On Wednesday, Sept. 27, the Graduate Senate Assembly passed four of five votes.
The first vote was concerning the fact that all student organizations, when booking a trip, must pay a five dollar fee through the service provider that the university uses. This accumulates to about $3,000 every year. Historically, each organization was responsible for their fee, but it has become burdensome to differentiate between which individual organizations were responsible for the fee.
As a solution to this problem, the board proposed to increase the Operations budget from 10 percent to 12 percent and to add “central travel fee booking cost” to the student government constitution. This would mean that the student government would be responsible for all of the fees accumulated together and would be covered by the Operations budget. With a vote of 58 “yes” to 12 “no,” the vote passed.
The second vote was on whether to provide Committee of Student Organization (CoSO) members $300 honorariums. The money would be taken out of Audit Committee Honorariums. This was the only vote not to pass, as only 39 voted “yes” with 24 votes for “no” and one “abstain.” It required a three-fourths vote in order to pass.
The Undergraduate Senate needed a change in the student activities fee to be approved by the Graduate Senate Assembly. The change would “approve Senate absorbing the $5 media fee into their $144 student activity fee to a new $149 student activity fee; JFC and the shared StuGov budget used for operations gets at least the same $ amount as before.”
At the moment Undergraduate Senate has quite a bit of money in the Media account, which can only be utilized for Media; however, it has just been sitting there collecting. Undergraduate Senate President Kyle Hynes aimed to combine the two fees into one. The vote passed with 64 votes “yes” and only 4 votes “no.”
“Approve the StuGov hires” was next on the agenda. It passed with 68 “yes” votes and just one “abstain,” initiating Eugenia Williams as the Constitutional Advisor, Lydia Yang as the Chief Executive Officer, and Darshini Chilakapati Poster Policy and Student Space Admin.
The last vote was for the advocate selection, which was voted “yes” unanimously. Adriana Avitia and Hannah Nguyen are the International Student Advocates; Olivia Haberberger as the Master’s Student advocate; Tatiana Imler, Peter Roberts, and Logan Carpenter as the Partner and Family Advocates; Meghna Anil and Eshita Shrawan are the Graduate Student Life Assistants; Carter Houseknecht and Jason Orlando are the newest Finance Committee Auditing Members.
GSA is also developing a new strategic plan. The last one was originally written in 2014 and published in 2016 for the 10 years of 2015-2025.
At the moment, the current mission statement reads, “To advocate for and support the diverse needs of all Carnegie Mellon University graduates students in their personal, professional and public lives by 1. Improving quality of life on and off campus. 2. Supporting academic and professional goals and 3. Encouraging vivid and public engagement.” Their overall vision statement is to create “a culture or cross-disciplinary community and collaboration that enhances the Carnegie Mellon Graduate Student Experience.” At the meeting, assembly members reflected on these statements and changes they want to make.
They are looking to make the development of a new strategic plan a two year process with a deadline of Spring 2025. They are planning on deciding a plan scope, receive input from representatives, brainstorm topics, as well as hire a strategic plan coordinator. The Executive Board told The Tartan they are very excited about this process.
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