NAGPS Proposal in the Vice President Sub-Committee Report. No objections to the change in agenda. New agenda was approved.
  2. Approval of the October 2nd Minutes. Motion to approve minutes. Seconded to the motion. Minutes were approved.
  3. Officer Reports
  4. President’s Report:
  5. Few things to update on the written report. The Official Blue Ribbon Panel Report on Stipends has been released. Have not had the chance to look over the report yet, but will in the upcoming week. Please read the report, will link it to the GSA Website in a couple of days. Feel free to send any remarks, reactions, or comments.
  6. There is a committee crisis within the GSA, encourage some of your colleagues to join some of these committees. This is your GSA; this is your Assembly we cannot do the work that we want to do without your help.
  7. Attended the public hearing on the SUNY Board of Trustees, presented testimony, particular emphasis on the new 20-hour rule for student assistants, it was not a Board of Trustees decision, but rather an HR decision. They suggest that we address this issue with the Board of Labor, because there could be a violation or a violation within the University policy. The 20-hour rule was put in place to avoid covering students under the Affordable Care Act, so the hours were cut. But it is also University Policy that students have insurance in order to enroll at this University, there’s seems to be some contradiction there that needs to be looked at.
  8. Vice President’s Report:
  9. Nothing to add to written report.
  10. Treasurer’s Report:
  11. Email her if you want to know why you were not approved (purchaser’s request). Motion to approve report. Second to the motion. Treasurer’s report is approved.
  12. Equity and Inclusion Report:
  13. Been receiving many applications for events, you guys are awesome. However, some RGSO are not attaching the actual form you guys approved last year. Do not just send a flyer in an email, she actual needs that form to vote on your events, please go on the GSA website to get the form. If you cannot find the form on the GSA website, please send her an email and she will send you the form.
  14. Programming Report:
  15. FYI for the next meeting Michael Christakis President of Student Affairs will be coming in and talking to you guys about the graduate experience.
  16. Some of the events that are coming up:
  17. First is the Social Permaculture Program which will be held tomorrow from 3 pm – 6 pm in the Business Building Room B012.
  18. On Nov. 18th there will be a Call Congress Day, it’s a chance to advocate about graduate student debt.
  19. Finally, on Dec. 2nd there will be a TedTalk by Brian Stevenson.
  20. For Call Congress Day, the issues with graduate student debt that we are focusing on are reunification of student loan rates, which will be us down the undergraduate levels to subsidized loan offers. Graduate students are much more dependable borrowers, statics show, basically right now we are cash cow. If you participate in Call Congress Day as well as the event tomorrow, and the TedTalk, you will be entered to win 1 of 10, 20 minute massages (professional masseuse). There will be pizza at the Call Congress Day.
  21. The TedTalk on December 2nd will look at asking the question have you been incarcerated in the past and how that disproportionality effects marginalized minority populations and set-ups barriers to access higher in. This TedTalk will be held in humanities 354, we want graduate students, professors, staff, as well as undergraduate students to attend. We will ask if certain professors have interest in this talk and would like to offer extra credit.
  22. Grants Report:
  23. Status of the latest grants, the numbers are very low, there are 20 names on the list and the average grant amount was $430. The grants are set, you should be receiving letters and you can start your paper work.
  24. GSA Representative Reports
  25. University Council:
  26. Discovered that People at the University of Council reads the entire reports. So will be changing the approach of how the reports will be written. The next meeting is December 4th.
  27. Lead Senator:
  28. Nothing to add.
  29. UAS Board Representatives:
  30. Nothing to add.
  31. Wages and Benefits:
  32. Blue Ribbon Panel Report is out. Need new people to join this group.
  33. Judicial Board Report:
  34. The Judicial Board has not been trained yet.
  35. Old Business
  36. Strategic Plan
  37. Motion to un-table the strategic plan. Second motion. Strategic plan was un-tabled. Plan is on the floor.No questions.
