GPSA Council Meeting Minute Saturday, February 23 rd, 2019, 10:00 am Student Union Building, 3 rd Floor - Lobo A and B I. Meeting called to Order at 10:17 am a. Confirmation of Quorum: Sign in sheet was passed around to all the council representatives present and voting, quorum was confirmed Name Department Eliberto Calderan OILS/GEO Trevor Jackson Psychology John Reinert COE Rose Davenport SPA Danielle Beene Geog Benjamin Panda Andrea Alberta Biology Peter Njagi LLSS Texanna Martin OILS (proxy) Leonel OILS Roxanne Humphrey COPH b. Adoption of Agenda: A motion to adopt the agenda as it is by Trevor, seconded by Benjamin. Agenda disapproved with 5 No votes, 2 abstention and no approval votes. Lionel motioned to move bylaw amendment from action item to discussion, Andrea seconded it. Motioned approved with 10 votes and no disapproval or abstention votes. II. Opening Business a. Approval of the Minutes: Minutes for January not disputed. Minutes approved. b. Media and Gallery: None Bryan appealed to the council to follow legislative procedures. LSC should be up and running and every item should go through LSC. He also suggested that abstention would be more appropriate action if you are a member of the organization that you are voting for. Brandon, the president of Philosophy Graduate Student Association asked to increase the appropriation for educational materials to $300 and $480 for travel expenses. This will be for an annual conference that is being held.
Sara, a representative from World Affair Delegation, requested the council to increase the appropriation amount for her to attend a conference being held in Madrid, Spain. She was approved for $949 and was asking for additional $349. III. Guest Speakers: a. Scott Dotson, Resident Life: Scott took over the position in November. He has been with the university for 23 years. A lot of complaints have been registered with student family housing and big upgrades are on their way. Information has been collected via student survey. Eli asked if student organization can come forward and provide help. Scott told that any help is welcomed and would provide his card at the end. b. Mark Peceny and Philip Ganderton, College of Arts and Science They informed the council that they were here last year as well and made changes to the last years proposal to address the concerns raised by students. They wanted to change the budget models and make allocations based on historical figures. They are proposing differential tuition to bring benefits to all the students. Over 60% of all public universities charge some form of differential tuition. College of Arts and Science is the largest college at UNM and has a total budget of $65 million. Instructional quality and ability to deliver curriculum has been threatened due to budgetary deficit. As a flagship university, UNM has to support its grad students and the differential fee is one way to address this. A separate account of differential tuition would be maintained, and all of the fee would go to the school and not to central administration. 45% of this would be sent back to grad students as tuition waiver and 55% would be for increased number of grad students or to increase stipends for them. Benjamin motioned to extend time by 5 mins and Eli seconded it. Motion approved with 12 votes. Andrea raised concerns about the proposal. The money is going to be provided to the students who are already being covered and not to the students who are paying out of their pocket. We are seeing a decrease in the value of our money being spent. The state of NM has one of the highest poverty rate and can t be compared with similar universities.
Andrea motioned to add 10 more minutes, Peter seconded it. Motion was approved. Philip asserted that the college lost 32 faculties due to budget cuts but GA/TA stipend levels are at the same level. They spent $3 million to support GA and TA tuition waivers and another $11-12 million stipends. They wouldn t be asking for it if it didn t benefitted students. We ll still be among the lowest tuition universities. Peter asked how increase in tuition would affect an already dwindling number of students. Phil told that the decrease in student is more pronounced at the undergraduate level. The proposed solution is to provide tuition recharge for beginner level undergrad course and premium for upper level grad courses. c. Alonzo Maestas, VRC: Alonzo thanked the council for invitation. There has been a lot of changes in past few years. They serve veterans and active duty service members who are also students. In the fall of 2018, there were 1200 self-identified military affiliated students. VRC helps them to overcome social, physical and psychological barriers. Returning to civilian life is a huge transition for a lot of students and VRC is there to help. He provided a list of resources and introduced other team members for students to refer to and go for help. IV. Officer Reports a. President s Report Boney shared his experience of going to Santa Fe for the senate meeting. He thanked everyone who contributed towards it. GPSA has a new office manager now along with new volunteer of communication and new chief of staff. Governor has selected new student regents. Melissa who worked as Chief of Staff is now one of the student regents. He is also working on grad and professional appreciation week which will be held on the fourth week of April. There will be poster presentations and Alumni will be there to guide fellow students. It is still in planning phase and details would be provided later. He also informed the council about possible changes in graduate premium fees for certain colleges at UNM. Lionel asked if there would be any conflict of interest for a former Chief of Staff to be a regent, Boney denied any possibilities. b. Council Chair s Report
James stated that he has been busy last couple of months and is working resident life student family housing and informed that some great changes are on pipeline. c. Finance Chair s Report GPSA general fund has been cut from last semester. We have $38,791 in the general fund which amounts to $7758 per month. A new budget schedule has been released and appropriation schedule is also out. Also stated that he was working with LSC and VRC. James informed the council that he won t be able to go to the conference that he was planning to attend due to personal reasons and thanked the council for its generosity in providing fund. Election is coming up and the appropriations have been approved. Andrea asked James if there s any other conference that he might go to. James said that there wasn t any. V. Action Items a. Resolution Renewable Energy by Alexandra Huber and ASUNM Alexa informed the council that ASUNM passed a bill to transition to renewable energy. She wanted to make sure that she had the support of community members as it was pivotal in pushing the bill forward. There were environmental as well as financial benefits of this program. Ben asked if it would be voted next month to which James replied that it has to go through LSC before it is presented for vote. b. Call for two Finance committee members Kyle informed the council that FC lost two members including vice-chair and would like to call for 2 members. Trevor and Sara were recommended for the position and got approved with 7 votes in favor and 1 abstention. c. Call for two LSC committee members Texanna informed that there were two resignations and the committee was in desperate situation. Many resolutions were in pipeline and election code too needed revision but there weren t enough members. There she called for volunteers. Kyla and Alonzo volunteered for the position and were approved by 8 votes in favor. Roxanne made a motion for 5 minutes break, Andrea seconded it and was approved by 8 votes in favor. 5 minutes break began at 12:16 PM.
