GSC BoD meeting: 6/07/01

Meeting Convened at 12:00

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Members and guests present:

Alejandro Backer, Jeff Bergthorson, Isaac Chenchiah, Jason Cohen, Catherine Cornu, Diego Dugatkin, Michael Fleming, Florian Gstrein, James Harrington, Benedict Hebert, Sidharth Jaggi, Michael Johnson, Fok-Yan Leung, Timothy Lesko, Jose Mumbru, Steve Pracko, Sarah Stewart, Ayah Bandeh-Ahmadi (ascit/totem), Craig Countryman (surfsac), Justin Ho (ascit), Ted Jou (surfsac)

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The minutes from May’s meeting were approved by consensus.

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Underrepresented options:

We are currently missing representatives from Physics, Math, and Astronomy and we would like to recruit at least one person from each option. To help do this, we were thinking that we should approach people from different venues, in person, by email and as always, our trusty newsletter.

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Email lists:

There are 3 graduate student email lists that have been established and are to be advertised in the GSC Newsletter. These lists are meant as a vehicle to facilitate discussion on topics directly relating to improving the quality of graduate student life. The lists’ names are related to the topics that they are to be used for. Please note that these lists are open for anyone to subscribe to, but their content is moderated. The lists are gshousing, gscsocials, and gsparking.

Motion to approve the above lists: Passes by Consensus.

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GPS handbook:

This is a handbook that includes some division specific aspects and tends to be more technically oriented than the Technique. This handbook talks about how to transition between academics and research, with a specific emphasis on the local departmental guidelines. There are quality of life issues included, some of which link to the technique. They even include information on how to search for a job when one graduates.

This reference is a great way to provide unofficial help for people who may be stuck. Since the authors have at one time been students, they can offer an understandable perspective on the problem at hand. This handbook, if used in conjunction with other similar ones to be created across other divisions, can help us to show students that there are multiple ways to attack issues that they may be dealing with. In this way, it can compliment the Technique quite well.

Some comments on this idea included:

• Creating a centralized version of information which could be used and found useful by all graduate students, with links to decentralized and division specific pages
• GPS seems to want to keep the entire document in tact; can we work around this?
• We want to have a centralized version which does not scare off people from any other divisions, as the GPS title may have the effect of doing
• Some of the issues raised here are too serious of a nature to be included in the Technique (student advisor conflict guidelines for example) and hence we SHOULD pick up the ball on this
• We could centralize all of these divisional pages created, on the responsibility of each division, so that way students can see what every division has to say
• The Technique editor should be responsible for managing and updating these centralized servers, while GPS may be able to pull it off, their department is much more community-oriented than most other ones
• Continuity and uniformity across the divisional pages, at least in layout and bounds on the material presented can help to streamline the reader’s job
• We should consider adding these aspects into the job of all future Technique Editors hired

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Student advisor conflicts:

There was a meeting with Parandeh and it was a useful meeting. The idea of having an open house for faculty interested in attending a training session was discussed. What we are to do is to determine what time would work best for this voluntary meeting, so if we can exclude days when faculty are in seminars, that would provide us with a good time to set up a meeting.

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Gradiators:

Committee: Jeff Bergthorson, Benedict Hebert, and Michael Johnson

This group needs to hold a brainstorming session to get ideas for the event. A committee chair was asked for and no one has currently stepped forward. Does anyone know when the event is to be held? No, that needed to be decided upon by the committee.

Someone asked what Gradiators was. It is a fun-filled day of physical games, water games, and food. The point is to have fun and to compete for prizes, while getting to know your community members better. A date was decided on to have the open-ended meeting.

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NSO:

There are currently 5 BoD reps that are interested in working on this. Last year, there were many more people who actually helped when the events were to be put on. Again, there was a call for a committee chair to start organizing this group, and Fok stepped up to the plate.

One mission will be to better coordinate schedules this year between the GSC and the grad office, so that such things as direct time conflicts between events can be avoided.

A meeting date was set.

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BoD retreat:

Last year this took place in the Channel Islands. The grad office paid for it last year and will hopefully do so again this year. Last year’s event was a 1-day leadership and development opportunity. We should definitely hold it before the budget meeting, to help build our ability to cooperate before that important event.

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Commencement speaker survey:

If we want to get graduate student interest in choosing a speaker, we should start assessing candidates now, so that there is sufficient time to actually try to recruit someone. This would be a brainstorming effort to reach out to the grad students to solicit their ideas. If we get some good ideas out there, the Trustees may consider some of them.

Ascit currently has a webpage for soliciting names of commencement speakers. If we got in with them, the process would be speedier than if we used a paper-based version. The way it works is a good idea, at first, anyone can propose names, and then the list gets voted on to see the support for the various different ideas. Jose will talk to ascit to get more information from them.

Another thing we can do is to review the impressions that people have had of past commencement speakers. If there were ones that people really liked, we could highlight that.

