a. Lindsey Schell, Sonja P. Reid, and Adrian Johnson. After introducing themselves, the three librarians from the General Libraries noted that they are representatives to a new Student Library Council formed by Dr. Fred Heath, Director of the General Libraries. This council was formed to ensure that the libraries are addressing the concerns of students. One of these librarians will attend each GSA meeting and solicit feedback from students. They note that they are leaving business cards with their contact information and that they want students to go back to their departments and encourage any student with a concern to contact them. Graduate students can also bring their concerns to GSA’s representatives to the Library Committee, Melanie Ulrich and Don Drumtra. Finally, the Council is setting up a website where you can provide feedback. Marian Barber (Co-Chair) noted that she is worried about how janitorial cuts are affecting cleanliness in the libraries, particularly in the bathrooms of PCL. Several representatives noted a dislike for PCL’s revolving door and that many books in PCL appear to be misshelved. Sylvia Gale (English) noted concern with the reduction in service hours at some desks. In particular, it is hard to find reference assistance in PCL on Friday and Saturday evening. One other representative stated that you should be able to check out journals for longer than 2 hours at a time. Another representative felt that the online catalogue needs a greater capability to conduct searches using combinations of terms in order to retrieve more specific results. Others voiced concern over a lack of functioning copy machines in PCL or an easier method for putting money on a copy card since the Copy Center’s hours in PCL seem so restricted. One representative offered praise for the Reference staff at PCL noting that the desk staff is always helpful.

a. Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies (GSA Faculty Advisor) Victoria Rodriguez. The Tuition Advisory Committee will make its report to the UT System later this week. She noted that she recognized several people in the room as attendees at the Open Forums.

Dr. Rodriguez mentioned that representatives may have read today’s Texan article about the fact that the OGS is holding up the recommendations for diversity in admissions to the System. Several factors have caused this delay including the decentralization of the graduate admissions process, the desire to allow Deans to review the proposal before it is submitted, and having lawyers check the language of the proposal. These processes are well on the way and the graduate admissions policy is now on the fast track to being submitted. They will argue that race neutral funding has not brought in more diverse populations and that this can be supported through pre and post Hopwood statistics.

Dr. Rodriguez noted that the Benefits Committee has continued to meet. The charge of the committee had expanded from examining benefits for just graduate student workers to encompassing all graduate students and eventually to looking at health benefits for all UT students. Currently, the committee is in the process of scaling back to their original focus and meeting the deadline to address the benefits issue for graduate student employees with an intent to broaden to the rest of the student population in the future.

Dr. Rodriguez then opened the floor to questions. Sylvia Gale (English) asked if the committee decided if they will put out a request to other insurance plans? Yes, they plan to do so, but they cannot in the short term since it takes at least a year for a process to be put in place. So, right now their focus will just be Mega. Another representative asked: Have you all discussed increasing reimbursement for TA/AI/RAs? Yes, this was part of the Tuition Policy Committee’s recommendation. They hope to be able to set aside funding for graduate student workers to cover the increase in tuition.

Brian Haley (ex-officio, Student Government President) stated that at a recent meeting he was surprised to hear that some fellowships awarded by the University were not going to cover the tuition increase. Dr. Rodriguez replied that it is likely that the individual school or department fellowship boards will have the discretion to determine if the fellowships they award will cover the cost of the increase or not. Another representative asked if there are any plans to lobby the legislature in the next session for employee compensation? Dr. Rodriguez replied that she has no idea what plans are for the next session or even the extent that the university is permitted to lobby the legislature.

b. Brian Haley (Student Government). The Student Service Fee Committee is in the process of deliberating and will make an announcement during or immediately after the week of November 12th concerning what the Fee will be and how it will be dispersed. Student Government is working to set up an external grievance policy committee in order to be more impartial. Please give any feedback concerning this issue to him or Paul Navaratil (graduate student representative to SG). UTSystem Advisory Committee (UTSAC) will meet this coming weekend. The majority of items on their agenda are regarding health insurance and tuition. UTSAC only meets four times during the year so if you have an issue you want brought before them please contact him or Marian Barber (Co-Chair) who also serves on UTSAC by Friday. Marian noted that she chairs the Health and Graduate Affairs Committees of UTSAC so if you are particularly interested in these issues you should contact her. Brian noted that Dr. Faulkner will be submitting UT’s proposal on tuition increases to the System tomorrow evening. The System-wide Tuition Committee will meet on November 14th and 15th.. Please contact Brian if you have any concern with the tuition plans for other UTSystem components you would like him to address at these meetings. Brian noted that he is on the Board of Directors for the Union and that they are interested in ways to make the Union more accessible to graduate students. Please contact him with any concerns or suggestions. Finally, he noted the problem of passing knowledge of ongoing issues to future campus leaders. To fight this problem he has created a committee to author a concrete document that they will present to President Faulkner in April.

