General Studies Lounge

3/25/2008

yong, evan, clare, jake, melissa, william, elie, mansur, monique, chikodi, brendan, raul, alex, paige, nancy, niko, brody

19:36

Niko: welcome back. Whitney you have a new postion?
Whitney: yes, secretary on ESC E-board

Niko: couple agenda items, and then financial stuff. If anyone has any updates let us know.

Raul: Alumni dinner, 13th April, working on the date, not a Sunday. Working with Erich Irving who is doing a fantastic job.

Niko: Senior class?

Chikodi: Lerner Pub Thursday. Gift is going along well - number of donors we're at half the amount raised last year before Christopher Riano's matching gift.

Niko: another Christopher gift?

Chikodi: we'll see

William: There is an int'l student monthly lunch on 4 April. It is around the IHouse

Melissa: I am sending an email out to the class presidents and vp's to get more awareness about both NY Cares (4/12) and Relay for Life. Don't have budget or strong participation yet. Want to use student channels to get the word out.

Jake: Now a COI website on the gslounge.com thanks to Brody Berg. Holding office hours. If you have concerns or questions about academic items let me know. This will help me see patterns to address them.

Evan: Many of you may have received the email about our second in a series luncheon in the GS Lounge. CCE in attendance. Free Yoga class this Thursday up and running in Earl Hall. Information upcoming, information on the calendar and online. Training on Excel in the library in a few weeks. And the Secret Spots tour, more information on that next time.

Yong: Facebook events for the yoga event and the secret spots tour.

Allen: Save the date, 3rd May, Hanami at Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Will be leading a group. Cherry blossom festival.

Brody: CCE and DOS calendar integration onto main site by writing software over break.

Paige: minutes for housing meeting up soon on site.

Monique: we're tabling to get more donations in the Lounge and eventually ticket sales. Also working on getting seniors access to gradfest, 9 college event this spring. Kaplan event in the works.

Niko: I've asked Richard to work on the financial aid subcommittee to report about the meeting members of the student council had with the admins of general studies.

Richard: I appreciate any input students have.

Meeting had strong and weak points. Good that it happened. Going forward need to make strategic shifts in approach. Too many people in the room. May want to work on a smaller group, and scheduled regularly.

Gist of the meeting is that the Dean sympathizes but stresses that resources availablle for next steps aren't there. We as a body need to make strategic decisions about how to push our agenda. Clearly this isn't enough of a response compared to other bodies that can generate the resources that have more money.

Tone was cordial. Collaborative effort. But I think it was the first of many meetings that need to occur. No major milestones achieved that day, but it did occur.

Clare: Did they give a reason for why the resources weren't there?

Richard: it's a university issue, not a GS issue. not a lot from the university pot. This should be a point of focus for future efforts.

Nancy: I'd like to add to that. A major point of the meeting was to let the council know they are there to meet.

A few key points. When we say "more money" they say "no more money". Two things to improve situation: lower interest rate loans through university. Flatrate of 15 credits rather than 19 credits. They aren't inflexible, they are willing to listen.

Richard: Tuition freeze not on the table.

Nancy: unfortunately CU doesn't get much funding from it's endowment, which means that 85% of the operating costs of the university come straight from tuition.

Niko: We've had two weeks now to sit on the aid announcement to think and sort out our own feelings. I've prepared a pack for all of us to present data to all of us so that we have the same information.

Big thing the deans pushed us to push for is something called the "Discount Rate" ie. for every $1 we spend, we get 25% back, where as CC gets 30% back. We can't get the same packages as CC for financial aid, but we can push for same discount rate.

Before we do that Matt introduce yourself.

Matt: My name is Matt Miriles. I am the guy who sent out the email out that about 1/3 of you got that Brody sent an email back about.

We're begging for crumbs at the table at the university. I don't care about excuses. If they have the political will they'll make it happen. If we make ruckus they'll listen to us. We might not go to the bargaining table to get the same thing as CC but we can work to improve our position.

Niko: The GSSC is working on putting together a good recommendation to work with the deans to bring a good situation with our financial aid. Matt is taking this from a grassroots level, appreciate that you are here to see what we're doing, to see our numbers, so you are here.

Brody shares samples from some of the 60+ emails he got on the subject of the email from Matt Miriles:

council member:

"was this sent out to everyone is GS ? does everyone have access to the alias ?"

"It arrived first thing in the morning in my mailbox -- at first glance, I thought it was an "official" communication -- but when i re-read the whole tone and manner of the piece made me a bit suspicious."

"Frankly, I find it embarrassing - especially because this student is trying to gain some type of legitimacy by pretending he has been given access to the GS list serve while being anti-establishment."

regaring the use of our email addresses:

"we really NEED to find that one out!"

Taken how? How did this person get all of our email addresses?

students:

"This is a real problem. A total abuse of email."

""who was that guy" and "how did he get our addresses"?"

"I will defend any student or group of students’ right to speak their minds, I find it problematic when such a communication appears to be a message from the GSSC or GSSC related organization or the Dean of Students Office."

why someone would send something like this out... could you help me out here? What was their aim with this? It was obviously a measure for instigation, but, to what end? I can't see the purpose of someone posing as the GSSC.

"Uh oh. Well, it fooled me and I wrote an email and sent it back to
the email address in that email - talking about my hopes that COlumbia
would indeed support GS more in terms of financial aid - I was pretty
open about my own financial needs and annoyance at the disparity and
even signed my name. Please reassure me I won't be kicked out of the
school (sort of kidding there, but I'm a bit distressed over this!)"

