GSA Meeting 11/17/05
Minutes from last time
Put email and name of contacts for funding requests
on the minutes
Officer reports
Ian/President:
- Alumni meeting: Since there is no grad college the $ that
alumni give to the alumni association goes to a pot?
- Alumni meeting: There is no grad college. Porter wanted
to talk about hosting grads there…
- Comic strip “PhD” coming to do a presentation
- TA sabbaticals- let folks know. Let’s make sure there’s enough
to go around
- We’ve submitted our draft of the appeals document to Lisa Sloan (last
week). We are now turning to a new stage of this as we are
looking into mentoring so if you are interested in this committee now
would be a good time to join
- Diversity forums are going on…
- LRDP (long range development plan): read the document that’s going
around. There are executive summaries of this document of the web
because it’s huge. There is a public comment period from 3-6 at
Stevenson next Wed. If you find issues with this document let us
know and we’ll work on getting them addressed.
Marina/CPB:
- the current LRDP document is seriously flawed and the city of Santa
Cruz is not happy with it
o particularly the impact of traffic on the city of Santa Cruz is
dramatically underestimated
o another issue is housing for professor and students
- Proposed UC Regents budget for 2006-2007
o Fees for everyone (undergrads, grads, resident and non) have gone up
o The return to aid for grads was dropped from the promised %50 to %43
PARKING:
- There are three kinds of permits A, B, R. There are 1,700
parking spaces in “core” of campus (“core” doesn’t include remote
lots). A permits have access to all 1,700 core campus spots.
- We asked to have B permits gotten rid of and have Grads have access
to A permits. Faculty/staff were not happy with this ‘cause they
don’t want to loose their parking spots.
- We proposed that we should pay less for B permits because of the
fewer available spaces. Staff asked if they could get B’s
too. This was problematic because we would have a price
comparable to what the undergrads pay for C permits and there would be
a new inequity as we would be paying the same for more spots.
- TAPS is making money but they also have multiple parking structures
that they plan to build (in LRDP) so they need to save.
- At UCB and UCLA they have permits for grads based on whether they are
Taing or not TAPS is not down with this
- As we get more people at UCSC there is less parking to go around…
Historically TAPS looks to get rid of categories of permits in the core
of campus when they get crunched. We might loose B permit access
to the core of campus entirely.
- A trial period for changes was also suggested for use with giving
grads access to a more expensive A permit. See who chooses what
and then review.
- Proposals from Parking representatives:
o Lower B permit cost?
o Get rid of B permit and tie us to faculty/staff?
- Allison proposes that we write a letter to ask TAPS to get rid of the
B permit and if they won’t we need to have the price adjusted.
- Discussion:
o Faculty shouldn’t have to walk because of age and respect
o Concern about students late at night
- Sixteen approved this, 2 abstentions, none against.
- We need to talk to faculty and warm them up to this in anticipation
of this vote.
UC REGENTS MEETING:
- Fabian Nuñez came to the meeting yesterday because we asked
him to.
o He got the Regents to agree not to have fee hikes if he finds the
money in the budget to compensate for this
- The executive committee of UCSA went ahead and didn’t push for the
vote to be postponed as we had decided to.
- Return to aid for the undergrads went up to 33%. This may be a
token victory because it’s not enough to cover the need we have now and
we lost ground on so many other fronts.
- The fee hike they approved was 8% for the undergrads, and 10% for
grads
- The vote on raising grad fees was closer than the vote for raising
undergrad fees.
- Members of UCSC student worker coalition went to Berkeley meetings
11/16 and did disruptive protests yesterday when they were voting on
the fee hikes.
- We thought that the vote happened today but they changed it and did
it yesterday so that it wouldn’t be during the protest today.
- Concerns about strategizing and planning of this event.
o There were lots of people there from all of the UC campus (except
Berkeley!)
o Could have been used better strategically (organization? the media
was there…)
- Next steps:
o UCSA meeting this weekend.
o The governors budget comes out in January and we’ll see what happens
o Create and build on connections with John Laird and Sentinel
COMMITTEE REPORTS:
- Committee on teaching
o Teaching and learning symposium with the theme of how to help
students succeed (Committee on Teaching with CREDE)
o Ask grads for topics for this committee
o Get a Grad student speaker
o Letter will be sent out to all grads with this info
o Tamara suggests that we look through TA awards list for a willing
speaker
o Allison would like to hear about how to help folks who are behind in
the sciences.
o Someone suggests we talk about teaching to a diverse student body.
- Social committee:
o Surfing clinic Jan 23rd we pay half so price is $20
o Wine tasting we pay $15 grad students pay $10
- Grad Student Commons Committee
o On Saturday we will decide which DVDs to have at the GSC
- Committee for the Ethical Treatment of Grad Students (CETGS)
o A Latino student is getting discriminated from his dept.
o What can we do now?
o We should also talk about and document what has been done right
o Allison motions that Marina draft a letter to the Chancellor and the
Dept chair and then send it to CETGS and grad council to have comments
o Motion passed unanimously.
- Travel Grant
o Committee is asking for applications.
o Fall deadline for applications is Dec. 2, the top award is $200
o Some new regulations apply so check the website
GRAD COLLEGE
- Do we wanna do this? We’ve talked about this before but there’s
new pressure ‘cause the alumni would like for us to have a grad college.
- There was concern about land use but we think that if we don’t claim
it the land will get used anyway.
- Will investigate more and talk again next meeting.
ADJOURN