Amidst much discussion and deliberation Tuesday evening, the Graduate and Professional Student Council approved new funding and communications policies for student groups.
After the GPSC General Assembly voted to affiliate seven more student groups with GPSC, Treasurer Heather Dean presented a proposed addition to the GPSC by-laws regarding group funding. The section clarified the type of events hosted by GPSC-affiliated organizations that may receive funding and how the budget will be allotted.
"Most groups who applied for funding [this cycle] received funding from the committee," said Dean, a third-year student in neurobiology. "We want to be open for groups that have graduate and professional students as well as staff."
The new addition to the by-laws states that a group must have only 20 percent of its members from the graduate and professional student body to be affiliated with GPSC. Easing fears about the low number, Ben Cooke, a graduate student in mathematics, said the funding committee could take the percentage of students into account for each case.
Following the group funding discussion, Marc Sokol, a third-year student in the Fuqua School of Business, proposed changes in the GPSC-controlled e-mail list-serves.
In addition to the older GPSCList and GPSCExec list-serves, Sokol said the Communications Committee will be working with the Office of Information Technology to create two new list-serves--GPSCNews and GPSCNewsFlash. GPSCNews will be a bi-weekly news letter distributed to the entire graduate student body, announcing upcoming events hosted by GPSC-affiliated organizations. Students will also receive reminders before major GPSC-sponsored events over GPSCNewsFlash.
"[GPSCList] was previously used to communicate with our constituents, but now it will be more of a forum to discuss internal issues," said Sokol, the Communications Committee coordinator, regarding changes to the old GPSCList.
Some members voiced concerns about recent list-abuse and voted to allow the Communications Committee to review list-abuse cases.
"There are still some technological details to work out," said GPSC President and third-year physics student Rob Saunders. Those details include the e-mail subject lines and possible political overtones in the messages.
Students will have the option to remove themselves from the general lists if they do not want to receive the e-mails.
In other business, the Assembly approved the appointment of Milan Selassie, a first-year business school student, to the Academic Affairs sub-committee position on the Board of Trustees.
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