"Hi, I was just wondering, since I had responded with a reply about my
story and personaly info to the email sent to me, do you know what the
person that sent this email out plans on doing with the info sent?
should I be concerned, since it was not a genuine GSSC initiative?"

finally, from someone who mistook the email as official and emailed back:

I've learned a verrryy valuable lesson in internet/email
communications. See, Colubmia GS is full of all kinds of educational
opportunities!

Joel: The whole idea of Brody sending out the email is that there was a problem. The whole idea that we're opening up a forum here to legitimize him is a problem. The email was definitely getting close to misrepresent itself, many students were noticing this. I looked at the facebook group, many students were complaining about how the message was sent out. I don't know that this council should legitimize this by giving this an open forum.

Richard: Something I am grappling with here is that I don't want to be push to be profiled as mainstream and to take "mainstream" positions because of a grassroots group. I think the GSSC should take what positions are appropriate. I am offended by an idea that I am not grassroots or not in touch.

Nancy: First, I absolutely agree and we're individuals. However, our role as council members is to serve the student body, responsibly, and to act as a bridge. That's why we have Matt here. with that being said it was completely inappropriate for the reasons as Brody said and he's calling for a NYTimes article and I am working with Katheryn Knighton, Elizabeth Alonso Hallifax and the deans to work on that article. The article is to paint a real-world article and to portray us in a good light to get more aid.

Michael Rain: to me this is a really irrelevant discussion. this is the first meeting I've been to all year. I am not sure what council has been doing this whole year on financial aid. what matt actually did is filling up the void of leadership when nothing else has been done. I have more of an idea that he wants to do than the entire gssc. the gssc up to this point has been zero. the email was legitimately bad, that's true, but it comes up because there was no bridge that Nancy has referred to. it's not there. this council should be serious about the situaion. let's work on somethign that works.

Raul: I've been here a couple of years and Nancy just mentioned alumni, as the alumni liaison, I have to say that I am disappointed. what are the gs alumni, what is their involvement? what are we doing to get out and raise funds? I hear a lot of mention that GS has no alumni. what are we doing to approach alumni? without alumni there will be no endowment. These things have been raised in open council before, we've been told we can't do this, or can't do that, but everything is being rebuffed. What can we do to get something?

We're always being told what there isn't? Michael Rain brought up a valid point, people only do things in the absence of action. If there already was something perhaps students wouldn't be working up an idea.

It's incumbent on us to be more communicative with the student body. We can't just blame Matt, he's just filling a void.

Evan: I appreciate the comments from the audience. i'd like everyone in the audience and the students to know that from the moment i joined the council, at the beginning of this semester, i've been trying to make financial aid parity a priority. it's not public. at the very least I can share the list of students. it's not my responsibility to communicate with the students.

there has been little consensus on this board about what to do or how to do it. I am sorry there is a feeling that we're not doing our job, but that many of us are doing a lot of work to.

Brody: Awn said at the financial aid meeting Friday before break that he had repeatedly attempted to meet with Niko but that Niko had no-showed two meetings and then never followed-up to reschedule.

Success with financial aid will be about getting a seat at the table, a voice in the discussion and a hand in the creation of the policy. It will also include the scary stuff that Matt is doing, along with that non-scary stuff in boardrooms. We need both. We didn't do that this year. The ball was dropped, and so now rather than knowing about the financial aid announcement before it came out we were surprised.

Matt: I am with you Brody. I am here to get financial aid for people. If you are Martin Luther King, I am Malcom X. I am tech savvy, I am media savvy. I have a rolodex. To me it's not a matter of process, it's a matter of results. That's how bad companies fail. I am here to focus on results.

I emailed Allison Scola in the administration. She wouldn't tell me the information.

Brody: Nancy and I will be putting up information from the financial aid meeting. She is a nice person who responds to professional behavior.

Matt: I want results.

Raul: Dean Stellini, can you offer clarity?

Dean Stellini: Nancy hit the nail on the head - school is tuition dependent. For a school this size the endowment is small. That leads to a lot of problems. GS endowment has grown fairly substantially in the last 8 - 10 years. I don't have those numbers. Awn is really working on it.

Capital Campaign: 40% ear marked for our endowment. that's part of the plan to address this for GS. We're also working with outside donors. A lot of the named scholarships have no connection, but they saw something in GS that they liked. That's what we have gift officers out there for, to find those opportunities. We have a whole organization that's out there trying to raise money.

Bear Sterns just tanked it, we go to those people. they are hurting. the economy makes fund raising difficult. excuse? reality.

Raul: I share everybody's determination to get more it's a business. can't squeeze blod from a turnip. something there's nothing there. i don't know if anyone follows financial news - two companies that offer fiancial loans have pulled out of the space.

Melissa: It sounds like there are two things happening: money coming in, structural tweaks that we can negotiate to shift balances. One is short term and one is long term. They will require different approaches. Tweaking the system, working with the deans, and trying to raise money and debugging the process about what is working or not.

I am glad that you are going to be there (matt) shaking your fist, but if you aren't clear about what you are asking for it is going to look like noise.

Alex: if I may make a motion to make a motion to end discussion

Niko: motion passes.

About packet: has information about discount rate, awn talks about our peer information like Smith or UPenn, all their financial aid policies are here for non-traditional students, historical data about debt for students, dependent or otherwise.

Take 15 minutes to try and get through this so we can develope a roadmap - what is salient, what hits home for us? We need to figure out what the noise is and move on.

William: we need to have participation in the arts campaign - collecting objects for what they want to have in the glass case for display about our history that needs to happen. Arts campaign has an event about physics and I have no idea how to get a room.

Allen: talk to Yong.