March 11, 1998
6:59 pm: Call to order.
Secretary's Report:
Chris asked for approval of the minutes for February. Rich moves to accept with second by Todd. Motion passes unanimously.
Treasurer's Report:
Rich Pierce, Treasurer, distributed the following report:
Note: *Finally -- this charge is for a room rental/reservation fee on April 10/11 1998 for last year's Graduate Symposium on Eurasian Studies (CREES). I imagine that the August disbursement date is due to it simply taking a while for the CREES organizers to submit their reimbursement request.
According the these numbers, I put our available budget at $5955.38. Dean Huskey quotes our current balance at $10999.87
Funding Requests:
Prior to considering any funding requests, Amanda called for a vote to determine if we would consider the English funding request because we did not receive the FRF with much advance notice. The vote passed unanimously, so their request was put on the agenda.
(1) Representatives of Anthropology requested funding for their CCHSI Symposium on alternative forms of memorialization. This event is a graduate student initiated event that is to take place April 23/24. There will be 9 UVa graduate students from 6 different departments involved. There will also be 3-4 UVa faculty, as well as 7 faculty and grads from outside the University.
Discussion: Oliver suggested contacting the Institute for Advanced Study of Culture. He also asked how the event would be promoted, and was told that there would be flyers, email, and a website advertising the conference.
Virginia moved to fund at $750, with an invitation to come back and request more funds at a later date. Rich seconds, and it passes unanimously.
(2) Funding request for Ninth Annual English Graduate Students Conference. This conference will involve 40 participants that are mostly english students except for a few from sociology, history, etc. Most of the participants are from UVa, however about 8 will be from outside institutions this year.
Discussion: Rich made two suggestions -- the first was to ask the keynote speakers if they'll accept smaller honoraria since this is a student funded conference. The second was a recommendation to ask other departments that may have students involved if they will consider helping fund the conference. Virginia also suggested that next year's conference should not conflict with Passover like the current conference does.
Rich moves to fund at $850 with a second by Virginia. The vote passes unanimously.
President's Report:
Old Business:
Amanda brought up the publishing forum during old business. Virginia mentioned that she had attended and said that there were some very broad talks and some very specific talks relevant to those in the humanities. Nicole said that she felt that it went well, and mentioned that the friction between several of the panelists led to spirited discussions after the talks. Someone also mentioned that OCPP made a videotape of the forum and it is available in their office.
Chris P. gave a brief report on the activities of the Health Insurance Committee. The HIC hopes to finalize the proposal and bring it up for a vote at the April meeting. Chris (Sociology) asked if we felt that wages would be decreased to compensate for any health insurance subsidy we receive. Since we do not necessarily expect to win a subsidy this year, we feel that this will not be a problem, however, we will give the administration conditions under which we will not accept a subsidy. For example, we will not take a subsidy if it means decreased TAships, decreased wages, or loss of any other current benefit.
New Business:
Chris (Sociology) passed around a copy of the Cav Daily with an article about money from A&S students' tuition going to fund the other schools. No definite course of action on our part was suggested or adopted.
Someone (Oliver?) asked if we should have another tax session. Amanda mentioned that much of the information from our last session was summarized at the NAGPS website, and she suggested we simply distribute the URL of the site to our departments.
The distribution of Arts & Sciences fellowships (two per department) was brought up. Someone asked if we should look into requesting that these awards be apportioned differently. Amanda volunteered to find out the rules for how these awards are distributed.
Rich and Amanda mentioned the brewing controversy surrounding Student Council's annullment of the election of the grad honor reps.
Chris mentioned briefly at the end of the meeting that Astronomy is having problems finding enough faculty to teach the required number of grad courses, and he asked if any other small departments have this problem. No one else had a similar problem.
Meeting adjourned 8:00 pm (?)