Meeting Minutes for the Graduate Student Association General Council Meeting

December 9th, 2007

Meeting starts at 7:08pm 12/09/2007.

  1. Approval of agenda – agenda approved.

  2. Approval of meeting minutes on 11/11/2007 – meeting minutes approved.

  3. New Business:

    1. Recognition of GSOs:

      1. Graduate School of Education: Club recognized and approved. Departmental organization.

      2. RAW: No representative of RAW showed up.


    1. Proposals from the floor?


  1. Issues of the day

    1. Library databases going away: (President) Lots of database access in state and university libraries will no longer be available (11 of them) due to funding cut. We distributed some resolution in this meeting and the resolution discussed about actions that can be taken with respect to the cut. Any comments, questions and suggestions on the resolution will be appreciated. (Vice President) We need to put pressure on the state regarding this in order to ensure higher education. (President) We have also been working closely with a librarian and the librarian suggested that the best action we can take would be calling the number provided in the resolution. (Scott) Just a suggestion. If you call the Governor's office, it might be a good idea to mention that 1 million dollars is being cut for higher education library initiative while the governor has committed $1 million of his own money and to help raise $30 million total to expand the football stadium, especially for sky boxes for the wealthy. (Vote) All in favor for the resolution. No objection. 1 abstention.

    2. Stadium expansion: There have been some debates on the expansion of the stadium. The future of the expansion is still uncertain. 30 million will come from the state, and the rest should come from the money where people use to buy the seats to watch games. However, at this moment the state has withdrawn the 30 million dollars. Further, if the seats go unsold, Rutgers owns the debt. (Charlotte) Question: has there been any proposal regarding how much the seats will be charged? (President) No. In various meetings that I attended, people have been complaining about the transparency issue. The administration behind the stadium expansion has been kept a lot of details in the dark. The meetings appear to have three levels. Students are only allowed to join the public meetings. (Scott) Rutgers actually has to take out the loan for the stadium expansion in the amount of $80+ million dollars. What happens is that Rutgers will be issuing bonded indebtedness for the loan. At this moment, there is $500 million in deferred maintenance costs at Rutgers, and the university could use such a loan to begin to fix these long-standing problems. In a larger context, having such a huge loan will affect Rutgers’ ability to issue further bonds without reducing its bond rating, thereby making loans unavailable for other projects. (President) We should draft a resolution for opposition of such expansion. We also can vote on this issue to state GSA’s position on this issue. (Ben A) The university has been cutting courses and lots of resources right now and on the other hand is working towards expanding this stadium. It is important for us to come out and clearly state that we oppose the expansion as facilities are not adequate and the quality of education has not been met. The expansion is not of utmost priority. (Vote for transparency issue) All vote in favor of more transparency. (Vote for opposing stadium expansion) 21 in favor; 1 oppose, 11 abstentions.

    3. Discussion on printing policy for Fall 2008: The person in charge of computers on campuses has expressed his intension of putting a limit on the number of pages one can print. In fact, someone printed out 70,000 pages last year in computer labs. At this point, there has not been evidence on any separation of policies regarding undergraduate and graduate students. There also has been a lot of waste on printing. It is important to make people conscious about the things that they are printing. (Vice President) We should try to push for separation of policies for graduate and undergraduate students. We should also push for sensible limits. (President) Previously the machines on campuses are set to print single-sided by default. Now the settings have been changed to print double-sided by default. The goal is change the policies such that 95% of the population will not be affected; only those 5% that printed out enormous number of pages will be affected.

    4. Spring allocations: Deadline for spring allocation is 01/31/2008. The committee will review the application in early February. If any of the GSO believes that they need more money, they are encouraged to apply. Any group that need more money but has already gone over the limit, please apply anyway. We will, however, give higher priorities to GSOs that are under the limit. (Question) How do I apply? (Answer) Go to GSA website. There are application guidelines and packages that you can download to fill out. Once you fill out the forms, submit it to GSA office. (Vice President) For those GSO who applied for large amount of money but at this point have spent very little, please be prepared that when you apply for Spring allocation, we may have questions to ask you. We do understand that some groups who applied for large amount of money now may be holding the event in the future. Those cases are understandable.

    5. Problems of implementation of the new TA/GA contract: (Charlotte W) The TA/GA Steering Committee is focusing right now on implementing two important things in the new contract. First, the “work with family leave” provision. In the new contract, in addition to the 6 weeks of maternal leave, we have negotiated 8 more weeks for parents (including the father and including domestic partnership). Second, we have negotiated health coverage for partial TA/GAs. We are in the process of implementing these, and we hope that people who are here in the meeting tonight and who know other people in this kind of situation can bring them forward to GSA so that we can help them to gain access to the resources. (Vice President) It is important people here tonight go back to their departments and spread the words.

    6. GSA representative to university-wide Work and Family Committee.  Michelle Pinheiro (Social Work) elected, contingent on the University accepting our rep.


  1. Reports

    1. GSA Officers:

      1. Spent-so-far: Everyone in the meeting should be getting a spreadsheet showing how much money each GSO has spent so far, as of 11/26/2007. If you believe that there is some discrepancy, please contact us. Also for those GSOs expecting to be reimbursed, please stay after the meeting to claim your check.

      2. Reminder of Spring allocation deadlines: 1/31/2008.

    2. Internal Committees

      1. Request for new ISAC chair: ISAC (International Student Affairs Committee) needs a new chair. If anyone is interested, please apply for the position. Responsibilities include one social hour every two weeks and some other tasks that will not take too much time. The chair does not need to be an international student.


    1. External Committees (none)


    1. Administrative Assistant & Events Coordinator (Benjamin Peters and Ben Arenger)


  1. Questions and Announcements

    1. No GSA film this week.

    2. Naomi Fleming wants to start a GSO called “women in GSO”. Anyone who is interested in the idea please contact her.

    3. (Diana Johnson) On Feb. 29th, the Nutritional Science GSA will be holding a graduate student symposium on nutrition and health. We are calling for abstracts, which is due on Dec. 15th to jdellava@rci.rutgers.edu.