GSG • Assembly Meeting • December 14, 2005

Outline and Summary

1. Call to Order and Assembly Business
   1. Seating of New Assembly Members - Medini Padmanabhan
   2. Approval of Minutes (November) - Shin-Yi Lin: vote postponed.
2. Special Guest
   1. Leslie Bernard-Joseph - Chair, Undergraduate Student Government
3. New Business
4. Other Guest items
   1. Funding Requests - Jeff Dwoskin
   2. DCE discussion - Harvey Stark
   3. Ivy Summit - Karin Sigloch, Leslie Hinkson, Vera Keller
5. Decision Items
   1. Election Committee - Medini Padmanabhan
   2. GSG Fee Yea-Nay Vote/By-law - Jeff Dwoskin and Medini Padmanbhan
   3. Jorge Cham Event - Shin-Yi Lin: discussion postponed.
   4. Valentine's Day Event - Megan Sullivan: discussion postponed.
6. Department Reports
   1. Butler Apartments - Josh Friess: postponed for one month.
   2. History of Science - Sultana Banulescu: postponed for one month.
   3. Woodrow Wilson School - Danny Harris: postponed for one month.
   4. Religion - Harvey Stark: postponed for one month.
   5. Politics - Brookes Brown: postponed for one month.
   6. Graduate College - Neven Fuckar: postponed for one month.
7. Other Reports
   1. CPUC Governance - Sara Nephew
   2. Student Billing - Katy Bold: postponed.
   3. Chair - Shin-Yi Lin: postponed.
8. Adjornment (Next meeting January 11, 2006 at 6pm in Frist 309)

Attendance

• Representatives present • Katherine Bold, ACM • Ricky Martin, ANT • Daniele Bianchi, proxy for Neven Fuckar, AOS • Alexandros Ntelekos, CEE • Swaroop Chatterjee, CHE • Adam Dunn, CHM • Jake Mackey, CLA • Xiaoling Ang, ECO • Adrian De Froment, EEB • Anita Adhitya, GEO • Jesse Salazar, HIS • Lindy Baldwin, HOS • Wei Ho, MAT • Shin-Yi Lin, MOL • Steve Hassani, PHY • Brookes Brown, POL • Daniel Raburn, PPL • Louis Lee, PSY • Harvey Stark, REL • Cori Anderson, SLA • Alicia Juskewycz, SOC • Frankki Bevins, proxy for Daniel Harris, WWS •

• Delegates present • Josh Friess, BUT • Steve Hassani, MIL • Bernice Rosenzweig, BGC • Tian Xia, ACSS •

• Councilors present • Chair Shin-Yi Lin, CPUC, CPUC Executive Committee • Parliamentary Secretary Medini Padmanabhan, CPUC • Corresponding Secretary Danielle Osler • Press Secretary Susan Robison • Treasurer Jeff Dwoskin • Social Chair Megan Sullivan • Guillaume Sabouret, CPUC, CPUC Executive Committee • Sara Nephew, CPUC Governance Committee • Josh Friess, CPUC Resources Committee • James Bickford, CPUC Rights and Rules Committee • Steve Hassani, Academic Affairs •

• Others present • Assistant Dean Lisa Schreyer, Graduate School • Community Programming Coordinator Tara Kitley • Yesim Tozan, APGA • Vera Keller, QGC • Leslie Bernard-Joseph, USG •

• Representatives absent • Chris DeCoro, COS • Ilias Tagkopoulos, ELE • Peter Eubanks, FIT • Megan Ewing, GER • Samir Soneji, OPR •

• Delegates absent • Weining Man, CIGS • Neven Fuckar, GCO • Jennifer Jordan, LAW • Meredith Safran, OFF •

• Councilors absent • Recording Secretary Annika Peter • Kellam Conover, CPUC • Leslie Hinkson, CPUC • Diana Hill, CPUC Judicial Committee • Fatema Gunja, CPUC Priorities Committee • Ian Parrish, CPUC Priorities Committee • Karin Sigloch, CPUC, CPUC Rights and Rules Committee, Health and Life • Canturk Isci, Academic Affairs •

• Representative seats vacant • ARC• ART• AST• COM• EAS• ENG• MAE• MUS• NES• ORF• PHI• SPO•

• Delegate seats vacant • Hibben-Magie Apartments • Women's Center •

Minutes

I. Call to Order and Assembly Business

A. Seating of New Assembly Members - Medini Padmanabhan

Ms. Padmanabhan reported that the Hibben-Magie seat was now vacant, and that there were new representatives for Computer Science (Chris deCoro), History of Science (Lindy Baldwin), Physics (Steve Hassani), and the Black Graduate Caucus (Bernice Rosenzweig). Additionally, the Woodrow Wilson School had recently elected a new representative.

