Graduate Student Council Minutes

October 14, 1998

6:05pm: Call to order.

Secretary's Report:

None.

Treasurer's Report:

Rich Pierce, Treasurer, distributed the following report:

Balance = $1720.15 Note: Actual balance is probably in the range of $7700 due to 1997-1998 Carryover.

Discussion:

Several people raised questions again about the mystery of the $140.00 paid for "reservations". Rich has tried repeatedly to contact Dean Huskey about both this and our 1997-1998 carryover, however Dean Huskey has yet to respond.

Rich has appropriated money to pay our dues to NAGPS, however he mentioned that he is unsure how exactly we get a check sent to them from our account. This is another matter which needs to be solved by contacting Dean Huskey's office. Also, the question was raised about the amount of our dues. Amanda and others recall that last year's dues were $250.00, not $400.00

President's Report:

Amanda reported that our press release about QualChoice was distributed to the Cav Daily, Inside UVA, Cville Weekly, and Daily Progress. However, it is unclear if any of them have printed it yet. A link to the text of the draft of the press release is here. Aaron Presnall, the chair of the Grad & Professional Student Affairs Committee of Student Council met with Amanda. He informed her that his committee has a new task force studying cost of living issues for graduate students. He was interested to find out that we are working on health insurance issues. We will be keeping in touch in the future since we share a mutual interest in grad life. Aaron also presented his idea for submitting a grant proposal to the Dept. of Education for funding to improve recruitment of graduate students from under-represented ethnic and economic groups. The deadline for this is next year, so this is something to consider for the future. Kathy Nixon will be working together with John Portmann to put together the Publishing Forum. It is uncertain, but it may be in April of 1999. Amanda has faxed enrollment numbers (1800 GSAS grads) to NAGPS. They will be sending us literature which we will then distribute to all department reps for distribution to their departments.

Discussion:

Chris mentioned that we may be able to determine if our press release has been printed in some of the papers by searching Web Archives for the newspapers. Oliver suggested a better plan may be to have someone write an opinion piece for the Cav Daily rather than resubmitting our press release.

There was concern among several reps that we have not seen much progress on the publishing forum. Although we have not spent money yet, we have committed money to this, keeping us from devoting it to new projects. It was suggested that we should ask Kathy to give us a formal briefing, either in writing or in person to fill us in on the reason for the delay and the current status. Some ideas for the format were also discussed. It was brought up that we should suggest that representatives from UVa press and the Virginia Quarterly Review be invited. It was also suggested that we might want to request the inclusion of people discussing careers in publishing for academics.

Old Business:

Amanda has been asked to appoint a graduate student to the open Graduate seat on Student Council. None of the four interested grads showed, however, so this has been delayed until they do show up. Oliver mentioned that he believes the prospective applicant from his department (government) is no longer interested in the position.

New Business:

The issue of our ongoing interest in health insurance for graduate students was brought up by Todd. He agreed at the small health ins. meeting to do some library research on the issue. He reported negative results in finding anything useful.

Next, Chris presented the very rough draft of a proposal he drew up. The purpose of the proposal is to present our argument for the University to subsidize health insurance for all GSAS grads. We expect that once a final draft is completed, we will present the endorsed document to the University administration (specific people yet to be decided.) After much discussion, an ad-hoc Health Insurance Committee (the HIC) was formed with Chris as chair, and Todd, Elena, and Oliver as members. The HIC will be meeting this coming week to revise the draft based on the outcome of council's discussion.

Elena went to the Presidential Retreat given by Casteen. She commented on three things she noticed while there. She felt that every time Casteen or some other luminary discussed students, he/she specifically meant undergrads, and that grads seemed to be a forgotten group. She was also the only graduate student there, while there were at least 10 undergrads, she felt that we should try and find out why there is not more graduate representation at functions like this. Finally, she got the impression that Casteen was telling the audience that UVa does not want to "patch holes" he wants us to go for it and make a concerted effort to really improve things at UVa. She felt that this gives us license to contact him with our suggestions for improving issues specific to GSAS students. The last issue discussed was the lack of photocopiers in Cabell Hall. This is another topic we will investigate prior to the November meeting.

Discussion:

Elena mentioned that her department did a survey. They found that whether or not a school provided health insurance was not an issue in picking graduate schools. She also mentioned that she felt that if we pursued this issue with the administration we should not do so in an adversarial manner, but we should approach them in a respectful manner and request their consideration.

One of the main issues that was brought up was that we really need to untangle two things -- the known dissatisfaction with QualChoice and our goal of having UVa subsidize grad health insurance. It was suggested that the final draft only say something along the lines of "due to graduate student dissatisfaction with the QualChoice plan, we wish that the subsidy provided by the University to be applicable to several different plans endorsed by the GSC."

Another topic that was brought up was of course money, and this came up in several ways. First of all, the issue of "who pays" came up. Chris feels that we should be quite specific in saying that we want any health insurance subsidy to be provided by the administration and paid for by the administration, i.e. the individual departments should not fund this. The reason for this is that we do not want any health insurance subsidy to be accompanied by a corresponding cut in stipend to pay for it. In addition, there is the issue of if the administration does pay, from what funds? The obvious answer is the Capital campaign money, however as was also brought up, every group and department around the university wants their cut from this fund. It was discussed that maybe the GSC should draft a letter to Casteen outlining several issues that the GSC would like to see addressed with whatever portion of the Capital campaign money is being committed to grad causes.

One other thing Chris brought up was that our current best support comes from an article in the Cav Daily about grad Jefferson scholarships. Dean Plog is quoted as saying that he feels that our funding is falling behind that of other top grad schools, and something should be done. Of course he is referring to creating 48 grad Jefferson scholarships with a price tag of $12 million. Chris pointed out that we can use this quote to bolster our case by saying that we believe that providing health insurance to grads could be used to attract top grad students, and at the same time would benefit all 1800 grads as opposed to only 48. The price tag per year for the health insurance subsidy (depending on the size) is $200000 to $1.08 million. If this could be endowed it would cost about the same as or less than 48 Jefferson scholarships.

Another monetary issue was that several people raised the issue of getting raw cash vs. having a health insurance subsidy. The point was raised that since grads are required to have health insurance, by having it subsidized this increases how much raw cash you are able to keep out of your stipend.

It was decided to combine our health insurance concerns with other concerns. Amanda wants us to use part of the November meeting to brainstorm and decide on a list of issues we wish to present to Casteen as our feelings for what needs to be improved for GSAS students. Todd mentioned that such a letter should include our disappointment that grads are apparently ignored when big decisions are being made. Oliver suggested we should try and get Aaron Presnall involved in our brainstorm session. Elena volunteered to draft a preliminary list for discussion.

Meeting adjourned 7:00 pm