In attendance: Thomas Morrill, Sneha Gantla, Mindy Crandall, Araby Belcher, Shannon Andrews, Lizz Hardardt, Béatrice Moissinac; guest members Kevin Weitemier and Matt Loewen; Ashley Bromley, Angela McClendon
Meeting called to order at 2:30 PM
Email Decisions – (1) Set Ed Ray meeting agenda. (2) Finalized workplace safety survey compilation.
Minutes from 2-18-2014 Meetings – Approved
Convention Resolutions (with Kevin) – The CGE committee has finalized their proposed resolutions.
(1) Support of comprehensive immigration reform.
(2) Support of the Safe Roads Act: driver cards for undocumented but qualified individuals.
(3) Encouraging AFT-Oregon to do their banking at a local credit union.
The officers approve of these resolutions and have all signed all the copies to go in the mail. Ashley has already prepared the delegates list so now we’re all set to register.
Pre-Convention Meetings – We’re getting into a time crunch for our delegate meetings. We’ll tentatively schedule them for Tuesday, March 18 and Tuesday, April 1, both at 5 PM.
Gazette-Times vs OSU (with Matt) – The GT has been trying to get employment records from OSU under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and OSU is denying them based on the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). The district attorney just decided with OSU. The GT is considering suing for the information. Several times in the past, OSU has claimed FERPA as a reason to deny CGE information about the graduate employees we represent. (Ashley believes CGE won an arbitration about it in the early 2000’s.) Sneha will contact Bennett Hall, the author of the GT article about this, and ask for a meeting.
Trivia Night Recap – It went pretty well – decent turnout and everyone had fun. Shannon will meet with the people who have expressed interest in hosting next term’s night.
Ed Ray Meeting Recap – Met with the admin team yesterday afternoon. Had an interesting conversation about the tuition plateau thing (the flat rate tuition between 12-16 credits): Brenda expects the plateau will end for grad students (like it already will for undergrads) but Ed Ray says it won’t be changing for two years. We’ll probably be seeing this come up in bargaining in a couple years. We brought up the increase in graduate enrollment that OSU has announced and it led to a conversation about improving graduate retention and degree completion. Ed Ray was seemingly very receptive to having a grad student on the institutional board. Related to the workplace safety survey, the admin team is working on it: they were already planning to tour one of the buildings today.
Steward Council Recap – “It was awesome!” Everyone loved the badges and the stewards came up with some great personal organizing goals. The conversation about the steward attendance email went alright until the displeased steward arrived part-way through and the discussion became uncomfortable for a minute. Fortunately, the meeting moved on soon and went very well afterward. Unfortunately, there was absolutely no decision made on the new t-shirt design. Ashley will put together some favorite parts into options people can vote for online.
CLC Meeting Recap – Sneha attended this last Wednesday at Community Outreach, Inc, where they had a tour and presentation about the programs offered there. The Strong Voice Summit will be happening on March 22nd in Eugene. The Benton County commissioner was there, as well as Sarah Gelser and the person running for the position she was in.
AGEL/Higher Ed Conference – Registration is due next Friday, March 7th. We need to send an all-member email out about this very soon to request essays. Ashley has some relevant language from a previous email that we can recycle. Ashley will also send some targeted emails to people she wouldn’t mind spending a weekend with (she’s planning to request this for a Professional Development expenditure). Speaking of emails…
All-Member Email – Mindy will send this out ASAP, including also the new rideshare platform, the Strong Voice summit, and OSU’s new anonymous student feedback form.
Xerox Copier – We thought we’d be paying for this by check in a few weeks, but the company put forward a bunch of hoops to jump through to put us on payment terms. The officers approve of putting the funds for the new printer onto the debit card so that Ashley can complete the purchase immediately. The total is $6,480.94.
AFT-Oregon Rep – We’ll revisit this next week.
Dues Meeting – Mindy will send out a doodle poll to schedule this.
SLCS Workload Meeting – This happened last Thursday, mostly as a forum for the students from that school to talk about their workload issues. The members who attended will be setting up some more meetings amongst themselves and with school leadership.
Executive Session
Meeting adjourned at 4:10 PM