3 – 7 – 2014 ROBERTS RULES OF ORDER - Handed out. Concerns with not using the most updated version as 2 turn speaking may have changed between 10th and 11th edition. Chair can actually comment on an issue without stepping down. Work on a revised edition that is updated and not merely an example and shows specifically how to use them, not merely definitions. APPROVAL OF MINUTES FROM FEBRUARY - Approved. APPROVAL OF ASSEMBLY SPEAKER - Motion to amend assembly speaker to this position passed. One volunteer for assembly speaker – Jordan Corner. Approved. MOTIONS - Add Bylaws Committee to Old Business Move Assembly Speaker to first business after Roberts Rules and Minutes Approval APPROVAL OF THE PROGRAMMING CHAIR - 100% Approval. OFFICER REPORTS TREASURER REPORT - Two reports, February and March. All RGSOs should have at least 1 voucher trained members at this point. Spring Budgets should now be on RGSO pages. Pages need to be updated yearly. All RGSO bills should be processed and put through from Fall 2013-2014. Don’t submit any Fall reimbursements from Fall. Stipends updated in February to show correct numbers. February Budget Approved. March’s budget is right on mark with what was projected. March’s Budget Approved. PROGRAMMING REPORT - Toiletry donations went very well. - March will feature a book drive to be donated to the Schenectady County Libraries. - On April 7th there is going to be an Appreciation Reception focusing on togetherness and involvement between the Senate, Faculty, and Graduate Students. It serves a dual purpose of promoting understanding of the roles we share in the UAlbany community. - The GSA will be providing t-shirts to (as many as possible) participants who sign up for the organization for the Campus Cleanup Day. This can count as an RGSOs community service/volunteering requirement option. - The end of the year party will take place on May 2nd. MCCA REPORT - Committee Meeting on Monday March 10th at 8:30pm in Draper 105 – if interested feel free to attend. Tentatively scheduled film screening of The House I Live In with a discussion as well. Looking for partners. Diversity and Inclusion grant to propose a program. GRANTS REPORT - Today (March 7th) was the committee deadline for evaluation reports. Summer grants will be opened around the end of March/beginning of April. The deadline will be June 1st, 2014. VICE PRESIDENT’S REPORT - 2 RGSOS are losing funding; the funds have been reallocated for the additional Spring and Summer allotments. They are both retaining recognition. Committee made this decision based off of the lack of a specific consequence being listed in the bylaws and constitution. Additional funds for Spring will be combined with Summer applications for funding – deadline is April 1st. A little over $3,000 is left over for these funds. A reminder was given to please communicate what has been said in the Assembly Meetings are making it back to the RGSO E-boards. If a stage change on any submitted vouchers has not happened within a week please e-mail Kat the number of your voucher to assure no requests are missed. Concerns about the Treasurers notification that we are still receiving bills from last academic year. This is revolved around last year’s E-board not following up on bills as they should have. - - Motion: Next Treasurer’s report to reflect the bills and amounts from past years since there are technical issues revolving around the fact that this is not supposed to be happening. (Approved Amendment) Also to include where the money is coming from. Motion Questions: Where is the money coming from? RGSO budgets since it is also involving RGSOs. Motion Approved. PRESIDENT’S REPORT - - - - - Working mission statement up for comments. (Posted online in the President’s Office Report, all comments to go to the President – Caitlin.) Adjunct Resolution will be pushed at the April 4th SUNY meeting. SUNY SA reps requested a report and Wages and Benefits will be providing it. We are building a coalition to support this – UBuffalo and Binghamton have responded. President’s forum date has been a struggle due to issues with booking rooms and the President’s schedule – Caitlin will update as soon as she has confirmation. Ed-TPA; SUNY SA is looking to take a stance against how fast this is being implemented because of the large amount of student (40%) at Cortland that became ineligible due to the fact of the rushed nature of the speed and other factors. Senate Information: CAFFECOR committee, 5/44 senators are grad students and we are pushing for better relations and representation of this fact. It will now all state University Senate rather than Faculty Senate now to better represent this fact. A survey will be going out and Caitlin has asked that graduate students please answer it to show better representation of our issues on campus. NAGPS northeastern conference is next weekend. Caitlin will be having a roundtable discussion at the conference. Faculty Advisors: will move to be a requirement (can also be staff) soon. The relationship needs to be solidified to be different than it is for undergraduates due to the very different nature of the relationships and experiences at the undergraduate vs. graduate level. We are looking for input on how these advisors should be interacting with RGSOs, especially from those that already have Staff or Faculty advisors with a working relationship. Fiscal Policy: analysis of the last 7 years of expenditures is being done. Revenue patterns analysis about rate of intake and output has been being worked on currently. Any questions about our numbers are accepted to help us form new fiscal policy and continue the efforts from this year to assure we have a contingency plan and avoid previous incidents of debt from happening again. Recruitment and Retention: this is a big push right now due to turnover issues on campus across the GSA and RGSOs to continue contingency efforts across the years that have been pushed by the current administration. All - - - - ideas are appreciated from RGSOs about how they have managed retention and recruitment over the years. CNSE transition: only 2 meetings have happened and both have focused largely on labor issues. CNSE is merging with SUNY IT for registration and course listings but they will be shared on our end with housing and other Albany centric issues. Choice will be given of current students of where they will technically graduate from due to this split – SUNY IT and UAlbany will remain