Dr. Susan Huntington, Dean of the Graduate School, addressed the delegate body. Her remarks closely followed a PowerPoint presentation that can be found here.
Dr. Huntington also entertained questions from the delegates.

Delegate Corwin You said several times that aligning quality with funding is good but that the metrics in the freeman report are not good. How would you measure quality to tie funding to it?
I would use things like student satisfaction, when they leave. I’m not against GPAs and GRE scores, but we should include other things. For fellowships, there are five criteria – GPA, GRE, letters, personal statements and program justification. You can also have program review…. For instance, a program could have a 3.9 GPA and 2390 on the GRE average scores, but haven’t revised their curriculum in thirty years. Certainly, that’s a program that needs improvement.

Delegate Pepper: I’m unclear about the contradiction between what you’ve said and the Freeman Report. My understanding is that there is fixed pool of money, and eventually programs would have to be cut, even if we use different metrics.
No, you’re right, we do have to find a way to get the money to where we want it to go. In addition, Masters funding goes with enrollments, but doctoral funding has been already been allocated to departments. We were at 90% of funding but we allocated all of it to departments – that’s 10% we’ve lost. The growth of Masters students is what’s eating into the doctoral subsidy – that’s allocated based on the number of credit hours, not the number of students – in this case, anyone over 50 credit hours earns doctoral subsidy. This is a fundamental flaw that should have been corrected during budget restructuring. One of the biggest ways to get money into doctoral programs is to reallocate that money to the doctoral programs. I guess what I’m saying is that for any question there are a number of different answers – you need to bring the right people to the table and ask the right questions. That was not done. That’s why the review is high stakes and inappropriate. We need a way to measure quality, but everyone needs to be involved.

At this point, President Pletz presented Dean Huntington with a plaque with the resolution commending her, and the meeting resumed.

Delegate Eggleston proposes the following amendment: Let it further be resolved that the council calls for the Office of Transportation and Parking Services, and Facilities, Planning and Development develop a standardized metric of intersection safety to be used to 1) identify intersections and other traffic areas that pose risks to pedestrian safety and 2) evaluate the efficacy of plans (i.e. the Gorove/Slade Action Plan) implements in order to ameliorate risk.

The amendment was seconded by Del Lucas, and was passed with a no objection to consent vote.

Amended motion passes by unanimous voice vote.

Resolution 0405-WI-017: A Resolution in Support of a Formal Policy on Short-Term Absences and Leaves of Absence
Rationale:
Chair Evans: The policies that this resolution refers to is really a program of absences, posted on the CGS website. If you have any questions about it, I can answer them. This really came out of the G-QUE recommendations and the program has been developed by a combination of people – representatives from CGS, the Graduate School, and the Office of Human Resources. This is a beginning – the program is not in effect yet, the purpose of this resolution was really to point out that graduate students were in favor of it.

Questions for the author
Delegate Corwin: In the last resolve clause we’re making her an honorary member. Why are we doing that? And does it actually mean anything?
It’s just a tradition – like getting the key to city. We’ve done it before. There are no practical implications. Delegate Lucas: It sounds like the money to support this program is not going to come from departments, but from a central pool of money. Is that correct?
As this stands in this program, there’s no specific response for how funding should be handled. One of the purposes is to formalize current, informal practices. We’re also going to evaluate it at the end of the year. The expectation would be that if someone has a funding issue during this first year pilot program, they would go to the graduate school to figure out how to work this out. There’s no overarching funding mechanism that’s been designed to fund this at this point.

What I’m alluding to is that I think it’s OSU’s responsibility, not the departments responsibility to pay for it.
Well it would depend on how your department handles it.

Delegate Corwin: In the second resolve clause, what are the principles expressed by this resolution and how will the CGS president determine them?
Treasurer Hodak: The idea was that the principles espoused in the Whereas clauses is that graduate students have a right to have some sort of leave policy. If for some bizarre reason the leaves policy changes to something that doesn’t benefit grad students, then the president would have the right to say that we no longer support the policy as written. We don’t anticipate this.

Delegate Muller: Once the policy is created we’ll get to see it again and say whether we’re in support of it? We’re not really sure where this policy will be set out – in the graduate school handbook in the HR policies or what. This is not the final form. The idea was to bring it before the council to see if they were in support of idea of graduate student leaves.

Delegte Lupo: The committee that I’ve been appointed to will be looking at these documents, and we would appreciate what direction that CGS wants to give us. I will pass it on.

Treasurer Hodak: As a process statement, that’s true. In many cases, the subcommittee does the work and the details of the policy. Our representatives serve on the subcommittee and therefore, shape the policy. <

Debate
Delegate Corwin: I want to point at that this really vague, we don’t have to worry about the details of the plan we’re just saying we do support a plan.

Delegate Pepper: I think this resolution is exceedingly vague and that this has burned us in the past – the Ohio Union stuff, the student activity fee, and I don’t think that we should commit ourselves to a policy without reviewing it.

President Pletz: This was passed out a few minutes ago, it’s available online, so it can be reviewed. Again, all we’re saying is that we encourage and support it. If this body doesn’t does not support this resolution, I think it sends a message that we don’t support our fellow delegates

Delegate Mrozek: I disagree. It’s not that I don’t think it’s not important. I just don’t think we should say we’re going to support an issue if we don’t know exactly what it is.

Delegate Pearson: We have some votes coming up where it would be good to have the body’s point of view on this. The question really is do we support a leave policy or not. I wish we could have the full resolution before we had to vote on it but schedules being what they are prevent it.

