CUNY Graduate Center
Doctoral Students Council
Steering Committee Agenda

February 1, 2008

Meeting called to order at 6:36 pm

I. Approval of Agenda
BV - under IV, add C = coffee hour
BV - under IV add D = room reservation discussion
RF - under IV, add E = provost search committee
RF motions to approve
AM second
Approved by Unanimous consent

II. Approval of Old Minutes
RF motion to approve
GD seconds
Approved by Unanimous consent

III. Old Business
a. Email Task Force –

GD – Bob Campbell postponed move to Windows Live Hotmail and wants to come to plenary to discuss with students. Bob – knows what student wants, but wants to set up task force (5 or 6 students meet once or twice). 1st meeting on Monday (2/4/08) so nothing more to report thus far. GD will let us know after Monday. The idea will be about an in house alternative.

RF – group of names reflect across GC and outside DSC membership and we will be providing Bob with a group of students who know their stuff.

DT – a number of schools and departments are represented in this task force.

IV. New Business
a. Community Building Ideas -
RF - Rouzbeh N. from USS called to announce that USS wants to partner with DSC us to get furniture for lounges. They will match dollar to dollar to do this. We have $1500 and we come up with ideas/ plan. The community building committee should come up with a proposal to come up with $2500 to do something. (The old couches didn’t fit the California Fire Safety – new couches may be expensive but it may be the only way.)

DW: Would rather use money for an “outreach” type of idea
DT: maybe decent video/tech system
BV: Can we move to discuss at community building to discuss; before the next plenary.

b. GOTV – GD – From now until 3/3/08 is the nomination process. April will be the election, online. We sent out postcards, we will also send emails and other interesting ways to get the info out. DT and GD talked about ideas – banners, posters. Massive email to all students to combined with primary elections and the GC. Think about putting together text. DW will advertise with postcards as she goes around to other campuses this month.

DT – one of the things that concerns us is the percentage of votes (400 votes last year)
AM – with e-voting this might improve
DT – our energies don’t have to go to filing papers; now energy can go toward get out the vote mechanisms so people are encouraged to participate with the process and so people feel like this is something they should be involved in
GD – key thing – lots of questions and problems as we go into this stage – It is good to circulate questions and we can build a database of FAQ to direct people to.

c. Coffee hour – BV end of Feb. or early March. May be best to do end of Feb. to get people nominating. Best date – Feb 26th? - After first plenary. We could also have a second one during voting (late March before Easter holiday) time: 2:30 to 5:30pm? Can we sell movie tickets that day and allow cash? Also we should be more proactive with the advocate or adjunct project to be there, also from chartered orgs for sign up/ events. Get fliers of everything we’ve done to place at the coffee hour. JSG has one of our coffee urns and we need top get them back!

DT - They’ve had it for three weeks.
BV – We should create a flier for it so everyone knows where the urns are.
DT – we always had a sign in sheet and no one borrows it. JSG is clear that she has it and will return it as soon as they are done with it.
RF- we should at least have something in writing that says who has it and when. (write it on the blackboard or maybe in Google docs)
BV – we need to have a better way of communicating ideas with each other. Emails clog inboxes, but we need to communicate better.
d. ROOMRES. – for RR some suggestions so we don’t overbook. Maybe we can phase out paper forms so we have an electronic trail instead of any paper. Provided a list of suggestions of everything on there.
(GD) Bob Campbell is getting a system for room reservations for the IT Department and we will have access to this software to do online reservations, but we don’t have a timeline yet for IT.
e. Provost search – active after Feb. 15th – the posted date when applications will not be accepted, but not a hard and fast date. The memo has not gone out, but a 12 member committee with 2 student reps (Tina Lee and RF)

V. Student Affairs Report (Gregory) -
a. E-Ballot Online Voting - nominations ballot is up online – 6 positions- Matriculated students nominate six. Non-matriculated students only nominate 4. Starting tonight at midnight we can all nominate. A list came from student services of everyone who is registered. A second wave of people who registered late will come out soon. Andrew Calder at eballot can tell us when the people who haven’t registered will be able to vote.