choices dependant on the time of accreditation. The current E-board has proposed a new Mission Statement they would like comments on from the general graduate student community. However, it should be noted there is a current statement in the constitution that describes itself as a purpose statement. An amendment will need to be made to change this listed ‘purpose’. Faculty Advisors concerns due to the fact that there is an opinion (form the speaking assembly rep) that it infringes on the autonomy of the graduate students control of their RGSOs. It is the opinion of a few in the Assembly that this should be opposed but if that is not possible that major revisions need to be made so to avoid it being beyond support and avoid any controlling role. It has been suggested to having them as members rather than advisory similar to graduate student RGSO members who sit in as faculty meeting representatives for departments and RGSOs. To clarify this is not opposition of faculty involvement, it is opposition of a requirement that ‘handcuffs’ us to having to have this even in places where not necessary. Motion: to oppose this requirement due to lack of regulatory backing to this requirement. Approved. Motion: E-board to form executive committee to investigate GSA/RGSO staff/faculty relations and to better define them. Approved. WAGES AND BENEFITS REPORT - - Higher Education costs dramatic increase and cuts in public education funding are a major issue. The committee is tasked with researching and advocacy on the behalf of graduate students. Met with Dean Williams on matters of money available for GA’s, base salary on campus, and how the decisions are made about how much we get. The committee is setting a lot of issues for the Presidents Forum particularly in regards to wages for GAs and Adjuncts. This is an opportunity to be real with the fact that graduate students often live below the poverty line and the realistic effects on our lives due to this. Will be holding a workshop on adjunct wages and issues and how that can effect undergraduate education in support of the adjunct resolution. There will be a survey going out about conditions of being a graduate student. - - Dean Williams will be raising all GA positions to $13,000 – unfortunately this means a loss of 1 year off funding almost across the board. If you are interested in joining the committee please speak to Jackie after the meeting or get in touch with her through e-mail or other means. Motion: GSA Assembly considers the highest priority of information for the President’s forum to be concerning wages and benefits. Clarification: highest priority does not mean other issues are ignored, merely that we were informed we should keep the number of issues we bring up to a smaller number than previous and this is just the highest priority. While funding may not effect everyone – the living standards issue is relevant to all funded or non-funded. Motion Approved, majority vote were yays and abstentions. Motion to put this report online and available to all. Approved. LEAD SENATOR - President Jones has appointed a new Chief of Staff. A name change for a department was placed up but it was accepted due to being only administrative and not effecting other things. May meeting for University Senate is when elections will be happening. We need our elections soon as after that so we can put in committee votes. BY LAWS REPORTS - - Motion was approved to move this business to this part of the agenda in the interest of time due to its importance. Makes very very clear the rights and recourses that were previously lacking. Proposition is to upload the draft and put it on the listserv and website so everyone can have proper time. Committee will take comments for 2 weeks and then full discussion will happen at the April meeting. (Grants amendment) due to Spring Break change this to a longer time. VP Motion: Consider half of the document for April and half for May due to the length of the document (20+ pages). Due to contingency of issues spread out over the document there are issues with this. President suggests E-board getting to see the document first, comment, and then allow for the Assembly and student body to see it post E-board discussion and comment. Motion denied. Motion: That the Constitutional Committee send the E-board the Bylaws first for a time of 2 weeks to give comments then to be given to the Assembly and student body. Issues with timing and wanting a month for everyone to be able to read and digest and comment on it. - - - Amendment to Motion Suggested: Have a joint E-board and Committee meeting prior to the Assembly meeting so all Assembly and E-board members can have a better amount of time to digest the document. Concerns from the President and Treasurer that the E-board has been mislead because they stepped down from the committee due to the fact that the E-board was promised to be able to see the Bylaws first. An argument was displayed by the Committee Representative that the President claims are misleading. The last minutes were noted to state that the Committee did say they would provide the bylaws prior to the March Assembly meeting. Amendment to the Amendment: to add specific language providing that the Constitutional Committee provide the draft to the E-board for distribution on the website and listserv on Monday the 10th. – Stated as friendly and language stated for inclusion in original amendment. Point made: Treasurer makes a point that this means the Assembly may get two very different versions of the document. Additional Amendment to the Amendment: explicitly that Assembly receives bylaws as the E-board. E-board will get them prior. No time stipulate was given, however it was stated we should have an additional Assembly meeting just for this purpose. A quorum count was taken to assure we still had enough numbers to vote. Numbers are sufficient. Additional Amendment to the Amendment: 13 yays, 4 nays, 2 absentions. Passed. Amended Amendment: 6 yays, 4 nays, 8 absentions. Passed. Amended Motion: E-board gets bylaws first, E-board and Committee have a meeting, special Assembly meeting called. Motion: 11 yays, 7 nays. Passed. Motion: informal poll on date for Assembly meeting. Amendment: look into available dates and then send out a poll on the listserv. Amendment found friendly. Motion Approved. Call made for orders of the day. Agenda was left incomplete due to the meeting being already 30 minutes over its usual running time of 2 hours.