B. Approval of Minutes (November) - Shin-Yi Lin

Since Ms. Peter was not present to report on the minutes, Ms. Lin proposed moving a vote on the approval of the minutes to the next meeting.

II. Special Guest

A. Leslie Bernard-Joseph - Chair, Undergraduate Student Government

Mr. Bernard-Joseph recounted the many projects the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) was working on, and the recent successes:

• In terms of computing on campus, the USG successfully lobbied for an increase in email quota and the installation of wireless internet in the dormitories.
• The USG worked on a survey on diversity and race relations on campus, and presented the results at the February 2005 CPUC meeting. This involved completed surveys from 5500 people, and many meetings with administrators.
• The USG lobbied for more financial aid for eating clubs.
• The USG organized discussions on the University's response to grade inflation.
• The new TigerTrade website was launched.
• They were focusing on the transition to the four-year college system. Mr. Raburn asked what the undergraduates think of the four-year college system. Mr. Bernard-Joseph replied that feelings were mixed on the issue: some thought that it would stratify the campus more, others thought that the four-year colleges would be a good alternative to the Street. Ms. Lin commented that the GSG was thinking about the role graduate students would play in the colleges--grad students had been told that each college would have ten graduate masters in residence.
• They were working on overhauling the academic advising system, trying to make sure that underclassmen would have undergraduate advisors.
• Several initiatives were underway to increase public service. This included fundraising for Hurricane Katrina victims.
• Burritos should be served at Frist Campus Center soon.
• The USG was pushing for the ROTC to not be allowed on campus since members of the LGBT community are not allowed to served in the armed forces. No referendum was held on the issue.
• There was a referendum on campus to probe the students' feelings on gay marriage and to vote on whether the USG should endorse the Princeton Justice Project's amicus brief to be filed in the Lewis v. Harris case (the same-sex plaintiffs in the case are seeking to be legally wed) before the New Jersey Supreme Court. Seventy-three percent of students supported the legalization of same-sex marriages, and fifty-two percent supporting the UGS's endorsement of the amicus brief. Ms. Keller asked if this referendum was the beginning of a trend for the USG. Mr. Bernard-Joseph stated that issues for which some students seek a referendum will be decided on a case-by-case basis. He thought that the USG would take a more active role in politics, though.

Ms. Lin asked about undergraduate/graduate student relations. She stated that at the Ivy Summit, grad students at other schools expressed interest in mentoring relationships with faculty, but that only Princeton students seemed interested in undergraduate/graduate mentoring relationships. She also stated that there had been two articles in the Daily Princetonian and the Nassau Weekly in the past week that reflected poorly on graduate students. Mr. Bernard-Joseph said that undergraduate feelings on grad students had a lot to do with the maturity of undergraduates. He stated that freshman were largely uninterested in contact with graduate students, but that a lot of upperclassmen, especially seniors working on their theses, sought closer relations with graduate students. An undergraduate at the last CPUC meeting said that it seemed like a new bar on campus would bring grads and undergrads together, as a current barrier in undergrad/grad relations was that undergrads cannot go to the D-Bar unaccompanied.

Mr. Sabouret wanted elaboration of the fact that many undergraduates consider graduate students to be "sketchy". Mr. Bernard-Joseph stated that undergrads stopped being rude to grad students when they had more contact. He also thought that the administration bore some of the blame in that they were so focused on the undergraduates that it separated the two student populations. Someone asked if the administration put more value on undergraduate relations than on graduate relations. Mr. Bernard-Joseph stated that Princeton focuses heavily on undergraduate education but was perceived as not being supportive enough of undergraduates pursuing graduate school. It seemed like Princeton was great for students going into investment banking or intending to go to professional school.

Ms. Lin thanked Mr. Bernard-Joseph for coming and presented him with a GSG mug.

III. New Business

There was no new business.

IV. Other Guest items

A. Funding Requests - Jeff Dwoskin

Mr. Dwoskin stated that two groups had not claimed funds granted to them by Assembly. Therefore, there was a surplus in the co-sponsorship budget. There was only one funding request, from the ACSS to put on a Chinese New Year festival. The event was to be open to all graduate students, and > 300 grad students were expected to attend. The ACSS was planning on serving food this year, which is why the budget was higher than in years past. Mr. Dwoskin recommended funding the event for the $400 the group requested. Assembly voted to follow Mr. Dwoskin's recommendation.

