At its Tuesday night meeting, Ohio University Graduate Student Senate viewed a presentation from GSS executive board members about joint committees.
Vice President for Communications Becky Salami announced five events the Diversity & Inclusion Committee have planned for Spring Semester. Those events include an international student discussion, a cultural competency discussion, Beers & Queers hosted with the LGBT Center, a sexual misconduct discussion and the Women in Grad School Day Conference.
GSS Vice President for Finance Alec Koondel said the Ways & Means Committee will select awards for faculty and graduating members of GSS. Koondel selected body members that are not graduating to select awards without biased judgement.
The Ways & Means Committee is also selecting the Outstanding Graduate Faculty Award, which is a “big role” for that committee.
“The person who is selected as the outstanding faculty will speak at commencement the following year,” Maria Modayil, president of GSS, said. “So the ones that were selected last year will be speaking at Spring Commencement this year.”
During Modayil’s report, Graduate Student Life Commissioner Yuxi Zhou asked whether GSS’ funding could support student health insurance or the general fee. Modayil said the senate's budget is “university money and restricted dollars.”
“There’s a lot of limitations in terms of what we can use our funds for, because it is university money and its restricted dollars, so there’s only so many activities we can use the money for,” Modayil said. “The other part is … our budget is really small, we receive $3,300 and some change each year. The reason why we have a budget now is its carried over (from the previous) years.”
Following those reports, body members voted on a resolution to appoint new members, which passed. That resolution welcomed five new members to the body: Representative for the Division of Physical Therapy Rylee Fitzgerald; Commissioner for Housing, Transportation and Parking Vivekasugha Alif Bin Gunaalan; Representative for Department of Economics John Moriarty; Representative for Mathematics Luke Morgan and Representative for Modern Languages Spencer Cappelli.
During winter break, three GSS members resigned. Senator for the College of Arts & Sciences Claire Eder, Senator for the College of Fine Arts Elliot Long and Representative for the Department of Political Science Fiona Akomolede resigned.
A resolution to regulate presentations during general body meetings was tabled indefinitely. A resolution on GSS committee structure was tabled because the primary sponsor, Senator for Center for International Studies Seth Baker, was absent.