  38. No discussion on the Strategic Plan. No objections. Voting occurred. Strategic Plan passed.
  39. Stipend Update
  40. The ideas are wild ranging. There was research done last year by the wage and benefits and the treasurer of the GSA. The number one thing that was found is that we send out 12% of our entire budget for stipends on our officers, while Stony Brook spends about 20% of their budget on officers. They invest more into their officers. Rather that means direct payment or other’s, in general we went to spend 20% of our officers. That significantly changes the number we are working with. Currently spending about $21,000 on officer’s stipend and the idea is that we spend more like $33,000. That does not just mean that the e-board is splitting up that money. The question became how do we split up that money? More time is needed to decide on this manner. The general approach we are considering is assigning roughly the values to certain kinds of responsibilities. What can we hold people accountable for? A really important thing that is fundamental that the Wages and Benefits Committee agreed on is that we can only pay people for things we can hold them accountable for. There’s a lot of things that people in the GSA do, that we cannot hold them accountable for. We should not be paying people for things we cannot check on. Then you can get into out of control spending. We want to the proposal ready by the December meeting. Those are the principals, but we don’t have the exact proposal yet.
  41. RGSO Guidelines
  42. Last time the Vice President of the GSA was asked where the number 40 comes from for letting RGSO having a 2nd representative. This is still the recommendation. Received data from the Office of Institutional Research, looked at that range and did some computing. There are a few that have weird classifications, so assuming these are non-degree people. You can see that certain studies (7 departments) that have less than 40 students, the rest of the departments have more than 40 students and are already allowed to have more than 1 representative.
  43. Point of Information: If we go into an involvement model, many departments are not active. Would it not be wise to to look at department involvements?
  44. If we go to an involvement model it becomes too inconsistent.
  45. We have RGSO that are very small, but have heavily involved. That maybe they should be able to have two representatives, are you saying that the number should be lower than 40 students?
  46. Initial thought is that some adjustment that be sensitive to the fact that smaller RGSO are very involved. Could be lower the number.
  47. Comment: If we’re having issues with committee membership, why not just have 50% membership and 50% for RGSO. For proportional representation.
  48. The amount of people fluctuates from semester to semester. May be difficult for departments to find more than one student to represent.
  49. Point of Information: How long did it take you to gather these numbers
  50. Received a response within one day.
  51. Departments fluctuate from year to year. Can we make a point to say that once every academic year the Vice President receives these numbers?
  52. Clarification what’s currently on the table is that no changes are occurring to the original proposed guideline.
  53. Clarifying one thing, actually trying to get this thing into the guidelines. Right now its been in practice, but there’s no way to enforce it. Its not in the guidelines, I need you guys to put this in the guidelines or something else. Need something in the guidelines how RGSO and departments can get multiple representatives.
  54. 25% of the departments have less than 40 students.
  55. Comment: In experience of running committees before. Hard press to base it off of committee participation, you can have an incredibly active RGSO, an incredibly active E-Board, and very good Assembly Rep’s, and your committee Rep’s get noting, but benefiting the RGSO. Remember Political Science last year came to 2/12 meetings. Think that basing it off of that gives it a method that’s not only un-tractable, but would be negative to most RGSOs.
  56. Comment: For there to be more than 4,000 graduate students at University at Albany, but can only pull 30-40 people at the end of the day. There is clearly an issue with involvement, way things are currently done don’t seem to be working. Encourage to pull participation in some way, it should give departments more reps.
  57. Every department of campus is allowed to have a representative.
  58. Comment: I don’t know if changing the system is necessarily going to change the problem. There’s only seven departments that have less than 40 students, all the other departments have way more students then that, but there not heavily involved. So I don’t think changing the system would bring more people to the GSA.
  59. Second to table.
  60. Comment: Think that people are not understanding. How is the GSA recruiting graduate students and how do departments get representatives? The reports are little too long; they need to be shorten. Then when presenting the reports, there should be an executive summary.
  61. At the beginning of the school year orientations are given to recruit students. Your other questions can be addressed after the meeting ends.
  62. Debate
  63. Against: This issue needs more discussion. Motion to discuss further and send it back to the RGSO committee.
  64. Question: If we were to implement this, what happens to RGSO who only has 1 vote and larger groups can have 4 votes?
  65. The numbers proposed (75 is the median) which is basically the middle number of departments. Half of the departments are 75 people or less, 75% of our departments are 120 or less. That’s where these numbers come from. Everyone who is an RGSO has 1 representative. It’s up to the department to dictate how many representatives they want to have.
  66. Question: How will that be handled, when the health department is four separate departments?
  67. Have to look at the numbers because not sure. The only way to break down the RGSO is by the numbers that the University provides. For RGSO is where you pull your membership from.
  68. Against: Appreciate the amount of work put in this. Don’t think its quite ready yet. To extend the concerns saying the history of RGSO is they wanted to have four members representing their departments, the weight of influence grows tremendously. Even if a department has more students the max it could have, is four representatives. This seems like it’s not quite together yet. I also think it should be motion to send back to committee.
