Minutes from meeting of
November 29, 2000

Funding Request: German Grad. Conference

Max Meyer presenting; 2nd year in German. "Desire: Literature, History, Culture." Feb. 23-25. 8th annual conference. CFP has been sent out.

The scope is inter-disciplinary. Anything that has to do with German culture. Generally, it is very selective about who will present. In the past, they have been able to give presenters from outside UVA travel grants. They are strict and don't give grants to those who can get funding from their own institution.

Distributed last year's program. Typically the have 15-20 presenters. This year it will be smaller to cut cost and allow for more interactions among presenters. 10-12 is the target.

Currently they are working on securing funding. Huskey has promised up to $1000.

The bulk of the expenses are travel grants. The conference has been written up in guide to graduate school. It has established itself as one of the best in the country.

He wants to cut travel grants over last year by $1000. It will be about $1200. Catering can be cut to about $500. Advertising will not change, because they think it is quite important. They may put ad in CD.

Perspective budget: the German department will not give as much as last year. Also, Huskey can not give as much. The deficit is $1800. They are looking at other sources, both in the university and outside.

They are asking for $1500, which is a slight increase over last year. One new expense is the key note speaker, who is quite well known.

Questions:
How many UVA students participate? Four last year, although they want to raise it this year. They have even considered allowing undergraduates an opportunity to participate.

Why less funding from department and Huskey? Typically he gives $500, but last year he gave more. Back to normal level. German is small department. The department put more of its budget into speaker.

Topic of keynote? Not sure. Born in Poland. She mainly works in 20th German literature, Jewish German studies. She has published in various fields, and is in the Comparative Literature department. Has published in history, philosophy, and translation theory.

How much is History giving? The History department will no longer be sponsoring the conference. The students who were most interested in German studies have moved on. They are exploring a new relationship with the Philosophy department.

They used to award travel grants based on distance from the conference. They might have higher expenses if they have more people from overseas.

Have they considered asking other departments? Yes.

They are soliciting papers in many departments.

They should really consider applying for CIO status.

They have a web site for the conference. It can be found through the German department site.

Discussion.

Full $1500 funded for German conference.

Secretary's report.

Minutes approved. Minutes from the QualChoice meeting will be posted soon.

Treasurer's report.

The first of the month report has not yet arrived yet, so little to report.

$100-$200 should be posted Friday.

Two funding items: $375 for Outreach Program. $700 for English Conference.

We have $7,190 for this semester left. More money will be coming next semester. Money will carry over and we generally have greater need in the Spring.

President's report

1) We have a great deal of money and we need to spend it. We should look for groups and try to distribute more funding. We get $5 a student.

2) Student BOV. Attended preliminary meeting to review applications. A committee of 10. Includes administrators and students. Not one Grad. A and S application. There were many professional student applications. There were about 30 applications, which they narrowed down to 10. Interviews will take place Saturday. They will narrow it down to three, and BOV will get final say. Patrick fought hard for professional students in the group. Most of the undergrad applicants didn't even mention graduate students.

3) Monday was QualChoice forum. We e-mailed 18,000 students and 30 showed up. The students there had much to say and Patrick has received many e-mails as well. Nothing surprising. The general concerns about administration, coverage, etc. Minutes will be posted soon. There were many interesting questions. For example, why are we not group plan? We will look into that. Currently you cannot used federal loans for insurance, but this might be different if charged as tuition. Why is this even a concern, since loans can be used for anything?

4) Student Council proposal introduced last night. Patrick spoke with Student Council. We got press in Cav Daily today. The resolution that Rich introduced will be voted on next Tuesday. Huskey told Patrick that there is a lot of momentum. He told us to keep momentum going and maintain visibility. Sources say that there has been some movement. Rich read the resolution. Small changes made to clarify some of the language. We should probably contact Engineering graduate students about this. Resolution passes unanimously.

Honor and Student Council Report. (Amy Campbell and Justin Reese)

Honor Review Commission's report.
TA and faculty make up 70% of case initiation for honor. The commission came about partly because of the lawsuits. The BOV delegates the authority to the Honor Committee, and they have been taking Honor to task for having rules that are too close to a trial system. Several attempts have been made for internal reform. But this didn't lead very far. Instead, they resolution to create review commission. Most of the members are alumni that have more of an outside perspective.

General impression is that the commission report was quite honest. The Cav Daily response tends to skew strongly towards the undergraduate perspective.

Amy presented a general overview of the system and the most important aspects for us.

General feeling that it wastes the time of the initiator. They are trying to make it easier and more rewarding to initiate a case. The I-panel will become an evidentiary inquiry and less of confrontation between the two parties.

Changes to trial phase: it is very legalistic. The by-laws currently occupy 30 pages. Often the initiator is grilled when the trial phase is reached. They want to change this.

Currently problem with jury nullification: 99% of cases are heard by random juries. Although they say that they can apply single sanction, in the end they often won't apply. They propose to eliminate random student juries. They can have mixed panel or entirely made up of committee members. Five will be students and four will be committee members for mixed panel, which will not allow any one group to vote as a block.

Seriousness: They will be moving seriousness to the I-panel phase. Also, they plan to remove seriousness from acts of cheating. All will automatically be considered serious.

The committee will vote on the proposals by line item, and then it will be voted on during the student council election.

Patrick asks if there is value in having the election at a time different from Student Council elections. It might help the vote. On the other hand, it could make it very hard to get the required 10% of the students to vote.

The honor system was changed in the 70s because people felt that expulsion meant sending students to Vietnam. We have never really been able to recover the strength of the system.

Will these changes make the Honor System more open to legal suits from outside? Amy feels that the fewer suits will results, since generally we get sued when we violate our own rules. We have never been sued because a student claimed they were not guilty. It has always been an issue of breach of contract.

The election will be in early March. We should really encourage graduate students to vote on this issue.

Old Business

Contraceptive Resolution
Strong opinions on both sides. Many issue were addressed in the QualChoice meeting Monday.

Research Exhibition
Huskey has provided $4000 in prize money. We still need more people from humanities and behavior sciences. We all need to go to our departments and find judges. Small time commitment. The read them Feb. 1. The next day all the judges listen to five minute talk. One way of the department of the value of the exhibition and they might assign someone. We also need to work really hard to find students to be involved. We must do this before we leave for break.

New business

Response to Faculty Senate: Patrick has tried to contact members of faculty senate. No response has been returned.

Another Tavern social on Dec. 8th. We need to get the information out. The music will be all 80s. The cover has increased.

Meeting adjourned.

Site maintained by: GSASC webmaster
© 2000, 2001 UVA Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Council