Minutes from Feb. 17,
05
Attendance
Officers: Kai Pommerenke (President); Allison Luengen (Secretary); Ian Dobbs Dixon (External Vice President); Meredith Armstrong (Treasurer); Marina Sarran (CPB)
Department Reps: Sina Farsiu (EE); Abhijit Sen Gupta (econ); Kelly Holt (lit); Alexis Shotwell (hiscon); Luke Winstrom (physics); Marla Holt (ocean sciences); Sara Bothwell (ENVS); Amy Dexter (psych); Brooke Crowley (ES); Sabrina Sanchez (history); Berra Yazar (MCDB)
Others: Cintia Mergi (CE); Avik Chaudhuri (CS); Leandro Dias (CE); Alex Hutko (ES); Susanne Altermann (EEB); Nicole Hidalgo (edu); Daria Siciliano (ocean sciences)
New Business
1. Meeting Schedule
We will meet March 3, not March 17, and then April 7.
2. Food
We will continue ordering food from Joe’s. Anyone sick of the food can volunteer to buy food somewhere else, and then get reimbursed.
Department Reps
Alexis Shotwell was approved as the department rep for hiscon.
Committee and
Officer’s Reports
1. President’s Report (Kai). Kai addressed the academic senate on the cuts in language programs, housing, and health care.
There will be a student free referendum to determine if students are willing to pay for any of the things below. The items were compiled by a consulting firm which gauged student’s interest in the items. They are listed below, with their quarterly costs:
1) Upgrade the student union $60
2) Improve the quarry $36
3) Outdoor events center $36
4) Expand health center $26
5) Athletics money
6) College $12
7) Indoor event center $144
In order for these to pass, 25% of the students must vote, and 51% of those must vote yes. The fees would be charged indefinitely.
Ian commented that these proposed fees are noteworthy for 3 reasons. 1) Students still want services and they are increasingly taking on the cost themselves. As a result, the burden is shifting from the State to the students. 2) Autonomy- just because students pay for the buildings, doesn’t mean we run them. How much control will we have over the facilities we build? 3) Student fees don’t always have return to aid. Kai noted that in this, case, these fees do return 20% to aid.
In other discussion, Susi wanted to know if we are still paying for other such services. Marla pointed out that the Council on Student Fees is looking into how these things get on the ballot.
2. Student Fee Advisory Committee (Marla). SFAC is conducting a study on what services students use. Be sure to take the survey to that grad students are well-represented. It will take about 15 minutes. You will have to enter your student number, but that won’t be linked to your responses, so they will remain anonymous. Email Marla if any problems with the survey arise: <iris@ucsc.edu>.
3. Social Committee (Sina). The party is next Friday. $2000 will be spent on it.
4. Transportation Advisory Committee
(Susi). TAC voted to extend night
parking until 8 or
Overall, the TAC committee voted overwhelmingly to approve the plan, with the exception of our 2 GSA reps who voted against it. Only one undergrad rep. (out of three currently on the committee) was present, and he voted for the extension of parking enforcement. The Grad Council’s letter opposing the extended parking came out after the vote.
5.
6. Graduate Student Health Insurance (Allison). The GSHIP committee met with Robert Antonio (health center business manger) and then had the first meeting of the year with the health center reps and Sommerton Student Insurance and Blue Cross. Allison would like to see the costs for the following improvements to the plan: increased physical therapy, increased chiropractic, COBRA plans, increasing in-network coverage to 90%, and not charging extra premiums for students on leave of absence. Allison also discussed with the health center how to improve communication between grads and the health center and the possibility of picking up more than 1 month’s supply of prescriptions at a time. The Blue Cross representative thinks that it may be possible to arrange an entire quarter’s supply.
Allison asked the GSA their opinions on how the GSHIP plan was working. Regarding the dental, several people pointed out that the six month wait for periodontal and endodontic treatment was problematic for them. There was another communication issue; if you give the dental office your old student number (i.e. your social security number), it doesn’t go through. Use your new one. The cap on acupuncture is too low. For vision, the frame allowance is too low, and overall students end up paying too much.
7. Childcare Advisory Committee (Amy). The committee is recommending moving the daycare to family housing because the current site is close to a major intersection, and the move would serve the needs of students better. Amy needs input on what people with kids need.
8. Committee on Academic Freedom (Nathan). The committee discussed the freedom of an individual researcher to choose his funding sources. There was a case from UCSF where an individual wanted to accept funding from a tobacco company, but the department wanted to refuse to let researchers to accept tobacco money. The consensus of the committee was that there is corrupt research, and that the true problem was the publication process, which doesn’t always require researchers to disclose all the sources of their previous funding. The committee felt that, overall, freedom for the searchers to choose their funding was most important.
9. Committee on Teaching (Berra). The committee held the teaching
symposium, and about 50 people attended.
New methods for teaching were discussed, including tablets to modify
power point presentations. A survey went
out to all departments about TA training.
The committee has also asked the regents to clarify the propaganda rule.