Notes from the Arizona for Education meeting
Tuesday, September 29th, 7:30pm
Brian Marks, instructor in Geography and Development
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The meeting convened with a listing of agenda items. The agenda included:
*Working with the Graduate and Professional Student Council (GPSC) and attending the GPSC meeting this Wednesday
- The proposed Graduate Student/Teaching Assistant Bill of Rights and Responsibilities
*Communication and networking
*Mission and goals
*The Faculty Poll
*Forming committees
We began with my announcing the meeting of the GPSC on Wednesday, September 30th at 6:30pm in Law 168. I invited everyone to attend the meeting.
Two senators from the GPSC were among the people at the meeting. Lucy and Cory (Senators for Humanities and Sciences, respectively) explained the need for people to come to GPSC meetings to speak up for their interests. Lucy’s agenda in the GPSC includes tuition, benefits, health care, and remission for graduate students. Without support from students at the meetings, it’s more difficult for them to be effective on these issues. In the GPSC Executive Board, there’s nobody from Humanities, SBS, etc., only Sciences and Law, so it’s not an even level of representation in the Board.
Lucy and Cory also informed us that today the GPSC President and Vice-President were in Phoenix working on increasing lobbying with the legislature. There’s going to be a speaker at the GPSC meeting about engagement with the legislature.
At present, there is one unfilled seat for SBS in the GPSC. Voter turnout is very low for GPSC and in some cases there’s no candidates at all or only one candidate for a post. With someone in the GPSC, you can get into audiences with the legislature, university committees, other venues that aren’t easily accessed by people acting as individuals.
This comment was in part a response to Kerri Jean who said that part of what we needed to do was go as individuals and groups to legislative committee meetings in Phoenix and other places where decisions on the budget took place. The question turned on how best to advocate for educational funding with people like legislators – a few other people spoke up about this and said that they didn’t want to put all of our efforts towards either individual or institutional means of influence, but that we also have collective action, like the rally last Thursday, as a means of influence. Billy said that if so few people voted for GPSC candidates, perhaps we shouldn’t have this body at all, why not have representation from departments instead.
We moved on from this discussion after concluding that four people present would go to the GPSC meeting on Wednesday.
Lucy and Cory told us a bit about the proposed Graduate Student Bill of Rights. This idea was first broached by the GPSC a few years ago, they tried but it hit a brick wall with the legal office of the university. The Bill came up again recently at the September 21st graduate student meeting with President Shelton when the GPSC president and Shelton announced they would begin a process to draft such a bill. As they understand it, Lucy and Cory say the Bill may be just the compiling or pulling together of already-existing policies on rights and responsibilities of grad students / TAs / RAs from various and sundry places in university codes and rules. They have some questions about the process of how this Bill will get drafted, as of yet it’s not at all clear how this will occur, plus concerns about the content of the Bill as regards graduate student’s issues.
After this, we took up the communication question. We agreed that we had some serious issues about communication, issues of people not being able to get on the Arizona for Education listserve if they don’t have a Google email account, how best to operate the website and listserve, how to exchange information with people around the campus and beyond. The technological part of the discussion dealt with the interest of Billy to have more people help him with moderating and maintaining the website and listserve and the use of Twitter and RSS feeds to syndicate our announcements to more people. Myself and others raised the question of contact people, someone or a few people who can be points of contact for those seeking information about events and meetings or otherwise be available to communicate with people (non-media) who want to get involved or otherwise say something to or hear something from this group.
At this point Paula, who was introduced as a movement organizer, spoke to us about the dilemma of a group just starting out from a situation like ours between the need for structure to be able to organize and the need for organizing to constitute the appropriate structure. Thus it’s difficult at first to sort out organizing and structure but it’s good to start from broad points of agreement and then move towards more detailed purposes based on listening to many people outside the group.
We took on the question of mission and goals now. Conor proposed that we were seeking campus-wide organizing across divisions of labor like graduates, staff, faculty, etc. Geoff and a few others asked at this point what our tactics could or should be, what are we going to do to achieve any end. Kerri Jean said that the point is to get more people on campus more active. We are more direct action-oriented than the GPSC.
There were a lot of points and proposals about what part of our work was in networking people together, what part about consciousness, what part about direct action, what level of focus on graduate students, or staff, or other groups on campus or beyond. Angela came up with two points, to which she added one more a bit later, as points of unity:
- Develop consciousness of the educational community
- Support direct action in defense of education
+ Cultivate outlets for individuals’ and groups’ experiences
Paula advised us that at this point we should be listening to people outside of this group, throwing back at them these questions (what our goals and tactics should be) so as to get at more specific goals and so on. (I had just prior said that these goals above were very general and more specific ones were needed, such as directing some tuition money back to departments who teach more undergraduate hours).
Majed said people should go back to their departmental graduate student committees and see where people stand in their departments, things shouldn’t be so centralized and people should organize in their departments.
Chad followed that by saying that we shouldn’t spread ourselves too thin, we need to do the organizing and listening here on campus so that we can go to the legislature with the breadth and numbers of people we need and are capable of achieving but don’t yet have. He also said that he’s against differential cuts because it’s those departments who bring in the big amounts of grant money who end up doing better from the cuts when they’re done this way.
Jacob talked to us briefly about how he’s glad that now that the charges have been dropped, it’s no longer about him primarily but about organizing, that’s a good thing.
Then we sketched out committee tasks and assignments.
We tasked a committee to articulate goals for the group and to return next time with their report.
There will be a delegation going to the GPSC on Wednesday.
There’s now an Outreach committee that will take up the work of organizing. Majed is with this committee.
Communication will improve our electronic infrastructure. They would like more people to help them in doing moderation and other tasks. Tabitha and Billy are with this committee. There was some talk about merging Outreach with Communication.
There’s an Action Committee that we didn’t get to talk about. We also didn’t get to say much at all about the Faculty Poll.
We adjourned at around 9pm.
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