c. Rusty Ince (Senate of College Councils). Rusty announced that Senate is forming an AdHoc Committee to address privacy concerns of students such as what information UT keeps public on the Web and the inability to use Blackboard if you restrict your personal information for privacy purposes. If you are interested in this committee or have a testimonial to offer regarding privacy of information please send him an email. Rusty noted that he chairs the Enrollment Committee and the Racial Respect and Fairness Committee that will be meeting soon. If you have concerns that should be brought before either of these committees please contact him. A letter will be given to President Faulkner this week concerning the formation of a committee to study the implementation of the Honor Pledge. Several resolutions that may be of interest to graduate students include a resolution in support of the Tuition Committee recommendations and in support of the creation of a diversity component. There is discussion regarding including a diversity component in graduate courses of study as well. Several representatives offered Rusty feedback on this issue: Robyn Honig (Psychology) Pointed out that graduate students are already exposed to diversity in the high numbers of international students that enroll in graduate programs. Rusty noted that this issue had been raised already and that current sentiment is leaning toward encouraging a diversity component but allowing individual departments to determine when it is necessary to require it. Another representative noted international students might bring diversity to a department but that this is not the same has being exposed to racially diverse populations.

a. Tuition Policy Advisory Committee (Don Drumtra). The report prepared by the Tuition Committee is available online.

b. Graduate Leadership Conference (Joyce Banks). Last spring Joyce was nominated to be one of three graduate student representatives from UT to attend a national leadership conference in St. Louis from Oct. 10-12th. Jane Barnette was also invited. She has graduated and teaches at Bowling Green State University and was coordinator of the Graduate Writing Project. The third UT representative was Scott Evans in Mechanical Engineering. He helped create the Technology Innovation and Leadership for Engineers workshop. Fourteen different schools were invited to attend including ivy leagues, large public universities, and large and small private universities. Student representatives were asked to submit the issues they felt were most crucial to the future of graduate education. The six chosen were: Social Responsibility, Diversity, Career and Professional Development, Mentoring and Interdisciplinary Training, Graduate Student Community and Life, and Governance and Representation. Joyce organized the panel on Diversity. It addressed both race and other definitions of diversity—especially class—as well as recruitment and retention of diverse populations including mentor programs and funding for groups more on the fringe. Joyce found that UT students have many concerns in common with graduate students at other Universities such as tuition and benefits, but every university had different ways of addressing these concerns: some unionize and others had a completely different administrative structure from UT. In the future Joyce would like to bring Dr. Tommy Darwin, the administrator who attended the conference from OGS, and Scott Evans to share their experience at the conference. The conference will be summarized in formal written proceedings and shared with those universities that sent representatives.

c. Benefits to Graduate Student Employees (Don Drumtra, Marian Barber, Vice Provost and Graduate Dean Victoria Rodriguez). Don noted that Dr. Rodriguez covered this extensively in her report and representatives should read Marian’s online report.

d. Library Committee (Don Drumtra). The Library Committee approved a 36 cent increase in their fee. This increase will cover less than 1/9th of the library’s budget shortfall, but the committee had to adhere to a stipulation that was part of the Tuition Committee holding any fee increases next year to 3% or less. Please contact Don if you want more details concerning this increase.

e. Financial Aid. Roger Martinez reported that the office of Student Financial Services is currently conducting an online survey in order to solicit student feedback about the services their office provides. He mentioned that because tuition has been deregulated student will have increased bargaining power. He has created his own survey that he would like representatives to fill out concerning financial aid. Because how students fund their education varies widely from one department to the next he would like to use this survey to create department-level financial aid profiles. There are also questions concerning affordability and how students think departments should distribute financial aid—whether it should be based on need or merit is one fundamental question. One representative from each department should pick up a copy of the survey, fill it out, and then return it to him via the campus mail address on the form in approximately a week. The survey will be used to inform his opinion to the committee and will be shared with Dr. Rodriguez and the GSA.

f. TA/AI Rights and Responsibilities Committee. Sylvia Gale reported that the committee had been working very hard on making the tuition reimbursement check graduate student employees receive untaxed. However, the brakes have been applied to this process because of concern that it will hurt students financially more than help them. One representative noted that their financial aid had been reduced because of a misunderstanding over its taxability. Yes, a reduction in the amount of financial aid for which a student would be eligible is one concern. They are trying to determine what is best for the majority of students so that the administration can try to implement a practice that will accommodate a majority of students in the best way. An additional issue that came up last year was that if the reimbursement became untaxed it could not be claimed toward a Lifetime Learning Credit. Sylvia asked that students take the time to determine what would work best for their personal financial situation and let her know so that she can convey this to the committee. Representatives pointed out that there also needs to be a way to streamline the reimbursement process so that there isn’t a lapse between when tuition needs to be paid and when reimbursement funds are released.