Are there any creative ideas we can think of to help attract potentially high caliber speakers, given that Caltech does not grant honorary degrees (something we were ALL glad about!).

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Totem:

This is a campus-wide literary magazine, which includes art, stories, poetry, etc. It generally runs at about 30 pages and has always been provided to each undergraduate here at the Institute, so ascit has been picking up the full tab to date. Some grad students and professors have submitted in the past and a few do every year. Whoever submitted a piece of accepted work would receive a copy. However, if we were to want to reach out and expand our base of customers, not only would we be able to provide literature to the grad students, but we would reduce the cost per copy, by being able to buy in a larger bulk volume. For us to make 500 copies more than we currently had in mind, in black and white, the cost is roughly $400.

The total number of grad students participating in submissions has been increasing, as we have been advertising to them more this year.

There was concern that if we purchased 1 copy per graduate student, that so many would wind by being immediately trashed as is the case with the 336 and other publications. However, we definitely want to promote the arts and feel that graduate students could benefit.

Motion to purchase 350 copies for $350, distribute them to the various departments, and mark the bottom of each pile with a copy labeled "do not remove". Passes by consensus.

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Beach party:

The ascit social director presented to us an idea to have a beach party over the summer, as was the GSC’s idea initially. He said that there were too many ascit obligations during the last quarter and that the previously arranged idea flubbed. Since ascit does not meet in the summer, he wanted the GSC to work with surfsac to help set up this event.

The expected date for this event would be in July. The GSC seemed interested in holding the event, at the same funding level as the past event, even though we were asked to pay more. When we asked why more was needed, we were told that ascit does not meet. But, when further questioned, the presenter (also the ascit social director) did admit that he had the authority to use ascit funds, of which there was still $1000 left in the account. However, the point was raised that not all surfsac members are also ascit members. The BoD still did not like the idea of contributing extra money above what was agreed on the previous time.

The idea was raised that surfsac could ask the Graduate Housing Office for additional funds to help make up the difference. This idea was passed onto the surfsac people.

When asked to present a budget, they did not have one. We recommended that they generate one before talking with Linda Chappell.

Motion to approve the same $300 that was approved for the previous beach trip: passes by consensus

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Bylaws amendment:

The GRB chair currently supervises the Director’s election. If we extend this power to also oversee the officer’s election, then someone at least would be empowered to make these decisions. The GRB chair’s role is to handle the GRB meetings. The current chair does not want to accept this added responsibility. We should table this idea for now and see if we can improve it.

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Club funding:

We need to hold a meeting. Steve has volunteered to chair this meeting. It will be held and any interested BoD members may participate.

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CoL (code of law):

Many of our internal decisions are official resolutions. We have been informally keeping a list of these resolutions, but only buried in the minutes from the meetings. However, in this form, they are often unwieldy and hard to manage. Instead, if we include them in this special CoL, then they will be easily accessed for all time.

The secretary will place all CoL issues in an obvious place and once approved, they will be added into a separate document, which will be a single and unified piece.

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Library survey:

The numbers from the survey are available. The responses were strongly in favor of having a browsable library, somewhere on-campus. At the current time, there is no clear solution to this issue. The idea of keeping a browsable library may happen, but it may have to be off campus in this case. Ultimately the decision is made higher up the chain of command than even the taskforce.

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Health insurance:

There was extreme frustration at the meeting that Fok and Diego attended. There were very few options for change that were presented to the attendees. It seemed the only viable option presented was to leave the system at the status quo.

Fok feels that the issue of dependents is a small issue in relation to most grad students, since not too many have dependents and since it seems the administration does not have any easy options to deal with the issue. If we continue pushing on this issue, we may only frustrate the administration and make it less likely to make change in other areas which are more important to the grad student body, such as available housing.

Under the current system, the cost per student is about $100/month. But, the reason why this is such a small number is the average profile of the Caltech student is a person who sits at home trying to fight off disease, while trying to maximize their time at work. Since it is a male as well, it tends to have fewer costly heath costs associated with general living issues. If families were included in the plan, the cost per student would skyrocket.

Is it possible to use this issue to generate a raise in stipends, so that people could better afford to cover their families and dependents, similar to the argument used for the housing expenses being more off campus?

We could have a survey, however it was noted by an anonymous BoD member that any survey we hold is considered biased by the administration, unless they like the results, in which case they praise our survey.

If we are to continue on with this, we will need to see an actual proposal for health insurance, proposed to us, in writing. If this does not happen, we really can not act on this issue.

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There was no report submitted by Ying. She is busy, getting married.

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The results of the TA surveys will be released after an outside firm has processed them.

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We need a moderator / clock bigot to make sure that people do not go on and talk forever and that we stick to a timetable previously metered out by Secretary, at the discretion of the steering committee and the Chair.

The idea also came up to purchase a loud gong.