B. DCE discussion - Harvey Stark

Since the last meeting, Mr. Stark and other graduate students had been discussing DCE and had drafted a letter to send to administrators and the trustees. There were several questions that needed to be addressed:

1. Is the letter necessary?
2. To whom should the letter be sent?
3. Is the letter as is appropriate and the best we can do?

First, though each representative present gave a summary of their department's views on DCE:

• Anthropology: Mr. Martin stated that most people do not finish within the five year program length due to the necessity of doing field work. However, students are pleased that they get an extra half year of funding if they get an outside fellowship, since there was previously no extra funding as a reward for getting an outside fellowship. He did state that there was no formal discussion about DCE in the department.
• Applied Mathematics: Ms. Bold stated that students were generally happy about DCE. The program length in Applied Mathematics is four years, and a quarter of students take more than five years to graduate. Students are happy they will be allowed in the housing draw beyond their program length.
• Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences: Mr. Bianchi stated that there had not been formal discussions within his program. Ms. Adhitya stated that the majority of students in AOS were from outside the United States, and degree time often exceeded the program length, so that the DCE student status was beneficial. It was also noted that there are not funding problems for those exceeding their program length.
• Civil and Environmental Engineering: Mr. Ntelekos reported that the new DCE status would not affect most students except for the implications for visas.
• Chemical Engineering: The program length is five years, but advisors would fund a sixth year. DCE would improve the visa situation for international students. The number of AIs was decreasing because class sizes were decreasing.
• Chemistry: There were no formal discussions within the department. It was thought that DCE would save the department some money and be beneficial to international students.
• Classics: Most people take 6-7 years to finish, but the class entering in 2002 was looking like most would graduate in 5 years. There was constant communication between faculty and grad students on DCE, and the DGS was concerned.
• East Asian Studies: The faculty is concerned about DCE. It is necessary for students to go abroad, and this department previously granted an extra year of funding for those receiving outside fellowships. There were also very few teaching opportunities.
• Ecology and Evolutionary Biology: There was no formal discussion of DCE in the department, and most people finish in five years.
• Economics: Ms. Ang stated that her department was unanimous in support of DCE. The department chair did not think that the teaching burden on grad students would be increased. There are a lot of international students in the department, so DCE's impact on visa status is positive. The graduate student council had met to discuss DCE.
• Electrical Engineering: No one has expressed concerns with DCE, but there have been no formal discussions.
• English: Mr. Bickford stated that there was much discussion of DCE in the department. Students were concerned that a part-time lectureship constituted five precepts but a full-time Assistantship in Instruction required teaching six precepts. There was some discussion of how departments decide on what a full teaching load was--there seemed to be discrepancies across departments.
• Geosciences: Most students are paid by grants, and there was a shortage of AIs. DCE would likely be beneficial to most students.
• History of Science: Ms. Baldwin stated that most people seemed happy with DCE, that there had been no discussion with the DGS about DCE, and that most people take 6-7 years to finish. Ms. Keller stated that it seemed difficult for some people to obtain AIs because there were too many history students.
• Math: Overall, people think DCE is a good thing. The program length recently decreased to four years, and students were told they were expected to finish in that time. A lot of students are on outside fellowships.
• Molecular Biology: There have been no formal discussions, and there are no funding issues. There are a lot of international students in the department, so DCE will benefit them.
• Physics: Mr. Hassani stated that many graduate students were indifferent to DCE, largely due to the fact that most people finish approximately on time, and those who don't are funded by their advisors.
• Plasma Physics: Mr. Raburn said that students in his program never have problems getting funding. There are a lot of international students. However, there have been no formal discussions of DCE.
• Politics: Ms. Brown stated that there were no strong opinions in her department. Most people take 6.5 years to finish their dissertations. She stated that there seemed to be little awareness of DCE in Politics.
• Psychology: Almost everyone graduates within the program length, so most people do not worry about post-enrollment. There have been no formal discussions.
• Religion: Mr. Stark stated that his was one of the departments losing a half year of funding for those who obtained outside fellowships. There had been discussions of DCE in his department.
• Slavics: This is the smallest department, and the DGS is very worried about funding. There had been DCE discussions.
• Sociology: It takes most people about six years to finish even though the program length is just four years. DCE is seen as an improvement over DCC because it will allow people to seek outside student fellowships after their program lengths.
• Woodrow Wilson School: Most students are master's students, so DCE does not apply to them. Most Ph.D. students finish on time. There have been no formal discussions of DCE within the school.

