Graduate Student Council Meeting

Date:     August 30, 2002, 16:00
Location: Darts Lab, 2nd floor of CCB

Attendance

Members                          Others
Duke Hutchings                   Justin Jang
Pat Widener                      Khai Truong
Zack Kurmas                      Jeremy Goecks
Elaine Huang                     Brian McNamara
Brendan Hannigan
Fernando Alegre
Dan Sternberg
Daron Vroon
Jay Summet
Wei Han
Rod Peters

Agenda Point 1: GSC Open Positions

* The following positions are completely open
  - Graduate Student Senate Representative
  - Picnic Coordinator
  - New Student Orientation Chair

* The following positions are in need of people
  - Seminars Coordinator (co-chair needed)
  - Faculty Recruiting Committee

* Bessie Yang has indicated that she would give up her position as
  Master's Program Representative if another student is willing to
  take over.

* The Publications Chair and Undergrad Recruiting chairs have been
  removed due to lack of necessity.

Agenda Point 2: CoC Picnic

* Recommendations for next year:
  - make sure there is no MSG in the food
  - students would like to see the old format of picnic
    * less dispersal and more interaction among students and faculty
    * need physical threats to faculty to get softball game back!

* Candidates for chair:
  - No volunteers

* The Committee thanked the many students who helped organized the
  picnic and in particular to Jay Summet, who helped organize rides
  for new students and students without cars.

Agenda Point 3: New Student Orientation

* Recommendations for next year:
  - None

* Candidates for chair:
  - None

* The Committee thanked all of those who helped serve on the student
  panel and also helped the new student with the registration process.

Agenda Point 4: Grad Teas

* The Committee thanked Amanda Lyons for kicking off the grad teas.

* A note was made that remaining grad tea money from last year was
  used to buy supplies for future grad teas (cups, plates, plastic
  utensils, popcorn poppers, popcorn, etc.).

* A note was made about holding grad teas in the CRB.  In particular,
  it was requested that the grad tea chair ensure that entry to the
  building is made as easy as possible (for example, by providing a
  contact phone number to both the CCB grad students and the CRB front
  desk and if possible a list of student names to the CRB front desk).
  It was also requested that this information be made explicit to the
  CCB students to encourage a broader attendance at grad teas.

Agenda Point 5: Student Health Insurance

* There was a long discussion about insurance.  A number of issues
  were raised, but chief among them was the following.  Few of the
  students who had specific complaints about the process were not in
  attendance at this meeting in order to lodge their complaints.  It
  seems that only with an effort by these students to address the
  proper issues will a resolution of problems occur.

  The Liaison was given the task to contact all those who raised
  concerned and determine if any of them would be interested in
  serving on or even chairing a committee to explore this issue.  The
  next GSC meeting should feature a report on the progress of
  assembling a committee of students to address the insurance issue.

* Additional Important Points raised:
  - Probably need to provide insurance to students and not employees, 
    especially since many students (those of fellowship, many master's
    students, etc.) are not employed by the Institute.  however, a
    survey or equivalent study of the student body would be needed to
    be done by the committee mentioned above.
  - At the very least, a package that offers more than one option for
    insurance should be provided to our very heterogeneous student body

Agenda Point 6: Email Lists

* There was some discussion prior to the meeting about addressing what
  constitutes spam on the slush and phd-list mailing lists, as well as
  what is and is not appropriate on those lists.  The Committee
  decided that the current situation did not seem to pose a problem,
  and that setting strict policy for phd-list could be prohibitive to
  effective communication.

* The committee also decided that the digest issue can be put to rest
  since students may use procmail or other mail filtering tools to
  setup personal digesting options.  This does not mean that this
  issue is restricted from future consideration.

Agenda Point 7: Other items

* There was some discussion of changing the meeting time for GSC,
  since Fridays at 16:00 were problematic for some people.  It was
  decided though that no other time would be able to catch as many
  students as it currently does, and so it was decided to keep the
  time as is.

* There was a mention of the mentors program and that this should be
  completed as quickly as possible.  The Committee should revisit this
  issue at the next meeting to check progress.


The meeting concluded around 17:00.

These minutes were submitted by Duke Hutchings, and are subject to
change until the September 2002 meeting, at which time they will
become the official meeting minutes.