As the current Graduate Student Council term comes to an end, members are scrambling to set the stage for the incoming council, discussing budget and bylaw updates and concluding their final projects.

GSC members unanimously approved the appointments of Alexandria Butler ’11, Ana Portillo ’11, Stephanie Garrett ’12, Alekzandra June Scully ’13, Hilary Stone ’13, Dennis Mak, a business student, and Makeda Robinson, a medical student, to the Nominations Commission. Mak and Robinson will serve as chair and deputy chair, respectively.

NomCom will nominate four students to be “solicitors general,” paid positions to represent cases before the ASSU Constitutional Council, according to GSC co-chair Eric Osborne, a law student, and financial officer Ryan Peacock, a graduate student in chemical engineering.

Co-chair Nanna Notthoff, a graduate student in psychology, provided a housing update, explaining that the housing committee plans to improve communication between students and Housing administrators.

“[Housing] said they didn’t really know about the concerns that students had,” Notthoff said. “That’s why addressing the [Rains] issue didn’t happen until after the decision had already been made.”

ASSU President David Gobaud, a coterminal student in computer science, provided his final update of ASSU affairs and said his farewell to council members. Gobaud will conclude his term on Friday when incoming ASSU executives Angelina Cardona ’11 and Kelsei Wharton ’12 take over.

Council members approved $570 for Bengalis at Stanford, $1,028 for Sarvodaya and $400 for the Graduate Student Programming Board.

Executive Budget Debate

Heated debate arose over executive salaries, with members divided over whether or not executive salaries should be left at their current amount.

According to Peacock, the issue was raised by Undergraduate Senator Alex Katz ’12, who favored using the money for more voluntary student organization (VSO) funding.

Current executives are paid about $10,000 each per year, while GSC chairs and the Senate chair are paid a combined total of $7,200 and $6,250, respectively.

“How much of a full-time job should this be?” Osborne asked.

Emphasizing the “student” in “student body president,” Notthoff argued that the ASSU executives should still commit a considerable amount of time to their academic duties.

“The decrease in salary should correlate with the decrease in responsibility and expectation,” she said. “It’s important that the president is a student as well.”

Gobaud argued that the ASSU executive job requires 70 hours a week minimum, and decreasing the salary wouldn’t mean the executives would work any less.

School of Education representative Jon McNaughtan, a graduate student in education, said student body presidents in other schools often take academic leave during the year that they serve, allowing them to devote all of their time to improving campus life. Gobaud supported this concept.

However, Amy Askin, a doctoral candidate in civil and environmental engineering, argued that requiring too much of the student body presidents may also discourage qualified candidates from vying for the executive position.

“Telling people that they’re going to need to spend more time in school before they can finish will also discourage people from running,” Askin said. “I wouldn’t want someone who does have great ideas to be discouraged to run.”

Gobaud asserted that the budget does not need to be either increased or decreased. He has not accepted a paycheck for much of this year.

“There’s really no need to reallocate the budget,” Gobaud said. “There’s no need to cut. The amount of money we have probably even went up.”

In a straw poll among all meeting attendees, the majority voted to neither increase nor decrease the executive salary. In a separate straw poll, voting members voted 12-1 not to increase the salary and 8-4 not to decrease the salary. The polls will be used to figure out next year’s budget in Monday’s budget committee meeting.

If no new budget is approved, last year’s budget will be used instead, according to parliamentarian Robert Hennessy, a graduate student in electrical engineering.

Funding Bylaws

Funding committee bylaw changes were contested over the GSC members’ e-mail list this week; on Wednesday, newly elected funding committee chair Krystal St. Julien, a graduate student in biochemistry, addressed each concern as members mulled over more adjustments.

Discussing caps on food spending, GSC members determined that snacks, lunch and dinner funding will no longer be cut by an “arbitrary” $2, but instead be cut to $3, $6 and $8 from the original $4, $8 and $10 after the first 50 people. Larger groups can get bulk deals, St. Julien said.

Council members also discussed the wording of the seminars funding policy. Instead of declaring that all academic seminars would not be funded, members decided only academic talks of a “broad interest” will be funded. The GSC would define “broad interest” on a case-by-case basis.

Additional changes will be made in the upcoming week. Members plan to vote on the final bylaw changes at next week’s meeting.