GSU Fall AGM 2009 Minutes
Minutes
Fall AGM October 29, 2009
Opening of meeting:6:10pm
Nate Wilke will chair due to Keith Dunne’s absence.
1.Identification of Visitors:
None
Attendance:
Olivia Puckerin: Biology, Rachel Buxton: Biology, Kevin Le Horzdec: Biology, G Phani Suresh: Engineering, Amy-lee Kouwenberg: CABE, Ryan Jameson: Biology, Elysia Dutton: CABE, Danielle Fequet: Environmental Science, Jay Shah: Biology, Rebecca Dean: Chemistry, Arvindh Viswanathan: Engineering, Matthew Fuchs: Anthropology, Huang Hiang: Business, Anne Lafferty: Folklore, Jean Sebastien Batat: Geography, Christina Goldhar: Geography, Catherine Jalbert: Archaeology, Juan Acevedo: Engineering, Nate Wilke: Biology, Sebastien Despres: Anthropology, Stephanie Fung: Psychology, Megan Mackenzie: Psychology, Isabel Costa: Biology, Rebecca Daniels: Biomedical Science, Roger Bill: Anthropology, Mimi Sheriff: Womens Studies, Karan Bhawsinka: Naval Archaeology, Tiffany Piercey: Earth Sciences, Mike Minor: English, Mike Freeman: Business, Shawn Anctil: History, Melanie Underwood: Marine Institute, Ayaz Ghani: Economics, Yin Yin: Economics, Cyrinus Nwanguana: Economics, Zadeh: ECE
2.Acceptance of Agenda
8/A: VIIII
- Catherine – add employment relations committee
8/B/III – Occupational Health and Safety
Isabel Motioned to accept agenda with amendments, Rebecca Daniel 2nd, Unanimous
3.Apologies:
Received several *** will look in email**
4.Ratification of Minutes from Spring 2009 AGM
2nd by Amy-lee, unanimous
5.Receipt of Work Summaries of Executives
President: Catherine Jalbert
- Gave brief background of her position. She is ex-officio on all committees. She chairs the following committees: Legal, ERC, and Facilities Management Board Meeting.
o FMB has spent some money on new carpets, new shades for Bitters and new beds for the residents in Feild Hall. FMB is looking to replace the chairs in Bitters, have received a request to have some chairs without arms for customer comfort
- The Exec is looking to improve the GSU’s image and operations.
o A lot of people, both graduate students and other members of the university community don’t know what GSU is or what it does
o Have instituted a survey campaign. The VP Academic’s is going on currently.
o Bitters is having a new and improved website
o Budget will be presented to night
§ Olivia – what year does the budget start in?
· Nate- May
VP Academic: Sebastien Despres
As stands, but wants’ to highlight 3 things:
1. The GSU is well represented on the GSU boards as well as university bodies. Every single committee except three have GSU representation. Also the largest BOD in 5+yrs.
2. The VPA is to represent the grad students on committees: Senate Exec, Academic Council, SGS Appeals, SGS Nominations, University Space, and Senate Elections, Steering Committees (Student Affairs, Chaplaincy, Copyright, and FA Research).
3. Represents grad student interests and helps grad student represent themselves. He’s met with #’s of people. Mainly problems between grad students and supervisors
4. He’s also assisted with SGS orientation.
n Mike: member in English had questions that were raised by a recent survey. It felt that the GSU is more involved for social than academic interests
o Seb – He has $0.00 budget, where as events has a larger budget. But also, there are going to be 5 surveys in total, the last one was the Events survey and that’s why the survey was geared to that.
VP Finance: Nate Wilke
As stands, but the highlights of his time were learning and working with the Health / Dental and Finance Committee. He has been preparing the budget presentation, working on travel claims. He is also working with the committee on special grants, it is a very unused portion of the budget that is easy to benefit from. He encourages everyone to use them. Also, looking into having forms online.
- Seb: these grants are up to $500 that your department, society can use to buy things
Questions:
- Juan: is Nate in charge of H/D? Is the GSU involved with the H1N1 vaccination? Have they received any information?
- Nate – mainly he deals with appeals, people having paid for a service that they claim to have cancelled. Not sure on information on H1N1
- Matt – go to easternhealth.ca
- Juan – went on that website, they say we have to wait
- Mike – in regards to special projects grant, is he eligible (or society) because they get corporate sponsorship
- Nate – can’t think of something that would deny you $. If you have other sources that will give you $, then that’s better for everyone.
- Seb – there are no limitations, you are expected to get other sources.
- Matt – he suggests having a look at the exec salaries, they need to be reviewed
- Suresh – regarding the website: wants residences forms, try to add the application fee (so that people have to submit it immediately)
- Erin – our new site will be using a different software (joomla) so we’ll look into it
VP Internal: Emma Brand (via Nate Wilke)
As stands, her survey is recently completed and will send out information at a later date
Arvindh motions to accept reports, Melanie 2nd, unanimous
6. BOD Reports
Juan – Engineering. Issue that he has for exec members and for TAUMUN. Student is doing Masters but has completed everything in 2 yrs. If he finishes by the end of next summer but then he has to pay full 2 yrs)
Catherine – unfortunately this is in the SGS fee structure. It is unfair to students to pay when they have no funding, the administration sees a flaw in the structure
Seb – we pay for the program. We decide how long we’ll be in for (schedule A, B, or C)
Juan – but the student doesn’t have any funding
Seb – it’s a regulation that has to be dealt with
Nate – that we’ve heard from members of the grad student population, it will give Catherine leverage to these committees. The student can meet with Seb as well
Jay – the ABC schedule is for masters only, the PhD is only offered 4yrs.
Isabel – with students submitting thesis with revisions it can take months, even though it’s not the student’s fault. The students still get charged.
Catherine – SGS will have to start extending fellowships in extraordinary circumstances. Encourages the student to go to SGS to talk about funding with them
Isabel – goal should be to get the university to stop fees when it’s not the students fault
Seb – send students to him, so that he can track the issues
Chemistry – meeting with Jay
Buckets collecting water that the university has done nothing about. These safety concerns need to be addressed and fixed.
Nate – it is important that people bring up points to Jay so that we can have record of the issues
7.Report from General Members (None)
8.A – Health and Dental: met 5 times
Dealt with appeals, reviewed a premium decrease and the resulting temporary surplus, looked at using our student athletic therapists instead of the ones that GreenSheild wants
Constitution
What happens when it’s edited? Looking to have it edited in January, reviewed by the BOD in Jan and Feb, then having the GSU lawyer look at it and then ratified at March AGM.
Isabel – it can only be approved by AGM
Nate – the By-laws can be edited by BOD
Seb – it is so problematic because of dead linking, no one has looked at it in entirety.
Gsumun.ca
If you know there are issues please let us know so that we can rectify them
Finance / Budget
Option to increase travel 20% of budget. Either increase by 20% by changing the constitution, or increase $60 grad membership fee. According to the survey 75% of respondents would be ok with a fee increase. A substantial increase in overall budget due to increased student fees. We also have the GSDF.
Catherine – GSDF, we could as for all of it but it is a good savings. MUNSU had an opportunity to have a student fund but did not use it. We will have extra money for future expenditures
Mike – does GSDF rollover, have interest earning?
Nate – yes, unknown will ask
Seb – approx $50,000 gets put in each year, but doesn’t’ know how much has been accumulated over time
Catherine – if the BOD decides to contribute to the capital campaigns then the money would come out of GSDF
Jay – who decides how much, or what time formula?
Nate – there is no formula, and the finance committee decides (Lilly Walker, Finance, N. Golfman, Nate, Catherine) there are a terms of agreement
Nate – has no idea why there were only $30,000 asked for last year.
Isabel – it all depends on what is needed (i.e. the computer lab on the 2nd fl could have been $30,000)
Suresh – Lilly Walker is the dean of student affairs, how can we be certain she won’t spend it any way she wants?
Jay – how much are we asking?
Nate – it depends on the semester, but we are comfortable in asking for $70000
Rob – if the money is ours then we deserve to know how much is there, they have no right to our money
Catherine – we can try to find out how much is there. The administration acts as a parental role (i.e. a checks and balances)
Seb – their role can’t be judged, they are taxing students for us and thus bettering the whole population
Nate – will work on finding out the figures
Rob – if we are spending more $ on conference aid and most people want more, then why don’t’ we just completely take everything out of GSDF and use that money.
Erin – if we ask for it all then we leave nothing for future GSU
Nate – we do have to be responsible, and he agrees that the $500 or $250 is laughable for conference funding.
Juan – with the advertising budget – does it come out of campaigns? Should we be advertising more? Students don’t’ seem to care.
Nate – advertising it won’t do anything by itself.
Catherine – there are a lot of different avenues to get info at, part of that is being creative but it is difficult. Once those more creative ways are exhausted an advertising campaign would be hard.
Nate – any suggestions are welcome
Suresh – can we make the % for conference funding go up in the constitution? When is the budget done?
Nate – the budget is not fiscal, also have to consider that if we increase a percentage then we’ll be decreasing something else. Don’t really want to hurt other parts
Suresh – with the constitution – will the editor be doing revisions or amendments?
Nate – revisions, then it’ll have to go through the BOD and AGM
Suresh – when was the last revision?
Seb – the 80’s (for a full revision)
Academic Committee – met 2x. Not sure what we’re going to focus on this term because we’re waiting on the results of the survey. We will be inclined to organize workshops. We’ve been acting as a nominiations committee
Social – as stands
Legal – none, we only meet if there is an issue
External Relations Commitee - as stands
Graduate Student Awards – have not met (don’t have to until 4months prior to Awards)
Employment Relations Committee: 7 new positions were hired (Events Coord, EA’s, Residence Coord, Webmaster, Minute taker) We’ve also gotten a contract for the GM, everyone is happy with it.
Ad-hoc committees
Elections – no report at this time
Aldrich – see VP C& R Report
OSH – Jay – at the September BOD we formed the OSH committee, oct 1st was the first meeting. We discussed what goals we should have. The BOD members are to collect info in their departments and report it to OHS. So far he’s received many, need to collect accurate data so to take to the university. We are having an Ergonomics Workshop November 9th in the GSU Boardroom. Send info to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Juan – is it legal to take pictures of the safety hazards
Erin – yes, its a public place
Jay – please send us info
Juan – emails: GSU sends to every grad student, finding it annoying that he gets so many duplicate emails
Catherine – unfortunately we cant’ do anyting about that.
Seb – some departments dont’ forward emails
Juan – what can we do
Erin – get the departments and SGS to give us all of their students emails (then we will have a master list)
Seb – call the question, none opposed
Amy-lee Motion to accept the reports and budget omnibus. Sean 2nd, unanimous
Catherine – motion to adjourn; Mike 2nd; unanimous
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