CGE Executive Council Meeting Minutes – September 4, 2013
In attendance: Mindy Crandall, Thomas Morrill, Béatrice Moissinac, Lizz Hardardt, Shannon Andrews, Araby Belcher; guest Hailey Buckingham; Ashley Bromley, Angela McClendon
Meeting called to order at 3:00 PM
Minutes from 8-28-13 meeting – Approved
Email Decisions – (1) We invited David Rives to the September 18th meeting. (2) We invited Hailey to today’s meeting. (3) Website posts approved for Grad Connect.
Health Insurance: Transgender Coverage – Getting transgender coverage onto the OSU grad insurance policy has come up several times in CGE planning/strategy meetings. Mindy’s officemate Hailey has spent time looking into what it will take to make this happen, and we’d like to combine our efforts. OSU is actually falling behind on this compared to most other universities in the US, including UO and all the UC schools. For other organizations that have added transgender coverage to their policies, the financial impact has been very small. Hailey has spoken with Vice Provost Larry Roper and Rachel Gaskey from SHS; Rachel is communicating with PacificSource and will pass along what she hears from them. What we really need is someone from OSU admin to say “yes, this is for bargaining” or “no, this is for HIAC.” It looks like this will depend on what we hear from PacificSource. Luckily, Roper is very interested in helping to make this happen.
Bargaining Update – The most recent session was last Thursday, the 29th. We had hoped to be able to settle the contract then, but there were too many things the two teams disagreed on. Haven’t scheduled an new sessions yet.
EC Photos for Website – Apparently Rob has decreed that not only officers but staff also must have a photo on the “About Us” page. We’ll try to find some nice pics.
Swag – Ashley has presented a few options for our mugs and stickers. We’ll go with the one-color design for mugs and the two-color design version 2 for stickers. Hooray for cool new things!
Ed Ray Meeting Recap – We met the new VP Finance, Glenn Ford, who seems alright. We started the meeting talking about the institutional board. The meetings will be open and we’ll be able to get the agenda a few days in advance (if we look for it); the first one is scheduled for November 15th. Ed Ray felt very good about the selections for the OSU board. We talked about bargaining. Then we brought up campus health and safety and the meeting got fun! Glenn and Brenda were very interested in the issues we brought up and they’ve been following up with Mindy about these already. We’re happy they’re taking this seriously and expect we’ll be communicating with them about it a lot going forward.
SEIU Bargaining Update
Social Committee – Last night, Shannon convened the first meeting (ever) of the social committee! They were really productive in planning lots of fun stuff. We’ll get it onto the events calendar.
Orientation Lit Review – Béatrice and Ashley have been designing and updating lit. Looks good! We’re excited to be able to include a calendar of fun activities new folks can join in on.
Institutional Board Meeting – Brenda called Mindy to ask if we’d thought about meeting with the OSU board’s student representative. What a great idea! Ashley and Mindy will work on setting up a meeting.
Potential Health Insurance Issue – Ashley was emailed by a grad who got some bad information and a bad situation regarding their appointment and paying for insurance over summer. Jeri heard about it through an unknown channel and called Ashley to talk about it; she is going to take care of it “by Friday.”
AGEL Call – This is next Tuesday, September 10th, at 6 PM. We hope Eric will be able to participate, but if not, Béatrice and Ashley will cover it.
Member Benefit Stickers – Ashley will order some new little stickers for members to put on their IDs for this year’s local member benefits.
“Left Bank” – Araby and Béatrice will be the faces of CGE at the info table, this Saturday the 7th.
Parking Permits – We’ll do a lottery for the 40 faculty passes again this year. Angela will send an email announcement to the member list this week and then randomly select people in a drawing on the 19th.
Online Tax Payment – Approved!
Meeting adjourned at 4:55 PM