This is how decisions are made at all levels by those that claim to represent us. Behind NDAs, closed doors (closed Zoom rooms), and in secret. Corruption at all levels.
00:45 “so we started drafting something and there’s been a lot of other statements or demands going out, um, and I think it’s best that we hold off on this because I don’t want this to be attached as one more thing from grad students, one more demand from grad students.”
03:30 “A lot of the claims that I’ve seen are downright false and don’t understand the university mechanisms…”
05:50 “and there are some things, like Marie said, that aren’t very reasonable.”
09:12 “it’s been sort of, I guess our, our mentality to not allocate our personal funds to awards unless we have to…”
11:00 “we are approving this, and we’re sort of taking money that we have unspent over the last few years to spend on this.”
14:24 “so as you may be able to tell there uh, there are a number of factors that go in to what we can and can’t do, um, to Kayla’s point, sure we can basically go ‘we’re basically going to get everything second-hand from, uh, what’s it called Dustin, uh, um, surplus! We can get everything from surplus. Here’s the thing, everything in our office now is basically modgepodged together from different purchases, throughout different years, to meet different needs. So what we really wanted to do, um, is really set up the new GPSC office space to be a place that the GAs want to be working, because the GAs live there, the EB lives there, where we can actually hold little townhall meetings, or it can be a place for constituency meetings. We’ll have a backyard there. With some of those extra funds we can decorate it a little bit and make it a nice home base for GPSC. Um, I always understand the impetus to throw more money at graduate students, but there are limitations with what we are able to do and um, and how we are able to justify, uh, the giving of any money. Every single time. I can’t even explain to you how many hoops it takes, or and questions it takes, we cannot take that money and put it into our foundations account.”
17:22 “we really have to think about kind of the uh, um, strategy overall, because, literally half of our budget we already give away to graduate students. Um and I don’t think it’s that much to say that we’re going to set up the next council to really, um, have a home base they want to spend time in and that’s comfortable and that’s a livable space for the work that they do, and that’s going to last for years and years to come and that they’re not going to be constantly replacing things.”
20:14 “(graduate student printing hub) it doesn’t fulfill a business need and we are technically a business unit within the university, even our mission is different…”
21:15 “I move to amend it to $40,000 (from $35,000).
