•Representatives present• Tara Troy, proxy for Juan Norgues, CEE • Clara Tuan, EAS • Xiaoling Ang, ECO • Jeff Dowskin, proxy for Ilias Tagkopoulos, ELE • Anita Adhitya, GEO • Megan Ewing, GER • Lindy Baldwin, HOS • Robert Harron, MAT • Shin-Yi Lin, MOL • Steve Hassani, PHY • Brookes Brown, POL • Daniel Raburn, PPL • Julia Belopsky, proxy for Cori Anderson, SLA • Christine Percheski, proxy for Kenneth Jamison, SOC •
•Delegates present• Dante Ricci, BUT • Steve Hassani, MIL •
•Councilors present• Chair Shin-Yi Lin, CPUC, CPUC Executive Committee • Parliamentary Secretary Dan Raburn, • Jeff Dwoskin, proxy for Treasurer Alex Ntelekos • Jeff Dwoskin, Facilities • Steve Hassani, Academic Affairs •
•Others present• Aaron Levine, CPUC Rights and Rules Committee 2006-2007 Shuyang Pan, representative for ACSS Dean Lisa Schreyer, Graduate School •
•Representatives absent• Katherine Bold, ACM • Ricky Martin, ANT • Neven Fuckar, AOS • Marion Riggs, ART • Swaroop Chatterjee, CHE • Adam Dunn, CHM • Jake Mackey, CLA • Chris DeCoro, COS • Adrian De Froment, EEB • Jesse Salazar, HIS • Susan Robison, PSY • Harvey Stark, REL • Frankki Bevins, WWS •
•Delegates absent• Tian Xia, ACSS • Weining Man, CIGS • Bernice Rosenzweig, BGC • Neven Fuckar, GCO • Marcelline Block, HIB • Jennifer Jordan, LAW •
•Councilors absent• Kellam Conover, CPUC • Leslie Hinkson, CPUC • Luke MacDonald, CPUC • Medini Pedmanabhan, CPUC • Guillaume Sabouret, CPUC, CPUC Executive Committee • Karin Sigloch, CPUC, CPUC Rights and Rules Committee, Health and Life • Sara Nephew, CPUC Governance Committee • Diana Hill, CPUC Judicial Committee • Fatema Gunja, CPUC, CPUC Priorities Committee • Ian Parrish, CPUC, CPUC Priorities Committee • Josh Friess, CPUC Resources Committee • James Bickford, CPUC Rights and Rules Committee • Canturk Isci, Academic Affairs •
•Representative seats vacant• ARC• AST• COM• ENG• FIT• MAE• MUS• NES• ORF• OPR• PHI• SPO•
•Delegate seats vacant• Women's Center • Off-Campus Representative •
Samir Soneji, OPR representative, is currently an in absentia student so he has stepped down. He is currently looking for a replacement from among his classmates.
The May, June, July minutes were approved with a voice vote.
We discussed the summer letter writing campaign. While it was not feasible to add any letters that weren't informally approved in the July meeting, Shin-Yi Lin wanted to make sure that Assembly did not want to remove any letters from the list. A reminder of the informally approved proposals:
1. DCE tuition should not be significantly increased
2. A university-wide push for sustainability
3. Provide Frist dining options during the summer
4. Improve lighting, campus safety, and sidewalks; more blue-light phones
5. Separate Graduate College rent increases from UG room and board increases
6. Graduate College summer rents should reflect room size
7. Increased P-rides express service
8. Improve Housing Office customer service; review housing policy; propose a comprehensive housing survey be conducted
9. Improve the quality of GC food
10. Campus Bar
There was only disagreement about the Housing letter (#8). Steve Hassani asked how the proposed survey was different from the survey that was conducted during the spring of 2005. Ms. Lin said that the 2005 survey was focused on unit types in terms of long-term housing construction. What this new survey would focus on is housing policy. Christine Percheski raised concerns on the ability of the GSG to conduct and interpret a survey. Ms. Lin said that we were not suggesting that we run the survey, but that we help the Housing Office run this survey. Tara Troy said that we need the survey to defend housing policy with hard numbers. Ms. Percheski made a motion to take out a mention of the survey in housing letter, but this was not seconded. There was a motion to approve the letter topics as Is, which was approved with a voice vote.
We had two funding requests. One request was for the Moon Festival from ACSS. Shuyang Pan, a representative for ACSS, said that while they traditionally organize the celebration regularly, they have something special organized for this year: They have invited an art troupe from a top Chinese university to perform at Richardson Auditorium. Other campus groups (eg, ACSS, CSA) will also be part of the program. Their budget reflects the $3000-4000 required to rent Richardson out and the reception that will follow.
The other request was for the GC Summer Pirate Party from the Graduate College. Xiaoling Ang, a representative for the GC, said that the GSG Executive Committee has suggested that the GSG put the summer event budget into this party. Since we do not currently have a Social Chair, it made sense that we take advantage of this opportunity to support a significant social event during the summer. Brookes Brown supported this idea.
There was a motion to fund the Summer Pirate Party for $1000 ($600 from the GSG-organized Summer Party budget and $400 from the GSG Co-Sponsorship Budget) and the Moon Festival for $800 from the GSG Co-sponsorship budget. The motion was approved with a voice vote.
Ms. Lin said that an anonymous CPUC councilor asked that CPUC members not be listed as absent in the minutes. There was a consensus that CPUC councilors are expected to attend Assembly meetings -- so that they are aware of the issues affecting the graduate students they are meant to represent -- and so should be listed as present/absent in the minutes.
Ms. Lin made the following Chair's report for the August meeting:
The Executive Committee has met four times since the last Assembly meeting. We have been working on the summer letter writing campaign.
I would also like to invite interested Assembly members to consider representing Princeton at the Ivy Summit. The purpose of the Ivy Summit is for all the Ivy graduate student organizers to discuss shared issues and progress. For example, Dartmouth University has recently formally and financially supported maternity leave for their graduate students. This year's Ivy Summit will take place on November 17-19 at Dartmouth. We can bring up to 5 delegates. I would like to bring 1-2 Exec members, 1-2 Assembly members, and 1 special interest delegate (eg, BGC, QGC, international student association). If you are interested, please contact me.
Jeff Dwoskin, the Chair of the GSG Facilities Committee, made a presentation (PDF) on shuttle and housing. On the shuttle program: The goal this year is to maintain the current route but increase the frequency by using five small buses instead of two large buses. Medini Padmanabhan noted that if there was better shuttle service to Forbes, then the graduate students living at the Annex can take advantage of the shuttle. On housing policy: These are current issues and possible solutions, but the main point of this presentation is to educate the Assembly members so that we can help our constituents understand the intricacies and the trade-offs of the current housing policy.
Ms. Lin talked about a proposed plan to have town meetings this fall. The idea is to try to interact with the graduate student body more effectively. In order to make it more manageable, we may consider combining some departments together. This would be an opportunity to air out intra-departmental/discipline issues and graduate student-wide issues. If we end up running the housing survey, this would also be an opportunity to educate graduate students about housing policy. To get the program rolling, Ms. Lin asked for help in combining departments together into appropriate groupings. Ms. Brown and Ms. Ang volunteered to combine Social Science departments, Ms. Troy volunteered to combine Engineering departments, and Clara Tuan volunteered to combine Humanities departments.