The discussion kicked off with the first question: is a letter really necessary? Ms. Lin pointed out that the Graduate School had been made aware of these various issues. All DGS's are aware of the various issues. Dean Russel had informed the GSG that DCE was still a work in progress, and that he will give the Executive Committee an update in January. Mr. Stark responded that some students are not benefitting from DCE, and indeed feel like they will suffer under DCE, so he thinks that a letter should be written on the behalf of those students. The Board of Trustees will vote on DCE on January 20th, and so Mr. Stark thought that the Trustees should hear graduate student opinions on DCE before the vote. Beyond that, he thought it was important that there was documentation of graduate student opinions.

Mr. Stark moved that this letter be submitted to various administrators before the January 20th vote. This kicked off a long discussion. Mr. Raburn asked that people speak to their DGS's to determine how the change to DCE would affect students in their department. Ms. Nephew thought that the tone of the letter was respectful, and that it couldn't hurt to send the letter. Ms. Balwin asked what the goal of sending the letter was. Mr. Stark stated that the goal was not to stop DCE from going through, because it was certainly going through, but that the purpose was to include graduate student voices in the discussion. Mr. Sabouret stated that the trustees do not have the background in the issues related to post-enrollment to make sense of the letter. In his capacity as a graduate student representative to faculty meetings, he had learned that President Tilghman acknowledged that a lot of details still need to be hammered out. It was suggested that the endowments of the humanities departments could be used to pay the tuition for DCE students, so perhaps the GSG could lean on the administrators to increase the endowments. Mr. Stark asked about what would happen to students who would be negatively impacted by DCE. Mr. Sabouret responded that the administration was working on providing funds for those people. Mr. Ntelekos thought that Assembly should be supportive of those students, even if most graduate students benefit from DCE. However, he was convinced of only two of the points in the letter as written. Ms. Lin asked if Assembly could address the issues in the letter in the next GSLI. If Assembly is not wedded to the January 20th deadline, this might be appropriate. Mr. Friess stated that there was no rush to send a letter. He suggested forming a taskforce to collect actual data from all departments on DCE, with the idea that administrators might be more responsive if presented with facts instead of a litany of grievances. Mr. Bickford stated that the GSG had fought hard for student status past the program length, and Assembly should not contradict itself by not thanking the administrators for their work on post-enrollment. He thought that the GSG would lose credibility by sending the letter, making it more difficult to work with the administration in the future. Mr. Stark thought that sending the letter would actually improve relations with the administration by making the administration more aware of graduate student concerns.

Mr. Friess made a point of order: would the vote be a resolution, hence counting abstentions as no votes? Ms. Padmanabhan stated that Mr. Stark had made a normal motion, so abstentions would not count in the vote.

Several other people were concerned that sending this particular letter would strain the GSG's relations with the administration. Mr. Sabouret thought that he thought sending a letter that had data and specifics would be better than sending the current draft of the letter. At the PriComm open meeting in November, Mr. Friess was shocked that the Provost stated that perhaps DCE should be dropped since he had gotten the impression from those who attended the meeting that DCE negatively impacted many graduate students. Mr. Friess pointed out that DCE benefits 80-90% of graduate students, and that GSG should do nothing that jeopardized the implementation of DCE.

Assembly rejected the motion to send the administration the current draft of the letter.

Mr. Friess moved that Assembly charge a fact-finding taskforce on DCE and to have it report its findings to the Executive Committee and the Assembly. This motion was seconded by Mr. Raburn, who added that the central issue right now was that Assembly was lacking in facts about the effects of DCE. Mr. de Froment stated that Assembly should delineate the kind of data it wants from DGS's. Ms. Padmanabhan stressed that the taskforce ought to have representatives from all divisions. Ms. Osler asked that Assembly consider the most effective ways of communicating with the administration. There was also the issue of setting a deadline for the taskforce, and what the timescale for information-gathering should be. It was decided that the taskforce would write a letter to the Graduate School by the next Assembly meeting. Assembly unanimously approved the formation of a taskforce. Ms. Baldwin, Mr. Hassani, and Mr. Raburn volunteered to be on the taskforce.

