President's Report to the Council of Graduate Students
September 28, 2001
Greetings and welcome to the start of the 2001-02 academic year at The Ohio State University.
In light of the events on 11 September, I am asking everyone to make new students feel welcome in your programs. Also, please take a little extra effort to ensure that our international graduate students feel like the valued members of the OSU community that they are.
As always, but especially these days, we must all take personal responsibility for the health and safety of those within our community. To this end I strongly encourage anyone who experiences or witnesses any form of harassment to report these incidents to the Office of Student Judicial Affairs (2050 Drake, 2-0748).
I would also like to remind everyone that the Office of Counseling and Consultation Service (4th floor Younkin, 2-5766) is staffed with trained professionals who are available to address a variety of counseling needs. If you are experiencing any form of stress or anxiety due to the recent national calamity, please consider making use of this office.
I would like to put the call out for committee chairs. The work of the Council will be greatly hindered if we cannot fill all of our committee chairmanships. Since the last meeting, we have brought on a chair for the International Student Concerns Committee and lost our Compensation and Benefits Chair. In addition to Compensation and Benefits, Campus Events and Outreach and Engagement are currently without leadership. Please consider taking on a leadership role in the Council.
Please remind graduate students in your program that they can contribute $2 per quarter to the Council by checking the appropriate box when they register each quarter. These monies provide additional financial assistance to CGS and allow us to do more programming on behalf of graduate students.
I have been attending meetings of the Competitive Compensation Oversight Group during the summer. The task at hand continues to grow more difficult. Nevertheless the President is committed to moving the University towards a more competitive position relative to salaries for faculty, staff, and student workers (including graduate students). At the October Board and Senate meetings, initial presentations will be made on how the University is accomplishing this task.
Eve Scrogham, CGS Vice President, will probably mention this in her report, but I'd like to reiterate it myself. There are numerous Senate and University-wide Committees on which the Council seats graduate students. While it is our goal to fill all of our positions, I would like to stress the Senate Fiscal Committee. In light of the difficult economic situation that the state of Ohio faces, the University budget is a hot and important topic this coming year.
When I last spoke with Dean Huntington, the G-QUE Report was almost finalized. The draft report generated many suggestions and comments both within the Graduate School and within CGS. These revisions are being incorporated into the final document which will go to press shortly. Before this happens, members of a CGS subcommittee will have the opportunity to review the final draft.
Lastly, in a effort to reduce the Council's consumption of paper, we are reducing the copies of this mailing that we provide at our Council meetings. Should any delegate, for whatever reason, need hard copies of materials in the monthly mailings, please contact the office. We can send copies through campus mail, or provide copies for you at the meeting.
Respectfully submitted,
J. Briggs Cormier
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