CGE Executive Council Meeting Minutes – May 14, 2013
In attendance: Braden Elliott, Danny Ritter, Forrest Parker, Eric Coker, Wren Keturi, Michelle Marie; special guest BT-member Sneha Gantla; Ashley Bromley, Angela McClendon
Meeting called to order at 10:10 AM
Minutes from 5-7-13 meeting – Approved
Email Decisions – Sending all-member email about Grad Forums.
Bargaining Update from Sneha – Had sessions on Thursday the 9th and yesterday; next one is this afternoon.
Safe Space Sign – We like the language that Westmin uses on their sign, except that we’ll say “we strive to…” rather than “we’re designated as…” (since the Pride Center doesn’t officially certify anymore). Wren is going to ask Rob if he can put the sign together for us because he’s good at things like that.
Steward Council Appointments – Three of the appointees accepted, so they’re ready to be approved by the SC at the meeting on Thursday.
Steward Council Meeting – Most of the agenda will be dedicated to training the new Stus. Food: Danny will work with Sydney (and Wren can help) and probably do sandwiches. Braden sent out an invitation to the reps list.
YELL Solidarity Symposium – It’s the evening of Thursday the 23rd. Wren hasn’t heard from anyone interested in going. Eric is interested! We’ll “preimburse” him for travel based on Ashley’s handy mileage chart. We’ll also post on fbook about it to see if anyone else wants to go.
New Officers – We’ll add them to the email list next Monday. They’ll all be invited to EC meetings starting on May 28th. A couple of the new folks are unable to attend at our current schedule, but we think it will be fine since their term of office starts after the academic term ends.
Audit Update – Forrest went over the committee’s recommendations with updates on how we’ve addressed them. Budget decisions: we do document these in the minutes; we’ll work harder about reviewing the budget more regularly at EC meetings. Insurance questions: Danny has been investigating these and he’ll get us more info. Audit committee: we’re actually going to need to use a CPA now; Ashley will determine how to document her time related to chargeable activities. Two check signers: we asked the bank and it’s not possible for them to enforce our two-signers policy; we’ve been doing fine on this already.
AGEL Solidarity Fund – This is about “strong” AGEL locals sending activists or staff members to help organize at locals that are struggling with recent political upheavals. CGE needs to determine if we’re able and willing to spend the funds to send activists to one of those locals for a week or two in September. Unfortunately the timing means Ashley probably shouldn’t go, because she’ll be working on orientations. At tonight’s AGEL call, they’ll try to create proposals to get some funding from AFT to help; eg, AFT could cover airfare and “donating” locals could cover food stipend and city transportation. The officers are willing to consider this but want to hear what AFT will contribute before committing to any numbers.
Bulletin Board Updates – Michelle is going to take info around this afternoon to as many places as she can reach. Wren will work on it some more on Thursday if Michelle can’t get everywhere.
Trivia Night! – Happening next Tuesday the 21st. We haven’t heard from Thomas in a little bit, but Forrest will check in with him to make sure he’s ready to host.
All-Member Emails – Policy question: for the time being, we’re ok with letting the automatic moderation be our safeguard, and we’ll continue to proofread/approve emails among the EC as they’re drafted. Next all-member update goes out Monday the 20th: list includes Grad Forums reminder, student debt forum, bargaining update, trivia night.
Ed Ray Meeting – The administration representatives said inaccurate things that showed they don’t actually know all that much about the way some things work. Intellectual property rights: Ed believes all students have full rights over what they create (not quite). FML policy: Brenda doesn’t want to talk about it because it’s an employment issue; David thinks we’re already protected by it federally; Ed said he didn’t want to talk about it because it’s a bargaining issue. Work/life balance: we got some names of people grads can talk to about this, and David said he’ll make it clearer on the HR website. Institutional boards: Ed wants CGE to determine our position about this, share it with him, and push for student and faculty voting positions on the board; Brenda suggested we look at the Oregon Board of Forestry as a similar body. (We’ll research a little, Wren will put up an informational blog post, and we’ll gather some people to talk about it maybe 2nd week of June.)
Meeting adjourned at 11:45 AM