d. Appropriations Kyla stated that there were 11 appropriation requests out of which 8 were recommended and 3 were rejected. Trevor made a motion to block approve appropriations for Women in Computing, Speech and Hearing Science Graduate Student Association, Latino Medical Student Association, GPSA Elections Committee and Association of Women Surgeons as recommended by the Finance Committee. Ben seconded it and was approved by 6 votes in favor and 1 against. Thus, the appropriations were approved. Eli motioned to block approve appropriations for World Affairs Delegation and Philosophy Graduate Student Association per the new requested amount as of today. The motion was seconded by Danielle. Discussion: Andrea stated that although the student organizations were asking money for good cause, the decision to make cut was equitable to all. Our funds have been slashed time and again. World Affair delegation is asking for $1400 for one student s travel and were already provided $989. Another group is also able to have another appropriation and have asked for more than what s needed. Eli stated that providing the organizations with requested amount would encourage more participation to which Andrea disagreed and argued that it would create a dangerous precedence. The motion got 3 votes in favor, 3 against with 1 abstention and a majority did not approve it. Andrea motioned to approve World Affairs Delegation at the FC s recommended amount. Ben seconded it. Eli stated that the representative was entitled to her money and the council was being irresponsible. The motion was approved with 5 votes in favor and 2 abstentions. Appropriation for Student Veterans of UNM Question was raised in the meeting about some students being funded twice. Eli stated that it was joint resolution and two student organizations were putting the appropriations together. Upon a question regarding if any rules were violated, Kyle stated that it didn t violate policy but was about how the council would like to respond.
Motion to approve SVUNM at Financial committee s recommended amount was made by Andrea, seconded by Trevor. The motion was approved with 7 votes in favor and 2 abstentions. Motion to approve Philosophy Graduate Student Association as recommended by Finance Committee was made by Andrea, seconded by Danielle which was approved with 6 votes in favor and 1 abstention. e. Standing rule changes A list of changes to standing rules were made by Kyle. Trevor motioned to make the amendment, Andrea seconded it. The motion was approved unanimously with 7 votes. f. Resolution sponsored by Grant Heilman Grant decided to withdraw his resolution g. Bylaw amendment by GPSA President Boney Texanna informed the council that Boney had forwarded it to her and it will be action item. Boney requested LSC to take his name out of it was Gregor was the Election Chair, the sponsor of the bill and not him. h. Conference funding Danielle motioned to re-appropriate $435 in conference fund to Texanna s conference, Eli seconded it. Benjamin asked Texanna regarding the position she currently held at GPSA to which she said that she was LSC chair and alternate member to the council. Benjamin asserted that given her current position, LSC would benefit from this. The motion was approved unanimously with 7 votes. VI. Discussion Items Eli expressed his gratitude for everyone s support for VSS resolution. He asked for clarity for student s ability to talk about it and introduced impeachment of the president in front of the council. He claimed to have evidence and asked everyone to look at the file. The charges for impeachment included willful neglect of office, gross misconduct, or malfeasance in accordance to the GPSA Constitution, Article II, Section D, Items 1,2 and 3. Andrea expressed her shock and disbelief towards the impeachment and stated that the people sitting at the table were giving their best. She asserted that everyone was still learning, and we have to be supportive of each other. She
mentioned about the time and effort put forward by Boney to run the meetings and claimed the impeachment to be a political move. Eli stated that he was not doubting on the time spent by Boney and posited that the executive branch was attacking Veterans and student governments. He stated that no students should be discriminated against by executive committee based on their likes and dislikes and told that he would be bringing more points in special counsel. Benjamin was curious about the emails that had not been attached as described and requested to make them public before special counsel. Andrea claimed it to be gross accusation and demanded line by line explanations. She mentioned that impeachment was not a solution and Boney was trying to pick up pieces of a failing organization. James stated that he would send an email on the process and reminded the council of a need to move forward. VII. Council Announcements Texanna refused to accept the tranfered funding for her conference and stated that other students would be benfitted if it s transferred to the general fund. Call for election committee members was made and the council was informed that a formal email would be sent asking for 3 more members to form a full committee. James expressed his anger and disappointment regarding certain places where his name was being dropped without his notice and approval. He also asked team members to bring it into his attention if they see his name on something. Upcoming Meetings: The next regular council meeting will be held on March 30 th, 2018 at 10:00am in TBD. Texanna informed about an upcoming LSC meeting Kyle informed the council about budget hearing which would also be public on annual budget page of GPSA in the weekend.
Eli thanked everyone and expressed the need for stepping down from Finance Committee Vice-chair and the committee because of the impeachment procedures. James stated that he would verify if there s enough quorum in finance committee and expressed his concern that in the absence of Eli a lot of budgetary process might not go through. James informed the council that hee will send out emails regarding the way forward. VIII. Adjourn Motion to adjourn the meeting was made by Trevor and seconded by Ben which was approved unanimously with 7 votes. The meeting was adjourned at 1:30 pm James Kaminsky President Signature Date: Suraj Ghimire Council Recorder Date: