From owner-info@gso.bu.edu Sat Nov 21 07:50 EST 1998 Received: from gso.bu.edu (GSO.BU.EDU [128.197.60.71]) by cs.bu.edu ((8.8.8.buoit.v1.0)/8.8.8/(BU-S-10/16/98-v1.0a)) with ESMTP id HAA27752; Sat, 21 Nov 1998 07:50:50 -0500 (EST) Received: (from majordom@localhost) by gso.bu.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5/(BU-S-02/10/97-v1.0)) id HAA18393 for info-list; Sat, 21 Nov 1998 07:50:36 -0500 (EST) Received: from fserv2.bu.edu (root@FSERV2.BU.EDU [128.197.152.88]) by gso.bu.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5/(BU-S-02/10/97-v1.0)) with ESMTP id HAA18389 for ; Sat, 21 Nov 1998 07:50:32 -0500 (EST) Received: from 128.197.8.87 (PPP-83-3.BU.EDU [128.197.8.87]) by fserv2.bu.edu ((8.8.8.buoit.b5.ACS)/) with SMTP id HAA57568; Sat, 21 Nov 1998 07:50:24 -0500 Message-ID: <3656B679.62E9@acs.bu.edu> Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 07:47:55 -0500 From: Frances Altvater Reply-To: altvater@bu.edu X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Macintosh; I; PPC) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: info@gso.bu.edu Subject: GSO-Summary of Thurs. 11/19 mtg. Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-info@gso.bu.edu Precedence: bulk Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Length: 8320 Status: RO ========================================================================== Here is a summary of what we did at Thursday's Graduate Student Organization meeting. Since Rob was at the NAGPS Conference during that meeting, it was run by Ann Walker with an e-mail summary provided by Fran Altvater . Our next meeting will be on Thursday, December 3rd, 5-6:15pm; Assoc. Dean Scott Whitaker will be attending that meeting, as discussed below. --Fran Summary ======= 1. Gareth Roberts provided the group with flyers for the next meeting so that we could post them. He also provided the blue summary flyers that we will try to distribute to all departmental graduate groups and to department chairs in any department lacking a group. 2. Committee Reports Funding Committee ================= No specific report was made although Gareth Roberts mentioned that he would be attending several workshops at the NAGPS conference on funding topics as part of our general fact finding. Healthcare Committee ==================== Denise Guillot reported for this committee (with some additional information from Rob Pitts via e-mail). Their group has a description of BU Health Services which will be posted when the Chickering insurance plan research is complete. She added that they were currently researching information on dental services and any leads would be appreciated. They've already posted information about an alternative dental plan called "Dentistry For All". Rob Pitts will be gathering additional information on healthcare at the NAGPS conference. There was also mention of this committee asking for some student feedback on the Chickering insurance plan in the near future (to be included in their insurance writeup that will be added to the "Healthcare Pages"). Housing Committee ================= Catherine Cappuzzi reported for this committee. They met with Greg Wheeler of the Office of Rental Property Management. Doug Wright wrote up the information and it is already on our web site. They mentioned wanting to meet with the other directors of housing options for grad students, like the Office of Off-Campus Housing and the Office of On-Campus Housing. They reported that On-Campus Housing was resistant to the idea of meeting. Discussion happened on the possibility of getting a comments field and an archive of those comments attached to the Housing pages where folks could post comments about helpful/unhelpful rental agencies and agents. As an archive we could simply date the responses, and weed them out after a certain date so that the information could remain somewhat current (with a minimum amount of work). No discussion followed as to whether anyone would follow this up in order to find out feasibility or how to add it to the page. Liaison Committee ================= Gary Garber reported for this committee. Most of the discussion centered on the upcoming visit of the Dean. See below, after the committee reports. Social Committee ================ Jen Wenner reported for this committee. Jen reported on the most recent Pub Night as being well publicized but less well attended. Discussion centered around the time of year as a problem. Fran Altvater mentioned the possibility of advertising in the BU Bridge for both meetings and Pub Nights for next semester. Unlike the Free Press who charges for announcements (although at a reduced BU rate), the Bridge only requires that we send our announcement to them at least two weeks before the event. They will also put in announcements of continuing semester events so once we have a set schedule for the Spring, we can give it to them by fax or e-mail (info on that is in the box on the calendar page). We also discussed the possibility that because Pub Night was a standard event that we may be having trouble attracting people. Jen pointed out that their committee would need to have more people on it in order to plan a different event and that until that occurs it was agreed that we should concentrate her admirable efforts on the one successful event we can do regularly to keep a strong presence. Jen pointed to continuing problems with the food requisition forms not getting to the right people and will work to see that the bartenders are aware of our group and its regular Pub Nights so that we can avoid this in the future. Steering Committee ================== Kendra Carter reported for this committee. They met with Carlos from Harvard's Graduate Student Union. It was a positive meeting and they had good discussions on developing a good working relationship with the administration, including a monthly (regular) meeting with them so that both sides stay in touch. Harvard's GSU is funded by a voluntary fee assessed with administrative help through their billing system. Discussion of a similar system as possibly useful for us; like the Health Services flyer, you would need to return a form by a certain date if you were not going to accept the charge. In order to do this, we would need to sit down and brainstorm a list of things which we offer for that voluntary fee so that folks would feel they were getting something. Harvard's GSU also has representatives from each department, bolstering attendance and participation with things like a luncheon with department heads to woo them and eligibility for special travel grants (taken from the GSU funds) for reps with perfect attendance. They also discussed strategic planning, like getting a definite number of graduate students, developing a list of GSO services (much of which has been done), and developing catchy phrases, ads, etc. for our flyers. Getting the administration to consider a start-up fee (in the $1000s) for publication and ads would be extremely useful; further discussion was tabled for time. They also discussed our charter as not yet ready but should be ready sometime next semester. 3. Discussion on Assoc. Dean Whitaker's Dec. 3rd meeting It was discussed that as flyers had already been made and the event was being publicized already, the meeting would take place in our room in MCS 135 (at 111 Cummington St.), but that we should probably start meeting in the grad lounge so as to avoid the issue of "what'd they need a lounge for if they aren't going to meet there?" Most of the discussion centered on the agenda for next meeting as those who had attended the NAGPS Conference would undoubtedly have some things to report on and we weren't sure whether we should bring up that the Conference discussed potentially inflammatory issues like unionizing and unionizing as a form of fundraising. Most of the group came to the conclusion that as Dean Whitaker had requested to come to our meeting, we should to some extent conduct ourselves as if it was a normal meeting and that, in the case of our attending the NAGPS Conference, the administration is aware of our participation. It was also discussed that both our regular Committee Reports and the NAGPS report should be prefaced in a way that made it clear that most of these activities are for fact gathering and not yet implemented as policy. In general, we decided to begin with our regular Committee Reports, allowing time for questions on both sides. Gary mentioned that from his meetings with Dean Whittaker and Andrea White that he felt that they would welcome discussion of concerns, like the funding increase; the question of the Globe article's failure to mention our organization was raised and decided that the question, if tactfully phrased, would be ok to ask. We steered away from presenting any formal "list of gripes" on the theory that we didn't really presume to speak for every grad student at this stage and that this could be construed as overwhelming and hostile. We voiced the idea that a meeting (perhaps once a semester) with the administration to which all grad students were invited in a very public way would be useful/positive; a similar meeting was held this semester to discuss the university budget.