CGE Executive Council Meeting Minutes – January 21, 2014
In attendance: Thomas Morrill, Lizz Hardardt, Mindy Crandall, Beatrice Moissinac, Araby Belcher, Shannon Andrews, Sneha Gantla; Ashley Bromley, Angela McClendon
Meeting called to order at 2:30 PM (upstairs at Westmin – office is unsuitable for meetings right now)
Minutes from 1-14-2014 Meeting – Went around the room but didn’t get around to approving them.
Email Decisions – (1) Approved all-member email. (2) Approved membership drive lit.
Attorney Meeting Recap – Mindy, Sneha, Ashley, and Angela went to Salem last Wednesday to meet with Mike Tedesco, who was recommended to us by Dave Cecil as someone who has a lot of labor law experience. He emailed the two objectors to introduce himself as our representative and he’s begun the arbitrator request process. We shouldn’t expect a date to be available before April; Tedesco will include CGE in the final date selection. We’ll need to pull documents together for our case but not immediately. We will be allowed to bring as many people as we’d like to observe the arbitration.
Meeting with Zoology Faculty – Last week Ashley met with a faculty member about a lab area in Cordley with a lot of safety problems (shelves falling down). He told Ashley that he’s tired of asking his department for help, so he came to CGE because he knows we can make changes happen. Ashley would like to call Glenn Ford (new VP Finance who’s heading up the safety task force) right away.
ONID Issues – We’ve discovered that when OSU switched email formats from “@onid.orst.edu” to “@onid.oregonstate.edu” everyone’s forwarding setups were broken, so a ton of people may not be seeing their emails if they haven’t fixed their forwarding. This is confusing and frustrating because we can’t do much to fix it, but it prevents grads from getting our communications. We can post on the fbook group with info, ask the Stewards to talk to their people, and ask the department heads to talk to their grads.
“Pay It Forward” Letter – There’s a proposal for deferring tuition payments until after students’ graduation, when they’d become obligated to pay a percentage of their income for the next 25 years. AFT-Oregon and some other groups have written a letter against it. We’re having trouble deciding whether we should sign on. We’ll take it to the next Steward Council meeting; Ashley will invite Oregon’s own Jeff Merkley (who introduced this proposal to the US Senate) to come speak about it.
GMM – On January 30. We have an agenda drafted and each item has a person or people assigned to it. We’re going to have people verify their membership to pick up ballots on the way in (and pick up raffle tickets). There will be a raffle prize. We’d thought about having an award given at the GMM but can’t think of an objective one to have right now. (We’ll think about it more.) Shannon requests the EC give her some help with cooking and set-up on Thursday.
Social Committee Recap – They met last week to talk about how things have gone so far and what to do next. Trivia: need a different way of getting questions. Homebrew: Lauren will be the coordinator to try to get more homebrews at our events. There’s an idea of having an opt-in for text message reminders of events and/or meetings – we like this!
Barometer “Right to Work” Article – Sneha needed to run to class. Her article draft has gotten some feedback on the EC list. Officers should please finalize this over email.
Hillsdale Resolutions – We heard from Devin Hunter at Hillsboro Classified United about joint support for some Convention resolutions. Officers should please respond to Lizz’s email.
Budget for Website – Ashley has put together a slightly reorganized budget for the website to improve employee privacy and make some other categories clearer. We have a couple more skooches to make.
Executive Session
Meeting adjourned at 4:25 PM