There is information on our Wiki that describes FAQS. There might be a problem with people who do not have conventional last names. Send this on to GD and document everything, circulate widely. As we answer questions GD will post online so we don’t have to continue answering it over and over.

b. Chartered Organizations – Any specific questions about Chartered Orgs and funding should be directed to GD. All others should be directed to the website. 3 orgs totally AWOL. If they do not respond we will begin process of de-chartering. As we have more groups, we are more strict about following the guidelines.

VI. Communications Report (Rob) – archives are set; thanks to BV and AK – Facilities will archive and index our archives at the end of the semester. They will not be available until next academic year. We will be talking to the president about compact dollars at our next meeting. Largely pushing to increase the travel grants so students can get $500 instead of $300. We don’t know if this will be at the expense of anything else. Though we do know what will be continued: we can continue extended wellness office hours. Psychiatrist is still on compact funds, ESL and professional development, also funded.

4 DSC representatives to move for removal – 2 are departmental representatives for departments who have other reps. and have never attended a single meeting or have missed 3 consecutive meetings. Two are at-large reps.
Monika Steinberg – Art His.
Clayton Mattis- Chemistry
Caroline Erb – At large
Frank Muscara – At large
If this is done, we need to think of at large reps so we can approve others– right now we have no back ups so we can discuss at plenary
RF – constitution says we need to do it
Discussion Point (GD): at large members that aren’t coming and not following constitution should be replaced – easy to fill , easy to participate. Department reps, couldn’t find anyone so they picked one person and if we remove them we can’t find anyone else? GD more skeptical of at large reps.
BV – enrollment is different this year, can we be down 2 positions this semester?
RF – goes by last semester/ we could increase our numbers by 7 people (3 at large and 4 departmental reps.)
We need to maintain quota and we can’t add seats that aren’t filled.
The 2 departmental seats we are asking to remove: One hasn’t shown at all and the other hasn’t come to 3 meetings. Both are from departments with other members.
RF – motion to remove 4 people
BV - second
Approved with one abstention

VII. Business Report (Denise)
a. Office review – everyone’s hours are up. Expectations of office hours: make sure to use less paper around the office. Move to web based for scheduling. GO over BV suggestions. put room number in title and in “where” area when scheduling in GOOGLE CALENDAR. Eventually – we will have a calendar posted on the rooms. A way of getting people to be aware of what is going on. A few conflicts/overlaps/ better to compete then to have empty spaces.

RF- we can terminate, per rules, if anyone is abusing the privilege of room usage.

DT- Also make sure to make copies of documents that need to go out on the walls. Also half price discount tickets can be done during office hours.

b. Budget Mod – looking over budget and constitutional requirements of the budget. In some cases we could be giving more /less in terms of what we are required to do. DT be working the numbers. DT will be looking to Steering for what aspects we think are “out of whack.” Right now $4k in Professional Development Grant Capacity. (should be 2% of income – should be $4,400)_ Will be putting in budget mod specific for this.

c. 2008-2009 Budget – March 1st deadline

VIII. USS Report (Ally) - nothing to report

IX. Committee Reports
DW: Community outreach – wants to go to campuses with lots of PHD students to set up booth and DSC flyer advertising what we do. Feb 9th – City College, Feb 22nd, GSA at Hunter College, around lunchtime. Wants events to be posted up on the website, so people know where they are.

HIC – spoke to Carl Lindskoog (wants meetings before the plenary (4:30) Carl wants to set up meeting with Bill Kelly. (Clarify – Carl wants to partner with HIC to go to Bill Kelly to talk about health insurance

BV – Scholarly Awards Committee – Needs to meet. We have no one.
DT: Raised this issue at the last plenary – we can appoint three people and can have 3 volunteers.
BV: Wants to launch the committee in the Fall and will call a meeting for this.
RF: Constitution and Bylaws also needs to set a meeting.

X. Announcements – no announcements to report.

XI. Adjournment
RF moves to adjourn.
BV – seconds
Approved by unanimous consent. Meeting adjourns at 7:50pm.