GPSO ExComm Meeting
14 November 2008, 10am, Grad House
Present: Leslie Blaha, Nick Clark, Christopher Fisher, Csilla Kajtar, Amanda Meglemre, Peter Thoresen
1. CFR: met yesterday; Luke Fields has ideas about GPSO—who is constituency? Maybe IUSA
should acquire GPSO—he’s argued that undergraduates shouldn’t have to pay for GPSO since it
serves a particular constituency—McKaig said there are exceptions to the rule, like Rec Sports;
many grad students would argue that they don’t use Union Board or IUSA
Can we bring in other data to support our point, like just how much IUSA does for grad
students? Fields suggests an additional fee for grad students to pay for GPSO; Clark suggests
that grad students don’t pay into IUSA or UB and undergrads don’t pay for GPSO—Fields agrees
that IUSA may not do much for grad students at present. Do grad students benefit from IUSA?
Conference grant—IUSA has also offered aid for those. There are grad students who go to talks,
go to films. Maybe Grad students pay less than normal into IUSA/UB? Fields concedes this may
get too confusing. Herb Terry has misrepresented GPSO too. McKaig—two different sets of fees
for grad and undergrad students.
Will this hurt graduate students in the end? We may pay less fees, but not UB and IUSA not
available to grad students.
Grad students should be considered a separate group, not lumped with undergrads—but we
don’t want to become too insular either
Changing how the Bursar assesses fees—is their system able to do this?
How might we change these fees? UB gets $4.66/student, $4.20 for IUSA, $0.94 /students. If we
got $8 per graduate student. (We got $35412.17 for Fall 2008) 8000 grad students $128,000 for
academic year. IUSA general fund not for grad students; IUSA aid available to grad students but
would not be available to Grads in future. Perhaps we can use this to go line by line on fees
assessed to graduate students. Activity fee was 78.00 this year; maybe $70 for grad students if
all money go to grad students? Rec Sports, Legal services draw from that
Remember that CFR is only making recommendations, President still needs to sign off on it.
2. GPSO Budget—we’ve had surplus going into academic years in past, so we drew up larger
budgets than our CFR. We need to be careful to keep us in the red. So we need to make sure we
don’t over spend our CFR funds—we’ve spent our surplus so we don’t want to go over our CFR
$$. $54000 of 70000 goes to staff salary & benefits and GradPad. Actual amount in account is
larger, but we have to keep these numbers in mind.
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Proposed budget—last round GPSO asked for $0.37 increase—prior round we got $0.85, then
we got $0.94, prior to that was $0.63 and asked for $1.04 and we got a .30 increase so there is
precedent here. McKaig advised CFR not to give any group more than 5% increase. So even if we
can justify an increase, they will see that we’ve gotten some in the past.
McKaig’s reasoning? Legislature mandated to university that any tuition and fee increases must
be considered together. So if university, say, wants 7% and legislature says 5%, univeresity has
to work out what they want. CFR may be restricted to 3-4% top; could even be lowered.
Does IUSA have compensation for leadership? Yes. Fields gave his back due to campaign
promise. Maybe about $5000---our staff expenses are significantly higher. But part of this is
because UGS helped push for higher support for GPSO. We may be able to go back to Grad
school if we need more funds for support.
New groups—invitation to apply in IDS next week; applications due first (mid-Dec) but
considered after. Clark doesn’t expect new groups to be funded though
So we may want to push for a little more than 5% but not push too hard—how far should we
go? Clark suggests we ask for about $1.10. maybe cut back on proposed staff positions; we’ll get
to decide where any new funds go unless they specifically restrict us. We should put most of our
increase into academic support; integrate our support budgets into other places, like working
Peter’s salary into the events budget. Student Legal Services works staff increases into other
budget lines. Even a 3% increase for cost of living is reasonable, plus increase in GradPad rent.
Clark would like to keep new staff position in budget.
**Clark will revise budget and send second draft and ask for feedback. Proposal will likely be due midJan, with presentation likely in Feb. Peter Thoresen, Christopher Fisher, Lauren Boyle, and Mike Cox will
be in presentation group, try to add wider assembly members.
3. Surveys:
Blaha suggests we should restructure the questions to allow more complex correlational
analyses for our future presentations. She will put together a sample of the adjusted
questionnaire and analyses for consideration.
4. Fisher: Travel Grant Reviewer Feedback that Mike is doing a much better job, liked shortened
applications—process is much easier than usual. Only 48 applications this round, previous than
past? Not as much advertising?
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5. Sponsors needed for the Spring Social Hours, starting in January. Nov 14 Applied Health Sicience,
and Dec 5th is Informatics
6. Nick did report for NPR, talked a lot about School of Music. Recent surpluses were applied to
grad salaries, but not School of Music. Music is pulling down the university average. We need to
focus pressure on the Dean of the School of Music to affect change on this.
Organizing a protest? Music students could be affected by the Dean being on the casting
committee. We should bring this potential event to the Assembly. Ask individual student
associations.
Meeting Adjourned.
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