GSA council minutes from Jan 20, 05

 

Attendance

Officers: Kai Pommerenke (President); Lisa Downward (Internal Vice President); Allison Luengen (Secretary); Ian Dobbs Dixon (External Vice President); Meredith Armstrong (Treasurer); Marina Sarran (CPB)

Department Reps:  Berra Yazar (MCDB); Kivanc Bilecen (ETOX); Amy Dexter (psych); Sina Farsiu (EE); Gerardo Palafox (EDU); Brian Gerstenberger (chem); Kelly Holt (lit); Marla Holt (ocean sciences); Sabrina Sanchez (history); Sara Bothwell (environmental studies);; Nick Konidaris (astro); Jesse Saba Kirchner (ling); Luke Winstrom(physics); Abhijit Sen Gupta (econ); Ignacio Solis (CSE)

Others:  Nicole Hidalgo (edu); Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (astro); Liam Welcher (SUA); Susanne Altermann (EE Bio), Alex Hutko; Gary Hoffmann (earth sci); Cintia Mergi (CE); Leandro Dias (CE)

 

Announcements

1)  Ombuds Laurie McCann came and spoke to us about the role of the campus ombudsperson

Her annual report can be found at:

http://www2.ucsc.edu/ombudsman/annual02-04.pdf

The role of the ombudsperson is informal complaint resolution.  There are three major components of Laurie’s office:  1) confidentiality; 2) neutrality; 3) informality.  She has dealt with graduate students in the following roles 1) advising; 2) health center billing or other billing problems; and 3) person to person conflicts.  However, relatively few graduate students see her per year (roughly 5).  She only takes the conflict up when the student wants to.  It is NOT her job to advocate for anyone.  Her goal is to put mediation in the hands of the people having the disagreement.  Laurie does not deal with sexual harassment, discrimination, or union contracts.  She does not keep records.  She can conduct informal investigations where appropriate.  She can get together with the Dean and address specific problems if she seeing reoccurring situations.  For example, her predecessor worked on a code of conduct about how advisors interact with students.  She cannot mandate that people attend mediation.  For example, a faculty member could turn down the request to mediate with a student.  If you want to contact Laurie McCann, it’s best to call first (831) 459-2073.

Department reps should let their departments know about that the ombudsperson exists.

 

2)  Kristen Townsend discussed her Good Neighbor Initiative.  The initiate is primarily focused on traffic and transportation and housing.  Neighbors have concerns with students regarding parties, trash, and parking.  Their goals are as follows:

a)  Transportation- increase public and alternative transportation.  Currently, 40% of student who live off campus use public transportation.  That number can still be improved.

b)  Increase public awareness and work on bridging the gap between the community and the campus

You can send comments and questions to gni_ucsc@yahoo.com

 

3)  Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (chanda@astro) announced that there will be a noon rally at Cowell on Tuesday Jan 27th supporting the CUE contract negotiations.  She passed around petitions supporting CUE for faculty to sign.  If you are able to collect faculty signatures, return the forms to Chanda Prescod-Weinstein UCO/LICK mail room.

 

4)  Liam (wwelcher@ucsc.edu)- the SUA is in the process of restructuring.  They passed a resolution for skip a meal for tsunami relief.  The goal is $10,000.  UCSA is lobbying in Sacramento on behalf of students.  Liam wrote a resolution honoring Chemers for his service to UCSC.  The spring ballot will have a number of measures regarding increased dollars.

 

New Department Reps

            Sabrina Sanchez (history) and Kivanc Bilecen (ETOX) are new department reps.

 

New Business

Party:   We will have a party in winter quarter, and we will try to have it cosponsored with grad commons so that we can use our co-sponsored budget.  We agreed to use $1000 from last quarter’s cosponsored events, $500 from this year’s cosponsored events, and $500 from our interdepartmental socials to give us a budget of $2000.  This will leave $100 left-over for another interdepartmental social event.

 

Officer and Committee Reports

Committee on Teaching (Berra)- they finalized the panel for the Feb 17, 1-5 PM teaching symposium.  Berra will email out the URL.  There is a survey going around the departments about their TA training.

 

UCSA (Ian) (iandd@ucolick.org)- 

            1)  Lobby day.  The budget is in front of the CA legislature and student voices need to be heard.  Monday Feb 7 will be a lobby day and there will be training the weekend prior.  The SUA is sending 6 people.  Is anyone from the GSA interested?  The GSA can pay for someone to go up and stay in a hotel.

            2)  Student Regents.  Dinner with the student regents will be on Jan 27th.  The regents will be available to answer questions about becoming the next student regent at 3 PM in the Namaste Lounge and the GSA will take them out to dinner afterwards.

            3)  Health care.  UCSA sent a letter on health care to the Office of the President.  The Office of the President is leaning toward unification on regional campuses or regional bases.

 

Transportation (Brian)

            1) Parking.  There will be a vote on evening parking and Brian will vote against it. However, the vote is just a recommendation. The evening parking enforcement is scheduled to start in mid-summer.  A permit for grad students to park on campus between 3:30 and 8:30 PM will cost $2 and $102 for a colander year.  Carpool permits are still under discussion.  QUE and ASFME and others are filing grievances.  Unions might tie this up.

            2) Summer bus passes.  TAPS is doing some number crunching on summer bus passes for grad students, but they are unlikely to do anything that decreases their revenue.  They are also exploring options to start charging staff and faculty for bus passes.

 

Adjourn