Delegate Muller: Unless I know where the funding is coming from, I can’t vote on the policy. I really can’t support it.

Delegate Eggleston: I think it makes sense that we should support leave and those kinds of things. Therefore, if we want to do that without referencing a specific leave policy, we could strike the 3rd and 4th whereas. I move to strike the third and fourth whereas.

Delegate Pepper seconds and Delegate Eggleston waives her rationale.

Debate
Secretary Scott: Two things. First, we’re not saying that we support the policy no matter what. We’re authorizing the president to make that decision such that if things go awry we reverse our position. Seond, the funding issues are beyond our consideration. Historically we have voted for things without gathering budgets, etc.

Delegate Lucas: I don’t think anyone would honestly think that we’re against paid leave for sickness. Does anyone really think that we’re not for this.

Treasurer Hodak: People have been voting against it. Another thing that we’re nervous about is that our RGC members might be getting pressure from their advisor, from their departments etc.

Delegate Lucas calls the question on the amendment. 17 in favor, 11 opposed, amendment carries. Third and fourth whereas will be removed.

Return to debate on original motion. 27 in favor, 0 opposed, motion passes.

V.Elections

Delegate Pearson moved to suspend the rules and accept a nomination from the floor for RGS. Motion seconded by Chair Evans. President Emeritus Cormier objects

Rationale
At this point in time where it’s very important for our organization to be fully represented on RGC, we have some very important issues coming up. We haven’t had this seat filled in a long time and this will allow it to do so for the first time this year. I think it’s important for us to be fully represented in that body because we do have some controversial issues, including leave policies.

Delegate Lucas calls the question and motion passes by unanimous placard vote.

Delegate Pearson nominates Josh Pepper to be the new MAPS delegate on RGC. Chair Evans seconds. Delegate Pepper accepts the nomination and is elected with no objection to consent.

V.Officer Reports

Vice President Baack: I still need more two more judges for Hayes Research Forum

Treasurer HodakL No additions to online report.

Secretary Scott We’ve only had one executive meeting since the last delegate meeting. At that meeting we basically just approved these resolutions and the agenda.

VI. Committee Reports

Delegate Corwin: I know that I’m being really picky, but are you aware that in the article about this trip they both named this body and Waverly’s title incorrectly? President Pletz stated that she already saw a lantern reporter and she informed her of the changes and asked for a correction.

VII. Delegate Issues and Concerns

President Pletz requests that he send a blurb and will let the body know what she finds out at the April meeting.

Update on Buckeye Village situation from Chair Depelteau: there are a couple of units that have undergrads living in them. They don’t seem to be a problem. It’s either that or they don’t get filled and then the people renting at Buckeye Village will end up with higher rents. We are monitoring that situation

Delegate Muller: Regarding what Dean Huntington said earlier, what avenues are open to us, and other members of our departments to send feedback regarding the freeman report? President Pletz: They can certainly email dean freeman or the provost. Whenever I get a forum, I certainly try to speak about it. You can also bring forth a resolution.

Mr. Daniels: Do you have any thoughts about whether it would be more effective to do this now or after the 10 sample department report is issued? Do you think we should wait or try to do something before? My personal opinion is that rushing to do a resolution before we knows what comes after makes us look ridiculous. On the other hand, if we wait without commenting, we look like we missed something.

President Emeritus Cormier: So the report is final now? No the final report is not due until the end of June. I was at a steering committee meeting last week and I’m sure I heard Snyder say it might be later.

Treasurer Hodak: Will the final report be an assessment? Will it be a report of the test run? Delegate Pearson: I’ve heard different things. In fact I’ve heard that the final report will be released in Dec 05, and it will include the pilot info. I know that Dean Freeman asked the provost to give him another year because he didn’t think he’d made enough progress.
President Pletz; That makes me think that there is some backpedaling on this issue, after the heat they’ve received. Similarly, with the Beck Committee, there is much more representation. On second thought I think we should wait until after to make a resolution.

Delegate Lucas: I have a question about appointments to committee. I mean there’s a graduate student on the committee now, but there was no approval that that’s the grad student we want on the committee. That was under the purview of the Provost.
Delegate Lucas: Is that OK? I mean, how will we know what’s going? Will you give us reports?

President Emeritus Cormier: Historically when ad-hoc committees appointed by the Provost or President, we do not have any way of choosing who represents us. Historically, we have said that we do not approve of this. This is an example of one of those committees. And as far as public records, anything other than a search is public record, and you can talk about it.
Treasurer Hodak: But I don’t want to share things that aren’t public and lost credibility within the committee. So I think there may be some things I can’t talk about.
President Emeritus Cormier: I disagree. If it’s not a search, it’s public record and you can talk about it.

Delegate Pepper: Who makes the final decision about the Freeman report?It would probably go to president, board of trustees and board of regents.

Treasurer Hodak: If the del body is concerned about how committee members are appointed, we do have a committee called “Organization and Elections “ that you could get involved with.

Chair Daniels: In my three or four years on the council I’ve never seen where more than one person wanted to be elected to committees.

Delegate Lucas: Do you think it’s because we’re not interested or because the positions aren’t functional? We have lists of positions and they sit vacant for long periods of time.

Delegate Lupo: If the process could be streamlined, it would be helpful. Everything about being a CGS representative could be streamlined a little bit.

VIII. Announcements