Agenda for the Graduate Student Association General Council Meeting

April 20th, 2008

Meeting starts at 7:10pm 04/20/2008.


  1. Approval of agenda and meeting minutes for last GSA Council meeting: approved, no objection, no abstention.

  2. New Business:

    1. Proposals from the floor?

      1. Composers forum (departmental group) ask for recognition: The composers forum is in the same academic department with musicology, which is already a recognized GSO.

Recognizing the composers forum can be done; however, due to funding guidelines, the composers group and musicology society will be considered jointly as a joint GSO. Vote for recognition: all in favor, no objection, no abstention. (official recognition is contingent on all paper works being correct. No funding can be allocated for this semester.)

      1. Vote for ISAC chair – (Ramya Ramadurai): All approved, no opposition, no abstentions.


  1. Issues of the day

    1. Elections and nominees for GSA Officers + Senate + Board of Trustees (BOT). We accept nominations until May 3rd. Voting process starts on May 4th and terminates on May 10th. To nominate someone, please send a note to GSA, along with the position of interest, and 5 supporting signatures from graduate students. We also need volunteers to run the elections (vote counting etc.). Current nominees for each position are:

      1. President: Rebecca Steele from German Dept.

      2. Vice President: Densitsa Tilkidjieva from Computer Science Dept.

      3. Treasurer: Sarah Murray from Linguistic Dept.

      4. Secretary: Aaron Braver from Linguistic Dept.

      5. BOT: Ben Hicks from Classics Dept.

      6. Senator: Lulu Li from Biomedical Engineering Dept.

                    Voting procedure will be announced soon. We are considering web voting to encourage participation so that students do not need to come to College Ave. campus to vote.

    1. Recognition of Cook Graduate Organic Garden Club:

    2. Tent State University:

    3. Printing Policy: The new printing policy will come into effect next semester. The limit will be 750 sheets or 1500 double-sided pages. That will cover 93% of the graduate students. We have been contacting Joe Sanders, who is the person responsible for this policy. He also wants to hear feedbacks from graduate students. If you have any concerns, please contact us so that we can relay the message to Joe. GSA wants to have different printing quota for students who are writing dissertation. However, the policy has not been fully determined. GSA also wants to have distinction between graduate and undergraduate students. At present, we are not sure about the charge for each page after the quota is exceeded. Questions from graduate students: does the quota zero out after the end of each semester/academic year? A: GSA will relay the question to Joe Sanders.

    4. PER deadline: The academic year is about to end. The last day to turn in PERs is July 1st, but turn them in as soon as possible. If you want to be reimbursed in June or July, please send in your PER in May. Since GSA officers and staff will be out-of-town during parts of the summer, PERs turned in after the end of May may not be processed immediately. PERs turned in on July 1st may not be available for pickup until August.


  1. Reports

    1. GSA Officers

    2. Internal Committees

      1. TA/GA Steering Committee – AFT Affiliation

The contract between the TA/GA steering committee and AFT (American Federation of Teachers) is about to end. In the past three years, AFT has provided lots of help to the union, including membership recruitment, contract negotiations, political influence, leadership development, unionization and alliances. Please vote ‘Yes’ for affiliation with AFT again. Members of the union should already have received ballots from AAUP to vote. Please send in your ballot on time. The committee also has set up a desk, members of the union can also vote before exiting the room after the meeting. For the TA/GAs who currently are not members, it is very important to join the union to improve the strength of the union.

The TA/GA steering committee is also organizing an annual TA/GA award dinner. Once the date of the event has been determined, we will send out announcements. The TA/GA committee has been working very hard to improve the lives of TAs and GAs.

      1. Sustainability

    1. External Committees

      1. University Senate / BOT

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

      1. Benjie Peters: Please send in a PER as soon as an event has occurred; PERs are due within 90 days of the event. Also, pick up checks as soon as possible: they expire 90 days after they are issued.

      2. Benjie Peters: Our apology to representatives of GSOs tonight for not having pizza. They should be delivered.

      3. Benjie Peters: If you are expecting to be reimbursed, please come forward after the meeting and claim your checks.

    3. GSOs:

      1. School of Social works is sponsoring a team in New York City on May 18th for the AIDS walk. We are also soliciting donations for the sponsorship. On May 23rd, the will be a seminar on brain trauma 4:30-6:30pm. here will be a video conference across the three campuses, though the conference actually takes place on Newark campus. The school of social work also have experienced loss of a student who have been killed due to domestic-violence related issues. The students of Social works will be wearing purple ribbons during commencement this year.

      2. ISAC chair (Ramya Ramadurai): We have completed collection of foreign currencies after the last meeting. However, we are still missing the currencies of two countries: China and Turkey. If you are from these two countries and would like to donate some currencies for display, please contact us.


  1. Questions and Announcements