On Wednesday, the Graduate Student Council (GSC) approved a variety of student events, modified funding guidelines and unanimously passed a joint bill with the Undergraduate Senate (UGS) to put a constitutional amendment on the upcoming ASSU ballot.
The amendment would affect the ballot only for undergraduates, but the UGS realized at its meeting Tuesday night that potential constitutional changes would need the GSC’s approval as well. The measure would keep student groups from adding funding they did not initially request for their budgets in their annual petitions as well as prevent student groups from paying their officers with accounts funded by student fees. The amendment would also prevent students fees from going toward items prohibited by law or University policy, such as alcohol.
The GSC also began to revise its funding committee guidelines and will continue to modify the guidelines in the next meeting. Council members added language specifying that funding meetings should be placed on the GSC calendar no later than one week before funding meetings. They also revised guidelines to state that, in order to get GSC funding, Student Activities and Leadership (SAL) must approve off-campus events by the Monday before event representatives come to funding meetings.
Other changes modified requirements for ticketed and fundraising events, encouraged community service to groups to promote accountability with annual reports at the end of the academic year and specified that the GSC will not give funding to thesis defenses and related expenses.
The GSC also approved funding for a variety of student groups. One such group was the Stanford Youth Cultural Exchange Initiative, which will host a diversity dinner on April 12 to connect graduate students and high school students in an effort to open a conversation about diversity and community service. The event falls within Graduate Student Diversity Month, a series of events that promotes the importance of diversity and identity.
Contact Aparna Verma at averma2 ‘at’ stanford.edu.