  69. Vice President: There’s see to be a lot of feedback on this issue. Encourage you to form your own sub-committee ad revise this plan.
  70. The motion was seconded to send back to committee.
  71. Vice President: Again encourage you form your own sub-committee, if you guys want something different, you should form your own committee and revise the issues.
  72. Point of Information: Which committee are they trying to send it back to?
  73. Assume the RGSO committee.
  74. This proposal should be sent back to the RGSO committee; it seems like creating more committees will not be wised. You’ve already done a fantastic job with it, just need to make minor adjustments. If it’s the case that need ideas need to be given to the committee, will be more than willingly to join the committee and help create new ideas.
  75. Point of Inquiry: If this motion is passed, do we go back to the issue?
  76. No if you vote against, a new resolution would have to come about. If you vote for the motion, it will be sent back to the RSGO committee.
  77. Voting occurred. Proposal is sent back to committee. Warning the new proposal will not be available by the December meeting.
  78. NAGPS Proposal
  79. In the Vice President report is a draft of the NAGPS sub-committee of the RSGO committee. If you like what you see, want to make a few edits, encourage you to make a motion to pass it and then amend the document. If you have more than a couple of changes to make, you have until next week to give feedback. Encouraging you to send feedback. Have a week to give comments by email. Unless someone motions this proposal, this is just information. Will be included as an agenda item at the next meeting.
  80. New Business
  81. Open Access Resolution
  82. Lisa wrote the template. Open Access is the idea that research that is published has a cost, if it’s not already available by the Library. The idea of Open Access is that one year from the day of publication, all Federally funded research is being publically available. Graduate students need these resources for dissertations or thesis. It’s not all research, but it’s a step in the right direction. Asking the Assembly to support this resolution, the senate team will take it to the University Senate, so the University can be involved. Motion to adopt this resolution. Second Motion.
  83. Debate
  84. For: This is already a policy for NAH, agree should be available for everyone.
  85. Question: You want access to what exactly?
  86. Any research that is paid by tax payers, the public should have access to these articles. Publically available, if a high school teacher wanted access that could have it.
  87. For: Several California Universities have done this for all research done on their campus. California has a model in many ways we would like to mimic, as far as they pay and the way they run their advocacy in graduate student organizations.
  88. Voting occurred. Motion passed. (Open Access Resolution)
  89. Mizzou Resolution
  90. This resolution comes from the Wages and Benefit Committee, meeting on Monday, like to support student activist at the University of Missouri.
  91. Background: At the University of Missouri on August 14th with a few hours notice they cancelled health insurance to their graduate students. This resulted into an uproar among the graduate students, subsequently some of been reinstated because they could not do it. This lead to a unionization moment at the University of Missouri which is a public school system. Some of you have heard that talked about private schools that have trying to unionize as a separate issue. There are four universities within the state university of the Missouri system, Mizzou is obviously the forefront. They have organized a union called the Form of Graduate Students Rights is pursuing that unionization, in addition to that other student groups re-emerged to deal with issues on the campus including issues of racism, homophobia, and inequality that graduate students phase. One of the groups is known as Concerned Students 1950, which is reference to the first year a black student was amended to the University of Missouri. Starting last Monday at 9 am Johnathon Butler, one of the activist in the group begun a hunger strike calling for the resignation of their President Timothy Wolfe, for not addressing these issues, including an incident that occurred at their Homecoming Parade. Given the issues being handle at the University of Missouri are really nation wide concerns, the Syracuse GSO issued a statement of support. The Wages and Benefits is asking this body to issue its own form of a statement of support through its resolution.
  92. Motion that the GSA Assembly support the activism at the University of Missouri. Second to the motion.
  93. Point of Inquiry: How would passing or not passing this resolution help the University of Missouri?
  94. Talked to John Butler about what he needed. He basically outlined a couple of things, social media present, letters of support, and also asked for prayers. If we did pass it, it would be alongside what Syracuse has done and the effort NAGPS will be doing. We would be apart of the national conversation about this issue. Have a conference call at 12:30 pm tomorrow with the policy permit NAGPS contracts to discuss how we are going to get the word out about this. There is a hashtag on social media call the MizzouHungerStrike which is also wants people using. By supporting this resolution, you not only have a public document to send forward, but you also give the e-board the right to go and speak on this and use the hashtag on social media.