After extensive deliberation, the Graduate Student Organization voted to approve $7,465 in funds for several student organizations at its Wednesday evening meeting in Crouse-Hinds Hall.

Members of the School of Education Council requested $2,000 for a teaching assistant simulation program. Funding for the program was the subject of one of the most contentious debates of the meeting. The program would train international TAs to better communicate with native English-speaking students in a simulation of a classroom environment at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University.

The program had asked for funding through a different channel at the last GSO Senate meeting on Feb. 10. It was voted down by senators at that meeting based on the recommendation of the finance committee.

At Wednesday’s meeting, the finance committee said the proposal had undergone many necessary revisions and recommended the program receive the funding. One committee member, though, said the student looking to fund the program had made a comment about blockading — or holding up — the next GSO meeting if the committee did not support the funds.

When the student later arrived at the meeting, he said he had no intention of blockading the meeting. Rather, he wanted to bring his students, who are all international TAs, to the meeting so they could explain why the program would be beneficial to them.

The program was ultimately fully funded, but an amendment was added that will allow all TAs to apply to participate in the program. The GSO will decide how the TAs are chosen.

The largest amount of funding allocated to a single group at the meeting was $4,650, which went to contemporary arts and space programming (CASP) for five events throughout the course of the rest of the semester. CASP provides professional development services to graduate students in the College of Visual and Performing Arts.

The original motion presented by GSO Comptroller Jose Muller was to allot $3,215 to fund three CASP events. After further discussion about the events, the GSO senators decided to fund two additional CASP events that would bring visiting artists to campus.

CASP initially wanted to fund six events at a cost of $6,690, but the sixth event fell outside of GSO’s fiscal year. The events will also allow some VPA graduate students to expand their CVs by displaying work off campus.

Two smaller proposals, totaling $815, were also approved. Senators declined funding for two other proposals.

Rajesh Kumar, a member of the travel grant committee, also addressed the recent change to the GSO travel grant application that will allow students to collect up to $600 for travel. Previously, students could only collect $300 per application.

At the GSO’s Feb. 10 meeting, the organization voted to amend the travel grant policy to reflect the monetary change. At Wednesday’s meeting it approved an amendment that would allow students who had previously applied — and were awarded — a $300 grant for the 2015-16 academic year to apply for an additional $300.

Sam Leitermann, GSO’s vice president of internal affairs, announced that he and three other international graduate students would be traveling to Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress on behalf of graduate students on National Association of Graduate-Professional Students’ Advocacy Summit and Legislative Action Days.

One of the students going on the trip said American students should be more active in the event in the future because international students are not impacted by student debt policies in the same ways American students are.

Leitermann also led the senate in the meeting’s only election. Jasmine Vickers, a graduate student in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, had vacated the position of recording secretary, and three students had expressed interest in taking her place.

Neither Michaele Webb, a graduate student in the School of Education, nor Parvathy Binoy, a graduate student in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, attended the meeting to formally nominate themselves. The third candidate, Patrick Neary, a graduate student in the College of Arts and Sciences, was in attendance and nominated them out of fairness.

Neary, a former GSO president, was elected in a landslide.

Published on March 2, 2016 at 11:20 pm

Contact Delaney: dovanwey@syr.edu