C. Ivy Summit - Karin Sigloch, Leslie Hinkson, Vera Keller

Ms. Lin made the following report at the Ivy Summit, and Ms. Sigloch, Ms. Hinkson, and Ms. Keller made this report on the Ivy Summit to Assembly. The Ivy Summit is a meeting of graduate student leaders from all of the Ivy League schools. At the October 2005 meeting in New Haven, CT, the following issues were discussed:

• It seemed that overall, families seemed to feel isolated and ignored. Of all the Ivy League schools, only Cornell promised to build more child care facilities.
• Many people present thought that universities were not doing their best in terms of training those who would not necessarily end up on an academic track.
• At Penn, graduate students wrote a set of guidelines for faculty/student mentoring relationships.
• There was some concern that graduate students would have trouble getting faculty jobs as small liberal arts colleges because they lacked teaching experience in grad school. This was a worry especially for Princeton and Dartmouth students, since graduate students at those universities were not allowed to be instructors, only teaching assistants.
• It was noted that Princeton had the most diverse delegation in attendance. Other universities were either having trouble including various groups in leadership opportunities or did not include other student groups in their delegations.
• There were various degrees of feeling marginalized at the universities. Some graduate student delegations felt very marginalized, but the students at Yale reported that they had a beautiful graduate student center on the central campus. The fact that the center was on the central campus helped graduate students feel more connected to the university.
• It was clear that the GSG has a much, much smaller budget than graduate governments at other universities.

The Princeton delegation also made a presentation on the Ivy Summit at a CPUC meeting, but were disappointed by the response at the meeting.

V. Decision Items

A. Election Committee - Medini Padmanabhan

It was necessary to set up a committee to manage the GSG Officer elections and the referendum, as per the by-laws. The following people volunteered and were approved:

• Lindy Baldwin
• Brookes Brown
• Jeff Dwoskin
• Danielle Osler
• Medini Padmanabhan

B. GSG Fee Yea-Nay Vote/By-law - Jeff Dwoskin and Medini Padmanbhan

Louis Lee proxied his vote to Susan Robison.

Mr. Dwoskin had sent out the revised text for the fee referendum. The text was unanimously approved.

Next, a roll-call vote was taken to publicly assess Assembly's opinions on the two referendum items. As per the Constitution, after the vote, committees (consisting of those voting one way on each amendment) would be set up to write opinion papers for each side of each referendum item.

Roll Call Vote

Representative	Amendment 1	Amendment 2
ANT	yea	nea
ARC	vacant
ART	vacant
AST	vacant
CEE	nea	yea
CHE	yea	yea
CHM	yea	yea
CLA	yea	yea
COM	vacant
COS	absent
EAS	vacant
ECO	yea	yea
EEB	absent
ELE	absent
ENG	vacant
FIT	absent
GEO	yea	yea
GER	absent
HIS	absent
MAE	vacant
MAT	yea	yea
MOL	yea	yea
MUS	vacant
NES	vacant
ORF	vacant
PHI	vacant
PHY	yea	nea
POL	yea	yea
PSY	nea	nea
REL	yea	yea
SLA	yea	yea
SOC	absent
SPO	vacant
WWS	yea	yea
ACM	yea	yea
AOS	absent
HOS	yea	yea
OPR	absent
PPL	nea	nea
BGC	absent
WOC	vacant

A committee consisting of Medini Padmanabhan and Jeff Dwoskin was formed to write the factual statements for both referendum items. The final documents from the yea/nea committees and the factual committee would be presented to the graduate student body in advance of the referendum.

C. Jorge Cham Event - Shin-Yi Lin

Discussion postponed.

D. Valentine's Day Event - Megan Sullivan

Discussion postponed.

VI. Department/Committee/Other Reports

A. Butler Apartments - Josh Friess

This report was postponed.

B. History of Science - Sultana Banulescu

This report was postponed.

C. Woodrow Wilson School - Danny Harris

This report was postponed.

D. Religion - Harvey Stark

This report was postponed.

E. Politics - Brookes Brown

This report was postponed.

F. Graduate College - Neven Fuckar

This report was postponed.

VII. Other Reports

A. CPUC Governance - Sara Nephew

Ms. Nephew wanted to invite anyone present to join her on December 15 at 4:30 at Cafe Vivian to brainstorm candidates for honorary degrees.

B. Student Billing - Katy Bold

This report was postponed.

C. Chair - Shin-Yi Lin

This report was postponed.

VIII. Adjournment

The meeting adjourned at 8:15 pm.