Minutes from meeting of
April 25th 2005

Call order 7:00pm

Funding Requests

Officer and Ex Officio Representative Reports

President's Report

* Gavin began the meeting by informing us that, due to a clerical error, there would be no agendas at tonight's meeting. Is having no agenda better than having a hidden one?
* Gavin spoke with Dean Brunjes and brought back the following nuggets of essential info:

* We can't create an endowment to fund the student awards. We can set aside money to fund them for the next few years but it can't be an actual endowment. That sounds familiar. My department sets aside money for me every semester and I don't create anything either (unless you count an ulcer and a receding hairline).
* Apparently, people around Grounds have taken notice of the fact that we have a big wad of cash burning a hole in our wallet. So we need to be more proactive about spending this moolah of ours. Some suggestions:

* We could send out a notice saying that we will give away a certain sum of money to the group that can come up with the best idea to spend it.
* We could always launder the money. Knowing us though, we would probably have to look up "launder" in the dictionary. Also, Gavin could be deported for that. I think that would be a lot of fun but I am sure there is a downside that I am just not seeing.

Vice President's report

* Doug didn't have a ton to say tonight. That's ok, Doug. But just this once. We don't want this to be an every meeting kind of a thing.
* Doug did say that he will spend his summer searching for a physical space for Grad Council to meet in as well as to call home. If I could just inject my two cents here, let's try to find a place where the buffalo roam. Oh, and it also would be nice if the skies were not cloudy all day.

Second Vice President's Report

* Minutes from our most recent soiree were distributed.
* The minutes passed (but we were all having such a good time that it only seemed like a couple of seconds).

StudCo Report

* At the most recent Student Council meeting, much time was devoted to debate concerning how to allocate money to CIOs. Boy, it sounds like everyone is having trouble with this money allocation thing. I've always found the money acquisition thing to be the most difficult hurdle to get over.

Honor Report

* Maria (economist extraordinaire) discussed three proposals brought up by the Honor Committee:

* They would like to have an honor representative in each department around Grounds so as to put a face on the Honor Committee. I'm sorry, but I just got this image in my head of a Mr. Potato Head doll named "Honor Committee" having eyes, ears, a mouth and nose stuck into him.
* The Committee would also like to modify the role of the initiator. They would like to make it less adversarial as well as less time consuming for the initiator. Wanting to make it less adversarial must mean they didn't like my suggestion to have gladiator-type, fight-to-the-death-type matches between initiators and violators. The clean up might be a little complicated but I think everyone would see a good show.
* The faculty aren't too pleased with the Honor System so the Committee wants to distribute a survey to them to see what suggestions they would have on improving things. If we helped fund some of it, we could have grad students surveyed also. Grad students may have seen too many surveys at this point, though.

CEPC Report

* Andre reported that the Committee reviewed 500 pages of course proposals. As a dutiful member of the committee, Andre read all 500 pages and wrote helpful comments in the margins.
* A new committee for the Non-Western Perspectives Requirement was established.
* And Leonard Schoppa from the Politics Department was chosen to be the new chair of the CEPC.

Committee Reports

Budget Committee Report and Funding Debate

* We allocated more money this year than we took in but we still ended the year with a surplus of $22,000. Man, maybe we could give the Bush Administration some tips.
* Doug is going to be revising the online funding submission form and we will be looking into changing the by laws which deal with funding social events
* Two requests for funding were made.
* The budget committee met earlier and recommended funding $677 for an end of the year BBQ, and $2400 for and IM league for grad students over the summer. We were told that there better not be any opposition to the end of the year BBQ because the flyers have already been printed. Hey, we are such push-overs, we would have funded it in full anyway.
* A motion to fund in full passed unanimously.
* An IM league needs 4 teams and it was decided that we will try to form leagues for softball, soccer, and hoops. Heather will be the contact person for softball, Ben for soccer, and Doug (because he is over 6 feet tall) for hoops.
* Jena talked about the Starr Hill Halloween Party and said that we may have to reserve it now if we want to get it before the Darden folks claim it. A motion was passed unanimously to give Jena the authority to do that.
* We also talked about making t-shirts to give out to grad students in the fall that say "PhD or bust" or "I went to Virginia to get my PhD and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" or something like that on them. A motion was passed unanimously to explore the idea of t-shirts.

Student Welfare Committee report

* The rates for insurance were announced at the Chickering Town Hall meeting last week. Health insurance will cost $1825 for next year. Hey, 1825 is the year UVA was founded. It would be better if the cost of insurance was the year the Normans invaded England. Or better yet, the year Plato wrote The Republic.
* Brandi has set up a nice website with information about sources of insurance other than Chickering.

Teaching Committee

* Please fill the survey out if you haven't yet. Ya, I'm talking to you. You know who you are.

Diversity Committee

* It looks like we are a pretty homogenous group.

Research Committee Report

* It sounds like the Graduate Research Exhibition went well but could have used a little bit more publicity.

Social Committee

* Jena reported that the Habitat build went well.
* During the summer, the committee will try to organize some hiking, wine tasting, and other summer social activities.
* They are also planning on having an event at Rapture co-sponsored with the Graduate Black Student Association. This event will be the 2nd Saturday in August.
* A motion was passed to give Jena $1000 for the Rapture event and a slush fund for the rest of the summer events. A slush fund, now that is a way to get our money spent. Give me one and I will demonstrate.

New Business & Departmental Concerns

Crucial Business

* There was a small discussion about what pizza toppings everyone liked the best. It was decided that more mushroom pizza would be better. Don't let anyone tell you we don't make important decisions.

Meeting ended at 8:40pm

Minutes from meeting of April 25th 2005