Bye bye GSSC! It was nice to know you <3

Last night was the last GSSC meeting of the year and our beloved Bureau Chief Romane Thomas’ last coverage. We will miss you, Romane and GSSC!

Last night, General Studies Student Council met in the Satow room to review the constitution and launch the GSSC App.

President Larosa started us off by announcing that the food bank was recognized by the broader Columbia community. He motioned for the GSSC food bank special committee to be dissolved.

VP of Policy Silin Huang announced that the Teaching Excellence Awards have just been released. She also shared her work in the Ivy Policy Conference and stated that she had learned a lot from other schools about improving mental health policies.

The council then started going through the Constitution, and here are the most important updates:

  • The Student Affairs Representative and the Academic Affairs Representative are now combined into one position.
  • The position of Comptroller is now named Treasurer because it is “more sexy sounding.”
  • The council debated removing the Senior and First class treasurer from council. The VP of Finance Jacob Case argued that these positions were “way too broad for two individual people” and that “three people could handle that vs. having 5.” First Class President Nicole Rodgers disagreed with this view and expressed a need to have these positions remain on council. The VP of Finance stated that the people filling these positions had quit specifically because “they were bored.” One of the current class treasurers supported this statement and stated that within a whole year, he had only been contacted for projects three times. Senior Class Vice President Laura Cabrera responded that “we shouldn’t have to go around chasing people to do something.” The motion to remove these positions did not pass.
  • The council also debated changing the name of the Student with Disabilities Representative to Health and Wellness Representative. GS Senator Ramond Curtis stated that students with disabilities “are one of the most dissatisfied students in GS” and that the name should not be changed. In the end, the council voted to keep the title of Students with Disabilities Representative.
  • A new position of Dual BA and Joint program Representative was added. Members of the council argued about which committee this representative should sit on: Policy or Campus Life. In the end, the council voted to give this position flexibility given that it is a recent addition.
  • The position of Vice-Alumni Representative was removed. Originally this position was added to council because Michael Neier, who was Alumni Representative at the time, was graduating halfway through the year. Yet, it turned out that his vice-representative “quit as soon as Mike graduated anyways.”
  • The council debated removing the Family and Working Students Representative and the Veteran Students Representative from the list of elected positions to appointed positions. The current Veteran Student Representative stated that “having five people decide someone who is supposed to represent 400 people does not make sense.” Concerns were also raised that solely appointing the representative would allow MilVets to be implicated in the choices made.
  • As of now, former CEB members cannot serve on GSSC. The council debated whether they should just be ineligible to run for elections but could still serve in an appointed position. Concerns were raised about whether this would allow for promises to be made to CEB members and would thus be unethical. The motion did not pass.

Although the council was unable to go through all of the intended changes due to time and logistical concerns, they hope that next years’ council will continue constitutional review.

GSSC App

During this meeting, GSSC also launched their new app, designed by GS student Barak Ben-Noon. This new app will allow for increased engagement from GS students and will also “help people ask for help.” The main purpose of this app is to facilitate communication between GSSC and the student body through push notifications. Thus, a student who has this app would be able to know instantly about events on campus.

The Food Bank

Founder of the Food Bank, Michael Higgins, came to GSSC to ask for funding for an advertisement banner to be put up in Lerner. Higgins stressed that individual donations were crucial for the food bank and that this banner would allow for greater exposure. As he put it, “this is the biggest way to get the word out is to advertise who we are and where we are.” The council decided to postpone this decision until later.

Financial Updates:

  • F@CU Spending: $125 from the student events budget
  • Senior Cruise ticket subsidization: $150 from the student events budget
  • Senior Gift Funding:  $3018.28 from various budgets
  • Website Funding: $100 from the communications budget
  • App Funding: $300 from the communications budget