Agenda for the Graduate Student Association General Council Meeting

May 11th, 2008

Meeting starts at 7:15pm 05-11-2008.

  1. Approval of agenda and meeting minutes. Approved. No objection, no abstention.

  2. New Business:

    1. Recognition of new GSOs:

      1. Organic Gardening Club: the Graduate Cook Organic Garden club is designed to encourage students to grow their own food organically. Members may apply for a plot on the Cook campus and may grow vegetables, flowers, herb etc. on their plot. The club has workdays to help maintain the garden area, and invites experts in to teach us about different aspects of organic gardening. Anyone who is interested in joining the club should contact Naomi Fleming at sustainability@gsa.rutgers.edu. Vote for recognition: all in favor, no objection, no abstentions. The group is recognized.

      2. Iranian Fine Arts Society: the purpose of the organization shall be to hold regular meetings and to host events that are focused on Iranian literature, cinema, music and other fields of fine art. We aim to encourage discussion and to promote awareness of different aspects of Iranian culture. Question: Is it aimed at Iranian students? Can students of other ethnicity join? Yes, students of other ethnicity are welcome to join but we need to emphasize that we focus on Iranian fine arts. Vote for recognition: all in favor, no objection, no abstention. The group is recognized.

    2. Proposals from the floor?


  1. Issues of the day

    1. Update on GSA officers election – final candidate slate

      1. President: Ignacia Perugorria from Sociology Dept.

      2. Vice President: Rebecca Steele from German Dept

      3. Treasurer: Sarah Murray from Linguistic Dept.

      4. Secretary: Aaron Braver from Linguistic Dept.

      5. Senator: Lulu Li from Biomedical Engineering Dept. and Ben Hicks from Classics Dept.

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    1. Election of committee chairs:

      1. TA/GA (Joseph Dwyer)

      2. Sustainability, (Naomi Fleming)

      3. Publications,

      4. ISAC (Ramya Ramadurai),

      5. Social/Culture (Carlos Diuk),

      6. Student affair (Elric Kline)

Vote: All in favor, no objection, no abstention

    1. Election of Senators: The senate meets once a month on Fridays. Currently we have two candidates and we still need one more. Our candidates are Lulu Li from Biomedical Engineering Dept and Ben Hicks from Classics Dept.

    2. Graduate School-NB – meeting with Dean candidates. We have two candidates: xxxx and Jolie Cizewski. Some student representatives met with the candidates and both meetings were good. After the meetings we wrote up some confusions and each of them have responded to our questions.

    3. Discussion of possible changes to funding guidelines: We are suggesting a small change to funding guidelines (distributed material). This past year, we have this $4,000 allocation limit per group and this year some group went over the limit and we also imposed a 11% increase in allocation. We propose the following change: Keep the limit for fall, and in spring you can apply for more funding and each group in need of more money can exceed the limit with the hard limit being $5,000 (in other words, groups applying for $4000 and are granted in fall can in addition apply for $1,000 more in Spring). Question: Will the individual categories add up to $5,000? Answer: Right now, they add up to more than $4,000 with the current funding guideline, but we believe that we can adjust those categories accordingly to reflect the change. President: Note that we just propose to increase the funding limit, and it does not imply that the groups will get more allocation. (Treasurer) Right after each allocation deadline, the external allocation committee members read the application forms and allocate money according to the eligibility of the items. (Naomi) Maybe some money can be pre-allocated in each semester so that newly recognized GSOs can apply for funding. (President): We will consider that and change the funding guidelines accordingly. Vote for change: all in favor, no objection, no abstentions. GSA will change the funding guidelines accordingly.

    4. Financial state of GSA (distributed material): Sarah (Treasurer) talks about the current financial state of GSA, including income and expenses.

    5. Printing policy: Answers for questions asked in the last GSA council meeting

      1. Can the printing balance carry over to the next year? No

      2. Double-sided? All printers in the labs are configured to print double-sided. The limit is 750 pieces of paper, which is 1500 pages double-sided.

      3. More for students writing dissertations? That is what we have been asking for and will be asking for (supported by the Dean, Barbara)

      4. Does that include department allotment? No, such printing policy only applies to campus-wide labs, not department-specific labs.

(Question from Graduate students): Can we suggest department-specific policy. For example, students in the Science discipline usually have access to labs, which are not subjected to the printing limit, and students in the Humanities disciplines do not have such luxury. (President): Joe Sanders is currently studying the printing behavior of people from different departments.

(Question from Graduate students): Sometimes when we print from our own computer, even though we prefer double-sided printing, the printers still spit out papers printed on single-sided only. (Answer): The setting can be adjusted; however you may have a problem if you print from your own laptop.

  1. Reports

    1. GSA Officers:

      1. President: year-end balance

    2. Internal Committees

      1. TA/GA Steering Committee: We had our annual TA/GA steering committee award dinner and around 50 people came. The event was very successful. Charlotte Whalen won the TA/GA Activist of the Year award. We also created an award, the Scott Bruton award, and the winner is Scott Bruton. Such award is not annual and one needs to do something very special to win such award. We are also interested in recruiting people who want to make contributions to the TA/GA steering committee by holding a retreat in Johnson Park on this coming Tuesday, May 13th 2pm. It will be our strategic planning section, in which we talk about what we have achieved this year and what we want to do for the following year.

      2. Sustainability: Flea market: We held a flea market event this morning (05-11-2008). As for future plan, if anyone is interested in the chairing position, please contact us at GSA. The other plan is garden plots for housing on Busch campus. (Scott on history of the sustainability committee): The committee started (two presidents ago). The committee pushed really hard to start using sustainable products. The university in the beginning was very reluctant but eventually started to comply with the policies. The committee is also about to encourage students here to use more sustainable products, for example, imposing the GSOs to use reusable utensils. The committee has done great things to the community.

    3. External Committees

      1. University Senate / BOT: (Ryan Fowler) A new academic integrity policy will soon be in effect. Right now, the burden is on the teacher to act as prosecutors whenever a case comes up. As a result, a great many violations was not reported since a great deal of burden is put on the professor/lecturer. Now the policy is that an independent group of people will take on the burden of proving the cases. On the other hand, the stadium expansion is still taking place, even with GSA’s explicit opposition.

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

      1. Final submission of PERs: Keep in mind, the last day to file your PER is July 1st, 2008. There are also a few checks waiting to be picked up, please pick up your checks. They will expire in 90 days. If you have money left over at this point and want to hold new events, please make sure that you contact us to check the eligibility of reimbursement for such event. Also, be sure that you know how much money you have used under your allocation, if not, please email help@gsa.rutgers.edu to find out. Please make sure that you do not go over the allocated amount since we cannot guarantee reimbursement for exceeded expenses. (Sarah): In the next academic year, before the funding allocation application deadline, we will also hold a workshop for GSO representatives.


  1. Questions and Announcements

A tribute to our president, Carlos: Carlos started as a GSA secretary three years ago and has been the president for GSA for two years. He has done so much contribution to the graduate students including hosting movie nights, facing and sometimes challenging people administrative positions in the university. Carlos will be assuming the Social/Cultural position in GSA and will no longer be able to lead us. Let’s thank Carlos for his wonderful leadership. (Slide shows)